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 the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant famously criticizes traditional metaphysics and its proofs of immortality, free will and God's existence. What is often overlooked is that Kant also explains why rational beings must ask metaphysical questions about 'unconditioned' objects such as souls, uncaused causes or God, and why answers to these questions will appear rationally compelling to them. In this book, Marcus Willaschek reconstructs and defends Kant's account of the rational sources of metaphysics. After carefully explaining Kant's conceptions (...) of reason and metaphysics, he offers detailed interpretations of the relevant passages from the Critique of Pure Reason in which Kant explains why reason seeks 'the unconditioned'. Willaschek offers a novel interpretation of the Transcendental Dialectic, pointing up its 'positive' side, while at the same time it uncovers a highly original account of metaphysical thinking that will be relevant to contemporary philosophical debates. (shrink)

Gesture-first theories of language origins often raise two unsubstantiated arguments against vocal origins. First, they argue that great ape vocal behavior is highly constrained, limited to a fixed, species-typical repertoire of reflexive calls. Second, they argue that vocalizations lack any significant potential to ground meaning through iconicity, or resemblance between form and meaning. This paper reviews the considerable evidence that debunks these two “myths”. Accumulating evidence shows that the great apes exercise voluntary control over their vocal behavior, including their breathing (...) apparatus, larynx, and supralaryngeal articulators. They are also able to learn new vocal behaviors, and even show some rudimentary ability for vocal imitation. In addition, an abundance of research demonstrates that the vocal modality affords rich potential for iconicity. People can understand iconicity in sound symbolism, and they can produce iconic vocalizations to communicate a diverse range of meanings. Thus, two of the primary arguments against vocal origins theories are not tenable. As an alternative, the paper concludes that the origins of language – going as far back as our last common ancestor with great apes – are rooted in iconicity in both gesture and vocalization. (shrink)

Why should music be of interest to cognitive scientists, and what role does it play in human cognition? We review three factors that make music an important topic for cognitive scientific research. First, music is a universal human trait fulfilling crucial roles in everyday life. Second, music has an important part to play in ontogenetic development and human evolution. Third, appreciating and producing music simultaneously engage many complex perceptual, cognitive, and emotional processes, rendering music an ideal object for studying the (...) mind. We propose an integrated status for music cognition in the Cognitive Sciences and conclude by reviewing challenges and big questions in the field and the way in which these reflect recent developments. (shrink)

The result of two key social developments in recent years are examined here: the partial dismantling of the welfare state and the progress of genetics. Genetic insights are increasingly valuable for risk assessment, and insurers would like to use these insights to help determine premiums. Combined with the fact that social welfare is being curtailed, this could potentially create an uninsured high-risk population. Along with considerations of autonomy and privacy, this is the basis for an ethical critique of insurer's access (...) to information. The result has often been regulation of such information; but the authors argues that due to adverse selection, regulation will not solve these problems, and this may jeopardize the survival of private personal insurance. Instead, we should look towards the resurrection of social insurance, a key component of the welfare state. This will interest academic researchers as well as professionals involved with genetics and insurance. (shrink)

The Golden Rule has received remarkably little philosophical discussion. No book has ever been written on it, and articles devoted to it have been exceedingly few, and usually not very searching. It is usually mentioned, where it is mentioned at all, only in passing, and most of these passing remarks have either been false, trite, or misleading, though some of them, as we shall see, have certainly been interesting enough. Considering its obvious importance and its almost universal acceptance, this dearth (...) of philosophical discussion is unfortunate, and also somewhat surprising. One of the things I hope to show about it, though only incidentally, is that there are problems connected with it of the utmost subtlety, worthy of the attention of even the most minute philosophers. (shrink)

Dans cet entretien, Marcus Rediker décrit comment certains combats d’hier (l’anti-esclavagisme) ou d’aujourd’hui (la lutte contre la peine de mort et les biais du système juridique contre les populations afro-américaines) sont parvenus à mobiliser des forces très hétérogènes autour de revendications unificatrices. Il souligne le besoin de pratiquer un certain travail d’agitation, parfois nourri par de sentiments de colère et dynamisé par des slogans qui ne simplifient la réalité que pour l’orienter vers sa nécessaire transformation.

Excerpt from De Finibus Bonorum Et Malorum: Libri Quinque About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We (...) do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

It has been suggested that a substitutional semantics for quantification theory lends itself to nominalistic aims. I should like in this paper to explore that claim.

This article shows how the legacy of Hans Christian Ørsted (1777-1851), and his discovery of electromagnetism in 1820, was reconfigured and used by the H.C. english abstracts Ørsted Committee from 1914 before and during the centenary of 1920. Combining Somsen’s (2008) concept of olympic internationalism with uses of the past, I suggest understanding the 1920-centenary as an instance of olympic commemoration [olympisk historiebrug]. I argue that central actors from the committee, e.g. Martin Knudsen (1871-1949) and Kirstine Meyer, née Bjerrum (1861-1941), (...) used Ørsted's nationality to substantiate Denmark’s cultural and scientific achievements. By comparison to pre-twentieth century biographies, I show how the committee re-described Ørsted, i.e. from a scientist [Naturforsker] to being a Danish scientist [dansk Naturforsker]. The committee was deeply concerned with proving the big contributions by the small nation of Denmark, and I show how this relates to cultural politics of the early twentieth century Denmark. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to examine the possible relationships between the different dimensions of aesthetics on the one hand, and medical practice and medical ethics on the other hand. Firstly, I consider whether the aesthetic perception of the human body is relevant for medical practice. Secondly, a possible analogy between the artistic process and medical action is examined. The third section concerns the comparison between medical ethical judgements and aesthetic judgement of taste. It is concluded that the mutual (...) relevance between the aesthetic sphere, moral judgement and medical practice can be understood only if we recognize these spheres as distinct. (shrink)

Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science VII.

O presente artigo se propõe a uma análise das possibilidades de se alcançar a justiça no mundo pós-moderno, apresentando um estudo que dá suas noções iniciais, reflete sobre o itinerário a ser seguido para tal e alguns dos dilemas que impedem sua concretização.

Proof assistants are software-based tools that are used in the mechanization of proof construction and validation in mathematics and computer science, and also in certified program development. Different such tools are being increasingly used in order to accelerate and simplify proof checking, and the Coq proof assistant is one of the most well known and used in large-scale projects. Language and automata theory is a well-established area of mathematics, relevant to computer science foundations and information technology. In particular, context-free language (...) theory is of fundamental importance in the analysis, design, and implementation of computer programming languages. This work describes a formalization effort, using the Coq proof assistant, of fundamental results of the classical theory of contextfree grammars and languages. These include closure properties (union, concatenation, and Kleene star), grammar simplification (elimination of useless symbols, inaccessible symbols, empty rules, and unit rules), the existence of a Chomsky Normal Form for context-free grammars and the Pumping Lemma for context-free languages. The result is an important set of libraries covering the main results of context-free language theory, with more than 500 lemmas and theorems fully proved and checked. As it turns out, this is a comprehensive formalization of the classical context-free language theory in the Coq proof assistant and includes the formalization of the Pumping Lemma for context-free languages. The perspectives for the further development of this work are diverse and can be grouped in three different areas: inclusion of new devices and results, code extraction, and general enhancements of its libraries. (shrink)

Examines the social and ethical aspects of science and argues that research should incorporate social responsibility, democratic principles, and ethical standards.

Electoral representation is a cornerstone of contemporary democracy. Democracy today is widely interpreted to mean that the people governs itself through electing officials of government. But while...

The author, who lived in Berkeley, California during the disruptions of 1968, remembers the year as one of bad faith, though also of a sense of making history. He recalls the events of that year (and of 1964) in Berkeley, where he still lives, then moves out into related events in the rest of the world, but also into more lastingly important events in popular culture, especially popular music. He concludes by memorializing what now appears to him the most important (...) event of all, certain records broken that year in sports. (shrink)

Inspired by a mathematical ecology of thearre (M. Dinu) and the eco-grammar systems (E. Csuhaj-Varju et al.), this paper gives a brief analysis of simple cellular automata games in order to demonstrate their primary semiotic features. In particular, the behaviour of configurations in Conway's game of life is compared to several general features of Uexküll's concept of Umwelt. It is concluded that ecological processes have a fundamental semiotic dimension.

Relational Grammar (RG) was introduced in the 1970s as a theory of grammatical relations and relation change, for example, passivization, dative shift, and raising. Furthermore, the idea behind RG was that transformations as originally designed in generative grammar were unable to capture the common kernel of, e.g., passivization across languages. The researchconducted within RG has uncovered a wealth of phenomena for which it could produce a satisfactory analysis. Although the theory of Government and Binding has answered some of the complaints, (...) still it left many phenomena unaccounted for. Referent Systems (RSs) have been introduced by Vermeulen (1995) to overcome certain weaknesses of Dynamic Semantics. Their usefulness has not yet been realized in semantical theory. We shall show here that their significance cannot be overestimated. Namely, we will show in this paper that there exists a fundamental affinity to RG. Both handle the relation between an argument and a functor by means of a shared relational sign, which is unique for each argument. This assignment can be changed. What is interesting is that the notion of a chômeur, which is central to RG, finds a natural treatment in RSs. This coincidence is in our view not accidental but reveals some fundamental properties of the human language faculty. (shrink)