This is a re-look at the (Indian) Partition event through the lens of Advaita Vedanta.

Bashabi Fraser is a poet in her own right. She is also a creative translator. This is a review of her edited volume on the Partition of Bengal. The review highlights our need to read the partition event as a warning for future and ongoing genocides. The review also shows the superiority of literature over history. And finally it has something to say about translation and separately, on P Lal. For instance, this reviewer in many other reviews (...) too insists on the superiority of Fr Mignon SJ over Prof Lal's understanding of translation. (shrink)

This paper focuses on one matter that poses a problem for both human judges and standard probability frameworks, namely the assumption of a unique (privileged) and complete partition of the state-space of possible events. This is tantamount to assuming that we know all possible outcomes or alternatives in advance of making a decision, but it is clear that there are many practical situations in prediction, diagnosis, and decision-making where such partitions are contestable and/or incomplete. The paper begins by surveying (...) the impact of partitions on the choice of priors in formal probabilistic updating frameworks, and on human subjective probability judgements. That material is followed by an overview of strategies for dealing with partition dependence, including considerations of how a rational agent's preferences may determine the choice of a partition. (shrink)

People tend to perceive ongoing continuous activity as series of discrete events. This partitioning of continuous activity may occur, in part, because events correspond to dynamic patterns that have recurred across different contexts. Recurring patterns may lead to reliable sequential dependencies in observers' experiences, which then can be used to guide perception. The current set of simulations investigated whether this statistical structure within events can be used 1) to develop stable internal representations that facilitate perception and 2) to learn when (...) to update such representations in a self-organizing manner. These simulations demonstrate that experience with recurring patterns enables a system to accurately predict upcoming stimuli within an event, to identify boundaries between such events based on transient increases in prediction error, and to use such boundaries to improve prediction about subsequent activities. (shrink)

This article aims to rethink the trauma of the 1947 Partition of British India through the figure of the border. It is at the border that we can see how the present is as much constituted by the concentration of new realities that call for shifting frameworks of understanding as it is by past events that continue to haunt memory. It undertakes this task through a close reading of the trope of borders in Saadat Hasan Manto’s 1953 short story, (...) ‘Toba Tek Singh’. Partition fiction serves as a fruitful ground for developing new approaches to that history because, in part, literature is uniquely situated between representation and theory, between what a text represents and how it represents. In Manto’s story, the border is embodied in its central protagonist, Bishan Singh, who experiences an ontological struggle between being and belonging that exceeds the particular historical, geographical, and national context of the Partition. I suggest that the division of British India signaled a unique rupture within the subcontinent in which the creation of borders became the defining traumatic event of that history. This article thus moves away from the familiar nationalist rhetoric that has otherwise dominated conversations about the 1947 Partition of British India. It focuses instead on the geographical border as a conceptual figure that is at once spatially and corporeally oriented to a collective identity that exceeds nationalist frameworks of reference. (shrink)

We study how people attend to and memorize endings of events that differ in the degree to which objects in them are affected by an action: Resultative events show objects that undergo a visually salient change in state during the course of the event (peeling a potato), and non‐resultative events involve objects that undergo no, or only partial state change (stirring in a pan). We investigate general cognitive principles, and potential language‐specific influences, in verbal and nonverbal event encoding (...) and memory, across two experiments with Dutch and Estonian participants. Estonian marks a viewer's perspective on an event's result obligatorily via grammatical case on direct object nouns: Objects undergoing a partial/full change in state in an event are marked with partitive/accusative case, respectively. Therefore, we hypothesized increased saliency of object states and event results in Estonian speakers, as compared to speakers of Dutch. Findings show (a) a general cognitive principle of attending carefully to endings of resultative events, implying cognitive saliency of object states in event processing; (b) a language‐specific boost on attention and memory of event results under verbal task demands in Estonian speakers. Results are discussed in relation to theories of event cognition, linguistic relativity, and thinking for speaking. (shrink)

This paper offers a new unified theory about the meaning of the imperfective and progressive aspects that builds on earlier of analyses in the literature that treat the imperfective as denoting a universal quantifier (e.g. Bonomi, Linguist Philos, 20(5):469–514, 1997; Cipria and Roberts, Nat Lang Semant 8(4):297–347, 2000). It is shown that the problems associated with such an analysis can be overcome if the domain of the universal quantifier is taken to be a partition of a future extending interval (...) into equimeasured cells. Treating the partition-measure (the length of each partition-cell) as a contextually dependent variable allows for a unified treatment of the habitual and event-in-progress readings of the imperfective. It is argued that the contrast between the imperfective and the progressive has to do with whether the quantifier domain is a regular partition of the reference interval or a superinterval of the reference interval. (shrink)

The present theory leads to a set of subjective weights such that the utility of an uncertain alternative (gamble) is partitioned into three terms involving those weights—a conventional subjectively weighted utility function over pure consequences, a subjectively weighted value function over events, and a subjectively weighted function of the subjective weights. Under several assumptions, this becomes one of several standard utility representations, plus a weighted value function over events, plus an entropy term of the weights. In the finitely additive case, (...) the latter is the Shannon entropy; in all other cases it is entropy of degree not 1. The primary mathematical tool is the theory of inset entropy. (shrink)

Structuring Sense explores the difference between words however defined and structures however constructed. It sets out to demonstrate over three volumes, of which this is the second, that the explanation of linguistic competence should be shifted from lexical entry to syntactic structure, from memory of words to manipulation of rules. Its reformulation of how grammar and lexicon interact has profound implications for linguistic, philosophical, and psychological theories about human mind and language. Hagit Borer departs from both language specific constructional approaches (...) and lexicalist approaches to argue that universal hierarchical structures determine interpretation, and that language variation emerges from the morphological and phonological properties of inflectional material. The Normal Course of Events applies this radical approach to event structure. Integrating research results in syntax, semantics, and morphology, the author shows that argument structure is based on the syntactic realization of semantic event units. The topics she addresses include the structure of internal arguments and of telic and atelic interpretations, accusative and partitive case, perfective and imperfective marking, the unaccusative-unergative distinction, existential interpretation and post-verbal subjects, and resultative constructions. The languages discussed include English, Catalan, Finnish, Hebrew, Czech, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. (shrink)

EVENTAL AESTHETICS RETROSPECTIVE 1. LOOKING BACK AT 10 ISSUES OF EVENTAL AESTHETICS.

Our contributors explore a rich variety of aesthetic problems that bring about the self-reflexive re-evaluation of ideas.

Is aesthetics a product of evolution? Are human aesthetic behaviors in fact evolutionary adaptations? The creation of artistic objects and experiences is an important aesthetic behavior. But so is the perception of aesthetic phenomena qua aesthetic. The question of evolutionary aesthetics is whether humans have evolved the capacity not only to make beautiful things but also to appreciate the aesthetic qualities in things. Are our near-universal love of music and cute baby animals essential to our species’ evolutionary development, which took (...) place over thousands of years? In other words, do aesthetic practice and appreciation help people to survive or reproduce? Do aesthetic behaviors help to propel natural selection? If so, what does that tell us about ourselves as human beings? What does it tell us about art, our other aesthetic practices, and aesthetic experience? (shrink)

In her book, Vibrant Matter, Jane Bennett thinks through what ontological, political, and ecological questions would look like if humans could admit that matter and nonhuman things are living, creative agents; the contributors to this issue of Evental Aesthetics begin to think through what aesthetic questions would look like.

This issue is dedicated to thinking about art and current aesthetic perspectives through Hegelianism.

In this special issue on animals and aesthetics, contributors explore encounters with animals in art and thought.

In this issue, our contributors demonstrate how art in the city, art “about” the city, art compared to the city, can bring to attention the insidious forces underlying every city’s gleaming, wide-awake veneer.

In "Aesthetic Histories" our contributors’ shared concern is the inspiring and confounding, healthy and uncomfortable and above all inevitable relationship between history and aesthetic praxis.

A hijacking is a violent takeover, a misappropriation of something for a purpose other than its intended one, by parties other than those for whom the thing was meant. This issue explores the aesthetic practices and consequences of unauthorized repurposing.

This issue profiles various attempts, both successful and fraught, to engage the divide between asceticism and opulence, between materialism and poverty.

In this paper I provide a decompositional analysis of three kinds of plural indefinites in two related languages, European Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. The three indefinites studied are bare plurals, the unos (Spanish)/uns (Portuguese) type, and the algunos (Spanish)/alguns (Portuguese) type. The paper concentrates on four properties: semantic plurality, positive polarity, partitivity, and event distribution. The logic underlying the analysis is that of compositionality, applied at the subword level: as items become bigger in form (with the addition of morphemes), (...) they also acquire more semantic properties. The paper proposes the “indefinite hierarchy", which establishes a set of components for languages to build their indefinites with, in a particular order. (shrink)

A partition $\{C_i\}_{i\in I}$ of a Boolean algebra $\cS$ in a probability measure space $(\cS,p)$ is called a Reichenbachian common cause system for the correlated pair $A,B$ of events in $\cS$ if any two elements in the partition behave like a Reichenbachian common cause and its complement, the cardinality of the index set $I$ is called the size of the common cause system. It is shown that given any correlation in $(\cS,p)$, and given any finite size $n>2$, the (...) probability space $(\cS,p)$ can be embedded into a larger probability space in such a manner that the larger space contains a Reichenbachian common cause system of size $n$ for the correlation. It also is shown that every totally ordered subset in the partially ordered set of all partitions of \cS$ contains only one Reichenbachian common cause system. Some open problems concerning Reichenbachian common cause systems are formulated. (shrink)

A partition $\{C_i\}_{i\in I}$ of a Boolean algebra Ω in a probability measure space (Ω, p) is called a Reichenbachian common cause system for the correlation between a pair A,B of events in Ω if any two elements in the partition behave like a Reichenbachian common cause and its complement; the cardinality of the index set I is called the size of the common cause system. It is shown that given any non-strict correlation in (Ω, p), and given (...) any finite natural number n > 2, the probability space (Ω,p) can be embedded into a larger probability space in such a manner that the larger space contains a Reichenbachian common cause system of size n for the correlation. (shrink)

The logical basis for information theory is the newly developed logic of partitions that is dual to the usual Boolean logic of subsets. The key concept is a "distinction" of a partition, an ordered pair of elements in distinct blocks of the partition. The logical concept of entropy based on partition logic is the normalized counting measure of the set of distinctions of a partition on a finite set--just as the usual logical notion of probability based (...) on the Boolean logic of subsets is the normalized counting measure of the subsets (events). Thus logical entropy is a measure on the set of ordered pairs, and all the compound notions of entropy (join entropy, conditional entropy, and mutual information) arise in the usual way from the measure (e.g., the inclusion-exclusion principle)--just like the corresponding notions of probability. The usual Shannon entropy of a partition is developed by replacing the normalized count of distinctions (dits) by the average number of binary partitions (bits) necessary to make all the distinctions of the partition. (shrink)

At conceptual and linguistic levels of cognition, events are said to be represented in terms of abstract categories, for example, the sentence Jackie cut the bagel with a knife encodes the categories Agent (i.e., Jackie) and Patient (i.e., the bagel). In this paper, we ask whether entities such as the knife are also represented in terms of such a category (often labeled “Instrument”) and, if so, whether this category has a prototype structure. We hypothesized the Proto-instrument is a tool: a (...) physical object manipulated by an intentional agent to affect a change in another individual or object. To test this, we asked speakers of English, Dutch, and German to complete an event description task and a sentence acceptability judgment task in which events were viewed with more or less prototypical instruments. We found broad similarities in how English, Dutch, and German partition the semantic space of instrumental events, suggesting there is a shared concept of the Instrument category. However, there was no evidence to support the specific hypothesis that tools are the core of the Instrument category—instead, our results suggest the most prototypical Instrument is the direct extension of an intentional agent. This paper supports theoretical frameworks where thematic roles are analyzed in terms of prototypes and suggests new avenues of research on how instrumental category structure differs across linguistic and conceptual domains. (shrink)

Cellular events must be executed in a certain sequence during the cell division in order to maintain genome integrity and hence ensure a cell's survival. In M phase, for instance, chromosome segregation always precedes mitotic exit (characterized by mitotic kinase inactivation via cyclin destruction); this is then followed by cytokinesis. How do cells impose this strict order? Recent findings in budding yeast have suggested a mechanism whereby partitioning of chromosomes into the daughter cell is a prerequisite for the activation of (...) mitotic exit network (MEN). So far, however, a regulatory scheme that would temporally link the initiation of cytokinesis to the execution of mitotic exit has not been determined. We propose that the requirement of MEN components for cytokinesis, their translocation to the mother–daughter neck and triggering of this translocation by inactivation of the mitotic kinase may be the three crucial elements that render initiation of cytokinesis dependent on mitotic exit. BioEssays 24: 659–666, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Proportional quantification and progressive aspect interact in English in revealing ways. This paper investigates these interactions and draws conclusions about the semantics of the progressive and telicity. In the scope of the progressive, the proportion named by a proportionality quantifier (e.g. most in The software was detecting most errors) must hold in every subevent of the event so described, indicating that a predicate in the scope of the progressive is interpreted as an internally homogeneous activity. Such an activity interpretation (...) is argued to be available for telic predicates (e.g. cross the street) because these receive a partitive interpretation except in combination with a completive operator, which asserts that the event so described has culminated. The obligatoriness of the completive operator in the preterit is shown to parametrically distinguish those languages that show completion entailments in the preterit, e.g. English, from those that do not, e.g. Malagasy, Hindi, and Japanese. (shrink)

Let two events A, B be given. We consider probability distributions over the partition P = {A ∩ B, A ∩ ¯ B, ¯ A ∩ B, ¯ A ∩ ¯ B}. By a “constraint” is meant a probabilistically coherent set of statements each of the form Prob(E) = x, where E is a subset of P . Let C be the class of constraints. By a “method of ampliative inference” is meant any total function M from C to (...) the class of probability distributions over P , provided that M has the following property. (shrink)

Letters by the author, a member of Jamaat-e-Islami, written to his wife during 1946-47, on Islamic ethics; includes a chronology of events that took place in India immediately before and after partition.

Jeffrey conditionalization is a rule for updating degrees of belief in light of uncertain evidence. It is usually assumed that the partitions involved in Jeffrey conditionalization are finite and only contain positive-credence elements. But there are interesting examples, involving continuous quantities, in which this is not the case. Q1 Can Jeffrey conditionalization be generalized to accommodate continuous cases? Meanwhile, several authors, such as Kenny Easwaran and Michael Rescorla, have been interested in Kolmogorov’s theory of regular conditional distributions as a possible (...) framework for conditional probability which handles probability-zero events. However the theory faces a major shortcoming: it seems messy and ad hoc. Q2 Is there some axiomatic theory which would justify and constrain the use of rcds, thus serving as a possible foundation for conditional probability? These two questions appear unrelated, but they are not, and this paper answers both. We show that when one appropriately generalizes Jeffrey conditionalization as in Q1, one obtains a framework which necessitates the use of rcds. It is then a short step to develop a general theory which addresses Q2, which we call the theory of extensions. The theory is a formal model of conditioning which recovers Bayesian conditionalization, Jeffrey conditionalization, and conditionalization via rcds as special cases. (shrink)

Dilation occurs when an interval probability estimate of some event E is properly included in the interval probability estimate of E conditional on every event F of some partition, which means that one’s initial estimate of E becomes less precise no matter how an experiment turns out. Critics maintain that dilation is a pathological feature of imprecise probability models, while others have thought the problem is with Bayesian updating. However, two points are often overlooked: (1) knowing that (...) E is stochastically independent of F (for all F in a partition of the underlying state space) is sufficient to avoid dilation, but (2) stochastic independence is not the only independence concept at play within imprecise probability models. In this paper we give a simple characterization of dilation formulated in terms of deviation from stochastic independence, propose a measure of dilation, and distinguish between proper and improper dilation. Through this we revisit the most sensational examples of dilation, which play up independence between dilator and dilatee, and find the sensationalism undermined by either fallacious reasoning with imprecise probabilities or improperly constructed imprecise probability models. (shrink)

This article builds on C. S. Peirce’s suggestive blueprint for an inclusive outlook that grants reality to his three categories. Moving away from the usual focus on (contentious) cosmological forces, I use a modal principle to partition various ontological layers: regular sign-action (like coded language) subsumes actual sign-action (like here-and-now events) which in turn subsumes possible sign-action (like qualities related to whatever would be similar to them). Once we realize that the triadic sign’s components are each answerable to this (...) asymmetric subsumption, we obtain the means to track at which level of complexity semiosis finds itself, in a given case. Since the bulk of such a “trinitarian” metaphysics would be devoted to countenancing uninterpreted phenomena, I argue that current misgivings about sign-based ontologies are largely misplaced. (shrink)

Piercing incisively and deeply into the nature of the overlapping of the material andmental realms. Aage Petersen uncovers the reciprocal relations between quantum physics and theconcepts of metaphysics and epistemology, assessing the extent to which each has influenced theother. The author is eminently qualified to undertake this important work, which grew out of hisclose contact with Neils Bohr and his Copenhagen school during the years 1952-1962.Although themathematical formalism of quantum physics has long since been established, the question of itsphysical interpretation (...) is not yet closed, and the question of its philosophical interpretationremains in a formative state. The most widely accepted physical interpretation of the quantalformalism emerged from discussions between Bohr and Heisenberg in the winter of 1926-1927. ThisCopenhagen Interpretation centers around the relations of indeterminacy around the relations ofindeterminacy and the concept of complementarity, and was refined but not radically altered in theyears following, especially during the famous debate with Einstein on the completeness possible inthe description of events. The philosophical interpretation has proceeded along two principal lines:Bohr's emphasis on complementarity as a unifying concept, and Heisenberg's exploration of therelationship of quantum physics to the traditional categories of philosophy.To Bohr's mind, thecentral feature of human knowledge is the distinction between subject and object. The indeterminacyof the placing of the partition between instrument and system, which played so large a part inquantal description was, Bohr believed, an expression of the general relation between the knower andthe knowable. He thus sought to find relationships of complementarity in areas beyond quantumphysics.Quantum physics and traditional philosophy certainly relate enough to interact--even thoughthe effects of interaction may produce uncertain results. Heisenberg's view also emphasizes thatscience describes, not nature itself, but the interplay between nature and man, nature as affectedby man's method of questioning, thus denying the school of philosophical thought that began withDescartes' sharp separation of the World and the I.The author's investigation leads him as well tobelieve that complementarity is deeply linked to the basis of philosophy, but that the details ofthe relationship are so obscure that some other feature of quantum physics that makes amore directconnection with philosophy should be sought. He is led to choose the idea of correspondence as suchfeature. This idea played a key role in the development of the matrix version of the formalism andof the Copenhagen interpretation.Mathematically, the idea of correspondence was seen to imply thatquantal formalisms should emerge as generalizations of classical entities, that matrix mechanics wasa generalization of classical Hamiltonian mechanics. It is in this possibility of treating thetraditional categories of philosophy as limits of a more general scheme, or as analogies of a deeperorder, that the fruitfulness of the correspondence idea lies. (shrink)

Evolutionary transitions in individuality (ETIs) are events during which individuals at a given level of organization (particles) interact to form higher-level entities (collectives) which are then recognized as new individuals at that level. ETIs are intimately related to levels of selection, which, following Okasha, can be approached from two different perspectives. One, referred to as ‘synchronic’, asks whether selection occurs at the collective level while the partitioning of particles into collectives is taken for granted. The other, referred to as ‘diachronic’, (...) asks about the origins of the partitioning of particles into collectives. After having presented the two perspectives and a classical formalism used to deal with the levels-of-selection question in the literature, namely the multilevel version of the Price equation, I show that because this formalism treats the levels-of-selection question from a synchronic perspective, it is inadequate to explain ETIs. This is because a fundamental aspect of ETIs is the origin of collectives. From there, I develop a framework for levels of selection compatible with the diachronic perspective. This framework relies on the distinction between what I call, on the one hand, a ‘functional aggregative collective trait’, and on the other hand, a ‘functional non-aggregative collective trait’. After having presented this distinction, I implement it in the Price equation, leading to a new statistical partitioning of this equation which, I argue, represents a causal decomposition more relevant for ETIs. Finally, I exploit this partitioning to explain the critical stages of an ETI. In addition to its explanatory power, a measure of the degree of functional non-aggregativity could be used as a proxy for the degree of individuality of a collective. (shrink)

Given a basic conditional of the form, If A then C, individuals usually list three cases as possible: A and C, not‐A and not‐C, not‐A and C. This result corroborates the theory of mental models. By contrast, individuals often judge that the conditional is true only in the case of A and C, and that cases of not‐A are irrelevant to its truth or falsity. This result corroborates other theories of conditionals. To resolve the discrepancy, we devised two new tasks: (...) the “collective” truth task, in which participants judged whether sets of assertions about a specific individual, such as: If A then C, not‐A, C, could all be true at the same time; and one in which participants judged the truth of conditional predictions about specific future events. The results consistently matched the three possibilities, thereby corroborating the model theory. They also showed a massive violation of the probability calculus in estimates of the probabilities of the four cases in the partition of conditionals (A and C, A and not‐C, not‐A and C, and not‐A and not‐C), which summed to over 200%. (shrink)

Drawing upon rational choice and investor attention theories, we examine how accusations of corporate bribery and subsequent investigations shape market reactions. Using event study methodology to measure loss in firm value for public firms facing bribery investigations from 1978 to 2010, we found that total market penalties amounted to $60.61 billion. We ran moderated multiple regression analysis to examine further the degree to which the unique characteristics of bribery explain variations in market penalties. Companies committing bribery in less corrupt (...) host countries and with the involvement of compromised executives experienced greater market penalties than did other companies. After partitioning share value losses into components for regulatory penalties, class action settlements, and loss to reputation, we found that reputational penalties account for 81.8¢ of every dollar of share value loss. Omission of reputational penalties in rational choice calculus underestimates bribery costs by 4.5 times. The results suggest that firms should not underestimate the importance of market-imposed reputational penalties by merely considering regulator-imposed fines and sanctions. (shrink)

Categorical logic has shown that modern logic is essentially the logic of subsets (or "subobjects"). Partitions are dual to subsets so there is a dual logic of partitions where a "distinction" [an ordered pair of distinct elements (u,u′) from the universe U ] is dual to an "element". An element being in a subset is analogous to a partition π on U making a distinction, i.e., if u and u′ were in different blocks of π. Subset logic leads to (...) finite probability theory by taking the (Laplacian) probability as the normalized size of each subset-event of a finite universe. The analogous step in the logic of partitions is to assign to a partition the number of distinctions made by a partition normalized by the total number of ordered pairs |U|² from the finite universe. That yields a notion of "logical entropy" for partitions and a "logical information theory." The logical theory directly counts the (normalized) number of distinctions in a partition while Shannon's theory gives the average number of binary partitions needed to make those same distinctions. Thus the logical theory is seen as providing a conceptual underpinning for Shannon's theory based on the logical notion of "distinctions.". (shrink)

Whilst Bayesian epistemology is widely regarded nowadays as our best theory of knowledge, there are still a relatively large number of incompatible and competing approaches falling under that umbrella. Very recently, Wallmann and Williamson wrote an interesting article that aims at showing that a subjective Bayesian who accepts the principal principle and uses a known physical chance as her degree of belief for an event A could end up having incoherent or very implausible beliefs if she subjectively chooses the (...) probability of an event F for which she has much poorer evidence. They also argued that their own version of objective Bayesianism is completely immune to that challenge. In this article, after having presented the strongest version of Wallmann’s and Williamson’s argument, I will show that if successful, it has far-reaching consequences and would not only invalidate moderate subjective Bayesianism and imprecise probalism but also a form of objective Bayesianism that relies on conditionalisation, the principal principle, reference classes, and the principle of indifference applied to the most basic partitions. I then argue that their argument can be defeated by adding the rule that it is always irrational to choose a probability that can be computed from the known probabilities associated to one’s other beliefs. I finally argue that the authors’ main intuition that probabilities have different degrees of reliability favours imprecise Bayesianism over precise Bayesianism. (shrink)

THE ART OF CAUSAL CONJECTURE Glenn Shafer Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction........................................................................................ ...........1 1.1. Probability Trees..........................................................................................3 1.2. Many Observers, Many Stances, Many Natures..........................................8 1.3. Causal Relations as Relations in Nature’s Tree...........................................9 1.4. Evidence............................................................................................ ...........13 1.5. Measuring the Average Effect of a Cause....................................................17 1.6. Causal Diagrams..........................................................................................20 1.7. Humean Events............................................................................................23 1.8. Three Levels of Causal Language................................................................27 1.9. An Outline of the Book................................................................................27 Chapter 2. Event Trees............................................................................................... .....31 2.1. Situations and Events...................................................................................32 2.2. The Ordering of Situations and Moivrean Events.......................................35 2.3. Cuts................................................................................................ ..............39 2.4. Humean Events............................................................................................43 (...) 2.5. Moivrean Variables......................................................................................49 2.6. Humean Variables........................................................................................53 2.7. Event Trees for Stochastic Processes...........................................................54 2.8. Timing in Event Trees.................................................................................56 2.9. Intersecting Event Trees...............................................................................60 2.10. Notes on the Literature...............................................................................61 Chapter 3. Probability Trees...........................................................................................63 3.1. Some Types of Probability Trees.................................................................64 ii 3.2. Axioms for the Probabilities of Moivrean Events.......................................68 3.3. Zero Probabilities....................................................................................... ..70 3.4. A Sample-Space Analysis of the Event-Tree Axioms.................................72 3.5. Probabilities and Expected Values for Variables.........................................74 3.6. Martingales......................................................................................... .........79 3.7. The Expectation of a Variable in a Cut........................................................83 3.8. Conditional Expected Value and Conditional Expectation.........................87 Chapter 4. The Meaning of Probability...........................................................................91 4.1. The Interpretation of Expected Value..........................................................92 4.2. The Interpretation of Expectation................................................................95 4.3. The Long Run..............................................................................................98 4.4. Changes in Belief.........................................................................................101 4.5. The Empirical Validation of Probability......................................................106 4.6. The Diversity of Uses of Probability...........................................................108 4.7. Notes on the Literature.................................................................................110 Chapter 5. Independent Events.......................................................................................113 5.1. Independence........................................................................................ .......114 5.2. Weak Independence.....................................................................................118 5.3. The Principle of the Common Cause...........................................................121 5.4. Conditional Independence............................................................................128 5.5. Notes on the Literature.................................................................................133 Chapter 6. Events Tracking Events.................................................................................135 6.1. Tracking............................................................................................ ...........137 6.2. Tracking and Conditional Independence.....................................................142 6.3. Stochastic Subsequence...............................................................................143 6.4. Singular Diagrams for Stochastic Subsequence...........................................147 6.5. Conjunctive and Interactive Forks...............................................................149 Chapter 7. Events as Signs of Events..............................................................................153 iii 7.1. Sign................................................................................................ ..............154 7.2. Weak Sign................................................................................................ ....159 7.3. The Ethics of Causal Talk............................................................................160 7.4. Screening Off...............................................................................................16 2 Chapter 8. Independent Variables...................................................................................167 8.1. Unconditional Independence........................................................................170 8.2. Conditional Independence............................................................................175 8.3. Independence for Partitions.........................................................................177 8.4. Independence for Families of Variables......................................................182 8.5. Individual Properties of the Independence Relations...................................186 Chapter 9. Variables Tracking Variables........................................................................189 9.1. Tracking and Conditional Independence: A Summary...............................190 9.2. Strong Tracking............................................................................................ 192 9.3. Strong Tracking and Conditional Independence..........................................198 9.4. Stochastic Subsequence...............................................................................201 9.5. Functional Dependence................................................................................203 9.6. Tracking in Mean.........................................................................................204 9.7. Linear Tracking............................................................................................ 207 9.8. Tracking by Partitions..................................................................................210 9.9. Tracking by Families of Variables...............................................................212 Chapter 10. Variables as Signs of Variables...................................................................215 10.1. Sign................................................................................................ ............219 10.2. Linear Sign................................................................................................ .222 10.3. Scored Sign................................................................................................ 225 10.4. Families of Variables.................................................................................227 Chapter 11. AnTheory of Event Trees.............................................................229 11.1. Event Trees as Sets of Sets........................................................................230 11.2. Event Trees as Partially Ordered Sets........................................................232 iv 11.3. Regular Event Trees...................................................................................240 11.4. The Resolution of Moivrean Variables......................................................244 11.5. Humean Events and Variables...................................................................246 Chapter 12. Martingale Trees..........................................................................................247 12.1. Examples of Decision Trees......................................................................249 12.2. The Meaning of Probability in a Decision Tree.........................................253 12.3. Martingales......................................................................................... .......257 12.4. The Structure of Martingale Trees.............................................................261 12.5. Probability and Causality...........................................................................265 12.6. Lower and Upper Probability.....................................................................269 12.7. The Law of Large Numbers.......................................................................272 12.8. Notes on the Literature...............................................................................274 Chapter 13. Refining............................................................................................ ...........275 13.1. Examples of Refinement............................................................................277 13.2. A Constructive Definition of Finite Refinement.......................................281 13.3. Axioms for Refinement..............................................................................282 13.4. Lifting Moivrean Events and Variables.....................................................288 13.5. Refining Martingale Trees.........................................................................288 13.6. Grounding........................................................................................... .......294 Chapter 14. Principles of Causal Conjecture..................................................................299 14.1. The Diversity of Causal Explanation.........................................................302 14.2. The Mean Effect of the Happening of a Moivrean Event..........................305 14.3. The Effect of a Humean Variable..............................................................311 14.4. Attribution and Generality.........................................................................316 14.5. The Statistical Measurement of the Effect of a Cause...............................319 14.6. Measurement by Experiment.....................................................................320 14.7. Using Our Knowledge of How Things Work............................................322 v 14.8. Sampling Error...........................................................................................329 14.9. The Sampling Frame..................................................................................329 14.10. Notes on the Literature.............................................................................330 Chapter 15. Causal Models.............................................................................................3 31 15.1. The Causal Interpretation of Statistical Prediction....................................333 15.2. Generalizing to a Family of Exogenous Variables....................................337 15.3 Some Joint Causal Diagrams......................................................................339 15.4. Causal Path Diagrams................................................................................342 15.5. Causal Relevance Diagrams.......................................................................346 15.6. The Meaning of Latent Variables..............................................................352 15.7. Notes on the Literature...............................................................................357 Chapter 16. Representing Probability Trees...................................................................359 16.1. Three Graphical Representations...............................................................361 16.2. Skeletal Simplifications.............................................................................368 16.3. Martingale Trees in Type Theory...............................................................371 Appendix A. Huygens’s Probability Trees.....................................................................379 Huygens’s Manuscript in Translation..................................................................380 Appendix B. Some Elements of Graph Theory..............................................................385 B1. Undirected Graphs........................................................................................385 B2. Directed Graphs............................................................................................38 6 Appendix C. Some Elements of Order Theory...............................................................393 C1. Partial and Quasi Orderings.........................................................................393 C2. Singular and Joint Diagrams for Binary Relations.......................................394 C3. Lattices............................................................................................ .............395 C4. The Lattice of Partitions of a Set..................................................................396 Appendix D. The Sample-Space Framework for Probability.........................................399 D1. Probability Measures....................................................................................399 D2. Variables........................................................................................... ...........400 vi D3. Families of Variables...................................................................................401 D4. Expected Value............................................................................................402 D5. The Law of Large Numbers.........................................................................405 D6. Conditional Probability................................................................................406 D7. Conditional Expected Value........................................................................407 Appendix E. Prediction in Probability Spaces................................................................409 E1. Conditional Distribution...............................................................................411 E2. Regression on a Single Variable...................................................................412 E3. Regression on a Partition or a Family of Variables......................................415 E4. Linear Regression on a Single Variable.......................................................418 E5. Linear Regression on a Family of Variables................................................422 Appendix F. Sample-Space Concepts of Independence.................................................425 F1. Overview............................................................................................ ...........426 F2. Independence Proper.....................................................................................432 F3. Unpredictability in Mean..............................................................................434 F4. Simple Uncorrelatedness..............................................................................437 F5. Mixed Uncorrelatedness...............................................................................438 F6. Partial Uncorrelatedness...............................................................................440 F7. Independence for Partitions..........................................................................442 F8. Independence for Families of Variables.......................................................445 F9. The Basic Role of Uncorrelatedness.............................................................448 F10. Dawid’s Axioms.........................................................................................449 Appendix G. Prediction Diagrams..................................................................................453 G1. Path Diagrams............................................................................................ ..454 G2. Generalized Path Diagrams..........................................................................462 G3. Relevance Diagrams.....................................................................................466 G4. Bubbled Relevance Diagrams......................................................................475 Appendix H. Abstract Stochastic Processes...................................................................479 vii H1. Probability Conditionals and Probability Distributions...............................477 H2. Abstract Stochastic Processes......................................................................479 H3. Embedding Variables and Processes in a Sample Space.............................480 References.......................................................................................... ..............................491. (shrink)

The history of the church, inter-confessional relations and religious policies of the state is one of the developing areas of today's historical studies. An increasing number of special historical researches, papers, articles devoted to these issues, covering different periods in the history of our country, were a proof to that. Such interest is well justified as Ukraine is a country with complex ethnical and confessional set-up. This calls for deep insight into the history of relations between different confessions in the (...) past. The article analyses specific features of the church policies of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the four year parliament (Sejm) of 1788-1791, acts of law adopted in that period that set legal grounds for the status of the Orthodox Church in the state, and studies the interpretation of those events and documents by church historian V. Bednov. Special attention was paid to the analysis of the actions of the Polish authorities to be avoided in today's church policies or, alternatively, to be encouraged today to maintain public peace and inter-confessional dialogue in the country. In his work, V. Bednov described in details all clauses of the Resolution of the General Congregation held in Pinsk, which were later legitimised by the Polish parliament (1791) and confirmed in the special Sejm constitution. This document was intended to dramatically change the status of the Orthodox Church in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Yet, time was lost, and prejudices that prevented the document from being adopted without limitations became one of the factors further resulting in the disappearance of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as an independent state after the second (1793) and third (1795) partitions. These prejudices did not help to resolve controversies between Catholic, Uniate and Orthodox Christians either. The work of V. Bednov analysing the above issues was highly praised by his contemporaries. Yet, the scholar never returned to this topic in his studies, which makes this area very promising for modern researchers. (shrink)

The Monty Hall Dilemma (MHD) is a two-step decision problem involving counterintuitive conditional probabilities. The first choice is made among three equally probable options, whereas the second choice takes place after the elimination of one of the non-selected options which does not hide the prize. Differing from most Bayesian problems, statistical information in the MHD has to be inferred, either by learning outcome probabilities or by reasoning from the presented sequence of events. This often leads to suboptimal decisions and erroneous (...) probability judgments. Specifically, decision makers commonly develop a wrong intuition that final probabilities are equally distributed, together with a preference for their first choice. Several studies have shown that repeated practice enhances sensitivity to the different reward probabilities, but does not facilitate correct Bayesian reasoning. However, modest improvements in probability judgments have been observed after guided explanations. To explain these dissociations, the present review focuses on two types of causes producing the observed biases: Emotional-based choice biases and cognitive limitations in understanding probabilistic information. Among the latter, we identify a crucial cause for the universal difficulty in overcoming the equiprobability illusion: Incomplete representation of prior and conditional probabilities. We conclude that repeated practice and/or high incentives can be effective for overcoming choice biases, but promoting an adequate partitioning of possibilities seems to be necessary for overcoming cognitive illusions and improving Bayesian reasoning. (shrink)

I argue that one central aspect of the epistemology of causation, the use of causes as evidence for their effects, is largely independent of the metaphysics of causation. In particular, I use the formalism of Bayesian causal graphs to factor the incremental evidential impact of a cause for its effect into a direct cause-to-effect component and a backtracking component. While the “backtracking” evidence that causes provide about earlier events often obscures things, once we our restrict attention to the cause-to-effect component (...) it is true to say promoting (inhibiting) causes raise (lower) the probabilities of their effects. This factoring assumes the same form whether causation is given an interventionist, counterfactual or probabilistic interpretation. Whether we think about causation in terms of interventions and causal graphs, counterfactuals and imaging functions, or probability raising against the background of causally homogenous partitions, if we describe the essential features of a situation correctly then the incremental evidence that a cause provides for its effect in virtue of being its cause will be the same. (shrink)

Historical studies on the relationship between science and diplomacy tend to focus on events since World War II and on initiatives for the maintenance of peace or to achieve cooperation over contentious matters. This article presents the case of José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage (1823–1907), a Portuguese zoologist who had formal diplomatic responsibilities in a context of competition for the colonization of Africa in the nineteenth century. He used his knowledge in African geography to implement colonial and diplomatic strategies that (...) aimed at outcompeting rival powers. The development of a network of actors with scientific, colonial, and diplomatic expertise was crucial for the negotiations that involved the partition of the Congo basin, which resulted in victories for Portugal that surpassed the country's marginal political relevance at the international level and had long‐lasting consequences. (shrink)

In the following we will investigate whether von Mises’ frequency interpretation of probability can be modified to make it philosophically acceptable. We will reject certain elements of von Mises’ theory, but retain others. In the interpretation we propose we do not use von Mises’ often criticized ‘infinite collectives’ but we retain two essential claims of his interpretation, stating that probability can only be defined for events that can be repeated in similar conditions, and that exhibit frequency stabilization. The central idea (...) of the present article is that the mentioned ‘conditions’ should be well-defined and ‘partitioned’. More precisely, we will divide probabilistic systems into object, initializing, and probing subsystem, and show that such partitioning allows to solve problems. Moreover we will argue that a key idea of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (the determinant role of the observing system) can be seen as deriving from an analytic definition of probability as frequency. Thus a secondary aim of the article is to illustrate the virtues of analytic definition of concepts, consisting of making explicit what is implicit. (shrink)

A história intelectual do século XX tem sido escrita ao longo de um cenário que vê, na morte de Merleau-Ponty em 1961, a linha de divisória entre uma geração existencial e fenomenológica e o evento do estruturalismo imediatamente subsequente. A publicação das notas de leitura de Merleau-Ponty sobre o texto A origem da geometria, de Edmund Husserl, tem mostrado quão frágeis são os alicerces desta leitura simplificadora. Na verdade, enquanto a tradução e introdução de Derrida ao texto de Husserl, de (...) 1962, tornavam-se um texto fundamentador para a geração estruturalista, introduzindo uma reflexão sobre a historicidade e a materialidade da idealidade, foi apenas em 1998, com a publicação das notas da conferência de Merleau-Ponty no Collège de France, em 1959, sobre o mesmo tópico, que se tornou claro quão próximo está o primeiro Derrida do último Merleau-Ponty. Assim como Derrida, Merleau-Ponty identificou, na tensão husserliana entre arqueologia e teleologia, o problema básico da fenomenologia, introduzindo a questão da história e a do meio de transmissão cultural. Comparar tais leituras em seu contexto específico não apenas permite um retrato mais complexo dos debates intelectuais da época, mas também mostra como, com a interpretação de Merleau-Ponty sobre A origem da geometria, a "diferença" de Derrida antecede-se e admite outra genealogia.Idealidade. História. Mediador. Escritura. Origem. Diferença.The intellectual history of the 20th century has been written along a scenario which sees in Merleau-Ponty’s death in 1961 the partition line between an existential and phenomenological generation and the immediately subsequent event of structuralism. The publication of Merleau-Pontys lecture notes on Edmund Husserl’s Origin of geometry has shown how shaky the grounds of such a simplifying reading are. Indeed, while Derrida’s translation of and introduction to Husserl’s text from 1962 became a founding text for the structuralist generation, introducing a reflection about the historicity and the materiality of ideality, it was only in 1998, with the publication of Merleau-Ponty’s notes from the Collège de France lecture in 1959 on the same topic, that it became clear how close the early Derrida is to the late Merleau-Ponty. Just as Derrida, Merleau-Ponty had identified in Husserl’s tension between archaeology and teleology the basic problem of phenomenology, introducing the question of history and that of media of cultural transmission. Comparing both readings in their specific context not only brings about a more complex picture of the intellectual debates of the time, but also shows how, with Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of the Origin of geometry, Derrida’s “différance” predates itself and receives another genealogy.Ideality. History. Medium. Writing. Origin. Difference. (shrink)

Adam Naruszewicz - the court poet of the last king of Poland was born on 20th October 1733 in Polesie. He studied at Villinus University and in Lyon. Thanks to Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski he established a very close friendship with Stanisław August Poniatowski. In the course of time he started to bring out his political opinions and put some of his plans into practice. He edited Zabawy Przyjemne i Pożyteczne - the first Polish literary magazine. Franciszek Bohomolec printed his main (...) works in Dzieła. However, the first publications has already been issued in Zabawy Przyjemne i Pożyteczne. As far as literary writing is concerned, Adam Naruszewicz gave his undivided attention to contemporary situation. It was difficulties in the country and on the King’s court that inspired Naruszewicz to express his opinions in public. The resources of contemporary political situation, particularly the times of Barski Confederation, the First Partition of Poland and the dissolution of Delegation Representatives were found between 1768—1775 in Poniatowski’s royal collection. The above events, in Adam Naruszewicz’s poems, are presented in the following order: The Barski and Radom Confederation, the abduction of the King and the Frist Partition of Poland. The plots are very important in poet’s life. The writer perceives and comments on the subject touching various areas. Above all, patriotism and love to the Country are the most important issues in Naruszewicz’s works. (shrink)

Causal theories of content, a popular family of approaches to defining the content of mental states, commonly run afoul of two related and serious problems that prevent them from providing an adequate theory of mental content—the misrepresentation problem and the disjunction problem. In this paper, I present a causal theory of content, built on information theoretic tools, that solves these problems and provides a viable model of mental content. This is the greatest surprise reduction theory of content, which identifies the (...) content of a signal as the event the surprisal of which is most reduced by that signal. Conceptually, this amounts to the claim that the content of a signal is the event the probability of which has increased by the largest proportion, or the event that the signal makes the most less surprising to us. I develop the greatest surprise reduction theory of content in four stages. First, I introduce the general project of causal theories of content, and the challenges presented to this project by the misrepresentation and disjunction problems. Next, I review two recent and prominent causal theories of content and demonstrate the serious challenges faced by these approaches, both clarifying the need for a solution to the misrepresentation and disjunction problems and providing a conceptual background for the greatest surprise reduction theory. Then, I develop the greatest surprise reduction theory of content, demonstrate its ability to resolve the misrepresentation and disjunction problems, and explore some additional applications it may have. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of a particularly difficult challenge that remains to be addressed—the partition problem—and sketch a path to a potential solution. (shrink)

In the longstanding foundational debate whether to require that probability is countably additive, in addition to being finitely additive, those who resist the added condition raise two concerns that we take up in this paper. (1) _Existence_: Settings where no countably additive probability exists though finitely additive probabilities do. (2) _Complete Additivity_: Where reasons for countable additivity don’t stop there. Those reasons entail complete additivity—the (measurable) union of probability 0 sets has probability 0, regardless the cardinality of that union. Then (...) probability distributions are discrete, not continuous. We use Easwaran’s (Easwaran, Thought 2:53–61, 2013) advocacy of the _Comparative_ principle to illustrate these two concerns. Easwaran supports countable additivity, both for numerical probabilities and for finer, qualitative probabilities, by defending a condition he calls the _Comparative_ principle [ \({\mathcal{C}}\) ]. For numerical probabilities, principle \({\mathcal{C}}\) contrasts pairs, P 1 and P 2, defined over a common partition \(\prod\) = {a _i_ : _i_ ∈ I} of measurable events. \({\mathcal{C}}\) requires that no P 1 may be pointwise dominated, i.e., no (finitely additive) probability P 2 exists such that for each _i_ ∈ I, P 2 (a _i_ ) > P 1 (a _i_ ). By design, the cardinality of \(\prod\) is not limited in \({\mathcal{C}}\), which Easwaran asserts is important when arguing that the principle does not require more, or less, than that probability is countably additive. We agree that a numerical probability P satisfies principle \({\mathcal{C}}\) in all partitions just in case P is countably additive. However, we show that for numerical probabilities, by considering the size of the algebra of events to which probability is applied, principle \({\mathcal{C}}\) is subject to each of the above concerns, (1) and (2). Also, Easwaran considers principle \({\mathcal{C}}\) with non-numerical, qualitative probabilities, where a qualitative probability may be finer than an almost agreeing numerical probability P. A qualitative probability is regular if possible events are strictly more likely than impossible events. Easwaran motivates and illustrates regular qualitative probabilities using a continuous, almost agreeing quantitative probability that is uniform on the unit interval. We make explicit the conditions for applying principle \({\mathcal{C}}\) with qualitative probabilities and show that \({\mathcal{C}}\) restricts regular qualitative probabilities to those whose almost agreeing quantitative probabilities are completely additive. For instance, Easwaran’s motivating example of a regular qualitative probability is precluded by principle \({\mathcal{C}}\). (shrink)

Architecture is about to enter its first magical phase: a time when buildings actively co-operate with their inhabitants; when objects know what they are, where they are, what is near them; when social and physical space lose their type coupling; when wall and partitions change with mood and task. As engineers and scientists explore how to digitse the world around us, the classical constraints of design, ruled so long by the physics of space, time, and materials, are starting to crumble. (...) Documents can be laid down in one place, automatically cloned, and a copy picked up in another. Meetings scheduled for 9am to 10am can be joined by latecomers at noon, who then participate in a captured form of the event and are ‘edited into’ the past. People on the West coast of the USA can participate, in a telepresent way, with their colleagues on the East coast, and hold a meeting against a virtual backdrop, such as a production line in their Taiwanese factory. Walls seem to dematerialise, remote objects can be touched virtually, shaped, passed through one another. Technology is moving inexorably so that being in one place at a time no longer need dominate how we work and play. Material boundaries are losing their meaning, and interface and information space are catch words that architects must master. -/- In this article I will discuss some of the theoretical ideas shaping our new conception of form, function, and interactivity. My view is that of a cognitive scientist interested in how cognition is distributed throughout our environment. Since the ground rules defining the structure of environments are changing, our very idea of how we are embedded in the world is changing. Architecture is at a new frontier. (shrink)