Emeralds are no chameleons — Why “Grue” is not projectible for induction

The model function for induction of Goodmans's composite predicate Grue was examined by analysis. Two subpredicates were found, each containing two further predicates which are mutually exclusive (green and blue, observed before and after t). The rules for the inductive processing of composite predicates were studied with the more familiar predicate blellow (blue and yellow) for violets and primroses. The following rules for induction were violated by processing grue: From two subpredicates only one (blue after t) appears in the conclusion. As a statement about a future and unobserved condition this subpredicate, however, is not projectible for induction whereas the only suitable predicate (green before t) does not show up in the conclusion. In a disjunction a v b where a is true and b false the disjunction is true. When, however, the only true component is dropped, what remains is necessarily false. An analogous mistake may be observed in the processing of grue, where the only true component (green) was dropped in the conclusion. — As a potent criterion for correct inductions a check of the necessity of the conclusions is recommended.The author is indebted to Prof. Curt Christian for valuable suggestions.     

Indeterminiertheit,Iterabilität und Intentionalität

In his recent paper Indeterminacy, empiricism, and the first person John R. Searle tries to refute Willard V. O. Quine's famous indeterminacy of translation thesis by arguing that this thesis is in fact areductio ad absurdum of Quine's own linguistic behaviorism. Searle accuses Quine of being (irrationally) antimentalistic and suggests that the absurdity of Quine's thesis might be avoided if a full-fledged intentionality were tolerated in the debate on meaning. — This anti-Quinean approach in some respects reminds of the improbable debate between Searle and Jacques Derrida ten years ago, when Derrida had split and deferred intentionality by showing that the essential iterability of signs inevitably infects every intentional act with an unremovable non-presence.In this paper it is argued that Searle's attacks on Quine and Derrida have both failed — and that there are structural similarities between these two failures which reveal some interesting parallels between Quine's and Derrida's philosophy.     

Some basic problems in the development of the human sciences in China today

Paper read on November 3, 1988 before the Philosophical Society of Fribourg (Switzerland) — In China we use social sciences to refer to all disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences. The expression is juxtaposed to natural sciences. Since I do not discuss such subjects as economics, education, journalism, and other practical fields, I prefer to use here the term human sciences.     

Language in action

A number of general points behind the story of this paper may be worth setting out separately, now that we have come to the end.There is perhaps one obvious omission to be addressed right away. Although the word information has occurred throughout this paper, it must have struck the reader that we have had nothing to say on what information is. In this respect, our theories may be like those in physics: which do not explain what energy is (a notion which seems quite similar to information in several ways), but only give some basic laws about its behaviour and transmission.     

Where “Sex” Is Born(e): Intersexed Births and the Social Urgency of Heterosexuality

Our beloved genders of the present moment are neither universal nor trans-historical presences in the world. The specific gender order which we employ today is the legacy of a particular cultural and political history, and there is still a great deal at stake in preserving it. As a graduate student I stumbled upon the topic of intersexuality a few years ago and found myself enthralled with its implications. Continuing to present itself inspite of all our scientific knowledge about the supposed immutability of female and male, intersexuality disrupts the gender order. The response to this disruption has been swift and terrible: from the intersexed infants who enter our world everyday are carved (literally and figuratively) supposedly normal boys and girls (mostly girls). The following exposition represents a pre-fieldwork (theoretical) stage in my current research and attempts to demonstrate that medical authorities manage intersex cases as they do in order to stabilize the always precarious institution of heterosexuality.     

Between Science and Nature: Interpreting Lactation Failure in Elizabeth von Arnim's The Pastor's Wife

Interpreting a scene of lactation failure allows us to represent breast-feeding as a contested social practice. This essay reads a novelistic scene of lactation failure in the context of the decline of breast-feeding in the twentieth century. The protagonist's ignorance of the female experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and lactation is an effect of her objectification within the opposition between science and nature. Unnatural as a woman because she is a natural individual, the pastor's wife exemplifies the dilemmas of breast-feeding as a biosocial practice of maternity in a technological society which features the breakdown of traditional female networks in which knowledge about maternity and breast-feeding are circulated.     

The two cultures

Anhand von zwei Unterbereichen der künstlichen Intelligenz — den Expertensystemen und der wissenschaftlichen Entdeckung — wird aufzuzeigen versucht, daß die Beziehung zwischen der formalen und der intuitiven Kultur aus dem Gleichgewicht geraten ist. Dem Bereich der Intuition sollte größere Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet werden.

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This article is based on a presentation given on a symposium The Art of Science, in Amsterdam, Amolf, 27 May 1987. It was organized to celebrate the 65th birthday of Prof. J. o.     

Ethical Reasoning And The Embodied,Socially Situated Subject

My discussion is concerned with how symbolic power constitutively structures our very identities in relation to one another and at the bodily level of lived experience. Although many accounts of the self and of subjectivity as socially situated have difficulties in their explanations of agency, Zaners work suggests a basis upon which the selfs independence from others can be understood. His phenomenology of embodied subjectivity explains how the emerging self presupposes presence with others. At the same time, however, co-presence also reveals the selfs distinct perspective and capacity for circumstantial possibilizing, that is to say, actualizing another possible than the actual. My aim is to examine critically the intersections between Zaners phenomenology and other theoretical accounts of the socially situated self. I also show how Zaners work contributes to these discussions a way of understanding the possibility of agency that is rooted in embodied experience.     

Prinzipielle Problemstellungen der Forschungspolitik

Research consists of choosing a problem, proposing and testing problem solutions, and presenting the results. In its central moment — conjectures and testing — science must be autonomous in order to be successful. Securing this autonomy by organizational means is one of the tasks of research policy. Research needs to justify itself only when the researcher makes a claim to the resources of others. To discuss problems of justification of governmental support, it is imperative to distinguish between basic and applied research. In basic research the problem choice is guided only by considerations of scientific interest, while in applied research the problems emanate from extra-scientific concerns since applied research is by definition a means for tackling concrete practical problems. Deciding on external criteria (e.g. deciding whether to support more energy research or more cancer research) is a genuine political problem rather than a problem of research policy. Thus applied research can be justified by referring to the benefit the expected results will yield, but basic research requires a completely different justification. One such justification is the argument that applied research requires a certain overhead in basic research. Securing an adequate balance between funding basic and applied research within the problem area concerned is another task of research policy. (E.g. in the area of cancer whether to support more molecular biology research or more clinical research.) When the overhead argument is not applicable, there still remain several possible justifications for basic research. These are examined in the paper. When setting priorities for basic research within a certain discipline, one apparently must turn to the scientific community itself. It may well be that the researches, who constitute the only expertise available for this task, have to rely on tacit knowledge. If so, this remains afaute de mieux procedure since articulated criteria would be preferable to intuitive procedures. The purpose of methodological reflection on research policy making is to supply intellectual instruments for making the discussion about substantive problems more rational. The substantive problems can be tackled only through the close cooperation of research policy makers and researchers. Thus methodology should not limit the degrees of freedom of either but increase them.     

Positive modal logic

We give a set of postulates for the minimal normal modal logicK ₊ without negation or any kind of implication. The connectives are simply , , , . The postulates (and theorems) are all deducibility statements . The only postulates that might not be obvious are

Twardowski's theory of modification againts the background of traditional logic

Paper presented at the conference The Social and Philosophical Thought in Galicia and Its Austro-Hungarian Context, Lvov, December 5–7, 1991.     

Is medicine hermeneutics all the way down?

Several recent publications have suggested that hermeneutics, the method of literary criticism, might prove to be useful in medicine. In this essay I consider this thesis with particular attention to the claim that medicine is hermeneutics all the way down. After examining an anti-positivist critique of positivist medicine and arguing that hermeneutic interpretation involves a more radical critique of modern medicine, I examine the supposed consequences of hermeneutical universalism:relativism, skepticism andantirealism which further evaluation reveals to be only potential consequences of hermeneutics. A brief discussion ofphronesis and of the possible texts of medicine concludes the article.     

Ahad Ha-'Am — in the eye of the storm

This essay is based on a larger work, The Emergence of the Jewish State, which I am co-authoring with Ben Halpern.     

Imageries

Wyobrazenia i pojcia [Imageries and concepts] in [Twardowski 1965], 114–197.     

Free construction of time from events

Conclusions and conjectures Some may be of the opinion that one event can begin before another only by virtue of the existence of some event (a witness) which wholly precedes the other and does not wholly precede the one (and similarly for ends before and does not abut). Those would prefer ₀ to as a model for observers' apprehensions of events. Since G is a functor from to ₀, the current construction (restricted to ₀) remains applicable.This work supports a claim that the psychologically fundamental temporal relationships are wholly precedes, begins before, ends before and abuts. But only in a very weak sense. Any other set of relationships which is interdefinable with this one, using only quantifier-free formulas in the definitions, could be used to define a category which is indistinguishable from (because the same functions preserve and reflect the new relationships). This work equally supports the claim that those relationships are the psychologically fundamental ones, or the claim that it is just wholly precedes which is fundamental, and that we perceive begins before just by virtue of witnesses. But it refutes the claim that only wholly precedes is fundamental, and that we understand begins before only because we understand time as a linear ordering.     

Medical Intellectuals: Resisting Medical Orientalism

In this paper, we propose analogies between medical discourse and Edward Said's Orientalism. Medical discourse, like Orientalism, tends to favor institutional interests and can be similarly dehumanizing in its reductionism, textual representations, and construction of its subjects. To resist Orientalism, Said recommends that critics—intellectuals—adopt the perspective of exile. We apply Said's paradigm of intellectual-as-exile to better understand the work of key physician-authors who cross personal and professional boundaries, who engage with patients in mutually therapeutic relationships, and who take on the public responsibility of representation and advocacy. We call these physician-authors medical intellectuals and encourage others to follow in their path.     

Foucault on the Case: The Pastoral and Juridical Foundation of Medical Power

This paper employs Foucaults concept of governmentality to examine critically the efforts by medical humanists to reform the medical case. I argue that these reform efforts contribute to the individualizing dimensions of medical power through the development of a pastoral technique that medicine has taken over from religious authority. Clinical experiences at this NEH Institute also revealed a juridical dimension of the medical case that treats a patients statements as suspect and in need of corroboration by evidence provided by the patients body. The combination of these pastoral and juridical dimensions of the case contributes to the normalizing power of modern medicine, and medical humanists need to be aware of their own contribution to this form of power as they reform the case.