Neuroethological investigations of mammalian and avian auditory systems have documented species-specific specializations for processing complex acoustic signals that could, if viewed in abstract terms, have an intriguing and striking relevance for human speech sound categorization and representation. Each species forms biologically relevant categories based on combinatorial analysis of information-bearing parameters within the complex input signal. This target article uses known neural models from the mustached bat and barn owl to develop, by analogy, a conceptualization of human processing of consonant plus (...) vowel sequences that offers a partial solution to the noninvariance dilemma the locus equations orderly output constraint”) is hypothesized based on the notion of an evolutionarily conserved auditory-processing strategy. High correlation and linearity between critical parameters in the speech signal that help to cue place of articulation categories might have evolved to satisfy a preadaptation by mammalian auditory systems for representing tightly correlated, linearly related components of acoustic signals. (shrink)

The most frequent criticism of the target article is the lack of clear separability of human speech data relative to neuroethological data. A rationalization for this difference was sought in the tinkered nature of such new adaptations as human speech. Basic theoretical premises were defended, and new data were presented to support a claim that speakers maintain a low-noise relationship between F2 transition onset and offset frequencies for stops in pre-vocalic positions through articulatory choices. It remains a viable and testable (...) hypothesis that the phenomenon described by the locus equation is a functional adaptation of production mechanisms to processing preferences of the auditory system. (shrink)

Bridger and Alper (1999) maintain that the nonphysical featuresof the supertasks described by Pérez Laraudogoitia (1996) involving a system containing an infinite number of particles may be avoided by introducing, in a specific way, Hilbert space in classical dynamics. I argue that it is possible to interpret their proposal in two ways, neither of which is acceptable for the purpose for which it was introduced.

Bridger and Alper (1999) maintain that the nonphysical featuresof the supertasks described by Pérez Laraudogoitia (1996) involving a system containing an infinite number of particles may be avoided by introducing, in a specific way, Hilbert space in classical dynamics. I argue that it is possible to interpret their proposal in two ways, neither of which is acceptable for the purpose for which it was introduced.

There is a well-known variety of contact paradoxes which are significantly linked to topology. The aim of this paper is to present a new paradox concerning contact with bodies composed of a denumerable infinity of parts. This paradox establishes the logical necessity, in a Newtonian context, of contact forces that violate what is probably our most basic causal intuition, embodied in what I call the Principle of Influence: any force exerted on a body B induces change of movement of B (...) or the emergence of internal forces in B. However, the above paradox can be made strictly compatible with a Newtonian framework by introducing phantom forces as ideal elements in the Hilbert sense, though it will be seen that this does not solve all the problems. (shrink)

We give an overview of some remarkable connections between symmetric informationally complete measurements and algebraic number theory, in particular, a connection with Hilbert’s 12th problem. The paper is meant to be intelligible to a physicist who has no prior knowledge of either Galois theory or algebraic number theory.

In his introductory paper to first-order logic, Jon Barwise writes in the Handbook of Mathematical Logic :[T]he informal notion of provable used in mathematics is made precise by the formal notion provable in first-order logic. Following a sug[g]estion of Martin Davis, we refer to this view as Hilbert’s Thesis.This paper reviews the discussion of Hilbert’s Thesis in the literature. In addition to the question whether it is justifiable to use Hilbert’s name here, the arguments for this thesis (...) are compared with those for Church’s Thesis concerning computability. This leads to the question whether one could provide an analogue for proofs of the concept of partial recursive function. (shrink)

This volume tackles the slippery subject of 'meaning'.

The semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce is irreducibly triadic, positing that a sign mediates between the object that determines it and the interpretant that it determines. He eventually holds that each sign has two objects and three interpretants, standardizing quickly on immediate and dynamical for the objects but experimenting with a variety of names for the interpretants. The two most prominent terminologies are immediate/dynamical/final and emotional/energetic/logical, and scholars have long debated how they are related to each other. This paper seeks (...) to shed new light on the matter by reviewing the numerous manuscript drafts where Peirce develops the latter nomenclature while attempting to introduce his pragmatism to a general audience. It then goes on to examine an additional set of interpretants, intentional/effectual/communicational, and shows that the three different trichotomies can be understood as complementary, rather than redundant or conflicting. (shrink)

Language maps signals onto meanings through the use of two distinct types of structure. First, the space of meanings is discretized into categories that are shared by all users of the language. Second, the signals employed by the language are compositional: The meaning of the whole is a function of its parts and the way in which those parts are combined. In three iterated learning experiments using a vast, continuous, open-ended meaning space, we explore the conditions under which both structured (...) categories and structured signals emerge ex nihilo. While previous experiments have been limited to either categorical structure in meanings or compositional structure in signals, these experiments demonstrate that when the meaning space lacks clear preexisting boundaries, more subtle morphological structure that lacks straightforward compositionality—as found in natural languages—may evolve as a solution to joint pressures from learning and communication. (shrink)

The Problem of Iterated Ground is to explain what grounds truths about ground: if Γ grounds φ, what grounds that Γ grounds φ? This paper develops a novel solution to this problem. The basic idea is to connect ground to explanatory arguments. By developing a rigorous account of explanatory arguments we can equip operators for factive and non-factive ground with natural introduction and elimination rules. A satisfactory account of iterated ground falls directly out of the resulting logic: non- factive grounding (...) claims, if true, are zero-grounded in the sense of Fine. (shrink)

Modern philosophy recognizes two major ethical theories: deontology, which encourages adherence to rules and fulfillment of duties or obligations; and consequentialism, which evaluates morally significant actions strictly on the basis of their actual or anticipated outcomes. Both involve the systematic application of universal abstract principles, reflecting the culturally dominant paradigm of technical rationality. Professional societies promulgate codes of ethics with which engineers are expected to comply, while courts and the public generally assign liability to engineers primarily in accordance with the (...) results of their work, whether intended or unintended. A third option, prominent in ancient philosophy, has reemerged recently: virtue ethics, which recognizes that sensitivity to context and practical judgment are indispensable in particular concrete situations, and therefore rightly focuses on the person who acts, rather than the action itself. Beneficial character traits—i.e., virtues—are identified within a specific social practice in light of the internal goods that are unique to it. This paper proposes a comprehensive framework for implementing virtue ethics within engineering. (shrink)

I discuss three recent counterexamples to the transitivity of grounding due to Jonathan Schaffer. I argue that the counterexamples don’t work and draw some conclusions about the relationship between grounding and explanation.

Colour has often been supposed to be a subjective property, a property to be analysed orretly in terms of the phenomenological aspects of human expereince. In contrast with subjectivism, an objectivist analysis of color takes color to be a property objects possess in themselves, independently of the character of human perceptual expereince. David Hilbert defends a form of objectivism that identifies color with a physical property of surfaces - their spectral reflectance. This analysis of color is shown to provide (...) a more adequate account of the features of human color vision than its subjectivist rivals. The author's account of colro also recognises that the human perceptual system provides a limited and idiosyncratic picture of the world. These limitations are shown to be consistent with a realist account of colour and to provide the necessary tools for giving an analysis of common sense knowledge of color phenomena. (shrink)

It is frequently claimed that we can learn very little, if anything, about the aesthetic character of an artwork on the basis of testimony. Such disparaging assessments of the epistemic value of aesthetic testimony contrast markedly with our acceptance of testimony as an important source of knowledge in many other areas. There have, however, been a number of challenges to this orthodoxy of late; from those who seek to deny that such a contrast exists as well as attempts by those (...) who accept the distinction to provide an explanation and defence of the contrast. In Section I, I outline a little of the nature and history of the debate over aesthetic testimony. Section II, focuses on the opposing positions on aesthetic testimony, optimism and pessimism, and takes steps to clarify what exactly is at issue between them. In Section III, I survey considerations which have been adduced in favour of pessimism ranging from brute appeal to intuition to complex argumentation before turning in Section IV, to look at motivations for optimism. Finally, in Section V, I consider some alternative views which claim that, for a variety of reasons, it is a mistake to construe the debate over aesthetic testimony as concerned with the epistemic standing of aesthetic beliefs formed on the basis of testimony. (shrink)

Peirce is best known as the founder of pragmatism, but his dissatisfaction with how others understood and appropriated it prompted him to rename his own doctrine “pragmaticism” and to compose several variants of his original maxim defining it, as well as numerous restatements and elaborations. This paper presents an extensive selection of such formulations, followed by analysis and commentary demonstrating that for Peirce the ultimate meaning of an intellectual concept is properly expressed as a conditional proposition about the deliberate, self-controlled (...) conduct of its interpreters, not the law-governed behavior of its object. (shrink)

Most authors on metaphysical grounding have taken full grounding to be an internal relation in the sense that it's necessary that if the grounds and the grounded both obtain, then the grounds ground the grounded. The negative part of this essay exploits empirical and provably nonparadoxical self-reference to prove conclusively that even immediate full grounding isn't an internal relation in this sense. The positive, second part of this essay uses the notion of a “completely satisfactory explanation” to shed light on (...) the logic of ground in the presence of self-reference. This allows us to develop a satisfactory logic of ground and recover a sense in which grounding is still an internal relation. (shrink)

How do we form aesthetic judgements? And how should we do so? According to a very prominent tradition in aesthetics it would be wrong to form our aesthetic judgements about a particular object on the basis of anything other than first-hand acquaintance with the object itself (or some very close surrogate) and, in particular, it would be wrong to form such judgements merely on the basis of testimony. Further this tradition presupposes that our actual practice of forming aesthetic judgements typically (...) meets, or at least approximates, this ideal. In this paper I target this descriptive claim and argue—by appeal to some empirical work concerning belief polarization and echo chambers in aesthetics—that our actual practice of forming aesthetic judgements is heavily dependent on social sources such as testimony. I then briefly consider what normative implications this descriptive claim may have. (shrink)

Presents a mathematically rigorous, philosophically sound foundation for a science of information.

Neil Tennant and Joseph Salerno have recently attempted to rigorously formalize Michael Dummett's argument for logical revision. Surprisingly, both conclude that Dummett commits elementary logical errors, and hence fails to offer an argument that is even prima facie valid. After explicating the arguments Salerno and Tennant attribute to Dummett, I show how broader attention to Dummett's writings on the theory of meaning allows one to discern, and formalize, a valid argument for logical revision. Then, after correctly providing a rigorous statement (...) of the argument, I am able to delineate four possible anti-Dummettian responses. Following recent work by Stewart Shapiro and Crispin Wright, I conclude that progress in the anti-realist's dialectic requires greater clarity about the key modal notions used in Dummett's proof. (shrink)

Die Leitgedanken meiner Untersuchungen über die Grundlagen der Mathematik, die ich - anknüpfend an frühere Ansätze - seit 1917 in Besprechungen mit P. BERNAYS wieder aufgenommen habe, sind von mir an verschiedenen Stellen eingehend dargelegt worden. Diesen Untersuchungen, an denen auch W. ACKERMANN beteiligt ist, haben sich seither noch verschiedene Mathematiker angeschlossen. Der hier in seinem ersten Teil vorliegende, von BERNAYS abgefaßte und noch fortzusetzende Lehrgang bezweckt eine Darstellung der Theorie nach ihren heutigen Ergebnissen. Dieser Ergebnisstand weist zugleich die Richtung (...) für die weitere Forschung in der Beweistheorie auf das Endziel hin, unsere üblichen Methoden der Mathematik samt und sonders als widerspruchsfrei zu erkennen. Im Hinblick auf dieses Ziel möchte ich hervorheben, daß die zeit weilig aufgekommene Meinung, aus gewissen neueren Ergebnissen von GÖDEL folge die Undurchführbarkeit meiner Beweistheorie, als irrtüm lich erwiesen ist. Jenes Ergebnis zeigt in der Tat auch nur, daß man für die weitergehenden Widerspruchsfreiheitsbeweise den finiten Stand punkt in einer schärferen Weise ausnutzen muß, als dieses bei der Be trachtung der elementaren Formallsmen erforderlich ist. Göttingen, im März 1934 HILBERT Vorwort zur ersten Auflage Eine Darstellung der Beweistheorie, welche aus dem HILBERTschen Ansatz zur Behandlung der mathematisch-logischen Grundlagenpro bleme erwachsen ist, wurde schon seit längerem von HILBERT ange kündigt. (shrink)

In the early 1990s there emerged a growing interest with the concept of epistemic entitlement. Philosophers who acknowledge the existence of entitlements maintain that there are beliefs or judgments unsupported by evidence available to the subject, but which the subject nonetheless has the epistemic right to hold. Some of these may include beliefs non-inferentially sourced in perception, memory, introspection, testimony, and the a priori. Unlike the traditional notion of justification, entitlement is often characterized as an externalist type of epistemic warrant, (...) in the sense that a subject’s being entitled is determined by facts and circumstances that are independent of any reasoning capacities she may or may not have, and which the subject herself need not understand or be able to recognize. One key motivation for this view is that the inclusion of entitlement in epistemology can account for the commonly held intuition that largely unreflective individuals, such as children and non-human animals, possess warrant and basic knowledge about the world. It also paves the way for a tenable foundationalist epistemology, according to which there exist warranted beliefs which are not themselves warranted or justified by any further beliefs. This article explores theories of entitlement as presented by four prominent philosophers: Fred Dretske, Tyler Burge, Crispin Wright, and Christopher Peacocke. (shrink)

In this paper, I link philosophical discussion of policies for trans inclusion or exclusion, to a method of policy making. I address the relationship between concerns about safety, fairness, and inclusion in policy making about the inclusion of transwomen athletes into women’s sport. I argue for an approach based on lexical priority rather than simple ‘balancing’, considering the different values in a specific order. I present justifying reasons for this approach and this lexical order, based on the special obligations of (...) International Federations such as World Rugby. As a result, I provide a justificatory framework for the WR Guidelines that exclude transwomen from the women’s game in WR competitions. Finally, I give an account of a maximally safe, maximally fair and maximally inclusive form of sex categorisation in sport. (shrink)

This paper evaluates the proof-theoretic definition of ground developed by Poggiolesi in a range of recent publications and argues that her proposed definition fails. The paper then outlines an alternative approach where logical consequence relations and the logical operations are defined in terms of ground.

Unusability pessimism has recently emerged as an appealing new option for pessimists about aesthetic testimony—those who deny the legitimacy of forming aesthetic beliefs on the basis of testimony. Unusability pessimists argue that we should reject the traditional pessimistic stance that knowledge of aesthetic matters is unavailable via testimony in favour of the view that while such knowledge is available to us, it is unusable. This unusability stems from the fact that accepting such testimony would violate an important non-epistemic norm of (...) belief formation. In this article I present an objection to unusability pessimism and argue that Robert Hopkins, the view's most prominent defender, fails to motivate adequately the claim that there are such non-epistemic belief norms. The cases which putatively legitimize usability norms can be explained by appeal to more familiar norm types: epistemic norms of belief formation, and non-epistemic norms which govern action other than belief formation. The intent of this article is not primarily negative, however, and I will also argue that understanding why the unusability position fails helps us to identify a promising new direction for the pessimist's opponents who wish to defend the legitimacy of forming aesthetic beliefs on the basis of testimony. (shrink)

Campaigning activities of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have increased public awareness and concern regarding the alleged unethical and environmentally damaging practices of many major multinational companies. Companies have responded by developing corporate social responsibility strategies to demonstrate their commitment to both the societies within which they function and to the protection of the natural environment. This has often involved a move towards greater transparency in company practice and a desire to engage with stakeholders, often including many of the campaign organisations that (...) have been at the forefront of the criticisms of their activity. This article examines the ways in which stakeholder dialogue has impacted upon the relationships between NGOs and businesses. In doing so, it contributes to the call for more ‘stakeholder-focused’ research in this field (Frooman in Acad Manag Rev 24(2): 191–205, 1999; Steurer in Bus Strategy Environ 15: 15–69 2006). By adopting a stakeholder lens, and focusing more heavily upon the impact on one particular stakeholder community (NGOs) and looking in depth at one form of engagement (stakeholder dialogue), this article examines how experiences of dialogue are strategically transforming interactions between businesses and NGOs. It shows how experiences of stakeholder dialogue have led to transformations in the drivers for engagement, transformations in the processes of engagement and transformations in the terms of engagement. Examining these areas of transformation, the article argues, reveals the interactions at play in framing and shaping the evolving relationships between business and its stakeholders. (shrink)

Dieser Buchtitel ist Teil des Digitalisierungsprojekts Springer Book Archives mit Publikationen, die seit den Anfängen des Verlags von 1842 erschienen sind. Der Verlag stellt mit diesem Archiv Quellen für die historische wie auch die disziplingeschichtliche Forschung zur Verfügung, die jeweils im historischen Kontext betrachtet werden müssen. Dieser Titel erschien in der Zeit vor 1945 und wird daher in seiner zeittypischen politisch-ideologischen Ausrichtung vom Verlag nicht beworben.

I systematically defend a novel account of the grounds for identity and distinctness facts: they are all uniquely zero‐grounded. First, this Null Account is shown to avoid a range of problems facing other accounts: a relation satisfying the Null Account would be an excellent candidate for being the identity relation. Second, a plenitudinist view of relations suggests that there is such a relation. To flesh out this plenitudinist view I sketch a novel framework for expressing real definitions, use this framework (...) to give a definition of identity, and show how the central features of the identity relation can be deduced from this definition. (shrink)

A logic of grounding where what is grounded can be a collection of truths is a “many-many” logic of ground. The idea that grounding might be irreducibly many-many has recently been suggested by Dasgupta. In this paper I present a range of novel philosophical and logical reasons for being interested in many-many logics of ground. I then show how Fine’s State-Space semantics for the Pure Logic of Ground can be extended to the many-many case, giving rise to the Pure Logic (...) of Many-Many Ground. In the second, more technical, part of the paper, I do two things. First, I present an alternative formalization of plg; this allows us to simplify Fine’s completeness proof for plg. Second, I formalize plmmg using an infinitary sequent calculus and prove that this formalization is sound and complete. (shrink)

The detailed analysis of a particular quasi-historical numerical example is used to illustrate the way in which a Bayesian personalist approach to scientific inference resolves the Duhemian problem of which of a conjunction of hypotheses to reject when they jointly yield a prediction which is refuted. Numbers intended to be approximately historically accurate for my example show, in agreement with the views of Lakatos, that a refutation need have astonishingly little effect on a scientist's confidence in the ‘hard core’ of (...) a successful research programme even when a comparable confirmation would greatly enhance that confidence. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentis. (shrink)

Traces the depiction of biological science in mass media and how it has shaped public perceptions.

Charles Sanders Peirce is best known as the founder of pragmatism, but the name that he preferred for his overall system of thought was ‘‘synechism’’ because the principle of continuity was its central thesis. He considered time to be the paradigmatic example and often wrote about its various aspects while discussing other topics. This essay draws from many of those widely scattered texts to formulate a distinctively Peircean philosophy of time, incorporating extensive quotations into a comprehensive and coherent synthesis. Time (...) is not an existential subject with past, present, and future as its incompatible predicates, but rather a real law enabling things to possess contrary qualities at its different determinations, and Peirce identifies four classes of such states based on when and how they are realized. Because time is continuous, it is not composed of instants, and even the present is an indefinite lapse during which we are directly aware of constant change. The accomplished past is perpetually growing as the possibilities and conditional necessities of the future are actualized at the present, and the entire universe evolves from being utterly indeterminate toward being absolutely determinate. Nevertheless, time must return into itself even if events are limited to only a portion of it, a paradox that is resolved with the aid of projective geometry. Temporal synechism thus touches on a broad spectrum of philosophical issues including mathematics, phenomenology, logic, and metaphysics. (shrink)

The representation of Neg-Raising in the grammar is a matter of controversy. I provide evidence for representing Neg-Raising as a kind of presupposition associated with certain predicates by providing a detailed analysis of NPI-licensing in Neg-Raising contexts. Specific features of presupposition projection are used to explain the licensing of strict NPIs under Neg-Raising predicates. Discussion centers around the analysis of a licensing asymmetry noted in Horn (1971, Negative transportation: Unsafe at any speed? In CLS 7 (pp. 120–133)).Having provided this analysis, (...) I go on to discuss its implications for the theory of NPI-licensing more generally. In particular, I discuss how the present proposal reflects on von Fintel’s (1999, Journal of Semantics, 16, 97–148) proposal to use Strawson downward entailment in the statement of NPI-licensing principles. (shrink)

This paper proposes that both weak and strong NPIs in English are sensitive to the downward entailingness of their licensers. It is also proposed, however, that these two types of NPIs pay attention to different aspects of the meaning of their environment. As observed by von Fintel and Chierchia, weak NPIs do not attend to the scalar implicatures of presuppositions of their licensers. Strong NPIs see both the truth-conditional and non-truth-conditional (scalar implications, presuppositions) meaning of their licensers. This theory accounts (...) for the puzzling inability, noted by Rullmann and Gajewski, of Strawson anti-additive operators to license strong NPIs, as well as for the effects of Zwarts’s hierarchy of negative strength. Additional issues concerning comparative quantifiers, few, and proportional quantifiers are addressed. (shrink)

Two different versions of the ending of the first additament to C. S. Peirce's 1908 article, "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God," appear in the Collected Papers but were omitted from The Essential Peirce. In one, he linked the hypothesis of God's Reality to his entire theory of logic as semeiotic, claiming that proving the latter would also prove the former. In the other, he offered a final outline of his cosmology, in which the Reality of God as (...) Ens necessarium is indispensable to both the origin and order of our existing universe of Signs. Exploring these passages, as well as the unpublished manuscript drafts of the article, provides important insights into the key concepts of instinct and continuity within Peirce's comprehensive system of thought. (shrink)

This article presents a critical examination of the process of stakeholder dialogue in the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) field. It utilises data from a three-year research project into stakeholder dialogue processes to discuss three central themes: first, what is meant by the term ‘dialogue’, both from a theoretical perspective and from its practical application within CSR; second, the challenges of creating effective dialogue; and third, measuring and assessing the potential outcomes of dialogue. In providing a critical overview of these themes, (...) the article examines the nature of organisational learning through stakeholder engagement and dialogue. It questions the motives behind engagement in dialogue and highlights some of the potential challenges for organisational learning posed by opting for a stakeholder dialogue approach. It argues that organisations engaging in stakeholder dialogue must have a clear understanding of the implications of undertaking a dialogue process and have a long-term perspective regarding the outcomes and learning likely to emerge from it. While stakeholder dialogue may produce significant results, it is argued, many of these may be difficult to quantify on a short-term basis. (shrink)