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.     

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

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Blueprints and Recipes: Gendered Metaphors for Genetic Medicine

In the face of documented difficulties in the public understanding of genetics, new metaphors have been suggested. The language of information coding and processing has become deeply entrenched in the public representation of genetics, and some critics have found fault in the blueprint metaphor, a variant of the dominant theme. They have offered the language of the recipe as a preferable metaphor. The metaphors of the blueprint and the recipe are compared in respect to their deterministic implications and other associations. The likelihood of the recipe metaphor framing cognition in more useful ways is called into question.     

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.     

On fideism and Alvin Plantinga

The first version of this paper was presented at a summer workshop on Skepticism and Fideism in 1986 at the University of Notre Dame, sponsored by The Society of Christian Philosophers. Subsequent versions have been read at the Mississippi Philosophical Association and the American Academy of Religion. I would like to thank the director of the workshop, Phil L. Quinn, and the participants for providing an intellectual springboard for developing my ideas on the topic of fideism and the proper basicality of theistic belief.     

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.     

A Translation of Intuitionistic Predicate Logic into Basic Predicate Logic

Basic Predicate Logic, BQC, is a proper subsystem of Intuitionistic Predicate Logic, IQC. For every formula in the language {, , , , , , }, we associate two sequences of formulas 0,1,... and 0,1,... in the same language. We prove that for every sequent , there are natural numbers m, n, such that IQC , iff BQC n m. Some applications of this translation are mentioned.     

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.     

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.     

Imageries

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