Method, metaphysics, metaphor: three words with a common prefix, which, for philosophy, bear an ancient pedigree. Classically, the last word, as an object of philosophical reflection, has mostly been excluded from bearing any philosophical significance; we will see how this can no longer be the case today, precisely for phenomenology. If the “method” of phenomenology is wholly determined by its goal, namely, "pure" description, and if description is paradoxically only actualized in a figurative mode through guiding metaphors, then we (...) are compelled to ask after the meaning of such a situation for metaphysics, understood as the "redundance" or "affirmation" of existence in its declaration of itself as truth— precisely, I suggest, the work done by metaphor in its strange interlacing of being and human being in the event of language. (shrink)

Method, metaphysics, metaphor: three words with a common prefix, which, for philosophy, bear an ancient pedigree. Classically, the last word, as an object of philosophical reflection, has mostly been excluded from bearing any philosophical significance; we will see how this can no longer be the case today, precisely for phenomenology. If the “method” of phenomenology is wholly determined by its goal, namely, "pure" description, and if description is paradoxically only actualized in a figurative mode through guiding metaphors, then we (...) are compelled to ask after the meaning of such a situation for metaphysics, understood as the "redundance" or "affirmation" of existence in its declaration of itself as truth— precisely, I suggest, the work done by metaphor in its strange interlacing of being and human being in the event of language. (shrink)

It is commonly held that p is a reason for A to ϕ only if p explains why A ought to ϕ. I argue that this view must be rejected because there are reasons for A to ϕ that would be redundant in any ex...

I provide a fairly systematic analysis of when quantities that are variant under a dynamical symmetry transformation should be regarded as unobservable, or redundant, or unreal; of when models related by a dynamical symmetry transformation represent the same state of affairs; and of when mathematical structure that is variant under a dynamical symmetry transformation should be regarded as surplus. In most of these cases the answer is `it depends': depends, that is, on the details of the symmetry in question. (...) A central feature of the analysis is that in order to draw any of these conclusions for a dynamical symmetry it needs to be understood in terms of its possible extensions to other physical systems, in particular to measurement devices. (shrink)

I propose an amendment of Lewis's counterfactual analysis of causation, designed to overcome some difficulties concerning redundant causation.

Nested sequent systems for modal logics are a relatively recent development, within the general area known as deep reasoning. The idea of deep reasoning is to create systems within which one operates at lower levels in formulas than just those involving the main connective or operator. Prefixed tableaus go back to 1972, and are modal tableau systems with extra machinery to represent accessibility in a purely syntactic way. We show that modal nested sequents and prefixed modal tableaus are notational variants (...) of each other, roughly in the same way that tableaus and Gentzen sequent calculi are notational variants. This immediately gives rise to new modal nested sequent systems which may be of independent interest. We discuss some of these, including those for some justification logics that include standard modal operators. (shrink)

Biological systems exhibit complexity at all levels of organization. It has recently been argued by Michael Behe that at the biochemical level a type of complexity exists--irreducible complexity--that cannot possibly have arisen as the result of natural, evolutionary processes and must instead be the product of (supernatural) intelligent design. Recent work on self-organizing chemical reactions calls into question Behe's analysis of the origins of biochemical complexity. His central interpretative metaphor for biochemical complexity, that of the well-designed mousetrap that ceases to (...) function if critical parts are absent, is undermined by the observation that typical biochemical systems exhibit considerable redundancy and overlap of function. Real biochemical systems, we argue, manifest redundant complexity--a characteristic result of evolutionary processes. (shrink)

In Elder-Vass’s response to my it is maintained: that a social object is not identical with but is merely composed of its suitably interrelated parts; that a social object is necessarily indistinguishable in terms of its causal capacities from its interrelated parts; and that ontological individualism lacks an adequate ontological justification. In this reply, I argue that in view of the so-called redescription principle defended by Elder-Vass ought to be reformulated and renamed; that the conjunction of and renders social objects (...) causally redundant; and that ontological individualism can be coherently formulated and theoretically justified within Elder-Vass’s own metaphysics of objects with causal powers. (shrink)

The goal is to show that various exotic prefix classes can be "tamed by large cardinals". I.e., every statement in the class is either provable or refutable using presently formulated large cardinals. Some of these exotic prefix classes consist entirely of explicitly P01 sentences.

Abstract Since their inception, distributional models of semantics have been criticized as inadequate cognitive theories of human semantic learning and representation. A principal challenge is that the representations derived by distributional models are purely symbolic and are not grounded in perception and action; this challenge has led many to favor feature-based models of semantic representation. We argue that the amount of perceptual and other semantic information that can be learned from purely distributional statistics has been underappreciated. We compare the representations (...) of three feature-based and nine distributional models using a semantic clustering task. Several distributional models demonstrated semantic clustering comparable with clustering-based on feature-based representations. Furthermore, when trained on child-directed speech, the same distributional models perform as well as sensorimotor-based feature representations of children’s lexical semantic knowledge. These results suggest that, to a large extent, information relevant for extracting semantic categories is redundantly coded in perceptual and linguistic experience. Detailed analyses of the semantic clusters of the feature-based and distributional models also reveal that the models make use of complementary cues to semantic organization from the two data streams. Rather than conceptualizing feature-based and distributional models as competing theories, we argue that future focus should be on understanding the cognitive mechanisms humans use to integrate the two sources. (shrink)

Against the background of studies on redundancy in law that completely omit the visual element in law and of studies on traffic signs that are laconic about their redundancies, the present study proposes more focused investigation into the redundancies of traffic signs. After presentation of the broader context of existing studies on traffic signs and on redundancy in law, and following a discussion of the direct inspiration for embarking upon research into this topic, the article moves to present and discuss (...) six proposed types of redundancies of signs. Utilizing Franciszek Studnicki’s distinction between sign-types and sign-realizations, and given that traffic signs exist in various complicated relationships with each other, with written formulations in legal texts, and with the environments in which they are placed, the study comments on six types of redundancy: sign-type–basic task of road traffic law; of sign-type’s elements; sign-type–sign-type; sign-type–legal text; sign-realization–sign-realization; and sign-realization–environment. Analysis of each type is supported through examples, various subdivisions, and additional lines of inquiry. The study has value for both strictly theoretical and more practical enterprises related both to traffic signs themselves and to the wider realm of visualization of norms. (shrink)

In Elder-Vass’s response to my critical discussion of his social ontology, it is maintained (1) that a social object is not identical with but is merely composed of its suitably interrelated parts, (2) that a social object is necessarily indistinguishable in terms of its causal capacities from its interrelated parts, and (3) that ontological individualism lacks an adequate ontological justification. In this reply, I argue that in view of (1) the so-called redescription principle defended by Elder-Vass ought to be reformulated (...) and renamed; that the conjunction of (1) and (2) renders social objects causally redundant; and that ontological individualism can be coherently formulated and theoretically justified within Elder-Vass’s own metaphysics of objects with causal powers. (shrink)

Clinical research has at least three problematic features: it tends to be redundant, secretive, and isolated.1 Research with these features not only wastes resources and causes harm, it also fails to meet a basic ethical requirement of research: scientific validity. As bioethicists, we should be asking why, if research with these three features is ethically unjustified, it has been so routinely approved by research ethics committees over the past half century. In what follows, I provide one answer to this (...) question. The first section of this paper outlines empirical evidence for the redundant, secretive, and isolated nature of much contemporary clinical research. Next, I argue that a lack of clarity .. (shrink)

One of the most common ways of morphological marking is affixation, morphemes are classified according to their position. In languages with affixal morphology, suffixes and prefixes are the most common types of affixes. Despite several proposals, it has been impossible to identify solid generalisations about the behaviour of prefixes, in opposition to suffixes. This article argues that the reason is that our traditional definitions of suffix and prefix are based on pre-theoretical, surface criteria that have been given up in (...) other areas of linguistics: defining a morpheme as a prefix does not tell us anything about its grammatical nature, as that label does not take into consideration the structural configuration underlying the morpheme. Once the structural configuration is taken into account, solid generalisations begin to emerge. The article illustrates the advantages of this approach through a study of the interaction between vowel harmony and affixes. (shrink)

A strong and weak version of the redundancy theory of truth are distinguished. An argument put forth by Michael Dummett concludes that the weak version is vitiated by truth-value gaps. The weak version is defended against this argument. The strong version, however, is vitiated by truth-value gaps.

New nursing researchers are faced with a smorgasbord of competing methodologies. Sometimes, they are encouraged to adopt the research paradigms beloved of their senior colleagues. This is a problem if those paradigms are no longer of contemporary methodological relevance. The aim of this paper was to provide clarity about current research paradigms. It seeks to interrogate the continuing viability of positivism as a guiding paradigm for nursing research. It does this by critically analysing the methodological literature. Five major paradigms are (...) addressed: the positivist; the interpretivist/constructivist; the transformative; the realist; and the postpositivist. Acceptance of interpretivist, transformative or realist approaches necessarily entails wholesale rejection of positivism, while acceptance of postpositivism involves its partial rejection. Postpositivism has superseded positivism as the guiding paradigm of the scientific method. The incorporation in randomized controlled trials of postpositivist assumptions indicates that even on the methodological territory that it once claimed as its own, positivism has been rendered redundant as an appropriate paradigm for contemporary nursing research. (shrink)

The theory that structured propositions are complex act-types has been independently articulated by Peter Hanks and Scott Soames. The present paper argues that the role of the act in such theories is supererogatory, for the individuation conditions of the act-based propositions remain wholly at the level of concepts and their formal combination, features which the traditional structured proposition theorist endorses. Thus, it is shown that the traditional problems for structured propositions are only ameliorable on the act conception by appeal to (...) the very resources of the traditional conception. It is also shown that the act theories have no act-based account of quantification and other operator-involving relations. An elementary account of propositions is sketched, after Fodor, which retains the virtues of the traditional structural conception without falling into ’Platonism’. (shrink)

Radically new or unexpected findings in a science demand an openness to new concepts and styles of explanation. The time is more than ripe for asking ourselves what we have learned from the research program of comparative genomics. Where not long ago the human genome was expected to reveal a close association of complexity with the quantitative expansion of the roster of unique genes, more recent findings, especially in relation to comparisons between human and chimp, have raised the bracing possibility (...) that when it comes to complexity, it may be that `less is more'. But `less is more' is not the only observation or inference that follows from the data. The idea of `progressive detachment' will be introduced and set forth as the most perspicuous conceptual resource for unifying and interpreting the overall findings from comparative genomics to date. (shrink)

We investigate the expressive power of fragments of first-order logic that are defined in terms of prefixes. The main result establishes a strict hierarchy among these fragments over the signature consisting of a single binary relation. It implies that for each prefix p, there is a sentence in prenex normal form with prefix p, over a single binary relation, such that for all sentences θ in prenex normal form, if θ is equivalent to , then p can be (...) embedded in the prefix of θ. This strengthens a theorem of Walkoe. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue in favor of the view that some counterpossibles are false. This is done indirectly by showing that accepting the opposite view, i.e., one that ascribes truth to each and every counterpossible, results in the claim that every necessarily false theory has exactly the same consequences. Accordingly, it is shown that taking every counterpossible to be true not only undermines the value of debates over various alternative theories and their consequences, but also puts (...) into question the very possibility of such debates. In order to explicate this thesis, the close bond between counterpossibles and the so-called story prefix is explored. A number of possible responses to this criticism are also presented, and it is argued that none of them address the main problem. (shrink)

Evidence of the pervasiveness of neural reuse in the human brain has forced a revision of the standard conception of modularity in the cognitive sciences. One persistent line of argument against such revision, however, cites the evidence of cognitive dissociations. While this article takes the dissociations seriously, it contends that the traditional modular account is not the best explanation. The key to the puzzle is neural redundancy. The article offers both a philosophical analysis of the relation between reuse and redundancy (...) as well as a plausible solution to the problem of dissociations. (shrink)

According to group-agent realism, treating groups as agents with their own intentional states, irreducible to those of the group members, helps us explain and predict the groups’ behavior. This pap...

In referential communication, Grice's Maxim of Quantity is thought to imply that utterances conveying unnecessary information should incur comprehension difficulties. There is, however, considerable evidence that speakers frequently encode redundant information in their referring expressions, raising the question as to whether such overspecifications hinder listeners’ processing. Evidence from previous work is inconclusive, and mostly comes from offline studies. In this article, we present two event‐related potential (ERP) experiments, investigating the real‐time comprehension of referring expressions that contain redundant adjectives (...) in complex visual contexts. Our findings provide support for both Gricean and bounded‐rational accounts. We argue that these seemingly incompatible results can be reconciled if common ground is taken into account. We propose a bounded‐rational account of overspecification, according to which even redundant words can be beneficial to comprehension to the extent that they facilitate the reduction of listeners’ uncertainty regarding the target referent. (shrink)

The problem of wasteful clinical trials has been debated relentlessly in the medical community. To a significant extent, it is attributed to redundant trials – studies that are carried out to address questions, which can be answered satisfactorily on the basis of existing knowledge and accessible evidence from prior research. This article presents the first evaluation of the potential of the EU Clinical Trials Regulation 536/2014, which entered into force in 2014 but is expected to become applicable at the (...) end of 2021, to prevent such trials. Having reviewed provisions related to the trial authorisation, we propose how certain regulatory requirements for the assessment of trial applications can and should be interpreted and applied by national research ethics committees and other relevant authorities in order to avoid redundant trials and, most importantly, preclude the unnecessary recruitment of trial participants and their unjustified exposure to health risks. (shrink)

This paper discusses the zombie argument and other antiphysicalist arguments presented by David Chalmers in his book, The Conscious Mind . It is argued that both premises of the zombie argument -- the conceivability of zombies and the conceivabilitypossibility thesis --cannot be made simultaneously plausible without additional argument in support of one of the premises. The best strategy for the proponent of the zombie argument is identified as limiting the conceivability-possibility thesis to an idealized notion of conceivability, and arguing separately (...) for the conceivability of zombies in this idealized sense. Out of Chalmers' main arguments, the argument from epistemic asymmetry and the argument from absence of analysis are considered in this role. It is argued that, while either of the arguments would, if sound, be appropriate for the role, the first is subject to decisive counter-arguments. The second, on the other hand, is found not only suitable to support the zombie argument, but also more convincing in that its premises are less controversial. Since the argument from absence of analysis also establishes the falsity of physicalism directly by itself, if sound, it can be seen to render the zombie argument redundant. (shrink)

The results of an empirical study of 150 justifications of verdicts of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal are discussed. CT justifies its decisions mostly on authoritative references to previous decisions and other doxa- type arguments. It thus does not convince the audience of a decision's validity, but rather documents it. Further, the methodology changes depending on features of the case. The results are analysed using a conceptual framework of sociological systems theory. It is shown that CT's justification methodology ignores the redundancy (...) of the legal system, finding redundancy redundant. This is a risky strategy of decision- making, enabling political influence. (shrink)

Some have claimed that identity crowding is a case where we consciously see an object to which we are unable to pay attention. Opponents of this view offer alternative explanations, which emphasise the importance of prior knowledge, amongst other factors. We review new empirical evidence showing that prior knowledge has a profound effect on identity crowding. We argue that this is problematic for the “conscious seeing without attention” view, and supports an opposing view.

Living organisms are exposed to numerous influencing factors. This holds also true for their infrastructures that are processing and transducing information like endocrine networks or nerval channels. Therefore, the ability to compensate for noise is crucial for survival. An efficient mechanism to neutralise disturbances is instantiated in form of parallel complementary communication channels exerting antagonistic effects at their common receivers. Different signal processing types share the ability to suppress noise, to widen the system’s regulation capacity, and to provide for variable (...) gains while leaving the transferred signal to a large extent unchanged. (shrink)

Among the epistemological ideas commonly associated with the Descartes of the Meditations, at any rate, is a knowledge-infallibilism. Such an idea was seemingly a vital element in Descartes’s search for truth within that investigative setting: only a true belief gained infallibly could be knowledge, as the Meditations conceived of this. Contemporary epistemologists are less likely than Descartes was to advocate our ever seeking knowledge-infallibility, if only because most are doubtful as to its ever being available. Still, they would agree—in a (...) seemingly Cartesian spirit—that if infallible knowledge was available then it would be a stronger link to truth than fallible knowledge ever manages to be. But this paper argues that infallible knowledge lacks that supposed advantage over fallible knowledge. Indeed, we will see why we should move even further away from the epistemological model at the heart of the Meditations: we should adopt knowledge-minimalism, by conceiving of a belief’s being true as always sufficient for its being knowledge—this, for any belief. (shrink)

In his text, `Information strategies', written at the cusp of the emergence of digital photography in 1985, German artist and photography critic Andreas Müller-Pohle predicted that soon `it will be possible to generate and regenerate literally every conceivable - or inconceivable - picture through a computer terminal'. This realization coincided with Müller-Pohle's critique of conventional photography, which he dubbed `photographism' drawing on the philosopher Vilém Flusser's work. For Flusser, photographers are functionaries of an apparatus based on automation, programmed to produce (...) of pictures that correspond to certain general conventions and reconstructing the world as technical information. According to Flusser, the bulk of photography is `redundant', exhausting itself stylistically and enslaved to apparatuses and programs. This paper revisits the ideas of Flusser and Müller-Pohle in light of developments in digital photography that throw new light on the idea of image saturation and redundant photography. In particular, I address cultures of online photo sharing in light of the actions enabled by the metadata contained within common digital file formats. I propose that the very excess of digital photographic images coincides with the reinvention of the embattled authorial image into an evolving collaboration between the photographer and the database. (shrink)

The technosocial formula is a key concept in social cognition. It means that society needs a larger amount of life resources than people can produce. The main social goal means relationship along with technology is a provision of material production. Man is redundant to the extent to which his appearance goes beyond the natural balance. Production growth increases the amount of excess consumption and population, and at the same time the scarcity of natural resources. The volume of world energy (...) consumption is increasing, while hydrocarbon energy sources are exhaustible. It is necessary to change the technology of energy-oriented use of oil. The main consequence of the reorientation to the use of biological resources will be the restructuring of the social world. (shrink)