This paper critically examines the philosophical foundations of Colin Wilson’s New Existentialism. I will show how Wilson’s writings promoted a phenomenological strategy for understanding states of ecstatic affirmation within so-called ‘peak experiences’. Wilson subsequently attempted to use the life affirming insights bestowed by peak states to establish an ontological ground for values to serve as a foundation for his New Existentialism. Because of its psychological focus however, I argue that Wilson’s New Existentialism contains an ambivalent framework (...) for establishing ontological categories, which leads his thought into theoretical difficulties. More precisely, Wilson’s strategy runs into problems in coherently integrating its explicitly psychological interpretation of Husserl’s theory of intentionality within a broader, and philosophically coherent, phenomenological framework. Wilson’s psychological reading of Husserl’s transcendental reduction, for example, manifests tensions in how it reconciles the empirical basis of acts of transcendence with an essentialist conception of the self as a transcendental ego. The above tensions, I argue, ultimately render the New Existentialism susceptible to criticism from a Husserlian-transcendental perspective. After outlining a Husserlian critique of Wilson’s position, I end the paper by suggesting how some of the central insights of the New Existentialism might help to bridge the gap that persists between pure phenomenological description and metaphysics. (shrink)

The dissertation considers what is at stake when theoretical wonder ceases to be an originating affect for speculative thought and becomes, instead, a limiting concept for critical philosophy. It attempts to show that: wonder functions for its classical proponents in an entirely different context than that presupposed by the aesthetics of the sublime . This difference can be ascribed to the way in which the feeling of the sublime is operative in the overcoming of modern theodicy , whereas wonder is (...) an intimation of what Edward O. Wilson has recently called, the "consilient perspective" . Whereas, wonder suggests the beginnings of an overarching conceptual unity linking together mind and nature, the sublime, by contrast, is part of an ontology of freedom, in which our subjective capacity to withstand the blows of natural contingency without resorting to conceptual redescription or aesthetic totalization reveals the workings of an underlying "faculty of resistance." The resultant ambivalence of the sublime feeling is elucidated differently by Kant and Schiller, such that the former regards it as the cognitive lucidity resulting from the self-cancellation of the passions, whereas the latter views it as a function of the will, insofar as it suggests a subjective capacity to attend to things differently. Finally, it is suggested that the true source of sublimity in Kant and Schiller is the force of personality to lend unity and meaning to phenomena which would otherwise lack such. (shrink)

How are non-declarative sentences understood? How do they differ semantically from their declarative counterparts? Answers to these questions once made direct appeal to the notion of illocutionary force. When they proved unsatisfactory, the fault was diagnosed as a failure to distinguish properly between mood and force. For some years now, efforts have been under way to develop a satisfactory account of the semantics of mood. In this paper, we consider the current achievements and future prospects of the mood-based semantic programme.

One effect of information technology is the increasing need to present information visually. The trend raises intriguing questions. What is the logical status of reasoning that employs visualization? What are the cognitive advantages and pitfalls of this reasoning? What kinds of tools can be developed to aid in the use of visual representation? This newest volume on the Studies in Logic and Computation series addresses the logical aspects of the visualization of information. The authors of these specially commissioned papers explore (...) the properties of diagrams, charts, and maps, and their use in problem solving and teaching basic reasoning skills. As computers make visual representations more commonplace, it is important for professionals, researchers and students in computer science, philosophy, and logic to develop an understanding of these tools; this book can clarify the relationship between visuals and information. (shrink)

When people speak, their words never fully encode what they mean, and the context is always compatible with a variety of interpretations. How can comprehension ever be achieved? Wilson and Sperber argue that comprehension is an inference process guided by precise expectations of relevance. What are the relations between the linguistically encoded meanings studied in semantics and the thoughts that humans are capable of entertaining and conveying? How should we analyse literal meaning, approximations, metaphors and ironies? Is the ability (...) to understand speakers' meanings rooted in a more general human ability to understand other minds? How do these abilities interact in evolution and in cognitive development? MEANING AND RELEVANCE sets out to answer these and other questions, enriching and updating relevance theory and exploring its implications for linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science and literary studies. (shrink)

Aristotle's _Nicomachean Ethics_ is one of the most important texts in western philosophy, and arguably the most influential text on contemporary moral theory. This _GuideBook_ introduces and assesses: * Aristotle's life and the background to the _Nicomachean Ethics_ * The ideas and text of the _Nicomachean Ethics_ * Aristotle's central role in philosophy and his continuing contribution to our ethical thought.

It is now integral to much of cultural, political and social analysis. This is the first comprehensive survey in one volume of the interdisciplinary field of cosmopolitan studies.

How should physical entities be characterized? Physicalists, who have most to do with the notion, usually characterize the physical by reference to two components: 1. The physical entities are the entities treated by fundamental physics with the proviso that 2. Physical entities are not fundamentally mental (that is, do not individually possess or bestow mentality) Here I explore the extent to which the appeals to fundamental physics and to the NFM (“no fundamental mentality”) constraint are appropriate for characterizing the physical, (...) especially for purposes of formulating physicalism. Ultimately, I motivate and defend a version of an account incorporating both components: The physics-based NFM account: An entity existing at a world w is physical iff (i) it is treated, approximately accurately, by current or future (in the limit of inquiry, ideal) versions of fundamental physics at w, and (ii) it is not fundamentally mental (that is, does not individually either possess or bestow mentality). (shrink)

Essentialism is widely regarded as a mistaken view of biological kinds, such as species. After recounting why (sections 2-3), we provide a brief survey of the chief responses to the “death of essentialism” in the philosophy of biology (section 4). We then develop one of these responses, the claim that biological kinds are homeostatic property clusters (sections 5-6) illustrating this view with several novel examples (section 7). Although this view was first expressed 20 years ago, and has received recent discussion (...) and critique, it remains underdeveloped and is often misrepresented by its critics (section 8). (shrink)

We present a Kripke model for Girard's Linear Logic (without exponentials) in a conservative fashion where the logical functors beyond the basic lattice operations may be added one by one without recourse to such things as negation. You can either have some logical functors or not as you choose. Commutatively and associatively are isolated in such a way that the base Kripke model is a model for noncommutative, nonassociative Linear Logic. We also extend the logic by adding a coimplication operator, (...) similar to Curry's subtraction operator, which is resituated with Linear Logic's contensor product. And we can add contraction to get nondistributive Relevance Logic. The model rests heavily on Urquhart's representation of nondistributive lattices and also on Dunn's Gaggle Theory. Indeed, the paper may be viewed as an investigation into nondistributive Gaggle Theory restricted to binary operations. The valuations on the Kripke model are three valued: true, false, and indifferent. The lattice representation theorem of Urquhart has the nice feature of yielding Priestley's representation theorem for distributive lattices if the original lattice happens to be distributive. Hence the representation is consistent with Stone's representation of distributive and Boolean lattices, and our semantics is consistent with the Lemmon-Scott representation of modal algebras and the Routley-Meyer semantics for Relevance Logic. (shrink)

"Bartley and Radnitzky have done the philosophy of knowledge a tremendous service. Scholars now have a superb and up-to-date presentation of the fundamental ideas of evolutionary epistemology." --Philosophical Books.

Transformation of the sparrow and the butterfly -- Meeting the gods of poverty in a dream -- The greatest joys of the cicada and its cast-off shell -- The owl's understanding -- The centipede questions the snake -- The toad's way of the gods -- The mysterious technique of the cat -- Afterword by William Scott Wilson.

A quelle condition peut-on associer ou croiser la réflexion sur la temporalité vécue et la réflexion sur le temps historique? Pour répondre, l'auteur dégage le messianisme juif des philosophies de l'histoire, relit les doctrines du temps nées dans la philosophie classique allemande et retrouve les pensées messianiques contemporaines. Il analyse enfin les différentes facettes du temps humain.

The impressive variation amongst biological individuals generates many complexities in addressing the simple-sounding question what is a biological individual? A distinction between evolutionary and physiological individuals is useful in thinking about biological individuals, as is attention to the kinds of groups, such as superorganisms and species, that have sometimes been thought of as biological individuals. More fully understanding the conceptual space that biological individuals occupy also involves considering a range of other concepts, such as life, reproduction, and agency. There has (...) been a focus in some recent discussions by both philosophers and biologists on how evolutionary individuals are created and regulated, as well as continuing work on the evolution of individuality. (shrink)

At the start of the 21st century, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) seems to have great potential for innovating business practices with a positive impact on People, Planet and Profit. In this article the differences between the management systems approach of the nineties, and Corporate Social Responsibility are analysed.An analysis is structured around three business principles that are relevant for CSR and management systems: (1) doing things right the first time, (2) doing the right things, and (3) continuous improvement and innovation. (...) Basically CSR is focussing on the second principle, and management systems focus on the first. However, CSR is very likely to build on the management systems as well.From a CSR point of view, the existing generation of management systems with their focus on rational control (= doing things right) can only be of limited use in the development of CSR. However, the preventive rationalities of management systems are important. Values and the principle doing the right things is extremely relevant for CSR. This goes far beyond the present generation of ISO type management systems; opportunities stem from building on TQM approaches like the EFQM Business Excellence model. Continuous improvement and innovation is a permanent challenge underlying the two other business principles, and requires both individual and organisational learning processes. In the present generation of management systems, continuous improvement mainly addresses rational prevention, barely the value aspects of business.For the further development and implementation of CSR, each of the three business management principles are vital. There is a need for a new generation of management systems that addresses the values at stake in strategic decision-making, both at company level and in the behaviour of individuals, while the rationalities of prevention and anticipation are still relevant. In both directions more emphasis for continuous learning and innovation will be needed.CSR is likely to trigger the development of management systems in the directions mentioned. This will support companies to be credible and transparent in improving the performance with respect to people, planet and profit. (shrink)

Despite hundreds of definitions, no consensus exists on a definition of life or on the closely related and problematic definitions of the organism and death. These problems retard practical and theoretical development in, for example, exobiology, artificial life, biology and evolution. This paper suggests improving this situation by basing definitions on a theory of a generalized particle hierarchy. This theory uses the common denominator of the “operator” for a unified ranking of both particles and organisms, from elementary particles to animals (...) with brains. Accordingly, this ranking is called “the operator hierarchy”. This hierarchy allows life to be defined as: matter with the configuration of an operator, and that possesses a complexity equal to, or even higher than the cellular operator. Living is then synonymous with the dynamics of such operators and the word organism refers to a select group of operators that fit the definition of life. The minimum condition defining an organism is its existence as an operator, construction thus being more essential than metabolism, growth or reproduction. In the operator hierarchy, every organism is associated with a specific closure, for example, the nucleus in eukaryotes. This allows death to be defined as: the state in which an organism has lost its closure following irreversible deterioration of its organization. The generality of the operator hierarchy also offers a context to discuss “life as we do not know it”. The paper ends with testing the definition’s practical value with a range of examples. (shrink)

Die Autoren dieses Buches befassen sich mit dem Verhältnis der Wissenschaftstheorie zu den Wissenschaften. Vertreter verschiedener Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften kommen hier nach folgendem Anordnungsprinzip zu Worte: Von den »hard sciences« zu den »soft sciences«, von den empirisch leichter prüfbaren zu den empirisch schwerer prüfbaren Wissenschaften. Die klassischen Naturwissenschaften, Physik, Chemie und Biologie, machen den Anfang. Dann folgen Ökonomie, Soziologie und Geschichte.Fast alle Beiträge sind aus Vorträgen hervorgegangen, die im Juni 1989 während eines wissenschaftlichen Kolloquiums an der Universität Trier gehalten und (...) diskutiert wurden.Das Thema der Trierer Tagung lautete: »Der Kritische Rationalismus und die Wissenschaften«. Die jeweiligen Vertreter ihres Faches waren also eingeladen, insbesondere ihr Verhältnis zur Wissenschaftstheorie des Kritischen Rationalismus darzulegen. Das Tagungsthema war vor dem Hintergrund der in demselben Jahr erfolgenden Emeritierung von Gerard Radnitzky, einem der renommiertesten Vertreter des Kritischen Rationalismus, gewählt worden. (shrink)

Communication is an important feature of the living world that mainstream biology fails to adequately deal with. Applying two main disciplines can be contemplated to fill in this gap: semiotics and information theory. Semiotics is a philosophical discipline mainly concerned with meaning; applying it to life already originated in biosemiotics. Information theory is a mathematical discipline coming from engineering which has literal communication as purpose. Biosemiotics and information theory are thus concerned with distinct and complementary possible meanings of the word (...) ‘communication’. Since literal communication needs to be secured so as to enable semantics being communicated, information theory is a necessary prerequisite to biosemiotics. Moreover, heredity is a purely literal communication process of capital importance fully relevant to literal communication, hence to information theory. A short introduction to discrete information theory is proposed, which is centred on the concept of redundancy and its use in order to make sequences resilient to errors. Information theory has been an extremely active and fruitful domain of researches and the motor of the tremendous progress of communication engineering in the last decades. Its possible connections with semantics and linguistics are briefly considered. Its applications to biology are suggested especially as regards error-correcting codes which are mandatory for securing the conservation of genomes. Biology needs information theory so biologists and communication engineers should closely collaborate. (shrink)

In his preface Mr Wilson writes 'I feel that a great many adults … would do better to spend less time in simply accepting the concepts of others uncritically, and more time in learning how to analyse concepts in general'. Mr Wilson starts by describing the techniques of conceptual analysis. He then gives examples of them in action by composing answers to specific questions and by criticism of quoted passages of argument. Chapter 3 sums up the importance of (...) this kind of mental activity. Chapter 4 presents selections for the reader to analyse, followed by questions of university entrance/scholarship type. This is a book to be worked through, in a sense a text-book. (shrink)

Wilson R. Bachelor was a Tennessee native who moved with his family to Franklin County, Arkansas, in 1870. A country doctor and natural philosopher, Bachelor was impelled to chronicle his life from 1870 to 1902, documenting the family's move to Arkansas, their settling a farm in Franklin County, and Bachelor's medical practice. Bachelor was an avid reader with wide-ranging interests in literature, science, nature, politics, and religion, and he became a self-professed freethinker in the 1870s. He was driven by (...) a concept he called "fiat flux," an awareness of the "rapid flight of time" that motivated him to treat the people around him and the world itself as precious and fleeting. (shrink)

The infant mortality rate in Liberia is 50 times higher than it is in Sweden, whilst a child born in Japan has a life expectancy at birth of more than double that of one born in Zambia. 1 And within countries, we see differences which are nearly as great. For example, if you were in the USA and travelled the short journey from the poorer parts of Washington to Montgomery County Maryland, you would find that ‘for each mile travelled life (...) expectancy rises about a year and a half. There is a twenty-year gap between poor blacks at one end of the journey and rich whites at the other’. (Marmot, 2004, p.2). There are two types of questions which it is important to ask about inequalities in health such as these. The first are social scientific questions about the extent of inequalities in health and the factors which are causally responsible for these inequalities. Examples of social scientific questions to ask might be: how do infant mortality rates in the UK differ according to social class? What is the difference in life expectancy between Japanese who emigrate to the US and those who remain in Japan? Why do civil servants in higher ranked jobs tend to live longer than civil servants in lower ranked jobs? The second type are normative questions about the reasons we have to care about inequalities in health. Important normative questions to answer are: which inequalities in health should we care about (all inequalities or merely some of them)? When is an inequality in health unjust? How should we weigh our concern for equality in health against other factors such as maximising the.. (shrink)

Gelfand quantales are complete unital quantales with an involution, *, satisfying the property that for any element a, if a b a for all b, then a a* a = a. A Hilbert-style axiom system is given for a propositional logic, called Gelfand Logic, which is sound and complete with respect to Gelfand quantales. A Kripke semantics is presented for which the soundness and completeness of Gelfand logic is shown. The completeness theorem relies on a Stone style representation theorem for (...) complete lattices. A Rasiowa/Sikorski style semantic tableau system is also presented with the property that if all branches of a tableau are closed, then the formula in question is a theorem of Gelfand Logic. An open branch in a completed tableaux guarantees the existence of an Kripke model in which the formula is not valid; hence it is not a theorem of Gelfand Logic. (shrink)

This paper elaborates on conceptual, empirical and practical arguments why corporations need to focus on their social dimensions, in order to further enhance organizational performance. The paper starts with an introduction on the general trend towards inclusiveness and connectedness. It then elaborates on the phase-wise development of cultures and organizational structures. Managing corporate improvement by building cultures of trust is the central focus of this contribution. By showing the cultural dimensions of Great Places to Work and their workplace practices, worthwhile (...) experiences leading to organizational improvement and superior financial performance are demonstrated. (shrink)

This paper elaborates on conceptual, empirical and practical arguments why corporations need to focus on their social dimensions, in order to further enhance organizational performance. The paper starts with an introduction on the general trend towards inclusiveness and connectedness. It then elaborates on the phase-wise development of cultures and organizational structures. Managing corporate improvement by building cultures of trust is the central focus of this contribution. By showing the cultural dimensions of Great Places to Work and their workplace practices, worthwhile (...) experiences leading to organizational improvement and superior financial performance are demonstrated. (shrink)

This paper is intended to complement our previous works on the necessary existence of error-correcting codes endowing genomes with the ability of being regenerated, not merely copied. It sketchily recalls some fundamental definitions and results of information theory and error-correcting codes; provides an overview of our research; shows that the disjunction of replication and regeneration enlightens the divide between germinal and somatic cells; suggests that some phenomena referred to as epigenetic may possibly find an explanation within the framework of error-correcting (...) codes; points out some difficulties, especially those related to sexual reproduction; criticizes the template-replication paradigm, and prompts geneticists to become familiar with information theory. (shrink)

Perception solves computationally demanding problems at lightning fast speed. It recovers sophisticated representations of the world from degraded inputs, often in a matter of milliseconds. Any theory of perception must be able to explain how this is possible; in other words, it must be able to explain perception's computational tractability. One of the few attempts to move toward such an explanation has been the information encapsulation hypothesis, which posits that perception can be fast because it keeps computational costs low by (...) forgoing access to information stored in cognition. I argue that we have no compelling reason to believe that encapsulation explains (or even contributes to an explanation of) perceptual tractability, and much reason to doubt it. This is because there exist much deeper computational challenges for perception than information access, and these threaten to make the costs of access irrelevant. If this is right, it undermines a core computational motivation for encapsulation and sends us back to the drawing board for explanations of perceptual tractability. (shrink)

How secular is contemporary society? Are pockets of sectarianism embedded in societies of developed countries? This timely book examines the interweaving of politics and religion, and of tradition and innovation in a variety of cultural settings. Eminent scholars from four continents examine here current turmoil in religious beliefs, practices, and organization--not only in the Western world, but in South America, Africa, South Asia, New Zealand, and Japan. They scrutinize evidence of religious change, decline, and revival; investigate challenges posed by new (...) religious movements; and locate religious change and conflict in the context of broader shifts in consciousness and culture. Contributors include Richard Fenn, Phillip E. Hammond, David Martin, Philip Rieff, Roland Robertson, and Mark Schibley. With its focus on the interplay of secularization, rationalism, and sectarianism, this work offers a fitting tribute to Bryan Wilson, who has made so many contributions to the sociological understanding of these phenomena. (shrink)

"Biophilia" is the term coined by Edward O. Wilson to describe what he believes is humanity's innate affinity for the natural world. In his landmark book Biophilia, he examined how our tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes might be a biologically based need, integral to our development as individuals and as a species. That idea has caught the imagination of diverse thinkers. The Biophilia Hypothesis brings together the views of some of the most creative scientists of our (...) time, each attempting to amplify and refine the concept of biophilia. The variety of perspectives -- psychological, biological, cultural, symbolic, and aesthetic -- frame the theoretical issues by presenting empirical evidence that supports or refutes the hypothesis. Numerous examples illustrate the idea that biophilia and its converse, biophobia, have a genetic component: fear, and even full-blown phobias of snakes and spiders are quick to develop with very little negative reinforcement, while more threatening modern artifacts -- knives, guns, automobiles -- rarely elicit such a response people find trees that are climbable and have a broad, umbrella-like canopy more attractive than trees without these characteristics people would rather look at water, green vegetation, or flowers than built structures of glass and concrete The biophilia hypothesis, if substantiated, provides a powerful argument for the conservation of biological diversity. More important, it implies serious consequences for our well-being as society becomes further estranged from the natural world. Relentless environmental destruction could have a significant impact on our quality of life, not just materially but psychologically and even spiritually. (shrink)

This paper presents a theory of the syntactic aspects of human sentence production. An important characteristic of unprepared speech is that overt pronunciation of a sentence can be initiated before the speaker has completely worked out the meaning content he or she is going to express in that sentence. Apparently, the speaker is able to build up a syntactically coherent utterance out of a series of syntactic fragments each rendering a new part of the meaning content. This incremental, left‐to‐right mode (...) of sentence production is the central capability of the proposed Incremental Procedural Grammar (IPG). Certain other properties of spontaneous speech, as derivable from speech errors, hesitations, self‐repairs, and language pathology, are accounted for as well.The psychological plausibility thus gained by the grammar appears compatible with a satisfactory level of linguistic plausibility in that sentences receive structural descriptions which are in line with current theories of grammar. More importantly, an explanation for the existence of configurational conditions on transformations and other linguistics rules is proposed.The basic design feature of IPG which gives rise to these psychologically and linguistically desirable properties, is the “Procedures + Stack” concept. Sentences are built not by a central constructing agency which overlooks the whole process but by a team of syntactic procedures (modules) which work—in parallel—on small parts of the sentence, have only a limited overview, and whose sole communication channel is a stack.IPG covers object complement constructions, interrogatives, and word order in main and subordinate clauses. It handles unbounded dependencies, crossserial dependencies and coordination phenomena such as gapping and conjunction reduction. It is also capable of generating self‐repairs and elliptical answers to questions. IPG has been implemented as an incremental Dutch sentence generator written in LISP. (shrink)

It is possible to predict future life forms? In this paper it is argued that the answer to this question may well be positive. As a basis for predictions a rationale is used that is derived from historical data, e.g. from a hierarchical classification that ranks all building block systems, that have evolved so far. This classification is based on specific emergent properties that allow stepwise transitions, from low level building blocks to higher level ones. This paper shows how this (...) hierarchy can be used for predicting future life forms.The extrapolations suggest several future neural network organisms. Major aspects of the structures of these organisms are predicted. The results can be considered of fundamental importance for several reasons. Firstly, assuming that the operator hierarchy is a proper basis for predictions, the result yields insight into the structure of future organisms. Secondly, the predictions are not extrapolations of presently observed trends, but are fully integrated with all historical system transitions in evolution. Thirdly, the extrapolations suggest the structures of intelligences that, one day, will possess more powerful brains than human beings.This study ends with a discussion of possibilities for falsification of the present theory, the implications of the present predictions in relation to recent developments in artificial intelligence and the philosophical implications of the role of humanity in evolution with regard to the creation of future neural network organisms. (shrink)

This is one of those cases to which Dr. 8 oodhouse's remark applies with all its force, that a method which leads to true results must have its logic — H.S Smith (" On Some of the Methods at Present in Use in Pure Geometry," p. 6) A goodly amount of modern metaphysics has concerned itself, in one form or another, with the question: what attitude should we take in regard to a language whose semantic underpinnings seem less than certain? (...) Since much of standard English is surely of this type, many philosophers have felt driven to extreme and unpalatable resolutions — wholesale rejection of attractive logical rules, radical "antirealism", "minimalism" about truth, and so forth, Scientists, however, have long dealt with analogous foundational insecurities and, under the duress of practicality, have framed a set of shifting attitudes towards language and reasoning that seem far more commonsensical than the extreme positions to which pure philosophy has often been led. Following this lead, this essay will recommend a more nuanced approach to linguistic insecurity that is neither naively optimistic nor mired in the gloomy sloughs of antirealism. (shrink)

One of the most significant studies of Descartes in recent times. It concentrates on the Meditations to show Descartes' philosophy in the context of his overall scientific objectives, not all of them fully explicit in the texts.

When we talk about intellectual property, it is often implicitly assumed that we are talking about private intellectual property. However, private property and the idea of private ownership do not exhaust the possibilities for accounts of ownership and of property. There are other ways that ownership can operate, such as common property. A resource is common property if its use is ‘governed by rules whose point is to make them available for use by all or any members of the society.’.

This paper presents the algebraic and Kripke modelsoundness and completeness ofa logic over Boolean monoids. An additional axiom added to thelogic will cause the resulting monoid models to be representable as monoidsof relations. A star operator, interpreted as reflexive, transitiveclosure, is conservatively added to the logic. The star operator isa relative modal operator, i.e., one that is defined in terms ofanother modal operator. A further example, relative possibility,of this type of operator is given. A separate axiom,antilogism, added to the logic (...) causes the Kripke models to support acollection of abstract topological uniformities which become concretewhen the Kripke models are dual to monoids of relations. The machineryfor the star operator is shownto be a recasting of Scott-Montague neighborhood models. An interpretationof the Kripke frames and properties thereof is presented in terms ofcertain CMOS transister networks and some circuit transformation equivalences.The worlds of the Kripke frame are wires and the Kripke relation is a specializedCMOS pass transistor network. (shrink)

We recast parts of decision theory in terms of channel theory concentrating on qualitative issues. Channel theory allows one to move between model theoretic and language theoretic notions as is necessary for an adequate covering. Doing so clarifies decision theory and presents the opportunity to investigate alternative formulations. As an example, we take some of Savage’s notions of decision theory and recast them within channel theory. In place of probabilities, we use a particular logic of preference. We introduce a logic (...) for describing actions separate from the logic of preference over actions. The structures introduced by channel theory that represent the decision problems can be seen to be an abstract framework. This frame-work is very accommodating to changing the nature of the decision problems to handle different aspects or theories about decision making. (shrink)