Hilbert-style Presentations of Two Logics Associated to Tetravalent Modal Algebras

We analyze the variety of A. Monteiro’s tetravalent modal algebras under the perspective of two logic systems naturally associated to it. Taking profit of the contrapositive implication introduced by A. Figallo and P. Landini, sound and complete Hilbert-style calculi for these logics are presented.     

No Future

The difficulties with formalizing the intensional notions necessity, knowability and omniscience, and rational belief are well-known. If these notions are formalized as predicates applying to (codes of) sentences, then from apparently weak and uncontroversial logical principles governing these notions, outright contradictions can be derived. Tense logic is one of the best understood and most extensively developed branches of intensional logic. In tense logic, the temporal notions future and past are formalized as sentential operators rather than as predicates. The question therefore arises whether the notions that are investigated in tense logic can be consistently formalized as predicates. In this paper it is shown that the answer to this question is negative. The logical treatment of the notions of future and past as predicates gives rise to paradoxes due the specific interplay between both notions. For this reason, the tense paradoxes that will be presented are not identical to the paradoxes referred to above.     

Abducted by Bayesians?

This paper discusses the role of theoretical notions in making predictions and evaluating statistical models. The core idea of the paper is that such theoretical notions can be spelt out in terms of priors over statistical models, and that such priors can themselves be assigned probabilities. The discussion substantiates the claim that the use of theoretical notions may offer specific empirical advantages. Moreover, I argue that this use of theoretical notions explicates a particular kind of abductive inference. The paper thus contributes to the discussion over Bayesian models of abductive inference.     

On the Nature of Philosophy

This paper claims that what philosophy primarily does is interpret our notions, offer ways of understanding these notions that are not scientific in nature but not contrary to science either. The paper draws a distinction between conceptual analysis, a highly constrained enterprise that is supposed to bring to light what was in the concept all along, and the interpretation of notions, a creative enterprise that offers ways of understanding notions that were not already prefigured by the content of these notions—philosophy consists in the latter, not the former. It explains how these interpretations are justified and what the difference is between better and worse interpretations. The remainder of the paper is organized around three headings: philosophy and science, philosophy and language, and philosophy and progress. It claims that in philosophy there is no real progress, but that philosophy does move forward because the notions at issue are endlessly interpretable.     

Prima facie obligation

This paper presents a nonmonotonic deontic logic based on commonsense entailment. It establishes criteria a successful account of obligation should satisfy, and develops a theory that satisfies them. The theory includes two conditional notions of prima facie obligation. One is constitutive; the other is epistemic, and follows nonmonotonically from the constitutive notion. The paper defines unconditional notions of prima facie obligation in terms of the conditional notions.     

Cardinality without Enumeration

We show that the notion of cardinality of a set is independent from that of wellordering, and that reasonable total notions of cardinality exist in every model of ZF where the axiom of choice fails. Such notions are either definable in a simple and natural way, or non-definable, produced by forcing. Analogous cardinality notions exist in nonstandard models of arithmetic admitting nontrivial automorphisms. Certain motivating phenomena from quantum mechanics are also discussed in the Appendix.     

Treatment of Time in the TAT

Part of a larger empirical investigation to identify and classify subjective probability notions and explore their relationship to personality variables (Lipgar, 1965). Four factors that distinguished four types of subjective probability notions had been obtained from a matrix of intercorrelations among 30 Ss' Q sort ratings on patterns of “head-tail” guesses. To investigate the possibility that subjective probability notions are associated with other orientational activities in situations of uncertainty, a typology of time orientations and rating scales was derived from TAT stories by those Ss who best represented the four subjective probability factors. These and other stories were rated by four judges independently, and an association between treatment of time in the TAT and subjective probability notions was substantiated.     

Games and Bisimulations for Intuitionistic First-Order Kripke Models

Studia Logica - The aim of this paper is to introduce the notion of a game for intuitionistic first-order Kripke models. We also establish links between notions presented here and the notions of...     

The Varieties of Intrinsicality

Intrinsicality is a central notion in metaphysics that can do important work in many areas of philosophy. It is not widely appreciated, however, that there are in fact a number of different notions of intrinsicality, and that these different notions differ in what work they can do. This paper discusses what these notions are, describes how they are related to each other, and argues that each of them can be analysed in terms of a single notion of intrinsic aboutness that relates states of affairs to the things they are intrinsically about.     

Asymmetries in ethics

Ethical notions such as good and bad, are often treated as though they were ‘symmetric’ in the sense of having the same moral ‘weight’, one in a positive the other in a negative sense. I argue that they are in fact ‘asymmetric’ and that the negative members of such pairs of notions are more fundamental and definite, logically speaking, and operationally more important than the positive members. Detailed arguments are given to show this for some non‐moral notions, such as life and death, health and illness; some semi‐moral notions such as pleasure and pain; and finally for the moral notions of happiness, benevolence, right, and good and their negative counterparts. One of the intentions of the article is to show that a systematic view of such asymmetries may have consequences for one's view of the proper or desirable structure of a general theory of ethics: norms stating prohibitions and norms stating permissions will be seen to be, in a sense defined in the text, more fundamental and important than norms stating ('positive') obligations.     

On the notion of effectiveness

This paper focuses on two notions of effectiveness which are not treated in detail elsewhere. Unlike the standard computability notion, which is a property of functions themselves, both notions of effectiveness are properties of interpreted linguistic presentations of functions. It is shown that effectiveness is epistemically at least as basic as computability in the sense that decisions about computability normally involve judgments concerning effectiveness. There are many occurrences of the present notions in the writings of logicians; moreover, consideration of these notions can contribute to the clarification and, perhaps, solution of various philosophical problems, confusions and disputes.     

Well Founding Grounding Grounding

Those who wish to claim that all facts about grounding are themselves grounded (“the meta-grounding thesis”) must defend against the charge that such a claim leads to infinite regress and violates the well-foundedness of ground. In this paper, we defend. First, we explore three distinct but related notions of “well-founded”, which are often conflated, and three corresponding notions of infinite regress. We explore the entailment relations between these notions. We conclude that the meta-grounding thesis need not lead to tension with any of the three notions of “well-founded”. Finally, we explore the details of and motivations for further conditions on ground that one might add to generate a conflict between the meta-grounding thesis and a well-founded constraint. We explore these topics by developing and utilizing a formal framework based on the notion of a grounding structure.     

The “ambiguous liberties” of the commodified female body

This paper takes issue with the concept of liberty advocated for by contemporary legal feminists. Freedom, for such thinkers, represents bodily freedom, and freedom from unnecessary constraint upon the activities of female bodies. This paper argues that in a patriarchal capitalist society, such notions of female liberty are problematic. Firstly, such notions fail to recognise that freedom of choice is not equivalent to welfare or well-being. Secondly, legal feminist notions of liberty reinforce a form of bodily self-objectification. Through analysis of the function of the beauty myth in consumerist society, this article connects this self-objectifiying tendency in legal feminism to the commodification of the female body in capitalist society.     

关于小学教师对学生课堂参与的内隐观的研究

本研究通过课堂观察和结构化访谈,从三个侧面,即：教师判断学生参与的标准、对学生参与特点的描述、对参与功能的界定,考察了49名小学教师对学生课堂参与的内隐认识。研究表明,教师：1)重视师生交往中学生的参与,忽视学生与同学间的交往和学生独立活动时的表现;2)最关注学生在行动上的参与,其次是学生思维的投入,对学生情绪的投入是比较忽视的;3)特别注重参与促进学生认知能力发展的功能。     

Earman on Underdetermination and Empirical Indistinguishability

Earman (1993) distinguishes three notions of empirical indistinguishability and offers a rigorous framework to investigate how each of these notions relates to the problem of underdetermination of theory choice. He uses some of the results obtained in this framework to argue for a version of scientific anti- realism. In the present paper we first criticize Earman's arguments for that position. Secondly, we propose and motivate a modification of Earman's framework and establish several results concerning some of the notions of indistinguishability in this modified framework. Finally, we interpret these results in the light of the realism/anti- realism debate. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Revisiting Jung’s “A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity”: Some Implications for Psychoanalysis and Religion

This article explores one of C. G. Jung’s generally neglected essays, his psychological interpretation of the Trinity, and links up key theoretical notions with several more mainstream psychoanalytic concepts. It further uses the notions of oneness, otherness, thirdness, and the fourth to consider the recent points of convergence between psychoanalysis and religion.     

Happiness,eudaimonia, and other holy grails: What can job loss teach us about ‘One-size-fits-all’ theories of well-being?

Abstract

Positive psychology has made significant advances in our understanding of well-being, yet agreement about the definition and nature of well-being remains elusive. This study explores the experience of well-being from a bottom-up, naturalistic point of view and compares these inductive notions with existing a priori theories. Using a qualitative-focused case study methodology, this paper explores how everyday people describe well-being in the context of job loss among a sample of 20 workers from the Ottawa, Canada technology sector. Findings support integrated conceptualizations of hedonia and eudaimonia while also potentially identifying new notions of well-being. Identified themes include (a) life evaluation, (b) transitory experiencing, (c) growth and grounding, (d) environmental mastery/stability, (e) mental ill-being/ill-health, and (f) motivational mindsets/conditions. This study shows well-being to be a rich, pluralistic construct which includes the non-dualistic notions of both subjectivity and objectivity as well as encompassing notions related to the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of well-being.     

On radical conceptual revolutions in social science

The paper considers arguments for and against correction and elimination of the basic conceptual categories as well as theories of social science. It is argued that some correction of at least some basic social notions is called for. A great part of the paper consists in a conceptual investigation of such notion of correction in terms of different notions of corrective explanation.     

Maximal Subalgebras of MVn-algebras. A Proof of a Conjecture of A. Monteiro

For each integer n ≥ 2, MV_n denotes the variety of MV-algebras generated by the MV-chain with n elements. Algebras in MV_n are represented as continuous functions from a Boolean space into a n-element chain equipped with the discrete topology. Using these representations, maximal subalgebras of algebras in MV_n are characterized, and it is shown that proper subalgebras are intersection of maximal subalgebras. When A ∈ MV₃, the mentioned characterization of maximal subalgebras of A can be given in terms of prime filters of the underlying lattice of A, in the form that was conjectured by A. Monteiro. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 06D30, 06D35, 03G20, 03B50, 08A30. Presented by Daniele Mundici     

Why Care about Emotions in Music

The article aims at discerning and explaining the significance and role of emotive notions in understanding music, in performing it or listening to it with the appropriate understanding. The suggestion focuses on two notions: that of making sense of various musical features and their interconnections, and that of helping manage the enormous information one needs to process in keeping on the trail of the music in real time.