A modal logic is developed to deal with finite ordered binary trees a they are used in linguistics. A modal language is introduced with operators for the ‘mother of’, ‘first daughter of’ and ‘second daughter of’ relations together with their transitive reflexive closures. The relevant class of tree models is defined and three linguistic applications of this language are discussed: context free grammars, command relations, and trees decorated with feature structures. An axiomatic proof system is given for which completeness is (...) shown with respect to the class of finite ordered binary trees. A number of decidability results follow. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Der Artikel beginnt damit, die vermeintlich kritische These, die Identitätspolitik sei verantwortlich für den Rechtspopulismus, als einen Offenbarungseid politischer Urteilskraft darzustellen. Im zweiten Schritt wird Richard Sennetts Buch Der flexible Mensch dafür kritisiert, dass er eine fetischistische Kapitalismuskritik betreibt, die sich vor der Kritik der Lohnarbeit scheut. Sennett bietet theoretisch die Flucht in die Gemeinschaft als Ausweg aus den scheinbar erst seit dem Ende des Fordismus sinnlos gewordenen Verhältnissen an. Der Artikel zeigt, warum diesen Ausweg zu nehmen keine gute (...) Idee ist, auch wenn er gerade in Mode ist. Als weiterführendes Ergebnis der Beschäftigung mit Sennett wird gezeigt, dass die Kritiker_innen der Identitätspolitik die gegenwärtige Konfrontationsweise der Gewalt des Kapitalverhältnisses verkennen und ignorieren wie Subjekte sie bewältigen müssen. Damit soll zugleich der Zusammenhang von Liberalisierung und politischer Regression erhellt werden. (shrink)

Tens of thousands of students have learned to be more discerning at constructing and evaluating arguments with the help of Patrick J. Hurley. Hurley’s lucid, friendly, yet thorough presentation has made A CONCISE INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC the most widely used logic text in North America. In addition, the book’s accompanying technological resources, such as CengageNOW and Learning Logic, include interactive exercises as well as video and audio clips to reinforce what you read in the book and hear in class. (...) In short, you’ll have all the assistance you need to become a more logical thinker and communicator. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

We offer a formal account of the English past tenses. We see the perfect as having reference time at speech time and the preterite as having reference time at event time. We formalize four constraints on reference time, which we bundle together under the term ‘perspective’. Once these constraints are satisfied at the different reference times of the perfect and preterite, the contrasting functions of these tenses are explained. Thus we can account formally for the ‘definiteness effect’ and the ‘lifetime (...) effect’ of the perfect, for the fact that the perfect seems to ‘explain’ something about the present, and that the perfect cannot presuppose a past time point. We explain why perfect and preterite can sometimes be interchangeable, and we offer a solution to the ’present perfect puzzle’. We explain the unacceptability of notorious examples of the perfect such as * Gutenberg has discovered the art of printing . We give greater definition to the familiar notions of ‘current relevance’ and ‘extended now’. (shrink)

This modern, advanced textbook reviews modal logic, a field which caught the attention of computer scientists in the late 1970's.

This paper attempts to identify a principle of equal treatment that gives specific structure to our widely shared judgments about the circumstances in which we have moral reason to object to the differential adverse treatment of others. I formulate what I call a “substantive” principle of equal treatment (to be distinguished from principles of formal equality) that describes a moral constraint on the reasons we can have for picking out individuals for differentially adverse action. I argue that this constraint is (...) violated when an action, in view of its rationale, expresses lesser respect for the moral status of an individual under some differentiating description, compared to the respect reserved to another class of individuals who are not picked out by that description. I show that this substantive demand of equal treatment is not morally otiose and reveal the fallacy underlying accounts that have concluded otherwise. (shrink)

In this ground-breaking new text, Patrick Baert analyses the central perspectives in the philosophy of social science, critically investigating the work of Durkheim, Weber, Popper, critical realism, critical theory, and Rorty's neo pragmatism. Places key writers in their social and political contexts, helping to make their ideas meaningful to students. Shows how these authors’ views have practical uses in empirical research. Lively approach that makes complex ideas understandable to upper-level students, as well as having scholarly appeal.

The Handbook of Modal Logic contains 20 articles, which collectively introduce contemporary modal logic, survey current research, and indicate the way in which the field is developing. The articles survey the field from a wide variety of perspectives: the underling theory is explored in depth, modern computational approaches are treated, and six major applications areas of modal logic (in Mathematics, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics, Game Theory, and Philosophy) are surveyed. The book contains both well-written expository articles, suitable for beginners (...) approaching the subject for the first time, and advanced articles, which will help those already familiar with the field to deepen their expertise. Please visit: http://people.uleth.ca/~woods/RedSeriesPromo_WP/PubSLPR.html - Compact modal logic reference - Computational approaches fully discussed - Contemporary applications of modal logic covered in depth. (shrink)

Why do humans make music? Theories of the evolution of musicality have focused mainly on the value of music for specific adaptive contexts such as mate selection, parental care, coalition signaling, and group cohesion. Synthesizing and extending previous proposals, we argue that social bonding is an overarching function that unifies all of these theories, and that musicality enabled social bonding at larger scales than grooming and other bonding mechanisms available in ancestral primate societies. We combine cross-disciplinary evidence from archeology, anthropology, (...) biology, musicology, psychology, and neuroscience into a unified framework that accounts for the biological and cultural evolution of music. We argue that the evolution of musicality involves gene–culture coevolution, through which proto-musical behaviors that initially arose and spread as cultural inventions had feedback effects on biological evolution because of their impact on social bonding. We emphasize the deep links between production, perception, prediction, and social reward arising from repetition, synchronization, and harmonization of rhythms and pitches, and summarize empirical evidence for these links at the levels of brain networks, physiological mechanisms, and behaviors across cultures and across species. Finally, we address potential criticisms and make testable predictions for future research, including neurobiological bases of musicality and relationships between human music, language, animal song, and other domains. The music and social bonding hypothesis provides the most comprehensive theory to date of the biological and cultural evolution of music. (shrink)

This paper develops and refines the suggestion that logical systems are conceptual artefacts that are the outcome of a design-process by exploring how a constructionist epistemology and meta-philosophy can be integrated within the philosophy of logic.

Up to now theories of semantic information have implicitly relied on logical monism, or the view that there is one true logic. The latter position has been explicitly challenged by logical pluralists. Adopting an unbiased attitude in the philosophy of information, we take a suggestion from Beall and Restall at heart and exploit logical pluralism to recognise another kind of pluralism. The latter is called informational pluralism, a thesis whose implications for a theory of semantic information we explore.

The Polymath Project is an online collaborative enterprise that was initiated in 2009, when Timothy Gowers asked whether and how groups could work together to solve mathematical problems that “do not naturally split up into a vast number of subtasks.” Gowers proposed to answer this question himself by actually trying to set up such a collaboration, based on interactions taking place in the comment-threads of a series of posts on a WordPress blog. Hence, the first project officially started in early (...) 2009, to be proclaimed successful only 6 weeks later (Gowers and Nielsen 2009). From its inception until April 2018, 15 more Polymath problems (and a handful of smaller or related ones) have been launched. These projects have attracted attention from different scholarly communities, including the philosophy of mathematical practices, from the perspective of which the Polymath Project can be seen as a vast repository of mathematics in action. This chapter continues previous work by its authors on the topic in question and topics related. More specifically, for the purposes of this volume, it is our aim to both summarize and expand upon these earlier contributions. The starting point is the above observation that in the past decade, the issue of “massively collaborative mathematics” (to be qualified below) has drawn quite some attention. However, does it also warrant intensive philosophical attention in particular? For, as exciting as these developments might be from mathematical and other points of view, the enhanced possibilities that have come with it do not per se give rise to any philosophical import. In Van Bendegem (2011), one of us has indeed tentatively argued for the philosophical relevance of these new dynamics of proof construction flowing from the wide availability and efficiency of Internet technology. We shall below briefly rehearse and update the argument given there. (shrink)

In this thoroughly revised and updated second edition of the highly successful _Ecological Ethics_, Patrick Curry shows that a new and truly ecological ethic is both possible and urgently needed. With this distinctive proposition in mind, Curry introduces and discusses all the major concepts needed to understand the full range of ecological ethics. He discusses light green or anthropocentric ethics with the examples of stewardship, lifeboat ethics, and social ecology; the mid-green or intermediate ethics of animal liberation/rights; and dark (...) or deep green ecocentric ethics. Particular attention is given to the Land Ethic, the Gaia Hypothesis and Deep Ecology and its offshoots: Deep Green Theory, Left Biocentrism and the Earth Manifesto. Ecofeminism is also considered and attention is paid to the close relationship between ecocentrism and virtue ethics. Other chapters discuss green ethics as post-secular, moral pluralism and pragmatism, green citizenship, and human population in the light of ecological ethics. In this new edition, all these have been updated and joined by discussions of climate change, sustainable economies, education, and food from an ecocentric perspective. This comprehensive and wide-ranging textbook offers a radical but critical introduction to the subject which puts ecocentrism and the critique of anthropocentrism back at the top of the ethical, intellectual and political agenda. It will be of great interest to students and activists, and to a wider public. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, EarlyView.

The aim of this book is to answer two important questions about the issue of normativity in epistemology: Why are epistemic reasons evidential, and what makes epistemic reasons and rationality normative? Bondy's argument proceeds on the assumption that epistemic rationality goes hand in hand with basing beliefs on good evidence. The opening chapters defend a mental-state ontology of reasons, a deflationary account of how kinds of reasons are distinguished, and a deliberative guidance constraint on normative reasons. They also argue in (...) favor of doxastic voluntarism—the view that beliefs are subject to our direct voluntary control—and embrace the controversial view that voluntarism bears directly on the question of what kinds of things count as reasons for believing. The final three chapters of the book feature a noteworthy critique of the instrumental conception of the nature of epistemic rationality, as well as a defense of the instrumental normativity of epistemic rationality. The final chapter defends the view that epistemic reasons and rationality are normative for us when we have normative reason to get to the truth with respect to some proposition, and it provides a response to the swamping problem for monistic accounts of value. (shrink)

The distinction between distributive and non-distributive profiles figures prominently in current evaluations of the ethical and epistemological risks that are associated with automated profiling practices. The diagnosis that non-distributive profiles may coincidentally situate an individual in the wrong category is often perceived as the central shortcoming of such profiles. According to this diagnosis, most risks can be retraced to the use of non-universal generalisations and various other statistical associations. This article develops a top-down analysis of non-distributive profiles in which this (...) fallibility of non-distributive profiles is no longer central. Instead, it focuses on how profiling creates various asymmetries between an individual data-subject and a profiler. The emergence of informational, interest, and perspectival asymmetries between data-subject and profiler explains how non-distributive profiles weaken the epistemic position of a profiled individual. This alternative analysis provides a more balanced assessment of the epistemic risks associated with non-distributive profiles. (shrink)

This book is a major new introduction to the field of ecological ethics. Taking issue with the common assumption that existing human ethics can be 'extended' to meet the demands of the ongoing ecological crisis, Patrick Curry shows that a new and truly ecological ethic is both possible and urgently needed. With this distinctive proposition in mind, Curry introduces and discusses all the major concepts needed to understand the full range of ecological ethics. Focussing first on the major concepts (...) of ethics - religious and secular - and value, Curry then examines the gradations of ecological ethics. He discusses light green, shallow or anthropomorphic ethics with the examples of stewardship, lifeboat ethics, and social ecology; mid-green or intermediate ethics represented by animal liberation/rights and biocentrism; and dark green, deep, or ecocentric ethics. Particular attention is given to the various kinds of ecocentric ethics, such as the Land Ethic, The Gaia Hypothesis, and Deep Ecology and its offshoots: Deep Green Theory, Left Biocentrism and the Earth Manifesto. Ecofeminism is also considered in this context. The concluding chapters discuss green ethics as post-secular, moral pluralism and pragmatism, green citizenship, and human population in the light of ecological ethics. This comprehensive and wide-ranging textbook offers a radical but critical introduction to the subject. It will be of great interest to students, activists, and to a wider public concerned with the ecocrisis, its main theories, debates, and possible solutions. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine Jean-Luc Nancy’s notion of the sense of the world in relation to the phenomenological investigation of the life-world in Husserl and the worldhood of the world in Heidegger. My aim is to address the reasons why Nancy stresses the need for a different thinking that goes beyond the phenomenological gesture in order to approach the sense of the world. What is at stake in this other gesture is the overcoming of the way in which phenomenology (...) privileges seeing as the mode of access to the phenomenon, which is but one sense among many and which, as one sense among many, fails to bring thought into relation with the pluralisation of sense. The second part of the essay interprets the pluralisation of both sense and world in terms of Nancy’s turn to art, which by touching upon the limit of philosophy, turns the latter into the praxis of the exposition of sense. Pluralisation betokens Nancy’s attempt to think the finitude of the world as that which spaces itself out into multiple, singular and shared. (shrink)

"I think this is an outstanding book. The coverage is comprehensive, the lines of thought and exposition are clear, and the level of discussion is very high yet remarkably lively and accessible. It has an underlying intellectual seriousness and engagement which shines out through the individual chapters, and the author's unwillingness to make do with secondary analyses and received ideas gives it a strength and freshness of approach which is extremely welcome." -- Professor William Outhwaite, University of Sussex Social Theory (...) in the Twentieth Century offers an easy-to-read but provocative account of the development of social theory. Patrick Baert covers a wide range of key figures and schools of thought, including Giddens, Foucault and Habermas. Written in a lively style and avoiding jargon, this book is aimed at students who wish to understand the main debates and dilemmas driving social theory. Rather than providing a neutral summary of the different thinkers and theories, Baert challenges the conventional readings of social theory with new and original interpretations. In effect, he bridges the gap between philosophy and social theory by placing the theoretical views within wider historical traditions. Social Theory in the Twentieth Century will undoubtedly become the standard introduction to social theory for students in sociology, politics, and anthropology. (shrink)

Food uncertainty has the effect of invigorating food-related responses. Psychologists have noted that mammals and birds respond more to a conditioned stimulus that unreliably predicts food delivery, and ecologists have shown that animals consume and/or hoard more food and can get fatter when access to that resource is unpredictable. Are these phenomena related? We think they are. Psychologists have proposed several mechanistic interpretations, while ecologists have suggested a functional interpretation: The effect of unpredictability on fat reserves and hoarding behavior is (...) an evolutionary strategy acting against the risk of starvation when food is in short supply. Both perspectives are complementary, and we argue that the psychology of incentive motivational processes can shed some light on the causal mechanisms leading animals to seek and consume more food under uncertainty in the wild. Our theoretical approach is in agreement with neuroscientific data relating to the role of dopamine, a neurotransmitter strongly involved in incentive motivation, and its plausibility has received some explanatory and predictive value with respect to Pavlovian phenomena. Overall, we argue that the occasional and unavoidable absence of food rewards has motivational effects that facilitate foraging effort. We show that this hypothesis is computationally tenable, leading foragers in an unpredictable environment to consume more food items and to have higher long-term energy storage than foragers in a predictable environment. (shrink)

How can computers distinguish the coherent from the unintelligible, recognize new information in a sentence, or draw inferences from a natural language passage? Computational semantics is an exciting new field that seeks answers to these questions, and this volume is the first textbook wholly devoted to this growing subdiscipline. The book explains the underlying theoretical issues and fundamental techniques for computing semantic representations for fragments of natural language. This volume will be an essential text for computer scientists, linguists, and anyone (...) interested in the development of computational semantics. (shrink)

One important task of metaphysics is to answer the question of what it is for an object to exist. The first part of this book offers a systematic reconstruction and critique of contemporary views on existence. The upshot of this part is that the contemporary debate has reached an impasse because none of the considered views is able to formulate a satisfactory answer to this fundamental metaphysical question. The second part reconstructs Thomas Aquinas’s view on existence (esse) and argues that (...) it contributes a new perspective which allows us to see why the contemporary debate has reached this impasse. It has come to this point because it has taken a premise for granted which Aquinas’s view rejects, namely, that the existence of an object consists in something’s having a property. A decisive contribution of Aquinas’s theory of esse is that it makes use of the ideas of metaphysical participation and composition. In this way, it can be explained how an object can have esse without being the case that esse is a property of it. This book brings together a reconstruction from the history of philosophy with a systematic study on existence and is therefore relevant for scholars interested in contemporary or medieval theories of existence. (shrink)

One of the central tasks for naturalistic theories of representation is to say what it takes for something to be a representation, and some leading theories have been criticised for being too liberal. Prominent discussions of this problem have proposed a producer-oriented solution; it is argued that representations must be produced by systems employing perceptual constancy mechanisms. However, representations may be produced by simple transducers if they are consumed in the right way. It is characteristic of representations to be consumed (...) by systems which are capable of independent action. This paper defends this claim; discusses more precise, naturalistic formulations; and shows how it can illuminate the explanatory payoffs which science achieves by appealing to representation. (shrink)

If $j$ is an iterable elementary embedding of a model of ZFC into one of its submodels, and, for $\gamma: \omega\to\omega$, one defines $j_\gamma$ to be the sequence whose $n$th entry is the $\gamma(n)$th iterate of $j$, then the family of all sequences $j_\gamma$ is $\Pi_1^1$-complete.

Organisationen spielen in modernen Gesellschaften eine zentrale Rolle. Der Beitrag geht davon aus, dass in den mittlerweile etablierten Formen von Ethik und Ethikberatung in Einrichtungen des Gesundheitssystems eine angemessene Reflexion des Organisationsbezugs oft ausbleibt bzw. eine besondere Herausforderung darstellt. Wir konzipieren deshalb eine „prozedurale Organisationsethik“, die sich kritisch mit der organisationalen Passung der Prozesse ethischer Reflexion auseinandersetzt. Daraus lassen sich als Anregung für Theorie und Praxis von ethischen Prozessen praktische Schlussfolgerungen ableiten. Sie betreffen die Orte der Differenzsetzung für die Frage (...) nach dem Guten; die ethischen Hintergrundtheorien und die Frage nach der organisatorischen Verknüpfung der Reflexionssettings. (shrink)

Definition of the problem Organisations play a vital role in modern societies. This article presumes a lack of sufficient organisational reflection of well-established forms of ethics and ethics counselling in institutions belonging to the health sector or sees particular challenges where it is implemented. Arguments We have therefore conceived a procedural type of organisational ethics which critically examines the organisational fit of processes in terms of ethical reflection, leading to practicable suggestions. Conclusions On the one hand they relate to where (...) differences are established when asking for the good; on the other hand they are concerned with background theories and the organisational fit of the reflection settings. (shrink)

There is an apparent connection between reinforcement learning and agency. Artificial entities controlled by reinforcement learning algorithms are standardly referred to as agents, and the mainstream view in the psychology and neuroscience of agency is that humans and other animals are reinforcement learners. This article examines this connection, focusing on artificial reinforcement learning systems and assuming that there are various forms of agency. Artificial reinforcement learning systems satisfy plausible conditions for minimal agency, and those which use models of the environment (...) to perform forward search are capable of a form of agency which may reasonably be called action for reasons. (shrink)

Abstract: The core aim of this special issue is to present the philosophy of information as a way of doing philosophy, to focus on the contributions of Luciano Floridi to that area, and most important, to stimulate the debate on the most distinctive and controversial views he has defended in that context. This introduction contains a description of the philosophy of information, a discussion of two common misconceptions about the scope and the ambition of the philosophy of information, and a (...) brief overview of the essays in the issue. (shrink)

Presents a new interpretation of Aristotle's Analytics (the Prior and Posterior Analytics) as a unified whole, and argues that to "loose up" or solve—rather than to reduce or break up—is the principle meaning which best characterizes the Analytics.

One hundred years of French social theory : from structuralism to pragmatism -- The biological metaphor : functionalism and neo-functionalism -- The enigma of everyday life : symbolic interactionism, the dramaturgical approach and ethnomethodology -- The invasion of economic man : from rational choice theory to the new institutionalism -- Sociology meets history : Giddens's theory of modernity -- The history and the present : Foucault's archaeology and genealogy -- The spread of reason : Habermas's critical theory and beyond -- (...) A brave new world? : the empirical turn in social theory -- Conclusion : social theory for the twenty-first century. (shrink)

As AI systems become increasingly competent language users, it is an apt moment to consider what it would take for machines to understand human languages. This paper considers whether either language models such as GPT-3 or chatbots might be able to understand language, focusing on the question of whether they could possess the relevant concepts. A significant obstacle is that systems of both kinds interact with the world only through text, and thus seem ill-suited to understanding utterances concerning the concrete (...) objects and properties which human language often describes. Language models cannot understand human languages because they perform only linguistic tasks, and therefore cannot represent such objects and properties. However, chatbots may perform tasks concerning the non-linguistic world, so they are better candidates for understanding. Chatbots can also possess the concepts necessary to understand human languages, despite their lack of perceptual contact with the world, due to the language-mediated concept-sharing described by social externalism about mental content. (shrink)

The logic of ‘being informed’ gives a formal analysis of a cognitive state that does not coincide with either belief, or knowledge. To Floridi, who first proposed the formal analysis, the latter is supported by the fact that unlike knowledge or belief, being informed is a factive, but not a reflective state. This paper takes a closer look at the formal analysis itself, provides a pure and an applied semantics for the logic of being informed, and tries to find out (...) to what extent the formal analysis can contribute to an information-based epistemology. (shrink)