Naive realism about operators

A source of much difficulty and confusion in the interpretation of quantum mechanics is a naive realism about operators. By this we refer to various ways of taking too seriously the notion of operator-as-observable, and in particular to the all too casual talk about measuring operators that occurs when the subject is quantum mechanics. Without a specification of what should be meant by measuring a quantum observable, such an expression can have no clear meaning. A definite specification is provided by Bohmian mechanics, a theory that emerges from Schrödinger's equation for a system of particles when we merely insist that particles means particles. Bohmian mechanics clarifies the status and the role of operators as observables in quantum mechanics by providing the operational details absent from standard quantum mechanics. It thereby allows us to readily dismiss all the radical claims traditionally enveloping the transition from the classical to the quantum realm — for example, that we must abandon classical logic or classical probability. The moral is rather simple: Beware naive realism, especially about operators!     

African American Dance - Philosophy,Aesthetics, and ‘Beauty’

This essay considers the recuperation of beauty as a productive critical strategy in discussions of African American dance. I argue that black performance in general, and African American concert dance in particular, seeks to create aesthetic sites that allow black Americans to participate in discourses of recognition and appreciation to include concepts of beauty. In this, I suggest that beauty may indeed produce social change for its attendant audiences. I also propose that interrogating the notion of beauty may allow for social change among audiences that include dance theorists and philosophers. Through a case-study consideration of work by three African American choreographers, Donald Byrd (b. 1949), Ulysses Dove (1947 – 1996), and Abdel Salaam (b. 1949), I ultimately hope to suggest critical possibilities aligning dance performance with particular aesthetic theory relevant to its documentation and interpretation.     

Systems theory and psychotherapy

All systems behave, interact, vary in their level of complexity, and are related in subsystem-suprasystem hierarchical relationships. The behaviour of the whole system is more complex than the sum of its parts. Systems are seen to evolve in complexity along a continuum from nonliving matter, to simple living matter with the ability to reproduce itself, and on to organisms with increasing levels of complexity and consciousness.     

The origins and crisis of Continental philosophy

When contemporary continental philosophy dismisses, with the discourse of post-modernism, the role of origin, teleology, foundation, etc., it is forsaking its own style of thinking and as a consequence is no longer able to discern crises of lived-meaning or to engage in the transformation of historical life. I address this crisis by characterizing continental philosophy as a particular style of thinking, generative thinking. I then examine the meaning and origins of philosophical thinking by drawing, for strategic reasons, on Jacques Derrida's essay Cogito et histoire de la folie. For not only has the very question of origins come under fire through various post-modern readings of Derrida, but Derrida's own point of critique concerning Western Metaphysics depends upon a specific understanding of origin that I call origin-originating. In the final section of this paper. I interpret the crisis within continental philosophy as a forgetting the point of origin-originating within the generative structure of experience.     

Retour(s) sur “Mir Rose” ou comment analyser et représenter le texte argumentatif (écrit)?

The main purpose of this paper is to account for the varying analysis and formalisations of a same advertisement text, Mir Rose, by Jean Michel Adam. First, we draw the methodological frame of this psycholinguistic approach of composing and understanding-memorizing texts. We refer to the notions of prototypical textual schema, semantic macrostructure and superstructure. Then we point out the differences between argumentative text and argumentative discourse. Last, we try to explain why it has been possible for Adam to analyse and formalise the same text first as a narrative one and a few years later as an argumentative one. We suggest that his narrative approach is not specific and textual narrative means here temporal-causative sequence or problem solving, i.e., deeper and more general psychological devices than those involved in processing narrative text per se. From Toulmin and van Dijk approaches of argumentation, we propose our own analysis and formalisation of Mir Rose, the psychological validity or plausibility of which should be tested in experimental tasks of reading-memorising.

     

Understanding the Self in Self-Transcendence

Based on the work of William James and Bernard Lonergan, this article proposes an understanding of the self as a duplex, dialectical, first-person reality constituted by consciousness and experienced as I and me.     

Maturing Religious Experience and the Postmodern Self

Past attempts to define mature religion have been rooted in a modernist theological anthropology which assumes an atomistic, universal, rational, and stable human self. Yet postmodernists resist universal statements about humanity and understand the self as an ever-changing social construct. This paper suggests a theological anthropology more adequate to the postmodern world, examines maturing religious experience from this perspective, and considers ways pastoral care/counseling can nurture healthy, integrative, and maturing Christian faith in postmodern culture.     

Six-year-old children's understanding of sentences adjoined with time adverbs

The adjoining of clauses with temporal links is the basis for many sentences that convey sequence of events. The present study attempts to delineate 6-year-old children's (N=30) understanding of the meaning sequences imparted by sentences adjoined with after, before, and until. Their performance of the meaning sequence for each of 24 carefully constructed sentences is compared to an adult model. Analysis of the results (using a Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Signed Rank Test) indicated that: (1)Ss understood sentences adjoined with after according to an adult model more frequently than before adjoined sentences (P<0.01); (b) Until adjoined sentences with a negative marker in the main clause were understood according to an adult model more often than until adjoined sentences with no such negative element, but the difference was not significant at a=0.01; (3)Ss understood before adjoined sentences according to an adult model more often than until adjoined sentences, but the difference was not significant at a=0.01. In general, the results indicated that 6-year-olds have not yet completed development of an adult grammar with respect to adjoining clauses with temporal links, after, before, and until.     

The concept of a proposition in classical and quantum physics

A proposition is associated in classical mechanics with a subset of phase space, in quantum logic with a projection in Hilbert space, and in both cases with a 2-valued observable or test. A theoretical statement typically assigns a probability to such a pure test. However, since a pure test is an idealization not realizable experimentally, it is necessary — to give such a statement a practical meaning — to describe how it can be approximated by feasible tests. This gives rise to a search for a formal representation of feasible tests, which leads via mixed tests (weighted means of pure tests) to vague tests (convex sets of mixed tests). A model is described in which the latter form a continuous lattice; the pure and mixed tests are the maximal elements and the feasible tests form a basis. Each type of test has its own logic; this is illustrated by the passage from mixed tests to pure tests, which corresponds to the transition from L to classical logic.This work was supported by a grant from the National Research Council of Canada.     

"Solar love": Nietzsche,Merleau-Ponty and the fortunes of perception

Both Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty repudiate the mirror view of perception and embrace what Nietzsche refers to as solar love or creative perception. I argue that Merleau-Ponty thinks of this type of perception primarily in terms of convergence and Nietzsche in terms of divergence. I then show how, contrary to their own emphases, Merleau-Ponty's notion of flesh and Nietzsche's idea of chaos suggest that convergence and divergence are abstractions from an ontologically prior realm of hybrid perceptions. In this realm, each perception is shot through with the others, simultaneously inside and outside one another. The creative tension among these perceptions continually produces new perspectives or voices, that is, a realm whose very being is metamorphosis. Moreover, this realm of hybrid perceptions suggests a political principle that might prove attractive for communities in an age of diversity and cultural hybridity.     

In Defense of Indexicalism:Comments on Davis

Wayne Davis (2004) argues against the thesis that knowledge claims are indexical, and he presents an alternative account of the contextual variability of our use of S knows p. In this commentary I focus on the following three points. First, I want to supplement Daviss considerations about the inability of indexicalism to deal with skeptical paradoxes by considering what the consequence would be if the indexicalists explanation of these paradoxes were satisfactory. Second, I am going to take a brief look at Daviss alternative theory. Third, in the main part of my commentary I try to show that indexicalism may be true in spite of the linguistic evidence Davis presents against it.     

A New Representation Theorem for Contranegative Deontic Logic

The logic of an ought operator O is contranegative with respect to an underlying preference relation if it satisfies the property Op & (¬p)(¬q) Oq. Here the condition that is interpolative ((p (pq) q) (q (pq) p)) is shown to be necessary and sufficient for all -contranegative preference relations to satisfy the plausible deontic postulates agglomeration (Op & OqO(p&q)) and disjunctive division (O(p&q) Op Oq).     

Algebraic aspects of deduction theorems

The first known statements of the deduction theorems for the first-order predicate calculus and the classical sentential logic are due to Herbrand [8] and Tarski [14], respectively. The present paper contains an analysis of closure spaces associated with those sentential logics which admit various deduction theorems. For purely algebraic reasons it is convenient to view deduction theorems in a more general form: given a sentential logic C (identified with a structural consequence operation) in a sentential language I, a quite arbitrary set P of formulas of I built up with at most two distinct sentential variables p and q is called a uniform deduction theorem scheme for C if it satisfies the following condition: for every set X of formulas of I and for any formulas and , C(X{{a}}) iff P(, ) AC(X). [P(, ) denotes the set of formulas which result by the simultaneous substitution of for p and for q in all formulas in P]. The above definition encompasses many particular formulations of theorems considered in the literature to be deduction theorems. Theorem 1.3 gives necessary and sufficient conditions for a logic to have a uniform deduction theorem scheme. Then, given a sentential logic C with a uniform deduction theorem scheme, the lattices of deductive filters on the algebras A similar to the language of C are investigated. It is shown that the join-semilattice of finitely generated (= compact) deductive filters on each algebra A is dually Brouwerian.A part of this paper was presented in abstracted form in Bulletin of the Section of Logic, Vol. 12, No. 3 (1983), pp. 111–116, and in The Journal of Symbolic Logic.     

An effective fixed-point theorem in intuitionistic diagonalizable algebras

Summary Within the technical frame supplied by the algebraic variety of diagonalizable algebras, defined by R. Magari in [2], we prove the following:LetT be any first-order theory with a predicate Pr satisfying the canonical derivability conditions, including Löb's property. Then any formula inT built up from the propositional variables q, p₁, ..., p_n, using logical connectives and the predicate Pr, has the same fixed-points relative to q (that is, formulas (p₁ ..., p_n) for which for all p₁, ..., p_n T((p₁, ..., p_n), p₁, ..., p_n) (p₁, ..., p_n)) of a formula ^* of the same kind, obtained from in an effective way.Moreover, such ^* is provably equivalent to the formula obtained from substituting with ^* itself all the occurrences of q which are under Pr. In the particular case where q is always under Pr in , ^* is the unique (up to provable equivalence) fixedpoint of .Since this result is proved only assumingPr to be canonical, it can be deduced that Löb's property is, in a sense, equivalent to Gödel's diagonalization lemma.All the results are proved more generally in the intuitionistic case.The algebraization of the theories which express Theor, IXAllatum est die 19 Decembris 1975     

Are there human rights?

Conclusion In conclusion, I have tried to show that if there are any rights at all, legal, moral and political, there are at least the sorts of human rights cited in the Universal Declaration, rights which extend beyond the slender base provided by Hart's right to be free and which include the right to an adequate human life for everyone, rights shared by all, rights that, as rights, imply correlative duties. Even though the duties thus implied are admittedly imperfect, as rights, they confer upon right-holders, the authority to obligate others.I have argued for the most part against regarding any rights, even some human, rights (interchangable here with manifesto rights, welfare rights, rights of recipience, social and economic rights, programme rights, Fawcett calls them, positive in rem rights) as claims to rights or proposals for adoption as rights. I have argued that to have a right of any kind, including especially a human right, one shared by and held equally by all human beings,while not unconditional or unalterable, is fundamentally important, - to return once again to Feinberg's definition at the opening of this paper. A human right is fundamentally important, however, only if it, too, implies an obligation on the part of other people, one in which other people are obligated to use their power and resources to make things happen. To havea right is to be in a position to impose corresponding obligations on others. As Kant pointed out, a right of any kind gives a right holder a title to compel.

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Is “some-other-time” sometimes better than “sometime” for proving partial correctness of programs?

The main result of this paper belongs to the field of the comparative study of program verification methods as well as to the field called nonstandard logics of programs. We compare the program verifying powers of various well-known temporal logics of programs, one of which is the Intermittent Assertions Method, denoted as Bur. Bur is based on one of the simplest modal logics called S5 or sometime-logic. We will see that the minor change in this background modal logic increases the program verifying power of Bur. The change can be described either technically as replacing the reflexive version of S5 with an irreflexive version, or intuitively as using the modality some-other-time instead of sometime. Some insights into the nature of computational induction and its variants are also obtained.This project was supported by the Hungarian National Foundation for Scientific Research, Grant No. 1810.     

Eine informationstheoretische Methode zur Bestimmung der ästhetischen Wirkung von Flächenmustern

Zusammenfassung In dieser Arbeit entwickeln wir eine Form der informationsanalytischen Charakterisierung von Flächenmustern, welche es ermöglicht, schön wirkende von häßlich wirkenden Mustern zu trennen. Wir betrachten ein Flächenmuster als eine Menge von Rasterpunkten. Jeder Rasterpunkt kann hinsichtlich der drei Variablen horizontale Lage, vertikale Lage und Farbton kategorisiert werden. Wir charakterisieren durch eine multivariate Informationsanalyse die statistischen Beziehungen zwischen den genannten Variablen mit zwei Kennwerten. Diese Kennwerte sind die Interaktion zwischen den drei Variablen und ein Balancekoeffizient für die Variablen horizontale und vertikale Lage. Hinsichtlich dieser beiden Kennwerte unterscheiden sich Muster, die von Vpn als schön empfunden werden von solchen, die als häßlich empfunden werden. Schöne Muster haben signifikant höhere Interaktionen und signifikant niedrigere Balancekoeffizienten als häßliche. Hinsichtlich beider Parameter streuen schöne Muster signifikant weniger als häßliche.

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An information analytic method to estimate the esthetical effect of pictures

Summary In this paper we show, that multivariate information analysis can be used to separate pictures regarded as nice from pictures regarded as ugly. A picture may be considered as a set of pictureelements. Each pictureelement can be classified with regard to three variables, namely vertical position, horizontal position and colour tone. We characterize the statistical relations between these variables by multivariate information analysis which results in two parameters. These parameters are the interaction between the variables and a balance coefficient for the variables vertical- und horizontal-position. In respect of these parameters pictures, which are regarded as nice by human subjects are separable from ugly pictures. Nice pictures show significantly higher interactions and lower balance coefficients than ugly ones. The dispersion of interactions and balance coefficients is lower at nice pictures.

     

How long is “now”? Phenomenology and the specious present

The duration of now is shown to be important not only for an understanding of how conscious beings sense duration, but also for the validity of the phenomenological enterprise as Husserl conceived it. If now is too short, experiences can not be described before they become memories, which can be considered to be transcendent rather than immanent phenomena and therefore inadmissible as phenomenological data. Evidence concerning (a) the objective duration of sensations in various sensory modalities, (b) the time necessary for sensations to enter consciousness and (c) the variability in the subjective sense of time's passing under different conditions is used to conclude that the duration of now can actually vary under normal conditions from about 10 ms to several seconds and in extreme cases up to several hours. Thus the immanent moment can be long enough to encompass a report of the contents of consciousness, making phenomenology a viable project. A further speculation from the evidence described is that consciousness takes discrete samples of the external world, at a rate inversely proportional to the duration of the now moment.     

An extension of the Łukasiewicz logic to the modal logic of quantum mechanics

An attempt is made to include the axioms of Mackey for probabilities of experiments in quantum mechanics into the calculus _x0 of ukasiewicz. The obtained calculusQ contains an additional modal signQ and four modal rules of inference. The propositionQx is read x is confirmed. The most specific rule of inference may be read: for comparable observations implication is equivalent to confirmation of material implication.The semantic truth ofQ is established by the interpretation with the help of physical objects obeying to the rules of quantum mechanics. The embedding of the usual quantum propositional logic inQ is accomplished.Allatum est die 9 Junii 1976     

Inferential Intensionality

The paper is a study of properties of quasi-consequence operation which is a key notion of the so-called inferential approach in the theory of sentential calculi established in [5]. The principal motivation behind the quasi-consequence, q-consequence for short, stems from the mathematical practice which treats some auxiliary assumptions as mere hypotheses rather than axioms and their further occurrence in place of conclusions may be justified or not. The main semantic feature of the q-consequence reflecting the idea is that its rules lead from the non-rejected assumptions to the accepted conclusions.First, we focus on the syntactic features of the framework and present the q-consequence as related to the notion of proof. Such a presentation uncovers the reasons for which the adjective inferential is used to characterize the approach and, possibly, the term inference operation replaces q-consequence. It also shows that the inferential approach is a generalisation of the Tarski setting and, therefore, it may potentially absorb several concepts from the theory of sentential calculi, cf. [10]. However, as some concrete applications show, see e.g.[4], the new approach opens perspectives for further exploration.The main part of the paper is devoted to some notions absent, in Tarski approach. We show that for a given q-consequence operation W instead of one W-equivalence established by the properties of W we may consider two congruence relations. For one of them the current name is kept preserved and for the other the term W-equality is adopted. While the two relations coincide for any W which is a consequence operation, for an arbitrary W the inferential equality and the inferential equivalence may differ. Further to this we introduce the concepts of inferential extensionality and intensionality for q-consequence operations and connectives. Some general results obtained in Section 2 sufficiently confirm the importance of these notions. To complete a view, in Section 4 we apply the new intensionality-extensionality distinction to inferential extensions of a version of the ukasiewicz four valued modal logic.