Adam Smith’s ‘natural price’ has long been interpreted as a ‘normal price’ or ‘centre of gravitation price’ based on the famous gravitation metaphor of the Wealth of Nations I.vii, natural in the sense that it is the price that would … More ›.

Simulation relations have been discovered in many areas: Computer Science, philosophical and modal logic, and set theory. However, the simulation condition is strictly a first-order logic statement. We extend modal logic with modalities and axioms, the latter’s modeling conditions are the simulation conditions. The modalities are normal, i.e., commute with either conjunctions or disjunctions and preserve either Truth or Falsity (respectively). The simulations are considered arrows in a category where the objects are descriptive, general frames. One can augment the simulation (...) modalities by axioms for requiring the underlying modeling simulations to be bisimulations or to be p-morphisms. The modal systems presented are multi-sorted and both sound and complete with respect to their algebraic and Kripke semantics. (shrink)

Film studies has largely avoided the biocultural turn that has swept through other areas of the humanities. This resistance may be understood in terms of the field’s recent distaste for grand theory—and in terms of the loose, social-constructionist thinking that is one residue of that distaste. Fortunately, a biocultural approach to cinema can offer film studies a necessary and defensible set of assumptions. It can also offer interpretive tools and potential ways of conceptualizing perennial concerns like authorship and genre. This (...) essay demonstrates the last two points through an evolutionary reading of Howard Hawks’s musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and through proposals for new ways of approaching auteurism and pornography. (shrink)

This paper is a reflection on the emergent directions of Australian culture and values in the context of the process of globalization. It views Australian society as a multi-cultural mosaic where aboriginal cultures coexist with the derived cultures of migrants from Europe, America and Asia. Adding that globalization has meant both greater confusion and conformity to intrusive American culture and practices, the author asks: Will we be able to find and clarify a changing set of shared values in this emergent (...) society? Although Australia still finds itself in the mould of the acquisitive Western society, a transition to the stronger communitarian value system of the East is a distinct possibility. Drawing inspiration from an experiential workshop in India, the author concludes with the hope that ultimately the survival and enrichment of an edifying Australian culture and set of human values will depend on and flow from the hearts, minds and human creativeness of Australians in a continually changing world. (shrink)