Classes are a kind of collection. Typically, they are too large to be sets. For example, there are classes containing absolutely all sets even though there is no set of all sets. But what are classes, if not sets? When our theory of classes is relatively weak, this question can be avoided. In particular, it is well known that von Neuman–Bernays–Godel class theory is conservative over the standard axioms of set theory ): anything NGB can prove about the sets (...) is already provable in ZFC. In this paper I will prove a new conservativity result for a much broader range of class theories. It tells us that as long as our set theory T contains an independently well-motivated reflection principle, anything provable about the sets in any reasonable class theory extending T is already provable in T. (shrink)

The paper describes in detail the procedure of identification of the inner language and an inner logico of a physical theory. The procedure is a generalization of the original ideas of J. von Neuman and G. Birkhoff about quantum logic.

In the paper we will employ set theory to study the formal aspects of quantum mechanics without explicitly making use of space-time. It is demonstrated that von Neuman and Zermelo numeral sets, previously efectively used in the explanation of Hardy’s paradox, follow a Heisenberg quantum form. Here monadic union plays the role of time derivative. The logical counterpart of monadic union plays the part of the Hamiltonian in the commutator. The use of numerals and monadic union in the classical (...) probability resolution of Hardy’s paradox [1] is supported with the present derivation of a commutator for sets. (shrink)

Describes and evaluates a number of existing criticisms of the formal theory of rationality and subjective expected utility theory. The author argues that rationality is not a behavioural entity, but rather has to do with the relation between an agent's preferences and his or her behaviour.

Leibniz’s role en current political and social thought is complex. On the one hand, he represents the last great synthesis built on the idea of the World as a creation of God and man as his cooperator in history. However his notion of contingency can help to explain some of the problems facing social sciences today in so far as he understandsthis concept not only from an ontological but also from an epistemological point of view. To this one should add (...) that criticisms of classical and modern philosophy such as those of Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt leave intact the need of reason to organise society and we can see in Leibniz use of reason a forerunner of public choice postions. In sum, his vision of reason is very much alive though in new contexts. (shrink)

Leibniz’s role en current political and social thought is complex. On the one hand, he represents the last great synthesis built on the idea of the World as a creation of God and man as his cooperator in history. However his notion of contingency can help to explain some of the problems facing social sciences today in so far as he understandsthis concept not only from an ontological but also from an epistemological point of view. To this one should add (...) that criticisms of classical and modern philosophy such as those of Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt leave intact the need of reason to organise society and we can see in Leibniz use of reason a forerunner of public choice postions. In sum, his vision of reason is very much alive though in new contexts. (shrink)

Leibniz’s role en current political and social thought is complex. On the one hand, he represents the last great synthesis built on the idea of the World as a creation of God and man as his cooperator in history. However his notion of contingency can help to explain some of the problems facing social sciences today in so far as he understandsthis concept not only from an ontological but also from an epistemological point of view. To this one should add (...) that criticisms of classical and modern philosophy such as those of Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt leave intact the need of reason to organise society and we can see in Leibniz use of reason a forerunner of public choice postions. In sum, his vision of reason is very much alive though in new contexts. (shrink)

It is a recurring mantra that epistemic must creates a statement that is weaker than the corresponding flat-footed assertion: It must be raining vs. It’s raining. Contrary to classic discussions of the phenomenon such as by Karttunen, Kratzer, and Veltman, we argue that instead of having a weak semantics, must presupposes the presence of an indirect inference or deduction rather than of a direct observation. This is independent of the strength of the claim being made. Epistemic must is therefore quite (...) similar to evidential markers of indirect evidence known from languages with rich evidential systems. We work towards a formalization of the evidential component, relying on a structured model of information states (analogous to some models used in the belief dynamics literature). We explain why in many contexts, one can perceive a lack of confidence on the part of the speaker who uses must. (shrink)

The compositional semantics of sentences like Only mammals give live birth and The flag flies only if the Queen is home is a tough problem. Evidence is presented to show that only here is modifying an underlying proposition (its ‘prejacent’). After discussing the semantics of only, the question of the proper interpretation of the prejacent is explored. It would be nice if the prejacent could be analyzed as having existential quantificational force. But that is difficult to maintain, since the prejacent (...) structures when encountered on their own are naturally read as having a lawlike flavor, which in many analyses is attributed to the semantics of implicit operators alleged to be present in them. In the end, an analysis is presented which attributes some very particular properties to these operators and thereby succeeds in providing the target sentences with intuitively adequate interpretations. These complex constructions can therefore be used as a probe into the nature of implicit quantification in natural language. (shrink)

Collective emotions are at the heart of any society and become evident in gatherings, crowds, or responses to widely salient events. However, they remain poorly understood and conceptualized in scientific terms. Here, we provide first steps towards a theory of collective emotions. We first review accounts of the social and cultural embeddedness of emotion that contribute to understanding collective emotions from three broad perspectives: face-to-face encounters, culture and shared knowledge, and identification with a social collective. In discussing their strengths and (...) shortcomings and highlighting areas of conceptual overlap, we translate these views into a number of bottom–up mechanisms that explain collective emotion elicitation on the levels of social cognition, expressive behavior, and social practices. (shrink)

1 This paper has been presented at the workshop “Time and Modality: A Round Table on Tense, Mood, and Modality”, Paris, December 2005, at a CUNY linguistics colloquium in May 2006, and at the 6th Workshop on Formal Linguistics in Florian´opolis, Brazil, August 2006. We thank the audiences at those presentations, in particular Orin Percus, Tim Stowell, Marcel den Dikken, Anna Szabolcsi, Chris Warnasch, Roberta Pires de Oliveira, Renato Miguel Basso, and Ana M¨uller. We thank Noam Chomsky, Cleo Condoravdi, and (...) Irene Heim for very helpful conversations about this material. We thank Bridget Copley for sharing with us her recent manuscript “What Should Should.. (shrink)

This paper is mainly concerned with tense in embedded constructions. I believe that recent research – notably the work by Ogihara (1989) and Abusch (1993) – has contributed much to our better understanding of its semantics. The proposals made by the two authors are, however, still too simplistic in some regards. Among other things, they neglect the interplay of tense with temporal adverbs of quantification and with frame-setters. To get this composition right is a touchstone for every theory of tense (...) and tense semanticists have been concerned with this problem from the beginning on, as witnessed by the analyses in Kratzer (1978), Bäuerle (1979), Dowty (1979/1982), to mention a few. (shrink)

The interpretation of if -clauses in the scope of ordinary quantifiers has provoked semanticists into extraordinary measures, such as abandoning compositionality or claiming that if has no meaning. We argue that if -clauses have a normal conditional meaning, even in the scope of ordinary quantifiers, and that the trick is to have the right semantics for conditionals.

In recent work, Louis deRosset (Philosophical Studies 149:73–97, 2010) has argued that priority theorists, who hold that truths about macroscopic objects can be metaphysically explained without reference to such things, cannot meet an independently motivated constraint upon good explanation. By clarifying the nature of the priority theorist’s project, I argue that deRosset’s argument fails to establish its conclusion.

A normalization procedure is given for classical natural deduction with the standard rule of indirect proof applied to arbitrary formulas. For normal derivability and the subformula property, it is sufficient to permute down instances of indirect proof whenever they have been used for concluding a major premiss of an elimination rule. The result applies even to natural deduction for classical modal logic.

It is well known that indefinite phrases are more liberal in taking scope than other quantifying phrases. In general, the scope of indefinites is not limited by the finite clause in which they occur, although the scope of universal quantifiers is. Wh-phrases behave very much like indefinites: in languages with wh in situ, their scope need not be restricted by anything like clause boundedness.

Elementary geometry can be axiomatized constructively by taking as primitive the concepts of the apartness of a point from a line and the convergence of two lines, instead of incidence and parallelism as in the classical axiomatizations. I first give the axioms of a general plane geometry of apartness and convergence. Constructive projective geometry is obtained by adding the principle that any two distinct lines converge, and affine geometry by adding a parallel line construction, etc. Constructive axiomatization allows solutions to (...) geometric problems to be effected as computer programs. I present a formalization of the axiomatization in type theory. This formalization works directly as a computer implementation of geometry. (shrink)

Initially, astrobiology subsumed into philosophy. However, philosophy has increasingly subsumed into astrobiology concurrent with it steadily becoming an observational and experimental activity that mainly focuses on the link between life and the cosmos, rather than on extra-terrestrial life per se. However, the steadily increasing probability of locating such extra-terrestrial life and the questions this will lead to might require a refinement of astrobiology, with a bifurcation into astrobiology and astrophilosophy. There are many reasons for the emergence and necessity of astrobiology. (...) One barely realized reason for its emergence, I will argue, is the dawning realization that biology, until now, has been under a geocentric limitation, which has unavoidably pervaded the perception of life. Additionally, as astrobiology can be said to be a long last movement away from this limitation, astrophilosophy represents a movement away from that limitation because philosophy has, strictly speaking, been restrained by the frames for one species, Homo sapiens. Thus, philosophy has, strictly speaking, been anthropomorphic. Thus, when philosophy, like astrobiology, incorporates the Copernican principle, assuming that terrestrial life, and the thinking of Homo sapiens, is not privileged in the universe, astrophilosophy emerges. Astrobiology and astrophilosophy are not competitors but are rather two distinct but complementary activities that address questions with their own well-defined methods and rigor while still informing each other in an inter-dependent manner. Astrophilosophy concerns questions that are philosophical in nature but are procured by an astrobiological perspective. By including scenarios procured by astrobiology, a number of questions regarding value, rights, communication and intelligence that could arise in the interaction between Homo sapiens and extra-terrestrial life can be addressed. (shrink)

Simone Weil's influence has been enormous and in this age of doubt and uncertainty there is something particularly appealing about this French Jewish writer, for Weil lived out her beliefs. From an early age she was attracted to Bolshevism, became an anarchist and helped Trotsky. She joined the International Red Brigade to fight Franco in the Spanish Civil War. An agnostic, she experienced a profound religious conversion, yet never converted to the Christian faith to which she was so deeply attracted. (...) This clear lucid exposition of her life and work shows how Weil is truly a prophet for our age and an indispensable source of encouragement to all those at the frontiers of religion, both within and without. (shrink)

In English, the present perfect, unlike future, past, and non-finite perfects, cannot be modified by so-called ‘positional’ adverbials (Comrie 1976, McCoard 1978, a.o.). This phenomenon is known as the present perfect puzzle (Klein 1992).

Commentators raised 10 major questions with regard to self-deception: Are dual representations necessary? Does self-deception serve intrapersonal goals? What forces shape self-deception? Are there cultural differences in self-deception? What is the self? Does self-deception have costs? How well do people detect deception? Are self-deceivers lying? Do cognitive processes account for seemingly motivational ones? And how is mental illness tied up with self-deception? We address these questions and conclude that none of them compel major modifications to our theory of self-deception, although (...) many commentators provided helpful suggestions and observations. (shrink)

Leibniz holds that creatures require divine concurrence for all their actions, and that this concurrence is 'special,' that is, directed at the particular qualities of each action. This gives rise to two potential problems. The first is the problem of explaining why special concurrence does not make God a co-author of creaturely actions. Second, divine concurrence may seem incompatible with the central Leibnizian doctrine that substances must act spontaneously, or independently of other substances. Concurrence, in other words, may appear to (...) jeopardize creaturely substancehood. I argue that Leibniz can solve both of these problems by invoking final and formal causation. The creature is the sole author of its actions because it alone contributes the formal and final cause to these actions. Similarly, because it contributes the formal and final cause, the creature possesses what I call explanatory spontaneity. Leibniz, I contend, considers this type of spontaneity sufficient for substancehood. (shrink)

Why is it so plausible that business organisations in contemporary society use values in their communication? In order to answer this question, a sociological, system theoretical approach is applied which approaches values not pre-empirically as invisible drivers for action but as observable semantics that form organisational behaviour. In terms of empirical material, it will be shown that business organisations resort to a communication of values whenever uncertainty or complexity is very high. Inevitably, value semantics are applied in organisations first when (...) the speakers are uncertain about which stakeholders to whom they have to address (uncertainty) or when different stakeholder groups have to be addressed simultaneously (complexity); second, when the identity of the organisation has to be described; and third, when future strategic options that cannot be expressed by quantitative terms have to be communicated. Values accordingly play a role in organisational practice when certain aspects are indeterminate. Therefore, they are a means for organisations to communicate under fuzzy circumstances. On the basis of these findings, new approaches to value management can now be formulated. (shrink)

Narrative imagination, as MarthaNussbaum (1996) discusses it, is ``the abilityto be an intelligent reader of another person'sstory'', an ability tied to being a democraticand cultivated world citizen, one whounderstands the lives of others. Narrativeimagination does not only need knowledge andlogical reasoning but also love and compassion.This article argues that in order to be agenuine tool for democracy, narrativeimagination and consciously taking theperspective of others has to be based on anunderstanding of humans as basicallypluralistic, as homines aperti. Criticalexamination and reflection should (...) be broughtcloser to the lives we live and confront ourhabits and implicit values in order tocultivate us as humans so that we are genuinelyaffected and touched. (shrink)

The contribution starts with the observation that Kant mentioned Human Dignity in his main works with great variety in emphasis. In the 'Grundlegung' from 1785 we find a significant treatment and again in the 'Tugendlehre' from 1798 but none in the 'Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft' from 1788 and in the 'Rechtslehre' from 1797. This needs an explanation. In the 'Grundlegung' human dignity is not attached to the second formula of the categorical imperative, the formula of self-purposefulness, as it is often (...) assumed, but to the third formula of a kingdom of ends. It is there explained as self-legislation. This placement needs also an explanation, which is attempted by the article. In the 'Tugendlehre' human dignity is then explained as self-purposefulness. So Kant changed his understanding of human dignity from the 'Grundlegung' to the 'Tugendlehre'. But the question is: why? (shrink)

Business students early on should be offered a course presenting and analyzing ethical dilemmas they will face as human beings both in the business world and in society. However, such a course should use literature, plays, and novels to illustrate ethical norms and values in the intertwined relationships of human activities. Better than business case studies, literature offers portraits of characters as leaders, employees, consultants, and other professionals, as ordinary human beings with conflicting desires, drives, and ambitions. Literary texts offer (...) excellent descriptions of the circumstances or the organizational settings in which people find themselves. I believe this is the best way to sensitize students without business experience when they are still open to such a formative learning process. At the same time, this pedagogical method linking ethics and literature may help to critically expose some of the weak or missing aspects of various management theories students encounter in their business curriculum and make them more observant and critical. (shrink)

After cataloguing various ‘improper’ sense of only, those which are taken with restricted scope (‘no more than [within a fixed domain]’) as opposed to the purely exclusive ‘proper’ sense, Ockham (1980:137) remarks that These are the senses, then, in which the exclusive expression can be taken improperly. And perhaps there are still other senses in which it can be taken improperly. But since they are not as widely used as the ones we have dealt with, I will leave them to (...) the specialists. Larry Horn: “A glorious picture indeed: monasteries crammed to the spires with specialists on only, laboring away on the fine points of the semantics of exclusive propositions. Those were the days!” (Horn 1996: 26-27). (shrink)

The Löwenheim-Skolem theorem was published in Skolem's long paper of 1920, with the first section dedicated to the theorem. The second section of the paper contains a proof-theoretical analysis of derivations in lattice theory. The main result, otherwise believed to have been established in the late 1980s, was a polynomial-time decision algorithm for these derivations. Skolem did not develop any notation for the representation of derivations, which makes the proofs of his results hard to follow. Such a formal notation is (...) given here by which these proofs become transparent. A third section of Skolem's paper gives an analysis for derivations in plane projective geometry. To clear a gap in Skolem's result, a new conservativity property is shown for projective geometry, to the effect that a proper use of the axiom that gives the uniqueness of connecting lines and intersection points requires a conclusion with proper cases (logically, a disjunction in a positive part) to be proved. The forgotten parts of Skolem's first paper on the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem are the perhaps earliest combinatorial analyses of formal mathematical proofs, and at least the earliest analyses with profound results. (shrink)

Der Klimawandel ist die globale Krise unserer Gegenwart. Mit Blick auf die sich hieraus ergebenen Handlungsoptionen und -zwänge stellt der verantwortliche Umgang mit Energie sicher einen der zentralen Bereiche dar. Unsere ethische Verantwortung betrifft dabei beides: Erzeugung und Verbrauch von Energie gleichermaßen. Der vorliegende Band verfolgt zwei Ziele: Erstens soll ein interdisziplinärer Dialog ermöglicht und die dafür notwendigen fachlichen Reflexionen angestoßen werden. Keine Einzeldisziplin kann auf die komplexen Probleme des Klimawandels oder die mit dem Terminus Energieverantwortung angezeigten Herausforderungen alleine eine (...) plausible Antwort geben. Vielmehr müssen die Wissenschaften ein gemeinsames Verständnis der Probleme entwickeln, um auch interdisziplinär geteilte Antworten bereitstellen zu können. Zweitens soll dies in transdisziplinärer Perspektive erfolgen. Das bedeutet, die von der Gesellschaft an die Wissenschaft herangetragenen Fragen und Problemstellungen ernst zu nehmen, aufzugreifen und Antworten zu formulieren, die auch außerhalb der wissenschaftlichen Diskurse als Antworten auf diese Fragen und Problemstellungen verstanden werden können. (shrink)

Attention is drawn to the fact that what is alternatively known as Dummett logic, Gödel logic, or Gödel-Dummett logic, was actually introduced by Skolem already in 1913. A related work of 1919 introduces implicative lattices, or Heyting algebras in today's terminology.