Bemerkungen zur Interpretation,Bestätigung und Progressivität der frühen Matrizenmechanik

Remarks on Interpretation, Confirmation and Progressiveness of Early Matrix Mechanics. Our note discusses a case study in view of questions of theory-choice. We examine the extent to which the first complete, consistent exposition of matrix mechanics in 1925 can be claimed to be reasonably confirmed, well interpreted and fruitful. Various strategies, by means of deductions and otherwise, by Born, Jordan and Heisenberg to establish these claims are critically assessed. It is shown that the outcome of the Bothe-Geiger experiment does not represent a direct confirmation of the theory. Finally we pose the question of progressiveness and argue for a low over-all problem-solving effectiveness.     

The observing subject and psychophysiological research: An epistemological discourse

Realizing that scientific knowledge was not based on a simple disclosure of reality, but was rather invented and developed in accordance with our own conceptions and prejudices, it should no longer be possible to consider matters as if they existed independently of us out there.Taking as examples the notions of memory and information we try to elucidate the relevance this perspective has with respect to neuro- and psychophysiological research.     

Aids,myth, and ethics

The present paper is a commentary on an article by Larry Churchill [1]. Churchill has argued that the negative attitudes and adverse behavior we commonly encounter in connection with (suspected) AIDS patients may be understood in terms of a dualistic myth inspiring a ritual avoidance of dirt, of dirt as something that does not belong to a clean world order. The deep-seated mythical character of attitudes and behavior here makes them less accessible to the kind of rational argument commonly employed in ethics. Churchill also proposes a remedy for the (morally outrageous) dualistic mythical-ritual behavior he has focused — a remedy that may be overly intellectualistic.Three further comments are made: on the metaphorical meaning of myth, on a reductionist tendency in Churchill's deep-looking project, and on an ethically crucial ambiguity in the meaning of the other person's otherness. These (mildly critical) comments do not, however, detract from a positive overall evaluation of Churchill's basic idea that we will understand more about adverse attitudes and behavior in connection with AIDS if we think in terms of myth, ritual, dirt, and cleanliness.     

Kripke completeness of some intermediate predicate logics with the axiom of constant domain and a variant of canonical formulas

For each intermediate propositional logicJ, J _* denotes the least predicate extension ofJ. By the method of canonical models, the strongly Kripke completeness ofJ _*+D(=x(p(x)q)xp(x)q) is shown in some cases including:

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

Clinical interpretation: The hermeneutics of medicine

I argue that clinical medicine can best be understood not as a purified science but as a hermeneutical enterprise: that is, as involved with the interpretation of texts. The literary critic reading a novel, the judge asked to apply a law, must arrive at a coherent reading of their respective texts. Similarly, the physician interprets the text of the ill person: clinical signs and symptoms are read to ferret out their meaning, the underlying disease. However, I suggest that the hermeneutics of medicine is rendered uniquely complex by its wide variety of textual forms. I discuss four in turn: the experiential text of illness as lived out by the patient; the narrative text constituted during history-taking; the physical text of the patient's body as objectively examined; the instrumental text constructed by diagnostic technologies. I further suggest that certain flaws in modern medicine arise from its refusal of a hermeneutic self-understanding. In seeking to escape all interpretive subjectivity, medicine has threatened to expunge its primary subject — the living, experiencing patient.     

On the concept of language in some recent theories of meaning

The work on this paper was done in the research project V ra begrepp om spr k supported byHumanistisk-samhälls-vetenskapliga forskningsr det. I am indebted to Per Martin-Löf, Hans Ruin, Pär Segerdahl, and Sven Öhman for valuable comments on a previous version of this paper. Thanks to the comments of the anonymous referee I was able to improve some formulations in the paper.     

On a problem of P(α, δ, π) concerning generalized Alexandroff s cube

Universality of generalized Alexandroff's cube plays essential role in theory of absolute retracts for the category of , -closure spaces. Alexandroff's cube. is an , -closure space generated by the family of all complete filters. in a lattice of all subsets of a set of power .Condition P(, , ) says that is a closure space of all , -filters in the lattice ( ), .Assuming that P (, , ) holds, in the paper [2], there are given sufficient conditions saying when an , -closure space is an absolute retract for the category of , -closure spaces (see Theorems 2.1 and 3.4 in [2]).It seems that, under assumption that P (, , ) holds, it will be possible to givean uniform characterization of absolute retracts for the category of , -closure-spaces.Except Lemma 3.1 from [1], there is no information when the condition P (, , ) holds or when it does not hold.The main result of this paper says, that there are examples of cardinal numbers, , , such that P (, , ) is not satisfied.Namely it is proved, using elementary properties of Lebesgue measure on the real line, that the condition P (, ₁, 2 ) is not satisfied.Moreover it is shown that fulfillment of the condition is essential assumption in, Theorems 2.1 and 3.4 from [1] i.e. it cannot be eliminated.     

Sprachspiel vs. vollständige Sprache

The article formulates a criticism of Wittgenstein's later philosophy which, in its substance, I would like to think, is fairly the same as the (hermeneutic) criticism issued by Apel and Habermas in the sixties. Contrary to these philosophers, however, I try to make the point by focusing on the distinction between language game and language, respectively between intralanguage relations of family resemblance (between language games) and interlanguage translation relations. The notion of a complete language is introduced — completeness of a language being, roughly, its possibility in principle of being translated into any (other) language — and the criticism of Wittgenstein is formulated as the allegation that he does not, or will not, acknowledge such a concept of completeness.So far the contents of the first part of the article. The rest of it assembles some hints, remarks and reminders which bear upon the question of the completeness of a language. These considerations include comments on the conditions of translatability, on the performative (agent's) knowledge or intention-in-action of the acting person, on Habermas' concept of communicative competence and on the notion of a responsible subject of action. It is alleged that to speak of translation and reporting an event as language games is misleading.     

Ein Argumentationsspiel um das Münchhausen-Trilemma

By means of a strategic game the present paper tries to answer the question of whether the so-called trilemma of Münchhausen (H. Albert)as it stands is able to perform the twofold task of both refuting the methodology of foundationalismand of getting us thereby nearer to the methodology of critical rationalism.The formal reconstruction of the argument provides us with four possible versions which however can only be called trilemmas in a wider sense of this term. Moreover, a test shows three of them to be invalid. The subsequent discussion of the only valid one makes clear that in order to save the truth of its premisses as far as possible the latter have to be modified in a way that brings us still farther away from the original trilemma of Münchhausen. But even then it may be doubted whether the remains of the argument can fulfil the above-mentioned twofold task.     

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.     

Meta-diagnosis: Towards a hermeneutical perspective in medicine with an emphasis on alcoholism

This essay argues that making a diagnosis in medicine is essentially a hermeneutic enterprise, one in which interpretation skills play a major part in understanding a disease. The clinical encounter is an event comprised of two voices; one is the voice of science which is grounded in empiricism, the other is that of human experience, which is grounded in story-telling and the interpretation of those stories.Using two voices, one from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-III-Revised, which describes alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence, and the other, that of Claire, a character in Edward Albee's play, A Delicate Balance, who is conversing with her brother-in-law, Tobias, I apply principles from Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics to the clinical diagnostic process. The essay will demonstrate that we overlook an enormous amount of information about alcoholism by an overreliance on objective data and that our hope for understanding alcoholics is in listening to their voices, and sharing the interpretation of their experiences with them.     

Analytic/synthetic and semantic theory

A somewhat simplified version of Jerrold J. Katz's theory of the analytic/synthetic distinction for natural languages is presented. Katz's account is criticized on the following grounds. (1) the antonymy operator is not well defined; it leaves certain sentences without readings. (2) The account of negation is defective; it has the consequence that certain nonsynonymous sentences are marked as synonymous. (3) The account of entailment is defective; it has the consequence that analytic sentences entail synthetic ones. (4) Katz's account of indeterminable sentences is criticized; it has the consequence that certain logical truths are not marked as analytic. (5) Katz's semantics provides no account of truth, so that he is unable to show that analytic sentences are true and that indeterminable sentences are not.     

A semantical investigation into Leśniewski's axiom of his ontology

A structure A for the language L, which is the first-order language (without equality) whose only nonlogical symbol is the binary predicate symbol , is called a quasi -struoture iff (a) the universe A of A consists of sets and (b) a b is true in A ([p) a = {p } & p b] for every a and b in A, where a(b) is the name of a (b). A quasi -structure A is called an -structure iff (c) {p } A whenever p a A. Then a closed formula in L is derivable from Leniewski's axiom x, y[x y u (u x) u; v(u, v x u v) u(u x u y)] (from the axiom x, y(x y x x) x, y, z(x y z y x z)) iff is true in every -structure (in every quasi -structure).     

Making peace in gestational conflicts

Mary Anne Warren's claim that there is room for only one person with full and equal rights inside a single human skin ([1], p. 63) calls attention to the vast range of moral conflict engendered by assigning full basic moral rights to fetuses. Thereby, it serves as a goad to thinking about conflicts between pregnant women and their fetuses in a way that emphasizes relationships rather than rights. I sketch out what a care orientation might suggest about resolving gestational conflicts. I also argue that the care orientation, with its commitment to the significance of the partial and the particular, cannot be absorbed within standard, impartialist moral theory.     

What is non-fregean in the semantics of Wittgenstein'sTractatus and why?

From J.M. Bocheski's Rady starego filozofa [Advice of the old philosopher]: 6. Pytaj sie Zawsze (i) co to znaczy? i (ii) dlaczego? [Ask always (i) what does it mean? and (ii) why?]     

Oral production of linguistically complex sentences with meaning relationships of time

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the abilities of children to use the adjoining mechanism in combining two constituent sentences with the temporal adjoiners: after, before, until, when, and while. To elicit responses, a sentence repetition task was devised that included these five temporal adjoiners in four different syntactic environments: transitive sentences with the adjoiner and the subordinate clause following the main clause, transitive sentences with the adjoiner and the subordinate clause preceding the main clause, intransitive sentences with the adjoiner and the subordinate clause following the main clause, and intransitive sentences with the adjoiner and the subordinate clause preceding the main clause. The 30 were between the ages of 4O and 66 years. They were average children who were free from any known emotional disturbance, who were acquiring Standard American English as a native language, who had normal speech and hearing, and whose parents had neither very high nor very low socioeconomic status. To the extent that the children in this study were representative of normal-speaking children of their ages, certain general conclusions were drawn. Children begin to use the temporal adjoining mechanism early, but they do not master it by the age of 66 years. The ability to use the adjoiners, nor is it equal for different syntactic structures nor for all degrees of semantic complexity. After, before, and when appear earlier than while and until. A rapid period of growth in learning to use the temporal adjoining mechanism occurs between the ages of 4 and 5 years. However, a plateau of learning appears to be reached between the ages of 5 and 6 years. In general, children first learn to use the temporal adjoining mechanism in intransitive sentences with the adjoining link in the middle or at the beginning of the utterance. Next, they learn to use it in transitive sentences with the adjoining link at the beginning of the utterance. Finally, they learn to use it in transitive sentences with the adjoining link in the middle of the utterance. In transitive sentences, children appear to learn the rule for placing the subordinate clause at the beginning of the utterance when temporally adjoining two constituent sentences before they learn the base structure rule. In intransitive sentences, they appear to learn the rule for placing the subordinate clause at the beginning of the utterance when temporally adjoining two constituent sentences at the same time that they learn the base structure rule. The underlying semantic relationships that are expressed by specific temporal adjoiners are important determinants of children's abilities to use these adjoiners. In linguistic evaluations, one should consider the syntactic environment in which the temporal adjoiner occurs and assume that after, before, and when are developmentally earlier than while and until.