The general theory of variable binding term operators is an interesting recent development in logic. It opens up a rich class of semantic and model-theoretic problems. In this paper we survey the recent literature on the topic, and offer some remarks on its significances and on its connections with other branches of mathematical logic.

Three indexes have been compiled: authors of main articles (including our special departments such as ‘Projects in progress’ and ‘Notes and discussions’); essay reviews; and book reviews. Co-author...

This paper investigates the topological construction of Wedge Sum, with the aim of showing that it can be done mathematically, via a quotient construction, or logically, via Merge. Consistent and Inconsistent versions are given, while noting that the natural outcome of Merging is an inconsistent theory. Finally it is observed that algebraic constructions can also be treated via Merge, where the extra functionality makes for various triviality and non-triviality results.

Once symbolized by a burning armchair, experimental philosophy has in recent years shifted away from its original hostility to traditional methods. Starting with a brief historical review of the experimentalist challenge to traditional philosophical practice, this chapter looks at research undercutting that challenge, and at ways in which experimental work has evolved to complement and strengthen traditional approaches to philosophical questions.

This study probed a crucial assumption underlying much of the ethics theory and research: do managers perceive ethical behavior to be an important personal job requirement? A large sample of managers from a cross-section of industries and job functions indicated that, compared to other job duties, certain ethical behaviors were moderate to somewhat major parts of their jobs. Some noteworthy differences by industry, organization size, tenure and job function were also found. These findings underscore the importance of ethics for business (...) education. They also have implications for manager selection, training, and development by organizations. (shrink)

Our traditional ways of thinking about politics and society are becoming obsolete. We need some new points of reference in order to re-imagine the possible character, growth, and functioning of our private and common life. Such re-imagination would imply doing away with every-man-for-himself individualism as well as consumption-makes-me-happy materialism and the-state-will-take-care-of-it passivity. There is an alternative: Personalism is a forgotten, yet golden perspective on humanity that seeks to describe what a human being is and to then draw the social consequences. (...) Personalism builds upon the thinking of Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas, among others, and has been a source of inspiration for Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, and other important personalities in recent history. According to personalism, humans are relational and engaged and possess dignity. The person and the relationship amongst persons are the universal point of departure: Human beings have inherent dignity, and good relationships amongst humans are crucial for the good, engaged life and for a good society. Personalism has been greatly neglected in Western political thought. In this book, Jonas Norgaard Mortensen attempts to introduce personalism while simultaneously demonstrating its historical origins, acquainting the reader with its thinkers and those who have practiced it, and showing that personalism has a highly relevant contribution to make in the debate about today's social and political developments. (shrink)

Our view is that the folk concept of knowing how is more complicated than many epistemologists assume. We present four studies that go some way towards supporting our view—that the folk concept of knowledge-how is a philosophical hybrid, comprising both intellectualist and anti-intellectualist features. One upshot is, if we are going to award a presumptive status to philosophical theories of know-how that best accord with the folk concept, it ought to go to those that combine intellectualist and anti-intellectualist elements.

First, we consider an argument due to Popper for maximal strength in choice of logic. We dispute this argument, taking a lead from some remarks by Susan Haack; but we defend a set of contrary considerations for minimal strength in logic. Finally, we consider the objection that Popper presupposes the distinctness of logic from science. We conclude from this that all claims to logical truth may be in equal epistemological trouble.

The paper examines connections between ontology and finance. The ontological debates concerning the role of finance are examined between two opposing schools of thought that can be labelled, very broadly, ‘instrumentalist’ and ‘realist’. These two schools of thought have had momentous repercussions in understanding what is a good society. Each school defines Nature in particular ways which can be explored using ontology and philosophical insight. Our theoretical investigation aims to accommodate Nature in community financial deliberations. A positive role for government (...) is advocated to finance environmental infrastructure initiatives. For example, precautionary strategies to address climate change must be funded. New roles for finance and government are proposed to align human relationships with Nature. Environmental precautionary principles must be developed in conjunction with finance theory to maintain decent standards of living for all. Reliance on impersonal market forces will not be enough to save the planet given the power of some over the many in the neoliberal arena. (shrink)

This paper criticises necessitarianism, the thesis that there is at least one necessary truth; and defends possibilism, the thesis that all propositions are contingent, or that anything is possible. The second section maintains that no good conventionalist account of necessity is available, while the third section criticises model theoretic necessitarianism. The fourth section sketches some recent technical work on nonclassical logic, with the aim of weakening necessitarian intuitions and strengthening possibilist intuitions. The fifth section considers several a prioristic attempts at (...) demonstrating that there is at least one necessary proposition and finds them inadequate. The final section emphasises the epistemic aspect of possibilism. (shrink)

A typical theorem of conaexive logics is Aristotle''s Thesis(A), (AA).A cannot be added to classical logic without producing a trivial (Post-inconsistent) logic, so connexive logics typically give up one or more of the classical properties of conjunction, e.g.(A & B)A, and are thereby able to achieve not only nontriviality, but also (negation) consistency. To date, semantical modellings forA have been unintuitive. One task of this paper is to give a more intuitive modelling forA in consistent logics. In addition, while inconsistent (...) but nontrivial theories, and inconsistent nontrivial logics employing prepositional constants (for which the rule of uniform substitution US fails), have both been studied extensively within the paraconsistent programme, inconsistent nontrivial logics (closed under US) do not seem to have been. This paper gives sufficient conditions for a logic containingA to be inconsistent, and then shows that there is a class of inconsistent nontrivial logics all containingA. A second semantical modelling forA in such logics is given. Finally, some informal remarks about the kind of modellingA seems to require are made. (shrink)

This document contains the appendices, which provides the stimulus materials, for the four studies reported in: Gonnerman, Mortensen, & Robbins (forthcoming). KNOWING HOW as a philosophical hybrid. Synthese. -/- .

Klaus Peter Mortensen; The Double Call: on Bildung in a Literary and Reflective Perspective, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 December.

Nudging is a concept in behavioural science, political theory and economics that proposes indirect suggestions to try to achieve non-forced compliance and to influence the decision making and behaviour of groups and individuals. Researchers in medical ethics are currently discussing whether nudging is ethically permissible in healthcare. In this article, we examine current knowledge about how different decisions are made and how this decision-making process pertains to patients. We view this knowledge in light of the nursing project and the ongoing (...) debate regarding the ethical legitimacy of nudging in healthcare. We argue that it is insufficient to discuss nudging in nursing and healthcare in light of free will and patient autonomy alone. Sometimes, nurses must take charge and exhibit leadership in the nurse–patient relationship. From the perspective of nursing as leadership, nudging becomes a useful tool for directing and guiding patients towards the shared goals of health, recovery and independence and away from suffering. The use of nudging in nursing to influence patients’ decisions and actions must be in alignment with the nursing project and in accordance with patients’ own values and goals. (shrink)

The question of the interpretation of impossible pictures is taken up. Penrose's account is reviewed. It is argued that whereas this account makes substantial inroads into the problem, there needs to be a further ingredient. An inconsistent account using heap models is proposed.

The precautionary principle is a widely accepted policy norm for decision making under uncertainty in environmental management, However, some of the traditional ways of ensuring trustworthy results used in environmental science and of communicating them work contrary to the general goal of providing the political system and the public with as good an input as possible in the decision making process. For example, it is widely accepted that scientists should only communicate results fulfilling the traditional scientific standard for hypothesis testing. (...) The need for introducing complementary norms in environmental science is illustrated by a recent discussion among scientists on how the precautionary principle should be used in the context of marine biological studies. This discussion highlights the importance of the use of statistical power in communicating scientific results to decision makers and to the general public as well as to the scientific peers. We argue that it would be unethical to report only certainties—because of the need of early warnings—and it would in the same way be unethical to hide the uncertainties. Environmental science can make a better contribution to environmental decision making, if the available knowledge is communicated in a manner which allows for insight on how strong the evidence is. (shrink)

In this article we address the question of how many impossible images Escher produced. To answer requires us first to clarify a range of concepts, including content, ambiguity, illusion, and impossibility. We then consider, and reject, several candidates for impossibility before settling on an answer.

Popper's definition looked initially promising provided that the restriction of classical logic was removed. As we have seen, this promise is not fulfilled. The search for a satisfactory verisimilitude ordering must therefore be pursued along more mainstream lines. The present exercise ought, however, to make us aware of the possibility that breakdowns of proposed definitions might only occur because of strictly classical assumptions.

This paper offers an inconsistent model of motion perception. It was prompted by work on inconsistent motion due to Hegel and, following him, Priest. But the paper skirts Hegel's full scale idealism, by proposing that the inconsistency is with the cognitive contents of motion perception. The paper draws on work in the psychology of perception, and in the theory of inconsistency. I begin by noting the prima facie argument that temporal change threatens inconsistency, and canvassing ways in which this might (...) be avoided. The orthodox reply to the prima facie argument is that one and the same thing can have different incompatible properties at different times. This is plausible when applied to motion in the physical world. However, applied to cognition, it can be seen that the phenomenon of phi or beta, combined with the mechanism of a Reichardt detector, lends support to one key step in the prima facie argument, namely re-identification over time. The inconsistency of the model is then seen to follow from application of the Fade Principle. Advantages of the model are stressed: including a simple explanation of the debilitating condition of akinetopsia, that is, motion blindness; and a suggestion as to how to account for the “moving now.”. (shrink)

Identification of distinct items is a basic technique in mathematics. However, identification suffers from a certain weakness of resolve in that it is (classically) accompanied by dropping the original disidentification, which causes a loss of information about the theory which sources the identity. This article proposes an alternative, namely keeping the disidentification along with the identification. This produces an inconsistent theory which is generally an extension of the source theory. The concept of a Dunn–Meyer extension is defined to study these (...) properties. It is seen that this technique is sensitive to the choice of background logic, particularly RM3 as opposed to closed-set logic. By employing the Routley functor, a best-choice logic is found for this construction. (shrink)

This paper aims to distinguish and classify sixteen versions of the Necker cube. In particular, it is shown how to describe inconsistent and incomplete theories which correspond in a systematic way to these sixteen diagrams. Concerning two of these sixteen cubes, there is a natural intuition that there is a sense in which they inconsistent. It is seen that this intuition is vindicated by an analysis in which their corresponding theories turn out to be globally inconsistent but not locally inconsistent, (...) while various other cubes of the sixteen are merely locally inconsistent. The Routley functor is seen to be useful in classifying the relations between these diagrams. (shrink)

In this paper, a survey is made of some of the contributionsto the interpretation of Hartle and Hawking's theory of thewave function of the universe and its beginning. It is arguedthat there are considerable difficulties with the interpretationof the theory, but that there is at least one interpretationhitherto not found in the literature which survives existingphilosophical objections.

In the digital news environment, amateur images—citizen photojournalism—appear next to professional photojournalists' photos, contributing to a probable tension and sense of professional threat among professional photojournalists. Using the coorientation approach, this study explores the ethical values of citizen photojournalists and professional photojournalists, the extent to which they agree about these values, how accurate they are in assessing each others' values, and how congruent they perceive they are with each other.

The blindness to ontological questioning in feminist theory has left a lacuna in scholarly study that Touching Thought—a study at the intersection of ontological meditation and feminist theorizing on sexual difference—seeks to fill. Ellen Mortensen's new work critiques the language and theoretical pathways of contemporary feminist theorists such as Judith Butler, Rosi Braidotti, Elizabeth Grosz, Luce Irigaray, Theresa de Lauretis, and Donna Haraway to reveal a problematic predilection for technological language at the expense of ontological inquiry. The volume ranges (...) across feminist epistemology and ethics, the politics of performativity, the aesthetics of body/power, and the question of sexual difference and concludes with an examination of the different philosophical and theoretical attempts at undertaking an ontological questioning of sexual difference. This foundational work will serve as preparation for scholars of feminist and queer theory and continental philosophy seeking alternative pathways of feminist thought that encourage fundamental thinking on the subject of individual freedom. (shrink)

Various fields have examined the activity of flirting, predominantly based on experimental and reported data; the interactional workings are therefore often overlooked. Based on emails and chats from two Danish online dating sites, this article investigates how users negotiate romantic connections through the flirting strategy of ‘imagined togetherness’, linguistically constructing imagery of a shared future. Using the notion of the chronotope, turn-by-turn analysis demonstrates how users, embedded in the activity of getting to know each other, tenuously communicate romantic interest by (...) alluding to future points at which they might be together. Central to the strategy is a sequential pattern of avoiding closure and thereby preserving the imagery’s implicitness. The article concludes by arguing that while imagined togetherness functions to probe interests and thus protects oneself from potential rejection, it also draws on fundamental dynamics of fantasy in nourishing the excitement of romantic possibility. (shrink)

This article is currently available as a free download on ingentaconnect.

This paper argues for the benefits of approaching the terrorist attacks executed by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway on 22 July 2011 from the perspective of Luce Irigaray’s philosophy. In Breivik’s right-wing manifesto 2083, he identifies the triumvirate cultural Marxism, Islam and feminism as the main culprits for Europe’s decay. Despite arguing for the superiority of the white European race, and the dangers of immigration and religious plurality for Europe’s future, Breivik denies the value of difference, be it sexual, cultural (...) or religious. This paper finds support in Irigaray’s philosophy when arguing that, in this respect, Breivik’s extremist ideology operates in alignment with Western metaphysics that posits the masculine European subject as ‘the lord of the earth’, who denies all differences other than the ones hailed by male, white, Christian supremacists. In Norway, the dangers that Breivik and his allies represent are real, given that academics are being targeted and threatened. (shrink)

This collection of essays provides a reassessment of the question of sexual difference, taking into account important shifts in feminist thought, post-humanist theories, and queer studies. The contributors offer new and refreshing insights into the complex question of sexual difference from a post-feminist perspective, and how it is reformulated in various related areas of study, such as ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, biology, technology, and mass-media.

A principle of continuity due to Leibniz has recently been revived by Graham Priest in arguing for an inconsistent account of motion. This paper argues that the Leibniz Continuity Condition has a reasonable interpretation in a different, though still inconsistent, class of dynamical systems. The account is then applied to the quantum mechanical description of the hydrogen atom.

The phenomenon of multi-used stock photography in the news contradicts the photojournalism professional values of truthful and emotional depictions. This reality echoes other false images increasingly appearing in the media, including deepfakes and artificial intelligence. In the present study, a two (stock and staff photo) by two (positive and negative valence) quasi-experiment is conducted. The dependent variables include: 1) credibility; 2) self-reported arousal level; 3) emotional valence perceptions; 4) fixation duration; and 5) fixation count. Participants viewed staff photos as more (...) credible in both positive and negative valences. Negative photos were perceived as slightly less credible. Stock and staff photos were similarly arousing, received similar valence perceptions, and had similar gaze fixations and durations. Overall, participants perceived the genuine emotion portrayed truthfully in photojournalism as opposed to the faux emotion acted out in stock photos. (shrink)

This paper is dedicated to Newton da Costa, who,among his many achievements, was the first toaim at dualising intuitionism in order to produce paraconsistent logics,the C-systems. This paper similarly dualises intuitionism to aparaconsistent logic, but the dual is a different logic, namely closed setlogic. We study the interaction between the properties of topologicalspaces, particularly separation properties, and logical theories on thosespaces. The paper begins with a brief survey of what is known about therelation between topology and modal logic, intuitionist logic (...) and paraconsistentlogic in respect of the incompleteness and inconsistency of theories.Necessary and sufficient conditions which relate the T1-property to theproperties of logical theories, are obtained. The result is then extendedto Hausdorff and Normal spaces. In the final section these methods areused to vary the modelling conditions for identity. (shrink)

In this paper, a survey is made of some of the contributions to the interpretation of Hartle and Hawking’s theory of the wave function of the universe and its beginning. It is argued that there are considerable difficulties with the interpretation of the theory, but that there is at least one interpretation hitherto not found in the literature which survives existing philosophical objections.

This paper continues the investigation of inconsistent arithmetical structures. In $\S2$ the basic notion of a model with identity is defined, and results needed from elsewhere are cited. In $\S3$ several nonisomorphic inconsistent models with identity which extend the (=, $\S4$ inconsistent nonstandard models of the classical theory of finite rings and fields modulo m, i.e. Z m , are briefly considered. In $\S5$ two models modulo an infinite nonstandard number are considered. In the first, it is shown how to (...) model inconsistently the arithmetic of the rationals with all names included, a strengthening of earlier results. In the second, all inconsistency is confined to the nonstandard integers, and the effects on Fermat's Last Theorem are considered. It is concluded that the prospects for a good inconsistent theory of fields may be limited. (shrink)

Graham Nerlich studied philosophy and English literature at the University of Adelaide, gaining a BA (with joint Honours) in 1954 and an MA (1955). These were halcyon days for philosophy in Adelaid...

The blindness to ontological questioning in feminist theory has left a lacuna in scholarly study that Touching Thought—a study at the intersection of ontological meditation and feminist theorizing on sexual difference—seeks to fill. Ellen Mortensen's new work critiques the language and theoretical pathways of contemporary feminist theorists such as Judith Butler, Rosi Braidotti, Elizabeth Grosz, Luce Irigaray, Theresa de Lauretis, and Donna Haraway to reveal a problematic predilection for technological language at the expense of ontological inquiry. The volume ranges (...) across feminist epistemology and ethics, the politics of performativity, the aesthetics of body/power, and the question of sexual difference and concludes with an examination of the different philosophical and theoretical attempts at undertaking an ontological questioning of sexual difference. This foundational work will serve as preparation for scholars of feminist and queer theory and continental philosophy seeking alternative pathways of feminist thought that encourage fundamental thinking on the subject of individual freedom. (shrink)

"A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes." -- Ludwig Wittgenstein The good news is that this book offers an entertaining but enlightening compilation of Žižekisms. Unlike any other book by Slavoj Žižek, this compact arrangement of jokes culled from his writings provides an index to certain philosophical, political, and sexual themes that preoccupy him. Žižek's Jokes contains the set-ups and punch lines -- as well as the offenses and insults -- that Žižek is famous (...) for, all in less than 200 pages. So what's the bad news? There is no bad news. There's just the inimitable Slavoj Žižek, disguised as an impossibly erudite, politically incorrect uncle, beginning a sentence, "There is an old Jewish joke, loved by Derrida..." For Žižek, jokes are amusing stories that offer a shortcut to philosophical insight. He illustrates the logic of the Hegelian triad, for example, with three variations of the "Not tonight, dear, I have a headache" classic: first the wife claims a migraine; then the husband does; then the wife exclaims, "Darling, I have a terrible migraine, so let's have some sex to refresh me!" A punch line about a beer bottle provides a Lacanian lesson about one signifier. And a "truly obscene" version of the famous "aristocrats" joke has the family offering a short course in Hegelian thought rather than a display of unspeakables. _Žižek's Jokes_ contains every joke cited, paraphrased, or narrated in Žižek's work in English, including different versions of the same joke that make different points in different contexts. The larger point being that comedy is central to Žižek's seriousness. (shrink)

Intuitionist mathematics has claimed a philosophy deriving from Kant. This paper aims to draw attention to significant similarities with a much older source, Aristotle. At the same time, the connection should not be over-stretched, given two millennia between them.