Jorge Luis Borges is working for decades now on the execution of the nightmare. Perhaps his most celebrated instance is "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius ". It would take much work to sift the fabricated references in Borges' works from the ones deliberately misread from the over-emphasis on an author's casual remark, etc.

Como expuso Walter Lippmann en su libro La opinión pública, en sociedades complejas como la nuestra los medios de comunicación de masas construyen un pseudoentorno, a través del cual nos hacen llegar las informaciones necesarias para nuestra vida cotidiana. Pero, los medios de comunicación hacen algo más que informarnos: eligen y organizan jerárquicamente nuestro menú cotidiano de informaciones relevantes. Conjuntamente con los agentes sociales, económicos y políticos prominentes, determinan la agenda de las preocupaciones ciudadanas, colocando en primer plano de la (...) actualidad determinados asuntos y silenciando o soslayando otros. Por esa razón, en la sociedad actual el concepto de opinión pública es incomprensible sin referirnos a la actuación de los medios de comunicación. Pero no se trata únicamente de la labor de los media como vehículos para la información y plataformas para la discusión colectiva. Los media popularizan valores, actitudes y modelos de conducta y su enorme capacidad de influir despierta una razonable preocupación entre los ciudadanos. Esta comunicación analiza siete cuestiones que ilustran las fricciones entre ciudadanía y medios de comunicación en la sociedad contemporánea. (shrink)

Vardanyan’s Theorems [36, 37] state that $\mathsf {QPL}(\mathsf {PA})$ —the quantified provability logic of Peano Arithmetic—is $\Pi ^0_2$ complete, and in particular that this already holds when the language is restricted to a single unary predicate. Moreover, Visser and de Jonge [38] generalized this result to conclude that it is impossible to computably axiomatize the quantified provability logic of a wide class of theories. However, the proof of this fact cannot be performed in a strictly positive signature. The system $\mathsf (...) {QRC_1}$ was previously introduced by the authors [1] as a candidate first-order provability logic. Here we generalize the previously available Kripke soundness and completeness proofs, obtaining constant domain completeness. Then we show that $\mathsf {QRC_1}$ is indeed complete with respect to arithmetical semantics. This is achieved via a Solovay-type construction applied to constant domain Kripke models. As corollaries, we see that $\mathsf {QRC_1}$ is the strictly positive fragment of $\mathsf {QGL}$ and a fragment of $\mathsf {QPL}(\mathsf {PA})$. (shrink)

I argue that, against what is commonly believed, Spinoza’s use of the relation of constitution to characterize the relation between attributes and the essence of a substance does not indicate that, for him, there must be a numerical identity between each attribute and the essence constituted by that attribute. To do this, I follow a twofold strategy. First, I contend that the claim that because in Spinoza’s time constitution was understood as a one- to-one relation is mistaken: the main logicians (...) of Spinoza’s time, all Cartesian philosophers, believe that the constitution of an essence can be a many-to-one relation. I show that Spinoza can both accept that constitution is a many-one relation and share Descartes’ understanding of this relation. Second, I defend the claim that Spinoza’s use of constitution in the Ethics is consistent with these logicians’ account of constitution. In particular, I focus on Spinoza’s inclusion of the intellect in the definition of attribute and his definition of God. (shrink)

Big Data and Artificial Intelligence have a symbiotic relationship. Artificial Intelligence needs to be trained on Big Data to be accurate, and Big Data's value is largely realized through its use by Artificial Intelligence. As a result, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence practices are tightly intertwined in real life settings, as are their impacts on society. Unethical uses of Artificial Intelligence are therefore a Big Data problem, at least to some degree. Efforts to address this problem have been dominated by (...) the documentation of Ethical Artificial Intelligence principles and the creation of technical tools that address specific aspects of those principles. However, there is mounting evidence that Ethical Artificial Intelligence principles and technical tools have little impact on the Artificial Intelligence that is created in practice, sometimes in very public ways. The goal of this commentary is to highlight four interconnected areas society can invest in to close this Ethical Artificial Intelligence publication-to-practice gap, maximizing the positive impact Artificial Intelligence and Big Data have on society. For Ethical Artificial Intelligence to become a reality, I argue that these areas need to be addressed holistically in a way that acknowledges their interdependencies. Progress will require iteration, compromise, and transdisciplinary collaboration, but the result of our investments will be the realization of Artificial Intelligence's and Big Data's tremendous potential for social good, in practice rather than in just our hopes and aspirations. (shrink)

Cultuursociologisch essay over de postchristelijke manieren waarop mensen lijden compenseren.

Minimal Semantics asks what a theory of literal linguistic meaning is for - if you were to be given a working theory of meaning for a language right now, what would you be able to do with it? Emma Borg sets out to defend a formal approach to semantic theorising from a relatively new type of opponent - advocates of what she call 'dual pragmatics'. According to dual pragmatists, rich pragmatic processes play two distinct roles in linguistic comprehension: as well (...) as operating in a post-semantic capacity to determine the implicatures of an utterance, they also operate prior to the determination of truth-conditional content for a sentence. That is to say, they have an integral role to play within what is usually thought of as the semantic realm. Borg believes dual pragmatic accounts constitute the strongest contemporary challenge to standard formal approaches to semantics since they challenge the formal theorist to show not merely that there is some role for formal processes on route to determination of semantic content, but that such processes are sufficient for determining content. Minimal Semantics provides a detailed examination of this school of thought, introducing readers who are unfamiliar with the topic to key ideas like relevance theory and contextualism, and looking in detail at where these accounts diverge from the formal approach. Borg's defence of formal semantics has two main parts: first, she argues that the formal approach is most naturally compatible with an important and well-grounded psychological theory, namely the Fodorian modular picture of the mind. Then she argues that the main arguments adduced by dual pragmatists against formal semantics - concerning apparent contextual intrusions into semantic content - can in fact be countered by a formal theory. The defence holds, however, only if we are sensitive to the proper conditions of success for a semantic theory. Specifically, we should reject a range of onerous constraints on semantic theorizing (e.g., that it answer epistemic or metaphysical questions, or that it explain our communicative skills) and instead adopt a quite minimal picture of semantics. (shrink)

An introduction to formal semantic theories and dual pragmatic accounts. The chapter gives an initial examination of the distinct challenges posed by advocates of dual pragmatic accounts and the precise nature of the debate between the two approaches. The chapter also looks at the notion of logical form deployed by both kinds of semantic theory.

This chapter looks at a currently very popular argument for dual pragmatic theories, turning on so-called ‘unarticulated constituents’ or ‘hidden indexicals’. These are elements that do not figure at the syntactic level but are supposedly required to arrive at the truth-conditions of many natural language sentences. The precise form of this argument is explored and three different versions enumerated. However I argue that in none of its forms is this argument against formal semantics compelling.

An introduction to the notion of modularity of mind and an argument as to why only formal semantic theories are compatible with the claim that semantic comprehension is the product of a modular system. This chapter also looks at some initial challenges to formal semantics stemming from the apparent place of pragmatic reasoning in our grasp of meaning. These include arguments concerning the nature of speech acts, the analysis of implicatures, word learning, and ambiguity.

This chapter spells out the precise claims of minimal semantics and the role it accords to context in semantic theorizing. It also recapitulates the claims made with respect to the modularity of linguistic understanding, arguing that grasp of literal linguistic meaning is a properly modular process while grasp of what is said by a speaker is a non-modular process. Finally, some relevant questions that are not addressed in detail in the book are raised.

Looks at a classic problem for formal theories of meaning, stemming from the existence of expressions whose meaning depends, in part, on the context in which they are produced. I argue that formal accounts can accommodate such expressions without admitting rich contextual features to the semantic realm.

The present article introduces and describes an innovative educational approach to learning processes, the Imagineering collaborative methodology. The methodology has been developed as a part of the learning curriculum for the Imagineering masters course. The theoretical and practical framework is explained, offering some illustrations in order to demonstrate the possibilities and implications of embracing such an approach in an educational environment. This article proposes a systemic, collaborative, and relational view on education that avoids reductive and disjunctive learning processes, inviting students (...) to be designers of their learning, preparing them to deal professionally with the demands of the twenty-first century, more aligned with a radically changing landscape in today's society. (shrink)

Traditional approaches in healthcare have been challenged giving way to broader forms of users’ participation in treatment. In this article we present the Health 2.0 movement as an example of relational and participatory practices in healthcare. Health 2.0 is an approach in which participation is the major aim, aspiring to reshape the system into more collaborative and less hierarchical relationships. We offer two illustrations in order to discuss how Health 2.0 is related and can contribute to a positive uptake of (...) patient’s knowledge, which implies challenging healthcare practices exclusively focused on scientific expertise. In contrast, the illustrations we discuss focus on relations and cultural practices, searching for responsive and context-sensitive interventions, entertaining multiple views and allowing space for creativity. Finally we introduce two relational resources to contribute with the development and sustainability of Health 2.0 practices: Relational being and edge of fluidity. Those are resources aiming to engage professionals in a type of conversation with their clients, which is different from the hierarchical, linear and fact-oriented approach. This conversation aims at creating a space where the voices of all involved are welcomed, raising different opinions and points of view, bringing up new light and possibilities to the problem being investigated. These resources may be useful for those who are interested in improving quality in healthcare by investing in collaboration, contextual sensitivity and relational engagement. (shrink)

Resumo: A acessibilidade como tema transversal à formação dos egressos da Universidade Federal do Pampa se faz presente tanto no projeto institucional da universidade quanto nos Projetos Pedagógicos dos Cursos. No entanto, embora tal intencionalidade constar nos documentos institucionais, a materialização de tal temática - para além da garantia dos requisitos legais de acessibilidade presentes nos instrumentos de avaliação do ensino superior - se mostra incipiente. No curso de Medicina, apesar do tema da diversidade e, da garantia de equidade sem (...) qualquer tipo de distinção, no atendimento da rede básica, compor as Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para a formação dos futuros médicos, a discussão sobre a temática da deficiência é recente, sendo atualmente impulsionada pela demanda de recursos para este público, em específico, na atenção básica de saúde, em função da pandemia da COVID-19. Neste artigo, apresentamos as práticas interdisciplinares que vêm sendo protagonizadas entre o Curso de Medicina e o Programa de Mestrado Profissional em Ensino de Ciências. Dentre estas práticas estão a produção de pranchas em Comunicação Alternativa Aumentativa (CAA) para apoio ao diagnóstico do COVID-19 em pacientes com deficiência; materiais instrucionais acessíveis sobre temas envolvendo a pandemia; curso de CAA para estudantes da área da saúde e formação de profissionais dos serviços de saúde para o atendimento de usuários com deficiência. Estas práticas e suas consequências para a formação dos estudantes de Medicina, constitui o objetivo deste trabalho. Palavras-chave: acessibilidade; formação médica; inclusão; educação especial Medical Education and Inclusive Processes: interdisciplinary teaching practices guided by the knowledge of special education Abstract: The accessibility, as transversal theme to the formation of the Pampa Federal University egresses, is present in the University institutional project as well in the Courses Pedagogical Projects. However, although such intentionality appears in the institutional documents, the materialization of such theme – apart from the guarantee of the accessibility legal requirements present in the evaluation instruments of the university education – is still incipient. Even in the medical course, in spite of the diversity theme and the guarantee of equality without any kind of distinction in the basic system assistance compose the National Curricular Guidelines to the education of the futures doctors, is recent the discussion about the disability theme, being nowadays stimulated by the demand of resources required for this specific type of public in the primary health care, arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we present the interdisciplinary practices that have been executed in the Medical Course and Professional Master’s Degree on Sciences Teaching. Among these practices we have the production of boards in Augmentative Alternative Communication (AAC) for supporting the COVID-19 diagnosis in disabled patients; accessible instructional materials about themes concerning the pandemic; AAC courses for health area students and training of health services professionals for the assistance of disabled users. These practices and their consequences for the education of Medical students are the objective of the present work. Key-Words: accessibility; medical training; inclusion; special education Educación médica y procesos inclusivos: prácticas docentes interdisciplinarias guiadas por el conocimiento de la educación especial Resumen: La accesibilidad como tema transversal a la formación de los egresados ​​de la Universidad Federal de Pampa está presente tanto en el proyecto institucional de la universidad como en los Proyectos Pedagógicos de los Cursos. Sin embargo, aunque tal intencionalidad está incluida en los documentos institucionales, la materialización de tal tema, además de garantizar los requisitos legales de accesibilidad presentes en los instrumentos de evaluación de la educación superior, es aún incipiente. En el curso de medicina, a pesar del tema de la diversidad y la garantía de equidad sin ningún tipo de distinción, en la atención de la red básica, componiendo los Lineamientos Curriculares Nacionales para la formación de futuros médicos, la discusión sobre el tema de la discapacidad es reciente., siendo impulsado actualmente por la demanda de recursos para este público, específicamente, en la atención primaria de salud, debido a la pandemia de COVID-19. En este artículo presentamos las prácticas interdisciplinarias que se vienen dando entre el Curso de Medicina y el Programa de Maestría Profesional en Enseñanza de las Ciencias. Entre estas prácticas se encuentran la producción de tableros en Comunicación Aumentativa Alternativa (CAA) para apoyar el diagnóstico de COVID-19 en pacientes con discapacidad; materiales educativos accesibles sobre temas relacionados con la pandemia; Curso CAA para estudiantes del área de la salud y formación de profesionales de los servicios de salud para la asistencia a usuarios con discapacidad. Estas prácticas y sus consecuencias para la formación de los estudiantes de medicina, constituyen el objetivo de este trabajo. Palabras-clave: Accesibilidad; entrenamiento médico; inclusión; educación especial. Data de registro: 14/04/2021 Data de aceite: 01/12/2021. (shrink)

This is a book symposium on Steffen Borge’s The Philosophy of Football. It has contributions from William Morgan, Murray Smith and Brian Weatherson with replies from Borge.

Various kinds of user and patient involvement are spreading in healthcare in most Western countries. The purpose of this study is to critically assess the actual conditions for patients’ involvement in healthcare practice in Greenland and to point to possibilities for development. Patients’ perspectives on their own conduct of everyday life with illness and their possibilities for participation when hospitalized are examined in relation to the conditions in a hospital setting dominated by biomedical practice. On a theoretical level, it is (...) argued that the concept of ‘participation’ is preferable to the concept ‘involvement’ in healthcare. The study shows that there are several interconnected areas for development: the structural frames of hospital practice, including professionals’ possibilities for handling patient participation, and the agency of the patients conducting their everyday lives when hospitalized. Consequences of the biomedical hegemony are discussed in relation to WHO ́s broader approach to disease, illness and health and the still existing postcolonial traces of power and hierarchy. Finally it is argued that patient participation during hospitalization will promote the patients ́ conduct of everyday life, the cultural knowledge of the professionals, and the democratization of the healthcare sector. Such changes might be connected to a more encompassing democratic societal development – in Greenland as well as globally. (shrink)

The ‘question under discussion’ (or ‘QUD’) framework is a pragmatic framework that draws on work in the semantics of questions to provide an appealing account of a range of pragmatic phenomena, including the use of prosodic focus in English and restrictions on acceptable discourse moves (Roberts 1996). More recently, however, a number of proposals have attempted to use the framework to help to settle issues at the semantics/pragmatics boundary, fixing the truth-conditions of what is said by a speaker (which many (...) theorists take to be a semantic matter). In this discussion piece, we suggest that this kind of putative extension of the work to be done by the QUD framework is illegitimate, as the framework ultimately seems to depend on a prior grip on semantic content. To see this, we first outline the QUD framework and then raise our concern. (shrink)

The notion of Befindlichkeit in Heidegger’s phenomenological way. Heidegger’s phenomenology of Befindlichkeit and the different kinds of affection was initiated still before Being and Time, and developed in its essential features till the end of the 1930’s. The current paper argues that, since its very origins in a philosophical framework, back to the translation of the affectiones in Augustine, the notion of Befindlichkeit sets the beginning of a structural understanding of existence - displayed both at the ontological levei of Grundstimmungen (...) (such as anguish, boredom or reservedness), and at the ontic level of different factual Stimmungen. Any comprehensive analysis of those affections counts on a tripie background with a Wovor, a Worum and the full-fledged exercise (Vollzug) of such and such affective understanding. In Being and Time this analysis is dedicated to fear, in its different nuances. But this phenomenon was already dealt with in Heidegger’s Lectures on Augustine (1921) and will reoccur in the Beiträge (1936-38). A reading of this conceptual evolution will here ground a defense of the phenomenological character of Heidegger’s way of thinking. (shrink)

A critical review of four recent works that reflect current conflicts and tensions among feminists regarding new reproductive technologies: In Search of Parenthood by Judith Lasker and Susan Borg; Ethics and Human Reproduction by Christine Overall; Made to Order, Patricia Spallone and Deborah Steinberg, eds. and Reproductive Technologies: Gender, Motherhood and Medicine, Michelle Stanworth, ed. Their positions are evaluated against the background of growing feminist dialogue about the future of reproduction and the bearing of reproductive innovations on such related issues (...) as racism, sexuality, motherhood and abortion. (shrink)

Emma Borg examines the relation between semantics and pragmatics, and assesses recent answers to fundamental questions of how and where to draw the divide between the two. She argues for a minimal account of the interrelation between them--a 'minimal semantics'--which holds that only rule-governed appeals to context can influence semantic content.

Los desacuerdos acerca de la ontología científica han sido frecuentemente reconstruidos como el resultado de una disputa entre stances epistémicas rivales. En el presente trabajo, (i) caracterizamos algunos de estos desacuerdos como desacuerdos profundos. Además, (ii) mostramos que los desacuerdos profundos sobre ontología científica pueden surgir no solo de la adopción de diferentes stances epistémicas, sino entre posiciones que se encuadran dentro de una misma stance. El desarrollo de ese punto nos permite, a su vez, establecer una distinción entre tipos (...) de desacuerdos profundos y explorar la posibilidad de que existan diferencias de grado entre ellos. (shrink)

The Chomskian holds that the grammars that linguists produce are about human psycholinguistic structures, i.e. our mastery of a grammar, our linguistic competence. But if we encountered Martians whose psycho-linguistic processes differed from ours, but who nevertheless produced sentences that are extensionally equivalent to the set of sentences in our English and shared our judgements on the grammaticality of various English sentences, then we would count them as being competent in English. A grammar of English is about what the Martians (...) and we share. In this note, I argue that a recent attack on the Martian Argument by Laurence fails to mitigate its force. (shrink)

Philosophers often assume that folk hold pain to be a mental state – to be in pain is to have a certain kind of feeling – and they think this state exhibits the classic Cartesian characteristics of privacy, subjectivity, and incorrigibility. However folk also assign pains (non-brain-based) bodily locations: unlike most other mental states, pains are held to exist in arms, feet, etc. This has led some (e.g. Hill 2005) to talk of the ‘paradox of pain’, whereby the folk notion (...) of pain is inherently conflicted. Recently, several authors have rejected the paradox view, arguing instead that folk hold a univocal, bodily view (i.e. pains are properties of various body parts, not of minds). This paper presents six objections to the bodily view of the folk concept of pain. We then outline a direction for future research – the ‘polyeidic approach’ – whereby the folk notion of pain is held to encompass various divergent (potentially conflicting) strands and we suggest that certain problems surrounding the treatment and communication of pain might be usefully be viewed through the lens of the polyeidic approach. (shrink)

We explore the computational complexity of justification, stability and relevance in incomplete argumentation frameworks (IAFs). IAFs are abstract argumentation frameworks that encode qualitative uncertainty by distinguishing between certain and uncertain arguments and attacks. These IAFs can be completed by deciding for each uncertain argument or attack whether it is present or absent. Such a completion is an abstract argumentation framework, for which it can be decided which arguments are acceptable under a given semantics. The justification status of an argument in (...) a completion then expresses whether the argument is accepted (in), not accepted because it is attacked by an accepted argument (out) or neither (undec). For a given IAF and certain argument, the justification status of that argument need not be the same in all completions. This is the issue of stability, where an argument is stable if its justification status is the same in all completions. For arguments that are not stable in an IAF, the relevance problem is of interest: which uncertain arguments or attacks should be investigated for the argument to become stable? In this paper, we define justification, stability and relevance for IAFs and provide a complexity analysis for these problems under grounded, complete, preferred and stable semantics. (shrink)

This paper seeks to understand Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis of the time experience in Sein und Zeit, from the formal point of view of the Care-structure, and in the Seminars of Zollikon, where time is described as world-time in its fullness. Aimed is to show that the early anthropological reception of his major work of 1927 by some of his pupils, like Löwith, who detected similarities with Psychoanalysis, is somehow strengthed by Heidegger himself later on, as he comes with Medard Boss (...) to develop Daseynsanalysis as a metaonlogical understanding of humans life in health and pathology. Illness as privation of health will be seen as the failure of inauthentic existence. And the full, ecstatical experience of time will be shown as the proper or authentic one, being-in-the-world as well as within the psychoanalytical session and interpretation. (shrink)

Heidegger’ s Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriff offers what could be called a phenomenology of Phenomenology itself, that is: an investigation of its history. The husserlian discovery of the “categorial intuition” appears as the second moment of this history, after Brentano’s “intentionality” and before Heidegger’s own discovery of the “original sense of the a priori”, which constitutes the third moment. Our paper seeks to understand this sequence as a way to answer the leading question of how it may be possible (...) that “to be a intentional object can have any relationship with the being itself”. Or, to put it in another formulation: how is intentionality itself ontologically possible? (shrink)

‘Quiet’ and ‘Disquiet’ are terms which express ways of accounting for time-experience, besides being equally open for a rendering as emotional states. Starting from three existential moods – stress, boredom, and the joy of the present moment – this inquiry aims to put into evidence the structuring features of our existential experience of time itself, both in the daily exercise of our being-in-the-world, and at the level of our being or not being in possession of oneself in such exercise and (...) in its potentially pathological derivates. In this context, which finds its theoretical roots in the Heideggerian analysis of the being-in, quiet and disquiet reveal their paradoxical character in terms of the mutual belonging and tension each of them, respectively, presupposes. At the same time, and with such a basis, we will find the way of understanding ‘quiet’ as a correlate of time as a ‘duration’. (shrink)

This article takes as its point of departure Hannah Arendt’s discussion of public happiness, contextualising it within her thoughts on politics, democracy and revolution. It draws on Arendt’s discussion of how the expression “pursuit of happiness” has historically shifted from a public understanding of happiness into an increasingly privatised one. The article engages with Arendt’s account of public happiness in order to reanimate her radical democratic critique of how representative politics reduces the scope of political action and participation; and how (...) the notion of happiness in a neoliberal era can only be interpreted in economistic and subjectivist terms. Furthermore, the article turns to examine how recent works in contemporary political thought, namely, those by Adriana Cavarero and Judith Butler, extend and transform the stakes of Arendt’s account of public happiness. On one hand, Cavarero’s notion of surging democracy is considered as an account of radical politics that keeps alive the Arendtian concern with public happiness by contextualising it within contemporary political struggles and social movements. On the other hand, Butler problematises Arendt’s discussion of politics for its neglect of precarity; however, this article argues that Butler’s work on assembly extends Arendt’s by highlighting possibilities of resistance, radical democracy and even public happiness amid experiences of loss and grief. Although prima facie it might appear that happiness and precarity are opposed to each other, this article points towards contemporary political practices, such as those of Ni Una Menos, that are critically reanimating public happiness through the intertwining of affective registers that range from joy to grief. (shrink)

In his quest to let language speak, Heidegger explored thoroughly the possibilities of meaning of factical language, in its phenomenological and poietic dimensions. He thereby came to characterize Being and Time as a way, a path which must be followed until it ends. He later understood it as a wandering and, finally, as a dead end (Holzweg). The idea of the walker, in conversation with himself, accompanies this entire journey. The present essay seeks to uncover the main moments of Heidegger’s (...) retrospective and self-interpreting way, based on recent publications of the Gesamtausgabe (in particular GA 82 and 70.1), which he himself wanted to see, generally speaking, as the edition of his Wege, nicht Werke. (shrink)

A standard objection to so-called ‘minimal semantics’ (Borg 2004, 2012, Cappelen and Lepore 2005) is that minimal contents are explanatorily redundant as they play no role in an adequate account of linguistic communication (those making this objection include Levinson 2000, Carston 2002, Recanati 2004). This paper argues that this standard objection is mistaken. Furthermore, I argue that seeing why the objection is mistaken sheds light both on how we should draw the classic Gricean distinction between saying and implicating, and how (...) we should think about the key philosophical notion of assertion. Specifically, it reveals that these ideas are best understood primarily in socio-linguistic terms (resting on the degree of liability a speaker is held to have for linguistically conveyed content). (shrink)

Human beings are the only creatures known to engage in sport. We are sporting animals, and our favourite pastime of football is the biggest sport spectacle on earth. The Philosophy of Footballpresents the first sustained, in-depth philosophical investigation of the phenomenon of football. In explaining the complex nature of football, the book draws on literature in sociology, history, psychology and beyond, offering real-life examples of footballing actions alongside illuminating thought experiments. The book is organized around four main themes considering the (...) character, nature, analysis and aesthetics of football. It discusses football as an extra-ordinary, unnecessary, rule-based, competitive, skill-based physical activity, articulated as a social kind that is fictional in character, and where fairness or fair play - contrary to much sport ethical discussion - is not centre stage. Football, it is argued, is a constructive- destructive contact sport and, in comparison to other sports, is lower scoring and more affected by chance. The latter presents to its spectators a more unpredictable game and a darker, more complex and denser drama to enjoy. The Philosophy of Footballdeepens our understanding of the familiar features of the game, offering novel interpretations on what football is, how and why we play it, and what the game offers its followers that makes us so eagerly await match day. This is essential reading for anybody with an interest in the world's most popular game or in the philosophical or social study of sport. nstructive- destructive contact sport and, in comparison to other sports, is lower scoring and more affected by chance. The latter presents to its spectators a more unpredictable game and a darker, more complex and denser drama to enjoy. The Philosophy of Footballdeepens our understanding of the familiar features of the game, offering novel interpretations on what football is, how and why we play it, and what the game offers its followers that makes us so eagerly await match day. This is essential reading for anybody with an interest in the world's most popular game or in the philosophical or social study of sport. (shrink)

Reasoning with the maximally consistent subsets of the premises is a well-known approach for handling contradictory information. In this paper we consider several variations of this kind of reasoning, for each one we introduce two complementary computational methods that are based on logical argumentation theory. The difference between the two approaches is in their ways of making consequences: one approach is of a declarative nature and is related to Dung-style semantics for abstract argumentation, while the other approach has a more (...) proof-theoretical flavor, extending Gentzen-style sequent calculi. The outcome of this work is a new perspective on reasoning with MCS, which shows a strong link between the latter and argumentation systems, and which can be generalized to some related formalisms. As a by-product of this we obtain soundness and completeness results for the dynamic proof systems with respect to several of Dung’s semantics. In a broader context, we believe that this work helps to better understand and evaluate the role of logic-based instantiations of argumentation frameworks. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:.. MERELY A MAN OF LETTERS" an interview with Jorge Luis Borges* Philosophy and Literature: Why don't you tell us about some of the philosophers who have influenced your work and in whom you have been the most interested? Jorge Luis Borges: Well, I think that's an easy one. You might talk in terms of two: Berkeley and Schopenhauer. But I suppose Hume might be worked in (...) also, because, after all, Hume refutes Berkeley. Really, he comes from Berkeley—even if Berkeley comes from Locke. You might think of Locke, of Berkeley, and of Hume as being three links in an argument..... But I suppose that when someone refutes someone else in philosophy, he is carrying on the argument. P&L: And Schopenhauer? Borges: Schopenhauer is very different from Hume. Of course, Schopenhauer had his idea of the Will. That is not to be found in Hume.... The case of Berkeley was different. I suppose he thought of God as being aware of all things all the time, if I don't get him wrong. If we go away, does this room disappear? No, because God is thinking about it. Now, in the case of Schopenhauer, I was rereading Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, The World as Will and Idea, and I was rather taken aback, or baffled I should say, puzzled by something that keeps on recurring in Schopenhauer. Of course it may have been a slip of the pen, but as he goes back to it, and as he was a very careful writer, I wonder if it is a slip of the pen. For example, Schopenhauer begins by saying that the universe, the stars, the spaces in between, the planets, *On April 14, 1976, two editors of Philosophy and Literature, along with an interested colleague, interviewed Jorge Luis Borges at Michigan State University, where he held a position as visiting professor for the winter term. These remarks are edited from the transcript of that conversation. 337 338Philosophy and Literature this planet, those things, have no existence—except in the mind which perceives them. But then, to my surprise—and I suppose you can explain this to me, since you are philosophers and I am not—what Schopenhauer says is that all those things have no existence except in the brain. And that the universe—I remember these words, I don't think I'm inventing them now—"ist ein Gehirnphänomen," that the world is a cerebral phenomenon. Now, I was baffled. Because, of course, if you think of the universe, I suppose the brain is as much a part of the external world as the stars or the moon. The brain after all is a system of visual, of tactile, perceptions. He keeps on insisting on the brain. I don't think, for example, that Bishop Berkeley insists on the brain, or Hume, who would have insisted on the mind, consciousness. P&L: People sometimes say that they see Berkeley in stories like "Orbis Tertius." Borges: Yes, I suppose they do. Well, of course. But in that story I was led by literary means also. P&L: How do you distinguish the literary from the philosophical means in that story? Could you explain that? Borges: Very easily.... Encyclopedias have been my chief reading. I have always been interested in encyclopedias. I used to go to the Biblioteca National in Buenos Aires—and since I was so shy, I felt I could not cope with asking for a book, so I looked on the shelves for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I would pick up any chance volume and I would read it. One night I was richly rewarded, because I read all about the Druses, Dryden and the Druids—a treasure trove, no?—all in the same volume, "Dr-." Then I came to the idea of how fine it would be to think of an encyclopedia... a very rigorous one of course, of an imaginary world, where everything should be linked. For example, you would have a language and then a literature, and then a history and so on. Then I thought I would write a story of a fancy encyclopedia. Of course that would require many different people to write it... (shrink)

In this paper, I am going to present a condensed version of my theory of what sport is from my book The Philosophy of Football. In that work, I took my starting point in Bernard Suits’ celebrated,...

Some demonstrative expressions, those we might term ‘bare demonstratives’, appear without any appended descriptive content (e.g. occurrences of ‘this’ or ‘that’ simpliciter). However, it seems that the majority of demonstrative occurrences do not follow this model. ‘Complex demonstratives’ is the collective term I shall use for phrases formed by adjoining one or more common nouns to a demonstrative expression (e.g. ‘that cat’, ‘this happy man’) and I will call the combination of predicates immediately concatenated with the demonstrative in such phrases (...) the ‘matrix’ of the expression. The question, then, is how we should construe the logical form of such expressions within a semantic theory for our language; and I wish to suggest that some recent answers to this question are, in fact, mistaken. The structure of the paper is as follows: first, I wish to highlight two (often underlying) assumptions about the nature of noun phrases in general, and suggest that, if they are both adopted, they apparently constrain the possible accounts of the logical form of complex demonstratives to just three options. The second and third parts of the paper will be concerned with expanding these options and arguing that none of them are adequate; thus the major part of the paper is concerned with the negative claim that the most obvious moves to make in this area must actually fail on closer inspection. The fourth and final section will then (very briefly) sketch the positive thesis of the paper: that we can deliver a clear and cohesive account of complex demonstratives, armed simply with elements which we will draw from David Kaplan’s theory of demonstratives, but only at the cost of rejecting (or at least refining) one assumption we recognised initially. (shrink)