A distinction is made in formal semantics between "stage-level predicates," predicates that describe the general state of a noun, and "individual-level predicates," predicates that specify the specific properties of a noun. Fernald investigates various contexts in which this distinction is traditionally said to come into play. His aim is to show that the effects displayed are not uniform, and that the differences between the analyses proposed in the literature arise from the authors considering different subsets of data that they (...) take to exemplyify the "core" meaning of the stage/individual distinction. Fernald presents alternatives and extensions that shed light on the limitations of previous theories, as well as making original observations about important aspects of the topic, including coercion, and perceptual reports vs. other phenomena. (shrink)

Some say that presentism precludes time travel into the past since it implies that the past does not exist, but this is a bad argument. Presentism says that only currently existing entities exist, and that the only properties and relations those entities instantiate are those that they currently instantiate. This does in a sense imply that the past does not exist. But if that precluded time travel into the past, it would also preclude the one-second-per-second “time travel” into the future (...) that is ordinary persistence, for presentism accords the future the same ontological status as the past. Instead of quantifying over past and future objects and events, presentists speak a tensed language, regimented with primitive sentential tense operators. For a presentist, a persisting person is one who did exist, and who will exist. Regimented, these claims become: it was the case that she exists, and it will be the case that she exists. The presentist may then apply the same strategy to time travel proper. Suppose Katy travels back to the time of the dinosaurs. The presentist can say that it was the case two hundred million years ago that Katy exists. This claim, which consists of a present-tense statement “Katy exists” embedded within the past tense operator it was the case two hundred million years ago that, is exactly the sort of statement about time that a presentist is free to accept. This has all been made clear by Simon Keller and Michael Nelson ( ). In addition to rebutting the bad argument against the consistency of presentism and time travel, Keller and Nelson argue positively in favor of consistency by showing how to translate David Lewis’s ( ) account of time travel into the presentist’s tensed language. The appearance of con ict between presentism and time travel, they argue, is due only to the fact that most defenders of time travel (for example Lewis) have tended to phrase their defenses in nonpresentist terms. As much as I applaud their rebuttal of the bad argument, I wish to sound a note of caution.. (shrink)

According to Ross Cameron's version of the moving spotlight theory of time, (1) Past and future entities exist; (2) the properties and relations they have are those they have now; but nevertheless (3) there are no fundamental past- or future-tensed facts; instead, tensed facts are made true by fundamental facts about the possession of temporal distributional properties and facts about how old things are. I argue that the account isn't sufficiently distinct from the B-theory to fit the usual A-theorist's tastes (...) and arguments, since i) like the traditional spotlight it consists of a B-theoretic metaphysics with one small A-theoretic element tacked on, and since ii) in a sense it does not admit fundamental change. I also argue that the proposed grounding of tensed facts in tenseless facts does not work in certain cases. (shrink)

Posner [6] has shown, by a nonuniform proof, that every ▵ 0 2 degree has a complement below 0'. We show that a 1-generic complement for each ▵ 0 2 set of degree between 0 and 0' can be found uniformly. Moreover, the methods just as easily can be used to produce a complement whose jump has the degree of any real recursively enumerable in and above $\varnothing'$ . In the second half of the paper, we show that the complementation (...) of the degrees below 0' does not extend to all recursively enumerable degrees. Namely, there is a pair of recursively enumerable degrees a above b such that no degree strictly below a joins b above a. (This result is independently due to S. B. Cooper.) We end with some open problems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE START OF METAPHYSICS* THEODORE J. KoNDOLEON Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania I N HIS RECENTLY published book, John F. X. Knasas seeks to answer this twofold inter-related question: What, according to Saint Thomas's expressed teaching, is the subject of metaphysics and how does the human mind proceed to attain it for the purpose of study? While he acknowledges a debt to Joseph Owens for certain of his basic (...) positions, Knasas will claim that the book's argument is original in the way in which it opposes what he takes as realistically the subject of metaphysics at its initial stage (or with the only understanding of beingens -metaphysics requires to begin) to what will become this science 's subject at its later, more mature stage. Moreover, although he may contradict himself on this point, he will reject, as Saint Thomas's view, the position that a physical demonstration can establish the existence of immaterial being, be it God or angels. He will also argue at some length what he evidently considers a crucial epistemic procedure for the start of metaphysics, viz., that a series of judgments relating individuals back to their acts of existence (from whence they were originally abstracted) is required for the "judgmentally constituted multitude" from which the mind attains common being. Finally, since he will insist that abstraction must be controlled by the data, he will allow no room in Thomistic metaphysics for a beginning metaphysical intuition in which being is seen as not necessarily linked to matter and motion, nor for an a priori approach to its subject which would start *John F. X. Knasas, The Preface to Metaphysics: A Contribution to the N eo-Thomist Debate on the Start of Metaphysics. New York: Peter Lang, 1990. Pp. 193. 121 122 THEODORE J. KONDOLEON from the nature of the knowing subject, viz., the human intellect, as open to and directed toward infinite being and intelligibility. In what follows I will discuss (and critically assess) each of these features of this book as well as address myself briefly to certain things the author has to say about the Thomistic " five ways." In the first three chapters Knasas is primarily concerned with showing that metaphysics cannot begin with a notion of being understood in the sense of ens commune. This sense of the notion traditionally includes both material and immaterial being. However, he argues, since (according to his reading of Aquinas) only metaphysics can demonstrate the existence of immaterial being, its subject cannot, at least at its outset, encompass such being, not even as something conceivable. He therefore opposes the view of Neo-Thomists who, basing themselve? on the now famous and frequently cited text from Saint Thomas's Expositio on Boethius's De Trinitate (Question 5, article 3), insist that metaphysics begins with the recognition that being is something separate from matter and motion (and not merely so in the mind's consideration by abstraction). This separation is understood in the so-called negative judgment of separation: " it is not of the nature of being to be in matter and motion (even though it is sometimes found therein)." On this point Knasas finds fault with " Natural Philosophy" Thomists, among whom he includes the Dominicans L.-B. Geiger (although this writer is barely mentioned and only in a footnote discussion) and James Weisheipl, both of whom have argued that the subject of metaphysics presupposes a demonstration from natural philosophy that immaterial, unchanging being exists (otherwise, they maintain, the separation of which Saint Thomas speaks in the De Trinitate Commentary would have no fundamentum in re). Again, his main argument with these Thomists is that no textual justification can be found for their view-indeed there is counter-textual evidence against it-that physical philosophy proves the existence of immaterial being and that, in the eyes of Aquinas, metaphysics awaits such a demonstration in order to begin. He equally rejects the position, one which he at- THE START OF METAPHYSICS 123 tributes above all to Maritain, that, prior to any argument that would establish the actual existence of God, being can be understood -and this thanks to an existential judgment in which existence is restored to the essence... (shrink)

This is a reply to B. H. Slater's article "Liar Syllogisms and Related Paradoxes" (Analysis 51, 146-153), which raised an objection to one of the arguments considered in my article "Liar Syllogisms" (Analysis 50, 1-7). Slater's objection is shown to be a failure. In effect, the paradoxicality of liar syllogisms is vindicated.

Ten arguments for the nonexistence of God are formulated and discussed briefly. Each of them ascribes to God a pair of properties from the following list of divine attributes: (a) perfect, (b) immutable, (c) transcendent, (d) nonphysical, (e) omniscient, (f) omnipresent, (g) personal, (h) free, (i) all-loving, (j) all-just, (k) all-merciful, and (1) the creator of the universe. Each argument aims to demonstrate an incompatibility between the two properties ascribed. The pairs considered are: 1. (a-1), 2. (b-1), 3. (b-e), 4. (...) (b-i), 5, (c-f), 6. (c-g), 7. (d-g), 8. (f-g), 9. (e-h), and 10. (j-k). Along the way, several other possible pairs are also mentioned and commented upon. (shrink)

The dominance conditional 'If I drink the contents of cup A, I will drink more than if drink the contents of cup B' is true if we know that the first cup contains more than the second. In the first part of the paper, I show that only one kind of theory of indicative conditionals can explain this fact — a Stalnaker-type semantics. In the second part of the paper, I show that dominance conditionals can help explain a long-standing mystery: (...) the question of how one-boxers and two-boxers are guided by conditionals to their respective answers to the Newcomb problem. I will suggest that both implicitly appeal to a decision theoretic principle I will call the Dominance Norm (DN), a principle that connects indicative dominance conditionals with rational courses of action. Finally, I show that DN in combination with a Stalnaker-type theory of indicatives commits us to the two-boxing answer in the Newcomb problem. (shrink)

Die Kernaufgaben von Hochschulen sind Studium und Lehre (Persönlichkeitsbildung; inhaltliche und methodische Ausbildung, insbesondere des akademischen Nachwuchses; Bildung zur Berufsfähigkeit), Forschung und Third Mission (z. B. Wissens- und Technologietransfer; regionales Engagement; Weiterbildungsangebote; transdisziplinäre und soziale Innovationen). Im Rahmen dieses breiten Auftrags zu Aufklärung, Bildung und Innovation in Wissensgesellschaften sehen sich Hochschulen als kreative lernende Organisationen und strategische offene Republiken von Akademikern und Studierenden gegenwärtig vielfältigen und komplexen Herausforderungen konfrontiert. Solchen Herausforderungen kann ohne systematische, aufklärerisch-kritische Evaluation nicht produktiv und proaktiv begegnet (...) werden. (shrink)