The paper is devoted to applications of algebraic logic to databases. In databases a query is represented by a formula of first order logic. The same query can be associated with different formulas. Thus, a query is a class of equivalent formulae: equivalence here being similar to that in the transition to the Lindenbaum-Tarski algebra. An algebra of queries is identified with the corresponding algebra of logic. An algebra of replies to the queries is also associated with algebraic logic. These (...) relations lie at the core of the applications.In this paper it is shown how the theory of Halmos (polyadic) algebras (a notion introduced by Halmos as a tool in the algebraization of the first order predicate calculus) is used to create the algebraic model of a relational data base. The model allows us, in particular, to solve the problem of databases equivalence as well as develop a formal algebraic definition of a database's state description. In this paper we use the term "state description" for the logical description of the model. This description is based on the notion of filters in Halmos algebras. When speaking of a state description, we mean the description of a function which realizes the symbols of relations as real relations in the given system of data. (shrink)

There is a close coincidence in time between the appearance of psychology as a science and the rise of evolutionary theory. The first laboratory of experimental psychology was established in Germany by Wilhelm Wundt just as Darwin's writings were beginning to have their enormous impact, especially as they might be applied to understanding the human mind (Darwin, 1871). Psychology is an important discipline because it straddles the boundary between the biological sciences and the social or human sciences (defined as those (...) sciences that study exclusively human characteristics) of anthropology, sociology and economics. Given that importance, and given that new sciences lack the conceptual history within which older, established sciences might be mired, it might have been expected that psychology would have embraced in a way that established sciences did not the equally new, sensational and central theorem of biology which spoke to the origins of species as well as the origins of their traits and, crucially, the functions of those traits. Yet for over a century evolutionary theory had virtually no presence in psychology, despite having powerful friends like William James at court (James, 1880). (shrink)

Avicenna says that intellectual cognition involves the emanation of an intelligible form by the ‘agent intellect’ upon the human mind. This paper argues that in order to understand why he says this, we need to think of intellectual cognition as a special case of a much more general phenomenon. More specifically, Avicenna's introduction of an agent intellect will be shown to be a natural consequence of certain assumptions about the temporality, the completion, and the teleology of the causal processes by (...) which things acquire forms. (shrink)

The results of two experiments, in which participants solved constructive tasks of the puzzle type, are reported. The tasks were solved by two partners who shared the same visual environment hut whose knowledge of the situation and ability to change it to reach a solution were different. One of the partners — the "expert" — knew the solution in detail but had no means of acting on this information. The second partner — the "novice " — could act to achieve (...) the goal, but knew very little about the solution. The partners were free to communicate verbally. In one third of the trials of the first experiment, in addition to verbal communication, the eye fixations of the expert were projected onto the working space of the novice. In another condition the expert could use a mouse to show the novice relevant parts of the task configuration. Both methods of facilitating the 'joint attention' state of the partners improved their performance. The nature of the dialogues as well as the parameters of the eye movements changed. In the second experiment the direction of the gaze-position data transfer was reversed, from the novice to the expert. This also led to a significant increase in the efficiency of the distributed problem solving. (shrink)

Philosophy is traditionally understood as the search for universal truths, and philosophers are supposed to transmit those truths beyond the limits of their own culture. But, today, we have become skeptical about the ability of an individual philosopher to engage in "universal thinking," so philosophy seems to capitulate in the face of cultural relativism. In Introduction to Antiphilosophy, Boris Groys argues that modern "antiphilosophy" does not pursue the universality of thought as its goal but proposes in its place the (...) universality of life, material forces, social practices, passions, and experiences --angst, vitality, ecstasy, the gift, revolution, laughter or "profane illumination" --and he analyzes this shift from thought to life and action in the work of thinkers from Kierkegaard to Derrida, from Nietzsche to Benjamin. Ranging across the history of modern thought, Introduction to Antiphilosophy endeavors to liberate philosophy from the stereotypes that hinder its development. --Publisher. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty's «Phenomenology of Perception» suggests perception to be the primary level of the giveness of the world. Perception appears as always an incomplete synthesis of the plural, bringing together bodily and material aspects. Such the simplest interpretation of perception as rendering a contact within the dyad «body-world» is a preliminary axiom for explaining the rest of the process of noematic sense formation. At the same time, Merleau-Ponty’s theoretical intuitions clearly presuppose more, and perception is also thought of as the final (...) point where sense is already given by some way. Thus, in Phenomenology, the second interpretation of perception presumes it to be sense-giving accompanied by the tacit cogito. Merleau-Ponty suggests that these interpretations are compatible with each other, but the transition between them seems really problematic. In the research author shos that the limit of the initial synthesis of perception - some sense of the perceived (exemplyfing meanings as «this horse», «the green density that rushed towards me») - is unattainable from within perception itself and by its means. Perception is itself mediated by other faculties, such as memory, reflection, and imagination. Argumentation for this thesis is carried out in several ways; the relations in the perception/imagination pair show us the most characteristic case, where Merleau-Ponty, judging by later works, himself comes close to recognizing the limitations of the hypothesis of «the world of perception», to the need for a phenomenological development of the topic of faculties. Based on the application of the phenomenological method and the analysis of the conceptual constructions of Merleau-Ponty, we can conclude the following: «the world of perception» does not exist, but the phenomenology of faculties is demanded. (shrink)

If definitive evidence concerning treatment effectiveness becomes available from an ongoing randomized clinical trial, then the trial could be stopped early, with the public release of results benefiting current and future patients. However, stopping an ongoing trial based on accruing outcome data requires methodological rigor to preserve validity of the trial conclusions. This has led to the use of formal interim monitoring procedures, which include inefficacy monitoring that will stop a trial early when the experimental treatment appears not to be (...) working. For participants, inefficacy monitoring is especially important as it ensures that they are not being treated worse than if they had not enrolled on the trial. We discuss the importance of reporting with trial results the formal interim inefficacy monitoring guidelines that were utilized, and, if none were used, the reasons for their absence. A survey of two leading medical journals suggests that this is not current practice. (shrink)

"Qu'est-ce que le droit?" est peut-être la plus essentielle des problématiques auxquelles les juristes doivent répondre. Or peu de questions touchant à l'homme et aux sociétés ont suscité des réponses aussi diverses et parfois antagonistes que "Qu'est-ce que le droit?". Dans le vaste paysage des théories juridiques, il est difficile de savoir avec précision ce qu'est le droit. Faut-il dès lors se résigner à ne jamais disposer d'un objet-droit homogène et stable, dont l'identité serait finement établie et les frontières nettement (...) tracées? Pour étudier le droit, il importe pourtant de connaître ses spécificités parmi les différents modes de régulation sociale, cela afin de délimiter le champ des normes juridiques et donc circonscrire et borner l'objet d'étude. La définition du droit exposée dans la première partie de ce livre est une définition lexicographique, une définition scientifique. Il s'agit de constater ce qu'est le droit, quelles sont ses propriétés, au terme d'une enquête objective et empirique, excluant tout jugement subjectif et toute proposition personnelle. Comme la religion romaine qui accueillait dans son Panthéon tous les dieux grecs et étrusques, la théorie syncrétique réunit toutes les définitions du droit actuellement en vigueur dans la pensée juridique. Dans ce cadre, les diverses théories du droit ne sont plus des concurrentes, mais des associées. Elles ne s'opposent plus, mais se complètent. Ensuite, en appliquant les critères de juridicité ainsi recensés à une norme donnée, on peut mesurer son niveau de force juridique sur l'échelle de juridicité. Cette échelle, expliquée et expérimentée dans la seconde partie du livre, permet d'interroger les dimensions du droit. Or son application à de multiples formes de normativité indique que, dans le monde des normes sociales, les normes fortement juridiques côtoieraient les normes moyennement juridiques et les normes faiblement juridiques. En revanche, il ne semble guère exister de normes sociales non juridiques - les différences entre normes seraient de degré et non de nature. Ainsi l'échelle de juridicité invite-t-elle à retenir une conception graduelle du droit et un panjuridisme modéré. L'intérêt de cette nouvelle forme de rationalité de la pensée juridique est d'autoriser le juriste à s'ouvrir à tout type de normes sociales tout en sauvegardant l'autonomie conceptuelle du droit. (shrink)

Si tout le propos de Kant, dans la Critique de la raison pure, est de légitimer les conditions de possibilité des jugements synthétiques a priori, il ne va pas s'agir pour nous, à travers la présente étude, de prendre pour objet de recherche les conditions de possibilité des jugements synthétiques a priori, mais de nous attarder sur l'idée même de synthèse a priori et d'ouvrir une discussion critique autour du problème du jugement qui lui est directement rattaché. L'idée même de (...) synthèse a priori inaugure chez Kant une nouvelle forme de connaissance ; or toute forme de connaissance semble toujours consubstantiellement liée à une forme de jugement, car émettre un jugement revient à participer d'un acte de connaissance au travers duquel on détermine un rapport entre concepts. Tenter ainsi de montrer comment l'idée kantienne de jugement synthétique a priori, nouvelle manière de comprendre les relations entre concepts déterminés et de concevoir un jugement, fait problème en elle-même constituera également notre objet de recherche"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

I propose a general alethic theory of epistemic risk according to which the riskiness of an agent’s credence function encodes her relative sensitivity to different types of graded error. After motivating and mathematically developing this approach, I show that the epistemic risk function is a scaled reflection of expected inaccuracy. This duality between risk and information enables us to explore the relationship between attitudes to epistemic risk, the choice of scoring rules in epistemic utility theory, and the selection of priors (...) in Bayesian epistemology more generally. (shrink)

Descartes’ metaphysics lays the foundation for the special sciences, and the notion of consciousness (conscientia) belongs to metaphysics rather than to psychology. I argue that as a metaphysical notion, ‘consciousness’ refers to an epistemic version of moral conscience. As a consequence, the activity on which science is based turns out to be conscientious thought. The consciousness that makes science possible is a double awareness: the awareness of what one is thinking, of what one should be doing, and of the possibility (...) of a gap between the two. (shrink)

The leading art theorist takes on art in the age of the Internet In the early twentieth century, art and its institutions came under critique from a new democratic and egalitarian spirit. The notion of works of art as sacred objects was decried and subsequently they would be understood merely as things. This meant an attack on realism, as well as on the traditional preservative mission of the museum. Acclaimed art theorist Boris Groys argues this led to the development (...) of “direct realism”: an art that would not produce objects, but practices (from performance art to relational aesthetics) that would not survive. But for more than a century now, every advance in this direction has been quickly followed by new means of preserving art’s distinction. In this major new work, Groys charts the paradoxes produced by this tension, and explores art in the age of the thingless medium, the Internet. Groys claims that if the techniques of mechanical reproduction gave us objects without aura, digital production generates aura without objects, transforming all its materials into vanishing markers of the transitory present. (shrink)

In this paper we develop a general theory of algorithmic fairness. Drawing on Johnson King and Babic’s work on moral encroachment, on Gary Becker’s work on labor market discrimination, and on Strawson’s idea of resentment and indignation as responses to violations of the demand for goodwill toward oneself and others, we locate attitudes to fairness in an agent’s utility function. In particular, we first argue that fairness is a matter of a decision-maker’s relative concern for the plight of people from (...) different groups, rather than of the outcomes produced for different groups. We then show how an agent’s preferences, including in particular their attitudes to error, give rise to their decision thresholds. Tying these points together, we argue that the agent’s relative degrees of concern for different groups manifest in a difference in decision thresholds applied to these groups. (shrink)

In this handbook, I put into practice my philosophical views on children's mathematics. The handbook contains brief instructions and examples of mathematical activities. In the INSTRUCTIONS section, instructions are given on how, and in part why that way, to help preschool children in their mathematical development. In the ACTIVITIES section, there are examples of activities through which the child develops her mathematical abilities.

The fundamental tenet of contemporary sociobiology, namely the assumption of a single process of evolution involving the selection of genes, is critically examined. An alternative multiple-level, multiple-process model of evolution is presented which posits that the primary process that operates via selection upon the genes cannot account for certain kinds of biological phenomena, especially complex, learned, social behaviours. The primary process has evolved subsidiary evolutionary levels and processes that act to bridge the gap between genes and these complex behaviours. The (...) subsidiary levels are development, individual animal learning, and socioculture itself. It is argued that individual learning is pivotal to the derivation and biological analysis of culture. The differences between cultural and noncultural societies are stressed. It is concluded that such a multiple-level model of evolution can form the basis for reconciling opposing sides in the sociobiology debate. (shrink)

Bringing together evolutionary biology, psychology, and philosophy, Henry Plotkin presents a new science of knowledge, one that traces an unbreakable link between instinct and our ability to know.

This volume explores a central paradox in the evolution of psychoanalytic thought and practice and the ways in which they were used.

Wenn Tugenden Praxisformen sind, dann kann man einiges über Praxisformen lernen, indem man nachsieht, was Tugenden sind. Ich werde dies im Folgenden partiell und indirekt tun, indem ich die sprachliche Form untersuche, in der Aristoteles die ethischen Tugenden beschreibt. Er tut dies im Wesentlichen dadurch, dass er den derart Tugendhaften in der dritten Person Singular beschreibt. Dann werde ich kurz auf die Grenzen von Aristoteles’ Verfahren zu sprechen kommen, indem ich auf eine den Tugenden und anderen Praxisformen inhärente Pluralität hinweise. (...) Eine vergleichbare Untersuchung der sprachlichen Form in der Nikomachischen Ethik ist mir nicht bekannt; die Hinweise auf die Pluralität der Tugend dagegen beanspruchen keine besondere Originalität. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage propose une approche et une analyse scientifiques et statistiques du pluralisme juridique. Défini en tant que coexistence de sources étatiques et non étatiques de règles de droit, le pluralisme juridique appelle à la fois une réponse théorique et empirique. Ce livre procède à une enquête de terrain et de pose les jalons de ce travail scientifique visant à évaluer l'effectivité du pluralisme juridique en n'ayant d'égards que pour les seuls faits normatifs.

This book examines Aristotle's four causes (material, formal, efficient, and final), offering a systematic discussion of the relation between form and matter, causation, taxonomy, and teleology. The overall aim is to show that the four causes form a system, so that the form of a natural thing relates to its matter as the final cause of a natural process relates to its efficient cause. Aristotle's Four Causes reaches two novel and distinctive conclusions. The first is that the formal cause or (...) essence of a natural thing is not a property of this thing but a generic natural thing. The second is that the final cause of a process is not its purpose but the course that processes of its kind typically take. (shrink)

Boris Kment takes a new approach to the study of modality that emphasises the origin of modal notions in everyday thought. He argues that the concepts of necessity and possibility originate in counterfactual reasoning, which allows us to investigate explanatory connections. Contrary to accepted views, explanation is more fundamental than modality.

В книге прослежены разнообразные виды обманов, вплоть до парадоксально положительных, уточняется понимание терминов. Для специалистов и широкого круга читателей.

The discovery of a small collection of Darwin manuscripts at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science has allowed a reconsideration of Darwin’s interest in and knowledge of microscopy. Concentrating on the years between his return from the Beagle voyage and the publication of the major taxonomic work on barnacles, this paper recovers a number of important aspects of Darwin’s intellectual and practical development: on returning from the Beagle voyage he acquainted himself with the work of C. G. Ehrenberg, (...) and this informed both his private and public work; then through the 1840s Darwin transformed himself from a fascinated observer and consumer of others’ work into an expert on microscopy. I characterise this move as a piece of clever manoeuvring, and discuss more generally the kind of scientist—gentlemanly and expert—that Darwin was attempting to become.Keywords: Charles Darwin; Microscopy; Beagle voyage; Classification; Accuracy. (shrink)

Die Untersuchung rekonstruiert das Subjekt in seinen kulturhistorischen Formationen als kooperationsorientierten Bewährungssucher, der sich den jeweiligen Formen des Zusammenlebens gemäß formiert, um sich in ihnen bewähren zu können. Die systematisch entwickelte Bezogenheitstheorie erlaubt die Rekonstruktion der universalen und kulturspezifischen Aspekte des Subjekts. die Untersuchung zeigt auf der Subjektebene die Bedingungen der Entfaltung modernen Zusammenlebens auf und kann von daher als eine empirisch durchgeführte Mikrosoziologie der Moderne gelten. Aus dieser kulturhistorisch gesättigten Subjekttheorie werden schließlich Schlussfolgerungen für die pädagogische Professionalität gezogen (Zum (...) Umgang mit Bewährungssuchern).​. (shrink)

Many philosophers have argued that statistical evidence regarding group char- acteristics (particularly stereotypical ones) can create normative conflicts between the requirements of epistemic rationality and our moral obligations to each other. In a recent paper, Johnson-King and Babic argue that such conflicts can usually be avoided: what ordinary morality requires, they argue, epistemic rationality permits. In this paper, we show that as data gets large, Johnson-King and Babic’s approach becomes less plausible. More constructively, we build on their project and develop (...) a generalized model of reasoning about stereotypes under which one can indeed avoid normative conflicts, even in a big data world, when data contain some noise. In doing so, we also articulate a general approach to rational belief updating for noisy data. (shrink)

We further investigate a divisibility relation on the set of BN ultrafilters on the set of natural numbers. We single out prime ultrafilters (divisible only by 1 and themselves) and establish a hierarchy in which a position of every ultrafilter depends on the set of prime ultrafilters it is divisible by. We also construct ultrafilters with many immediate successors in this hierarchy and find positions of products of ultrafilters.

Approximate coherentism suggests that imperfectly rational agents should hold approximately coherent credences. This norm is intended as a generalization of ordinary coherence. I argue that it may be unable to play this role by considering its application under learning experiences. While it is unclear how imperfect agents should revise their beliefs, I suggest a plausible route is through Bayesian updating. However, Bayesian updating can take an incoherent agent from relatively more coherent credences to relatively less coherent credences, depending on the (...) data observed. Thus, comparative rationality judgments among incoherent agents are unduly sensitive to luck. (shrink)

In this paper, I make a contribution to a naturalistically-minded theory of truthmakers by proposing a solution to the nasty problem of truthmakers for negative truths. After formulating the difficulty, I consider and reject a number of solutions to the problem, including Armstrong's states of affairs of totality, incompatibility accounts, and JC Beall 's polarity view. I then defend the position that absences of truthmakers are real and are responsible for making negative truths true. According to the positive account of (...) absences I offer, absences of contingent states of affairs are causally relevant mind-independent features of the physical world, located within space and time, and capable of being discovered by scientific inquiry. Recognition of the reality of absences strengthens truthmaker theory as a naturalistic metaphysics, as truth and falsity of each and every contingent proposition finds an ontological grounding in some region of the physical universe. (shrink)

In our times, when the pace of economic, scientific and technological, social and cultural change calls to mind the relativist velocities of contemporary physics, Einstein's criterion begins to be applicable to the historical process itself; movement can be recorded (and consequently the notion of velocity acquire meaning) provided an adequate reference system is available. Where science is concerned, such systems have always existed: historians have brought out the increase in adequate knowledge in the past by comparing it with present knowledge, (...) which then offered a system of absolute reference. But now, the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, molecular biology and the radical transformation of standards of value in all cultural areas have made like absolutization of contemporary ideas impossible. Today ideas furnish no more than a point of departure for non-classical retrospection which, as Jaurès said, seeks the fire, not. the ashes, in the history of science. But: the fire of science, its dynamics, its movement, is inseparable from its value, its effect, its psychological ‘accompaniment.’ Contemporary science, with unprecedented dynamism, is distinguishable from classical science by its far more emotional coloring. It lays bare not only the logical collisions of knowledge but also the emotional collisions. Einstein called the history of science the ‘drama of ideas.’ A drama which sometimes turns into a tragedy. The tragic sense Lorentz was aware of in the crumbling of old conceptions is easily perceptible in the remark he made when he confessed he would have prefered to be dead before the structure of classical physics collapsed. For Erenfest the tormenting experience of a personal inability to understand the positive bases of non-classical physics was also tragic and, according to Einstein, was what drove him to suicide. Einstein's own dissatisfaction tor thirty years while he strove in the field theory alone to find a stable universal conception possessing more complete ‘internal perfection’ than the then existing solution, was again tragic. The real characteristic of the collisions of non-classical science, however, is their ambivalence: the tragic notes blend with the optimistic perception of irreversible general progress in knowledge. The collisions of knowledge and this optimistic perception together sound a very complex chord, major on the whole, but with minor harmonics. (shrink)

Considering liberty as a social notion implies the adoption of both an innovative method and style. With this aim in mind, Axel Honneth provides a fresh outlook on notions typically found with Hegel, Marx, Dewey, or Habermas. At last, inspired by psychoanalysis, he pioneers fruitful and unprecedented social therapeutics.

Earthly civilization has now entered a phase of development which requires urgent need of imagination to discern its eventual evolution.Demographic problems occupy a considerable place in global development. Numerous authors interested in the future of the planet have referred to the important factor of population increase. Nevertheless their attitudes toward demographic problems, the manner in which they conceive their own roles, their forecasts are all diverse and reflect a wide range of ideas from serene optimism to nihilistic pessimism.

Vladimir Arnold, an eminent mathematician of our time, is known both for his mathematical results, which are many and prominent, and for his strong opinions, often expressed in an uncompromising and provoking manner. His dictum that "Mathematics is a part of physics where experiments are cheap" is well known. This book consists of two parts: selected articles by and an interview with Vladimir Arnold, and a collection of articles about him written by his friends, colleagues, and students. The book is (...) generously illustrated by a large collection of photographs, some never before published. The book presents many a facet of this extraordinary mathematician and man, from his mathematical discoveries to his daredevil outdoor adventures. (shrink)

Thought experiments by ancient philosophers are often open to debate: in what sense did their reasoning really concern thought experimentation? For instance, in Plato's Republic, Glaucon uses the myth of Gyges to demonstrate why people who practice justice do so unwillingly. A challenge, posed to Socrates and provided through some sort of thought experiment by imagining the effects of using the ring of invisibility, was intended to answer the question of human nature and our basis for the inclination towards justice (...) or injustice. This collection expands the current, but rare, topic of whether it is possible to articulate a discussion about thought experiments and their arguments from the historical perspective of philosophy and science. It may sometimes seem that, in a loose sense, any philosophical reflection can already be interpreted as some form of thought experiment. Although the functions of it are very diverse and complex, and often closely linked to other cognitive tools, such as visualization, imagination or idealization, the contributions in this book provide new insights into how the concept of a thought experiment coincides with more modern perceptions. The purpose of the book is to show how philosophers, already in antiquity, began to use thought experiments and argumentation to convey theories in an accessible manner and how philosophical hypotheses, often being subjective and impossible to prove through empirical evidence, helped to promote scientific knowledge and discoveries. Different authors develop several lines of argumentation, claiming that philosophical thinking can be understood by comparing it to scientific experimenting, or vice versa: if empirical evidence is usually necessary for science, thought experiments may be used to develop a hypothesis or to prepare for experimentation. The analysis of historical examples of thought experiments might also contribute to a better understanding of philosophical endeavour in antiquity as a whole. (shrink)