Natural deduction rules for English

A system of natural deduction rules is proposed for an idealized form of English. The rules presuppose a sharp distinction between proper names and such expressions as the c, a (an) c, some c, any c, and every c, where c represents a common noun. These latter expressions are called quantifiers, and other expressions of the form that c or that c itself, are called quantified terms. Introduction and elimination rules are presented for any, every, some, a (an), and the, and also for any which, every which, and so on, as well as rules for some other concepts. One outcome of these rules is that Every man loves some woman is implied by, but does not imply, Some woman is loved by every man, since the latter is taken to mean the same as Some woman is loved by all men. Also, Jack knows which woman came is implied by Some woman is known by Jack to have come, but not by Jack knows that some woman came.     

Letter Writing and the Performativity of Intimacy in Female Pedagogical Relations: Recuperating Derridean Amnesia,Writing Back to Madame de Maintenon

Performativity and performance of language are the subject of this re-writing of Derrida's position on the gift. Here the source of performativity is Althusser's while the source of the gift is not only Marcel Mauss, but also both the opening of Derrida's Given Time: I, Counterfeit Money and the signing through letters of Madame de Maintenon, wife of Louis XIV and founder of a school for girls. A third writing plays a role, that of a 1910 biography of Madame. The paper is a relay, a re-play of the positions of the central characters, -- Derrida and Maintenon -- and a semiology of their writings. Out of this a new gift of pedagogy is evoked in a conception of pedagogical retreat.     

From <Emphasis Type="Italic">Pintele Yid to Racenjude</Emphasis>: Chaim Zhitlovsky and racial conceptions of Jewishness

The Russian Jewish intellectual, Chaim Zhitlovsky (1865–1943), a leading architect of secular Jewish culture and thought, was a central figure in the progressive Jewish intelligentsia of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In an essay written in 1927, Yidn un Yiddishkayt (Jews and Jewishness), he sought to define the secular essence of what he calls Yiddishkayt. This essay is not the first in Zhitlovskys long publicistic career in which he searches for new, secular definitions of Jewish identity and culture. But this essay differs, since it is marked by Zhitlovskys use of contemporary social scientific notions of race and racial traits to conceptualize what he believes constitutes Jewishness in a non-religious context, along with his adoption of the mystical Jewish concept of the pintele yid, the theory of an innate Jewishness embodied by a Jewish spark. Zhitlovskys desire to craft a truly secular theory of Jewish identity led him ironically to accept models of Jewish identity at odds with his stated larger vision. In turning to contemporary racial theory, as well as long nurtured mystical models of Yiddishkayt, Zhitlovsky reveals the wide range of ideological discourses that led him to innovative and controversial notions of modern Jewish identity.     

Three theories of nominalized predicates

By the term nominalization I mean any process which transforms a predicate or predicate phrase into a noun or noun phrase, e.g. feminine is transformed into feminity. I call these derivative nouns abstract singular terms. Our aim is to provide a model-theoretic interpretation for a formal language which admits the occurrence of such abstract singular terms.     

Finitude and Hume’s Principle

The paper formulates and proves a strengthening of Freges Theorem, which states that axioms for second-order arithmetic are derivable in second-order logic from Humes Principle, which itself says that the number of Fs is the same as the number ofGs just in case the Fs and Gs are equinumerous. The improvement consists in restricting this claim to finite concepts, so that nothing is claimed about the circumstances under which infinite concepts have the same number. Finite Humes Principle also suffices for the derivation of axioms for arithmetic and, indeed, is equivalent to a version of them, in the presence of Freges definitions of the primitive expressions of the language of arithmetic. The philosophical significance of this result is also discussed.     

On Alan Turing's anticipation of connectionism

It is not widely realised that Turing was probably the first person to consider building computing machines out of simple, neuron-like elements connected together into networks in a largely random manner. Turing called his networks unorganised machines. By the application of what he described as appropriate interference, mimicking education an unorganised machine can be trained to perform any task that a Turing machine can carry out, provided the number of neurons is sufficient. Turing proposed simulating both the behaviour of the network and the training process by means of a computer program. We outline Turing's connectionist project of 1948.In Memory of Robin Gandy     

On the Way to a Postmodern Curriculum Theory -- Moving from the Question of Unity to the Question of Difference

This article will examine the consequences of highlighting subject and difference in one of the curriculum theories that has been inspired by postmodernism. The term postmodernism is here first and foremost meant to signify the attempt to combine politics and morality with epistemology in accordance with Levinas, Lyotard and Bauman. The article will highlight some themes that need to be developed further for a postmodernism-inspired curriculum theory. A starting-point is a critique of the type of curriculum theory which has its base in the new sociology of education. From this critique, focused on universal claims, the Habermasian-inspired universalism is quickly and critically dropped and left behind, and another form of reasoning is embarked upon. The latter is inspired by a minotarian politics concept and tries to dissolve universalism as a prerequisite for critical conversations. With this background and with the help of Levinas, the article sets out to talk about difference without reduction to the Same and finally suggest a direction for a postmodern curriculum theory with a normative focus on knowledge.     

Israel Scheffler on Religion,Reason and Education

Israel Scheffler has only recently written directly and about religion and education in religion, although these are matters in which he has a strong personal interest. Scheffler's views on these issues are outlined and critically appraised, with some reference to the views of R.S. Peters on similar questions. It is suggested that one of the major difficulties which arise in relation to Schelffer's position concern its account of the balance between acceptance and critical search for clarity needed on the part of students in their engagement with Jewish ritual. This difficulty brings into focus a numer of central questions which arise concerning the reinterpretive account of Jewish tradition which Scheffler offers.     

Happiness and virtue in Socrates' moral theory

Conclusion In Section IV above we start with texts whose prima facie import speaks so strongly for the Identity Thesis that any interpretation which stops short of it looks like a shabby, timorous, thesis-saving move. What else could Socrates mean when he declares with such conviction that no evil can come to a good man (T19), that his prosecutors could not harm him (T16(a)), that if a man has not been made more unjust he has not been harmed (T20), that all of happiness is in culture and justice (T16(a)), that living well is the same as living justly (T15)? But then doubts begin to creep in. Recalling that inflation of the quantifier is normal and innocuous in common speech (that job means everything to him, he'll do anything to get it, will stick at nothing) we ask if there is really no chance at all that no evil in T19, not harmed in T20 might be meant in the same way? The shift from no harm at T16(a) to no great harm at T16(b), once noticed, strengthens the doubt. It gets further impetus in T21(b) when to explain how all of happiness is in culture and justice he depicts a relation (that recurs more elaborately in T22) which, though still enormously strong, is not quite as strong as would be required by identity. The doubt seeps into T15 when we note that current usage did allow just that relation as a respectable use of the same.At that point we begin to wonder if resort to the Identity Thesis might not be just a first approximation to a subtler, more finely nuanced, doctrine which would give Socrates as sound a foundation for what we know he wants to maintain at all costs - the Sovereignty of Virtue - without obliterating the eudaemonic value of everything else in his world. We cast about for a credible model of such a relation of virtue to happiness and hit on that multicomponent pattern sketched on p. 9 above. We ascertain that this will afford a comprehensively coherent eudaemonist theory of rational action, while its rival would not, and will fit perfectly a flock of texts in Section V which the latter will not fit at all. Are we not entitled to conclude that this is our best guide to the true relation of virtue to happiness in Socrates' thought - the one for which he would have declared if he had formulated explicitly those two alternative theses and made a reasoned choice between them?The Socrates of this paper is the protagonist of Plato's earlier dialogues. I list these (by self-explanatory abbreviations), borrowed from T. Irwin, Plato's Moral Theory [1974] (hereafter PMT): Ap., Ch., Cr., Eud., Eu., G., HMa., HMi, Ion, La., Ly., Pr., R., I. I assume, but shall not argue here, that in this segment of his corpus, Plato aims to recreate the doctrines and arguments of his teacher in dramatic scenes, all of which (except for the Ap.) may be, and most of which undoubtedly are, fictional; I shall be referring these works, under this proviso, as Plato's Socratic dialogues. (I did not include the Menexenus in the above list, since the parody of a funeral oration in this dialogue is implicitly dissociated from Socrates.)     

The Role of Public Argument in Emerging Democracies: A Case Study of the 12 December 1993 Elections in the Russian Federation

The authors argue that in the 1993 Duma elections it was the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, led by Gennady Zyuganov, that incorporated rhetorical values and audience adaptation into its campaign strategy. Finding its discursive ground limited by history, the CPRF gradually shifted its rhetorical posture and argumentative strategies, redefining itself in the process. This evolution allowed the CPRF to employ the ideographs of democracy, will of the people, citizen, and other key terms of Western-style democracy, while retaining, albeit in transformed meaning, traditional communist ideographs such as justice and spirituality. In addition, the CPRF was able to borrow selectively from the history of the USSR between 1917 and 1989, thereby imbuing their political appeals with historical force and cultural memory.     

Theor of free choice permission

I argue that the conjunctive distribution of permissibility over or, which is a puzzling feature of free-choice permission is just one instance of a more general class of conjunctive occurrences of the word, and that these conjunctive uses are more directly explicable by the consideration that or is a descendant of oper than by reference to the disjunctive occurrences which logicalist prejudices may tempt us to regard as semantically more fundamental. I offer an account of how the disjunctive uses of or may have come about through an intermediate discourse-adverbial use of or, drawing a parallel with but, which, etymologically, is disjunctive rather than conjunctive and whose conjunctive uses seem to represent just such a discourse-adverbial application.     

Some notes on the nature of methodological indeterminacy

This paper is an attempt to extend the meaning of the concept of indeterminacy for the human sciences. The authors do this by coining the term methodological indeterminacy and arguing that indeterminacy is better understood when linked to specific methodological techniques. Paradoxically, while specific research techniques demonstrate that the issue of indeterminacy is complex, yielding the possibility of types and degrees, it does not eliminate the problem of translation first raised by Quine. However, the authors go on to argue that, from a research perspective, indeterminacy can and must be approached in such a way that it is possible to reduce cases of it, even though never completely eliminating it in the human sciences.     

The relevance of Habermas' communicative turn

This paper points out the way in which educational and communicative action (Habermas) are to be related. It is shown that earlier attempts to put Habermas ideas to use have led to a dead end because they do not realize clearly that the new basic notion introduced by Habermas, namely communicative action, is the expression of a communicative turn. It is argued that Habermas' concept expresses a radical new attempt to grasp the intersubjective character of social action. Next implications of this communicative turn for the concept of education as a social praxis are indicated. Education can be conceived of as a praxis responding to the vulnerability of a communicative self.     

False Consensus and Adolescent Peer Contagion: Examining Discrepancies between Perceptions and Actual Reported Levels of Friends’ Deviant and Health Risk Behaviors

Adolescents perceptions of their friends behavior strongly predict adolescents own behavior, however, these perceptions often are erroneous. This study examined correlates of discrepancies between adolescents perceptions and friends reports of behavior. A total of 120 11th-grade adolescents provided data regarding their engagement in deviant and health risk behaviors, as well as their perceptions of the behavior of their best friend, as identified through sociometric assessment. Data from friends own report were used to calculate discrepancy measures of adolescents overestimations and estimation errors (absolute value of discrepancies) of friends behavior. Adolescents also completed a measure of friendship quality, and a sociometric assessment yielding measures of peer acceptance/rejection and aggression. Findings revealed that adolescents peer rejection and aggression were associated with greater overestimations of friends behavior. This effect was partially mediated by adolescents own behavior, consistent with a false consensus effect. Low levels of positive friendship quality were significantly associated with estimation errors, but not overestimations specifically.     

Mel Gibson’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Passion of the Christ</Emphasis> Seen Through Jewish Eyes

Mel Gibsons The Passion of the Christ has stirred up long simmering tensions between Christian, and Jews. This article, by someone of the Jewish faith who has for many years worked at a Presbyterian seminary, discusses Gibsons morbid—almost pornographic—fascination with violence, Gibsons theology of sin and atonement, and the dangers of Gibsons disparaging and inflammatory portrayal of Jews through the use of despicable stereotypes. Gibsons violence drenched Christianity is contrasted with a more tolerant Christianity rooted in love and justice.     

Peer Contagion of Depressogenic Attributional Styles Among Adolescents: A Longitudinal Study

This study examined longitudinal associations between adolescents and their friends depressive symptoms and depressogenic attributional style. Participants included 398 adolescents in grades six through eight at the outset of the study. Adolescents completed peer nominations to identify reciprocated and unreciprocated best friendships as well as measures of depressive symptoms and depressogenic attributional style at an initial time point, and again 11 months later. Results revealed that best friends reported level of depressive symptoms was prospectively associated with adolescents own depressive symptoms and with adolescents depressogenic attributional style. Moderator effects suggested that friends attributional styles were prospectively associated with adolescents own attributional styles for those involved in reciprocated friendships. Lastly, findings offered preliminary support for adolescents Time 2 depressive symptoms as a mediator of the association between friends depressive symptoms and adolescents attributional style. Findings have important implications for cognitive and interpersonal models of adolescent depression, as well as the study of peer contagion effects.     

Stuffed Cabbage in the Old New School Cafeteria

The purpose of this lecture is to celebrate the memory of Aron Gurwitsch by examining and enlarging the domain of phenomenological clarification of some elements of what Gurwitsch called the logic of reality. Chief among those elements are the nature of the taken-for-grantedness of our existential belief, the difference between presentive and non-presentive indices of reality and the ground for the self-illumination of the world of working.     

The Dancing Philosopher

This excerpt from Kenneth Kings essay, The Dancing Philosopher, traces its genesis from Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra (a work that greatly impacted Isadora Duncans founding of modern dance) that, in tandem with the emerging technology of the writing machine (typewriter), camera and kinetoscope (cinematography), conjoined the kinetropic and lexigraphemic to inaugurate the kinetic cogito. Maurice Merleau-Pontys phenomenological exposition of corporeality further amplified the reflexive potential of movement and the philosophical understanding of kinesthesia, and King cites as well the technosophic synergy of John Cages and Merce Cunninghams long artistic collaboration that furthered the frontier of a mind-body epistemic.     

The array size function in simple visual search tasks: A comparison between “go-no go” and “yes-no” tasks under conditions of high and low target-noise similarity

Summary In research on visual search within a single eye-fixation a number of different tasks are used and referred to interchangeably. Research with other types of tasks suggests that there are possibly important differences between these tasks. In the present study, two types of search tasks were compared under conditions as equal as possible: the go-no go task and the yes-no task. Conditions of low and high target-noise similarity were used. The results obtained showed: a) a steeper slope of the array size function in yes-no tasks than in go-no go tasks on the first day of practice but not on the second: b) a higher intercept value of the same function for yes-no tasks than for go-no go tasks; and c) a greater proportion of errors with yes-no tasks than with comparable go-no go tasks. A tentative model, describing the main features of the results obtained, is briefly sketched.     

Leadership of antireligious propaganda in the Soviet Union

Re-emergent scientific atheism bears the marks of its historical origins in the efforts of Bon-Bruevi and Jaroslavskij. The disciples of the Lenin generation use their fathers somewhat as second-level classics.