In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Is Literature Self-Referential?Eric MillerIIs literary language necessarily self-referential? And does this put paradox at the heart of literature? For at least two decades now, affirmative answers to both questions have been articles of faith among critics in the structuralist and poststructuralist mainstream. Literature’s ineluctable paradoxicality attracts us so because a paradox suggests that there are limits to human rationality, and thus strikes a blow for literature and against science. (...) Paradox ensures literature its own special realm, safe from the culturally imperialistic inroads of science’s orderly, rational-empirical constructions. Literature thus gets to be seen as “bigger” than reason, because only literature can live with paradox, and thus only literature reveals those “deeper” truths of contradiction-ridden human existence, whereas science can never penetrate beyond rational manipulations of phenomenal surfaces. Indeed, for anyone who holds all human existence to be fundamentally paradoxical, this special capacity makes literature the only genuine, demystified species of human knowledge. In the war between C. P. Snow’s Two Cultures, a war humanists are now losing badly, we like to regard paradox as our ultimate weapon.Belief in the paradoxicality of literature may also be found among the New Critics, 1 and in fact goes back at least to the Romantics, 2 but they did not derive this belief from a necessary self-referentiality of literary language. This newer way of deriving paradox appears to offer several competitive advantages. Self-reference seems to be the ultimate version of “art for art’s sake”: if all literary language is necessarily self-referential, then literature must be something totally self-contained, and is thus legitimized solely in and through itself. In addition, deriving [End Page 475] literature’s paradoxicality from self-reference seems to ground it in the same conceptual realm as mathematical logic, and thus tempts us to claim for literature a “rigor” normally conceded only to logic, mathematics, and theoretical physics. Self-referentiality would thus seem both to protect literature’s autonomy and to raise its cultural status into the company of mathematics and science.But it is a trap. For behind this new strategy lurks a capitulation to the underlying conceptual scheme of natural science, and literature thus comes to be conceived, in effect, as a science. Self-reference is, after all, still a kind of reference; paradox is still a kind of truth-relational construction;—and truth-relations built around reference constitute the correspondence theory of truth. From such a foundational commitment to reference and correspondence-truth, flows the rest of the scientific worldview: the dualism of referring expression and referent, word and object, sentence and fact, theory and data, language and world, culture and nature. The presentation of literature as a quasi-negation of this ontology changes nothing. The dualism of reference still functions as literature’s conceptual starting point, as its arche. We only appear to be defining a peculiar and radically distinct sphere for literature when we insist on its self-referentiality, on the (recursive) identity, for it, of referring expression and referent. For, this is still to treat the conceptual distinction between the two as foundational, and literature thereby tacitly assimilates science’s fundamental categorial division: the referential language-world duality of correspondence truth. Indeed, literature thus comes to live even more completely in the margins of science: it will have no essence of its own; it will differ at most in being a photo-negative image of science’s positiv(istic) project. In Snow’s war, self-reference is a Trojan horse.With self-reference as the essence of literature, we are thus staking our reputations on literature’s being a special field of formalizable “knowledge about...,” rather than, say, a quality or kind or realm of possible experience—which is to adopt science’s understanding of what is important. Matters are only made worse by that other attempt to define literary studies as a negation of the theory-data dualism of natural science: the poststructuralist denial of the distinction between criticism and literature. For the institutional need professional critics have to be seen as a discipline with a method and a subject, as a form of “knowledge about,” hardly disappears with... (shrink)

Connecting research and production, art research represents a breaking of the barrier between creation and academia. However, there is also a contradiction contained in this kind of research deriving from its methods, since the process of art-based practice must, by its very nature, involve the subjectivity of the artist. I use my own studies as the research object to discuss this issue, and this article presents the problems I encountered during my artistic practice and research of ambiguous roles. This paper (...) has two main points of focus. First, I explore how the fallacy of self-referentiality is presented in paintings and films, and, second, I draw on my short film practice during my master’s study period to explain how the shots present a continuum in relation to the “absent one” and produce interface effects. However, the second point is not necessarily the result of the first one. This kind of connection and contradiction between practice and cognition in the process of art research is that I will analyse and discuss here. (shrink)

Helps individual readers to overcome procrastination and build self-esteem Reveals how to create a culture of accountability, and how to hold someone accountable Gives leaders a step-by-step process for helping team members become more self-responsible Explains commitment reluctance and how to encourage self-responsibility among team members Uncovers why we blame others and shows how to defeat a blame culture Provides an easy read with no consultant-speak In recent years, HORN Training and Consulting was awarded the distinguished Gold Medal by the (...) Canadian Society for Training and Development for its leadership development program designed for one of the world’s largest international banks; and HORN is currently executing leadership development projects on a global scale for companies in the consumer packaged goods and pharmaceutical industries. (shrink)

On May 11th a round table discussion was held on the subject "The Interactions of Science and Art under the Conditions of the Revolution in Science and Technology ," organized by the editorial boards of the journals Voprosy filosofii and Voprosy literatury.

Despite their recent proliferation in global agricultural commodity chains, little is known about the potential of intersectoral partnerships to improve the position of smallholder farmers and their organizations. This article explores the potential of partnerships by developing a conceptual approach based on the sustainable livelihoods and linking farmers to market perspectives, which is applied in an exploratory study to six partnerships in the coffee sector in Peru. It is concluded that partnerships stimulate the application of standards to receive market access (...) and therefore emphasize human capital development of farmers to facilitate certification. By transferring knowledge to farmers, partnerships present a new source of technological change, which, in combination with certification, holds potential for improved environmental management and price premiums for producers. However, the emphasis on certification results in a comparatively narrow target group of farmers and is associated with high financial burdens for producer organizations. At the same time, other assets of producer organizations are often not strengthened sufficiently for them to operate successfully without further external support. This suggests that preparing producers for certification is prioritized over empowering organizations toward self-dependence. (shrink)

This article is concerned with Niklas Luhmann's theory of art which he formulated in the 1990s, based on his general theory of autopoietic systems. This theory regards modern society as a functionally differentiated formation whose sub-systems operate according to their inner principles of communication. According to this, the domain of art can also be seen as an operationally closed and self-referential communicative system. The basic problem in these notions lies in the way in which their description of the relationships existing (...) between different systems is only in very narrow terms. Consequently they partially ignore the present process of de-differentiation which has noticeably changed the status of art in society. Instead, Luhmann's ideas expressly emphasize that functional differentiation is an ongoing process. In order to describe the process of de-differentiation, social theory does not need to abandon the concept of autopoiesis, but it does need to understand social systems as interlaced formations which, to an increasing extent, contain common normative and organizational constituents. Because social systems are not altogether self-referential formations, the concept of autopoiesis can describe them only in part. This particular concept of system has been developed in particular by Richard Münch, and as such it forms a productive alternative to the theory of autopoietic social systems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Self-Reference:Theory and Didactics between Language and LiteratureSvend Erik Larsen (bio)Semiotics of Self-ReferenceLiterary metafiction constitutes the extreme case of self-referential texts. Therefore we can either discard it as generally irrelevant for the understanding of the cultural functions of texts, or use it as a point of departure for the formulation of both general and basic aspects of such functions. The position taken in this essay will opt for the last (...) possibility, although I know full well that already the term "metafiction" itself inevitably triggers a variety of skeptical reactions. Does it not just refer to some author's self-centered ruminations in the ivory tower? Or a topic for the nerds of literary studies with a taste for theoretical acrobatics? If so, in both cases following metafictional inclinations results in complete isolation from both the context of literature and its readers.However, one may also adopt the opposite position. The metafictional features of literature constitute one of the means by which literature reaches out to its context and also engages its readers. And critical endeavors are not necessarily devoid of anything but their own concepts. They may instead pave the way for methodological and didactic considerations that ultimately make difficult literature more accessible as a cultural phenomenon. Rather than dwelling upon subtle theoretical differences in the definition of what metafiction is, I will therefore engage in a methodological approach: what kind of questions can we put to the texts, and what kind of answers can we reasonably come up with when using metafiction in a methodological and didactic framework?I shall begin by proposing a set of definitions broader than metafiction that will allow me to zoom in on it as a relevant methodological concept that opens for didactic reflections. The notion of metalevel will constitute my starting point. In its broadest sense, a metalevel indicates a position outside a given field of objects or meanings and in relation to it. But rather than relating [End Page 13] to the content of the field in question, the metalevel is supposed to serve as a platform enabling us to observe and evaluate basic principles and function of the field. This is the role of, for example, the theory of science or of epistemology in relation to the particular knowledge of various sciences. We may call it an epistemological metalevel.In a more restricted sense, a metalevel comprises a level in relation to a given sign system — rather than to a given field of objects — from which we can observe and evaluate the basic principles defining the function, range and validity of the sign system. This is the role of, for example, musicology in relationto the acoustic arts, art criticism in relation to the visual arts, medicine in relation to bodily symptoms. We may call it an inter-semiotic metalevel.Finally, in its most restricted sense, a metalevel points toward a level inside a given sign system from which we can refer to this sign system itself,but not in relation to a given field of objects or in relation to another sign system. We may call this level an intra-semiotic metalevel. In this context, language is a unique system, which in this capacity shapes literature as a particular linguistic phenomenon. Only inside the semiotic system of language can the intra-semiotic metalevel have two different functions:The first function is as a science of language, linguistics, which is itself a verbal sign system. In verbal scientific descriptions and arguments we may scrutinize the natural or everyday language as a medium, that is, its basic linguistic structures and principles, without taking into consideration its content, which it may share with other media. Texts and pictures may refer to the same phenomenon even if such references do not overlap completely. All other sciences differ from linguistics in this respect, because they cannot deal scientifically with their non-verbal objects through the same non-verbal medium as that which makes up the object, but need the support of a linguistic metalevel or at least of signs that are linguistically anchored. Even mathematics or other strictly formal sign systems are based on natural languages. We may refer to... (shrink)

This study sought to identify whether or not differences exist between the ethical decisions of male and female managers; and, if they do exist, to identify the areas in which differences occurred. An additional evaluation was conducted to determine how each perceived their counterpart would respond to the same ethical decision making situations.Data were collected from 50 male managers and 50 female managers by means of a self-administered questionnaire. Distinctive demographic characteristics were noted among the segments.

Whereas mainstream theories of environmental art and sustainable development consider art as a domain suitable for the application of environmentally friendly procedures, such as the circular economy, trash management and digitization, this research article focuses on the internal development of the autopoetic and self-referential art machine, which generates an art-specific sustainability. The circular environmental economy coexists with the circular art economy, which implies changes in the aesthetics and poetics of the artwork; it deploys upcycling to use art trash in creating (...) a new, higher value object. Art-specific sustainability contributes to the power and complexity of the art machine with new conceptual interventions and devices. These devices allow art to resist threats from other fields and to redefine itself. As sustainable development agendas of international organizations take into account the social, political, and economic initiatives that promote ethics, inclusion, and tolerance, this article discusses the contributions of contemporary environmental art to expanded concepts of the political and science. In particular, art activism, in cooperation with civil society, can be an important driver in areas that parliamentary politics overlooks. (shrink)

This book collects, for the first time in one volume, contributions honoring Professor Raymond Smullyan’s work on self-reference. It serves not only as a tribute to one of the great thinkers in logic, but also as a celebration of self-reference in general, to be enjoyed by all lovers of this field. Raymond Smullyan, mathematician, philosopher, musician and inventor of logic puzzles, made a lasting impact on the study of mathematical logic; accordingly, this book spans the many personalities through which Professor (...) Smullyan operated, offering extensions and re-evaluations of his academic work on self-reference, applying self-referential logic to art and nature, and lastly, offering new puzzles designed to communicate otherwise esoteric concepts in mathematical logic, in the manner for which Professor Smullyan was so well known. This book is suitable for students, scholars and logicians who are interested in learning more about Raymond Smullyan's work and life. (shrink)

This dissertation investigates how art, truth, and politics are tightly integrated in Raphael's historical narratives in the Stanza d'Eliodoro. ;The first chapter argues for the importance of paying careful attention to pictorial structure--that close analysis of painting can make a strong contribution to the social history of art. The second chapter begins this interpretive path. It first describes the room's decorative ensemble as a whole and how the histories are located within its complex figurative scheme. Then, drawing upon Martin Heidegger's (...) analysis of postmedieval processes of Vorstellung, it defines the pictorial narratives themselves as representations and concludes that as pictorial representations these narratives appear unable to ground the truth of sacred history. ;Chapter 3 focuses on the Expulsion of Heliodorus, a mural replete with self-referential models of both its own mode of authorship and mode of reception. These self-referential cues help define what it means for the Heliodorus to be not only a pictorial representation but more extensively a work of art. It is Raphael's art of representation that shows forth and validates the metaphysical truth of papal history. ;The latter part of Chapter 3 and all of Chapter 4 offer readings of the Heliodorus as well as the three other histories--the Liberation of St. Peter, Mass at Bolsena, and Repulse of Attila--construing them as theologico-political narratives of the divinity of papal power. All four histories express at the level of narrative form the dilemma of the papacy's contemporary political trajectory only for this predicament to find imaginative "resolution" through the movement of the narrative action. This chapter expounds upon the configurations of historical time in the decorative scheme and how this projects the political unconscious of papal desire. Yet the fifth and final chapter concludes that the Eliodoro narratives are not simply collective wishfulfillments but more properly public symbols that rhetorically address a beholder so to persuade him to accept as true the papacy's desired self-image of its own historical mission. Raphael's art of representation was essential towards this end. (shrink)

We study the structure of families of theories in the language of arithmetic extended to allow these families to refer to one another and to themselves. If a theory contains schemata expressing its own truth and expressing a specific Turing index for itself, and contains some other mild axioms, then that theory is untrue. We exhibit some families of true self-referential theories that barely avoid this forbidden pattern.

This thesis focuses on expressively rich languages that can formalise talk about probability. These languages have sentences that say something about probabilities of probabilities, but also sentences that say something about the probability of themselves. For example: (π): “The probability of the sentence labelled π is not greater than 1/2.” Such sentences lead to philosophical and technical challenges; but can be useful. For example they bear a close connection to situations where ones confidence in something can affect whether it is (...) the case or not. The motivating interpretation of probability as an agent's degrees of belief will be focused on throughout the thesis. -/- This thesis aims to answer two questions relevant to such frameworks, which correspond to the two parts of the thesis: “How can one develop a formal semantics for this framework?” and “What rational constraints are there on an agent once such expressive frameworks are considered?”. (shrink)

Are there ‘self-referential’ propositions? That is, propositions that say of themselves that they have a certain property, such as that of being false. There can seem reason to doubt that there are. At the same time, there are a number of reasons why it matters. For suppose that there are indeed no such propositions. One might then hope that while paradoxes such as the Liar show that many plausible principles about sentences must be given up, no such fate will befall (...) principles about propositions. But the existence of self-referential propositions would dash such hopes. Further, the existence of such propositions would also seem to challenge the widespread claim that Liar sentences fail to express propositions. The aim of this paper is thus to settle the question–at least given an assumption. In particular, I argue that if propositions are structured, then self-referential propositions exist. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine a special subgroup of emotion: self-referential emo- tions such as shame, pride and guilt. Self-referential emotions are usually conceptualized as (i) essentially involving the subject herself and as (ii) having complex conditions such as the capacity to represent others’ thoughts. I will show that rather than depending on a fully fledged ‘theory of mind’ and an explicit language-based self-representation, (i) pre-forms of self-referential emotions appear at early developmental stages already exhib- iting their (...) characteristic structure of the intentional object of the emotion being identical with or intricately related to the subject experiencing the emotional state and that (ii) they precede and substantially contribute to the development of more complex representations and to the development of a self-concept, to social interaction and to ways of understand- ing of other minds. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that when we try to describe the specifically self-aware part of the mind, as opposed to the host of unconscious psychic activities, we face a potentially fatal difficulty - one I have termed ‘the inconceivability problem’. Because of the entanglement of the subject and the object in observations of subjectivity, and certain conceptual circularities, it seems we might never be able to represent the self-conscious mind with anything other than itself. This could leave consciousness studies (...) in a very awkward position. In an attempt to address this I propose that the concept of infinite regression, which is normally associated with the ‘homuncular fallacy’, be reinterpreted productively, in a way that puts self-reference at the heart of our conception of phenomenal experience. Looking at several examples of self-referential systems and theories of mind, including Zen, it seems one system in particular - video feedback - offers a rich source of analogies that might help us to visualize, if not explain, the operation of ‘world-embedded’ self-consciousness. I explain that this inquiry is an attempt to build a theoretical foundation for the construction of a ‘conscious art’, by which I mean a type of art that is, to some extent, aware of itself and its surroundings. (shrink)

The Western musical tradition has produced not only music, but also countless writings about music that remain in continuous—and enormously influential—dialogue with their subject. With sweeping scope and philosophical depth, _A Language of Its Own_ traces the past millennium of this ongoing exchange. Ruth Katz argues that the indispensible relationship between intellectual production and musical creation gave rise to the Western conception of music. This evolving and sometimes conflicted process, in turn, shaped the art form itself. As ideas entered music (...) from the contexts in which it existed, its internal language developed in tandem with shifts in intellectual and social history. Katz explores how this infrastructure allowed music to explain itself from within, creating a self-referential and rational foundation that has begun to erode in recent years. A magisterial exploration of a frequently overlooked intersection of Western art and philosophy, _A Language of Its Own_ restores music to its rightful place in the history of ideas. (shrink)

The Western musical tradition has produced not only music, but also countless writings about music that remain in continuous—and enormously influential—dialogue with their subject. With sweeping scope and philosophical depth, _A Language of Its Own_ traces the past millennium of this ongoing exchange. Ruth Katz argues that the indispensible relationship between intellectual production and musical creation gave rise to the Western conception of music. This evolving and sometimes conflicted process, in turn, shaped the art form itself. As ideas entered music (...) from the contexts in which it existed, its internal language developed in tandem with shifts in intellectual and social history. Katz explores how this infrastructure allowed music to explain itself from within, creating a self-referential and rational foundation that has begun to erode in recent years. A magisterial exploration of a frequently overlooked intersection of Western art and philosophy, _A Language of Its Own_ restores music to its rightful place in the history of ideas. (shrink)

Following the phenomenology that is revealed by the emergent structure of consciousness, the path will lead to the acknowledgement of consciousness having a self-referential aspect. By following phenomenological clues, properties of self-reference will be revealed. The two most prominent properties of self-reference will be shown to be inclusion and transcendence that will be shown to be found everywhere in the phenomenology of consciousness. Also, self-reference will turn out to be unformalizable, this imposing limits on what a theory of consciousness can (...) ever achieve. The unformalizability of self-reference would be shown to be because self-reference: is itself, includes itself, and transcendes itself, all at the same time. Nevertheless, unformalizability will be shown to be an essential feature needed to bring essences into existence. (shrink)

Episodic memory has a distinctive phenomenology. One way to capture what is distinctive about it is by using the notion of mental time travel: When we remember some fact episodically, we mentally travel to the moment at which we experienced it in the past. This way of distinguishing episodic memory from semantic memory calls for an explanation of what the experience of mental time travel is. In this paper, I suggest that a certain view about the content of memories can (...) shed some light on the experience of mental time travel. This is the view that, when a subject remembers some fact episodically, their memory represents itself as coming from a perception of that fact. I propose that the experience of mental time travel in memory is the experience of representing one of the elements in this complex content, namely, the past perceptual experience of the remembered fact. In defence of this proposal, I offer two considerations. Firstly, the proposal is consistent with the idea that memories enjoy a temporal phenomenology (specifically, a feeling of pastness). Secondly, the proposal is consistent with the possibility that some of our other cognitive capacities might yield an experience of mental time travel which can be oriented towards the future. I argue that the received conception of mental time travel is in tension with those two ideas. (shrink)

The Gödel–Artemov framework offered a formalization of the Brouwer–Heyting–Kolmogorov semantics of intuitionistic logic via classical proofs. In this framework, the intuitionistic propositional logic IPC is embedded in the modal logic S4, S4 is realized in the Logic of Proofs LP, and LP has a provability interpretation in Peano Arithmetic. Self-referential LP-formulas of the type ‘t is a proof of a formula ϕ containing t itself’ are permitted in the realization of S4 in LP, and if such formulas are indeed involved, (...) it is then necessary to use fixed-point arithmetical methods to explain intuitionistic logic via provability. The natural question of whether self-referentiality can be avoided in realization of S4 was answered negatively by Kuznets who provided an S4-theorem that cannot be realized without using directly self-referential LP-formulas. This paper studies the question of whether IPC can be embedded in S4 and then realized in LP without using self-referential formulas. We consider a general class of Gödel-style modal embeddings of IPC in S4 and by extending Kuznetsʼ method, show that there are IPC-theorems such that, under each such embedding, are mapped to S4-theorems that cannot be realized in LP without using directly self-referential formulas. Interestingly, all double-negations of tautologies that are not IPC-theorems, like ¬¬, are shown to require direct self-referentiality. Another example is found in IPC→, the purely implicational fragment of IPC. This suggests that the BHK semantics of intuitionistic logic is intrinsically self-referential. (shrink)

I suggest two valid and sound arguments refuting physicalism, whether it is reductive or supervenience physicalism. The first argument is a self-referential one that is not involved with any self-referential inconsistency. The second argument demonstrates that physicalism is inescapably involved with self-referential inconsistency. Both arguments show that arguments and propositions (to be distinguished from sentences) are not physical existents. They are rather mental existents that are not reducible to any physical existent and do not supervene on anything physical. From these (...) two arguments, it clearly follows that any physicalist argument or proposition, as a mental existent, is self-refuting. (AN PHL2326365) Subjects: EXISTENTS; INCONSISTENCY; METAPHYSICS; MIND; PHYSICALISM; SELF-REFERENCE. (shrink)

The paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of arguments of proper self-reference, arguments of self-application and arguments of iterative application. A formalization of the underlying logical structure of these arguments helps to identify the implicit premises on which these arguments rest. If the premises are plausible, the conclusions reached by these arguments must be taken seriously. In particular, all the types of argument discussed, when sound, show that certain theories that purport to be universally applicable are not tenable. The argumentative (...) power of such arguments then depends on how devastating it is for the theories in question to give up their claim of universal applicability. (shrink)

Glas's rich article makes several useful points about both anxiety and enactivism, and about how enactivism can help to conceptualize anxiety in a suitably complex way. I agree that we need to characterize anxiety as an embedded, context-sensitive and temporally evolving phenomenon with layered symptoms. As Glas points out, the enactive approach has useful conceptual tools for doing so, because of its incorporation of the theoretical apparatus of dynamical systems theory. I am sympathetic with most of what Glas says about (...) this point, so I shall not dwell on it any further.I want to focus instead on Glas's discussion of self-referentiality, which I found interesting and valuable but also in need of further... (shrink)

One way speakers can refer to themselves in conversation is with a stressed first-person pronoun accompanied by a movement of the hand to or toward the chest. This can be produced alone or in tandem with a reference and gesture to another person. Close analysis of several instances of self-referential gesture demonstrates that this form of self-reference is designed to achieve interactional work beyond simple reference, specifically relational disaggregation and self-referential extraction.

Contrary to the early media semioticians' claim that semiotics is a metalanguage of the media and the media are a metalanguage of reality, the present paper gives evidence of how the media represent a world that is itself highly mediated. It is argued that media representations involve self-referential loops in which communication turns out to be communication about communication, reports are reports about reports, and mediations are mediations of mediations. Self-reference in the media is interpreted as a symptom of postmodernity (...) with its tendency towards historical self-reflection in scenarios in which even catastrophic current events are being interpreted as mere media events or even déjà-vu scenarios in a culture in which everything seems to have been said and shown before. (shrink)

베르그손이 『의식에 직접 주어진 것들에 관한 시론』에서 발견하고 규정한 변화로서의 지속은 『물질과 기억』을 거치면서 과거의 보존으로 그리고 『창조적 진화』로 가면서 자기에 의한 자기 창조로 계속적으로 재규정되는 과정을 볼 수 있다. 이 세 가지 특징은 이미 첫 저서에서 그 맹아를 볼 수 있고 상당히 일관된 논리로 서술되고 있다. 우리는 이를 ‘자기지시성’(autoréférentialité)이라는 개념으로부터 재구성해 보고 이를 통해 지속의 개념이 점차 명료화되는 동시에 확장되는 과정을 살펴보고자 한다. 이를 위해 우리는 변화에 대한 『시론』의 분석에서 자기지시적 운동의 세 측면을 구분하고 이것이 새로운 규정으로 이어지는 실마리를 (...) 드러낸 후에 『물질과 기억』의 분석에서 물질적 현재로의 열림이라는 계기와 더불어 자기지시성이 창조적 의미로 확장되는 실마리를 살펴본다. (shrink)

This is a paper about The Causal Self-Referential Theory of Perception. According to The Causal Self-Referential Theory as developed by above all John Searle and David Woodruff Smith, perceptual content is satisfied by an object only if the object in question has caused the perceptual experience. I argue initially that Searle's account cannot explain the distinction between hallucination and illusion since it requires that the state of affairs that is presented in the perceptual experience must exist in order for the (...) perception to be veridical. Smith's account is interestingly different in that the descriptive content, i.e. the content that presents the perceptual object as having certain properties, does not determine the object of the experience. His account consequently does not require that the state of affairs that is presented in perception exists in order for the perception to have an object. Smith argues instead that perceptual reference is determined by a specific kind of demonstrative content. In this paper it is argued that Smith's account of demonstrative content is too indeterminate and in certain circumstances prescribes the wrong object. It is subsequently argued that the theory of demonstrative content can be modified so as to avoid these consequences. This modification involves deriving the conditions of satisfaction of seeing an object from the conditions of satisfaction of seeing the shape of the object, where the shape of the object is conceived of as a particularized property, what is also called a ‘trope’. (shrink)

The proof of the Second Incompleteness Theorem consists essentially of proving the uniqueness and explicit definability of the sentence asserting its own unprovability. This turns out to be a rather general phenomenon: Every instance of self-reference describable in the modal logic of the standard proof predicate obeys a similar uniqueness and explicit definability law. The efficient determination of the explicit definitions of formulae satisfying a given instance of self-reference reduces to a simple algebraic problem-that of solving the corresponding fixed-point equation (...) in the modal logic. We survey techniques for the efficient calculation of such fixed-points. (shrink)

The model of self-referential truth presented in this paper, named Revision-theoretic supervaluation, aims to incorporate the philosophical insights of Gupta and Belnap’s Revision Theory of Truth into the formal framework of Kripkean fixed-point semantics. In Kripke-style theories the final set of grounded true sentences can be reached from below along a strictly increasing sequence of sets of grounded true sentences: in this sense, each stage of the construction can be viewed as an improvement on the previous ones. I want to (...) do something similar replacing the Kripkean sets of grounded true sentences with revision-theoretic sets of stable true sentences. This can be done by defining a monotone operator through a variant of van Fraassen’s supervaluation scheme which is simply based on ω-length iterations of the Tarskian operator. Clearly, all virtues of Kripke-style theories are preserved, and we can also prove that the resulting set of “grounded” true sentences shares some nice features with the sets of stable true sentences which are provided by the usual ways of formalising revision. What is expected is that a clearer philosophical content could be associated to this way of doing revision; hopefully, a content directly linked with the insights underlying finite revision processes. (shrink)

In C. S. Peirce, as well as in the work of many biosemioticians, the semiotic object is sometimes described as a physical “object” with material properties and sometimes described as an “ideal object” or mental representation. I argue that to the extent that we can avoid these types of characterizations we will have a more scientific definition of sign use and will be able to better integrate the various fields that interact with biosemiotics. In an effort to end Cartesian dualism (...) in semiotics, which has been the main obstacle to a scientific biosemiotics, I present an argument that the “semiotic object” is always ultimately the objective of self-affirmation (of habits, physical or mental) and/or self-preservation. Therefore, I propose a new model for the sign triad: response-sign-objective. With this new model it is clear, as I will show, that self-mistaking (not self-negation as others have proposed) makes learning, creativity and purposeful action possible via signs. I define an “interpretation” as a response to something as if it were a sign, but whose semiotic objective does not, in fact, exist. If the response-as-interpretation turns out to be beneficial for the system after all, there is biopoiesis. When the response is not “interpretive,” but self-confirming in the usual way, there is biosemiosis. While the conditions conducive to fruitful misinterpretation (e.g., accidental similarity of non-signs to signs and/or contiguity of non-signs to self-sustaining processes) might be artificially enhanced, according to this theory, the outcomes would be, by nature, more or less uncontrollable and unpredictable. Nevertheless, biosemiotics could be instrumental in the manipulation and/or artificial creation of purposeful systems insofar as it can describe a formula for the conditions under which new objectives and novel purposeful behavior may emerge, however unpredictably. (shrink)

Graham Priest has argued that Yablo’s paradox involves a kind of ‘hidden’ circularity, since it involves a predicate whose satisfaction conditions can only be given in terms of that very predicate. Even if we accept Priest’s claim that Yablo’s paradox is self-referential in this sense—that the satisfaction conditions for the sentences making up the paradox involve a circular predicate—it turns out that there are paradoxical variations of Yablo’s paradox that are not circular in this sense, since they involve satisfaction conditions (...) that are not recursively specifiable, and hence not recognizable in the sense required for Priest’s argument. In this paper I provide a general recipe for constructing infinitely many such noncircular Yabloesque paradoxes, and conclude by drawing some more general lessons regarding our ability to identify conditions that are necessary and sufficient for paradoxically more generally. (shrink)

Graham Priest has argued that Yablo’s paradox involves a kind of ‘hidden’ circularity, since it involves a predicate whose satisfaction conditions can only be given in terms of that very predicate. Even if we accept Priest’s claim that Yablo’s paradox is self-referential in this sense—that the satisfaction conditions for the sentences making up the paradox involve a circular predicate—it turns out that there are paradoxical variations of Yablo’s paradox that are not circular in this sense, since they involve satisfaction conditions (...) that are not recursively specifiable, and hence not recognizable in the sense required for Priest’s argument. In this paper I provide a general recipe for constructing infinitely many such noncircular Yabloesque paradoxes, and conclude by drawing some more general lessons regarding our ability to identify conditions that are necessary and sufficient for paradoxically more generally. (shrink)

In his paper, “On paradox without self-reference”, Neil Tennant proposed the conjecture for self-referential paradoxes that any derivation formalizing self-referential paradoxes only generates a looping reduction sequence. According to him, the derivation of the Liar paradox in natural deduction initiates a looping reduction sequence and the derivation of the Yablo's paradox generates a spiral reduction. The present paper proposes the counterexample to Tennant's conjecture for self-referential paradoxes. We shall show that there is a derivation of the Liar paradox which generates (...) a spiraling reduction procedure. Since the Liar paradox is a self-referential paradox, the result is a counterexample to his conjecture. Tennant has believed that classical reductio has no essential role to formalize paradoxes. As our counterexample applies the rule of classical reductio, he may reject the counterexample. In this sense, it will be briefly argued that classical reductio and his rules for the liar sentence share some inferential role. If classical reductio should not be used in paradoxical reasoning, neither should be his rules for the liar sentence. (shrink)

In his paper, “On paradox without self-reference”, Neil Tennant proposed the conjecture for self-referential paradoxes that any derivation formalizing self-referential paradoxes only generates a looping reduction sequence. According to him, the derivation of the Liar paradox in natural deduction initiates a looping reduction sequence and the derivation of the Yablo's paradox generates a spiral reduction. The present paper proposes the counterexample to Tennant's conjecture for self-referential paradoxes. We shall show that there is a derivation of the Liar paradox which generates (...) a spiraling reduction procedure. Since the Liar paradox is a self-referential paradox, the result is a counterexample to his conjecture. Tennant has believed that classical reductio has no essential role to formalize paradoxes. As our counterexample applies the rule of classical reductio, he may reject the counterexample. In this sense, it will be briefly argued that classical reductio and his rules for the liar sentence share some inferential role. If classical reductio should not be used in paradoxical reasoning, neither should be his rules for the liar sentence. (shrink)