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.     

Lying and intersubjective truth: A communication based approach to understanding lying

This project was undertaken as a response to a perceived deficiency regarding the role of communication in a large block of the phenomenological discourse on lying. The arguments presented here attempt to make the communication process an explicit, rather than an implicit component of this discussion. First, a lie is explained as a communicative act that is identified by making a simple comparison between two contradictory realities, the reality presented by the lie, and some sort of true reality. Existing discussions of lying are examined and judged to be deficient because they limit their explanations of this true reality to subjective and objective standards of truth. Intersubjectivity is presented as an alternative truth standard, and it is argued that lies can only be discovered and understood through a process of interpretation or negotiation (dialogue) by human interactants.     

“The story says that” operator in story semantics

In [2] a semantics for implication is offered that makes use of stories — sets of sentences assembled under various constraints. Sentences are evaluated at an actual world and in each member of a set of stories. A sentence B is true in a story s just when B s. A implies B iff for all stories and the actual world, whenever A is true, B is true. In this article the first-order language of [2] is extended by the addition of the operator the story ... says that ..., as in The story Flashman among the Redskins says that Flashman met Sitting Bull. The resulting language is shown to be sound and complete.     

Naturalism, scientism and the independence of epistemology

Naturalists seek continuity between epistemology and science. Critics argue this illegitimately expands science into epistemology and commits the fallacy of scientism. Must naturalists commit this fallacy? I defend a conception of naturalized epistemology which upholds the non-identity of epistemic ends, norms, and concepts with scientific evidential ends, norms, and concepts. I argue it enables naturalists to avoid three leading scientistic fallacies: dogmatism, one dimensionalism, and granting science an epistemic monopoly.     

Contextualism and the Skeptic: Comments on Engel

Mylan Engels paper (2004) is divided into two parts: a negative part, criticizing the costs of contextualism and a constructive part proposing a noncontextualist resolution of the skeptical problem. I will only address the constructive part here. The constructive part is composed of three elements: (i) a reconstruction or reformulation of the original skeptical argument, which draws on the notion of epistemic possibility (e-possibility), (ii) a distinction between two senses of knowledge (and two corresponding kinds of e-possibility): fallibilistic and infallibilistic, and (iii) an argument which tries to hoist the skeptic by their own petard, namely the closure principle (CP). As I will argue, there are two ways to understand Engels anti-skeptical argument. Only in one interpretation does the argument depend on the proposed reconstruction of the skeptical argument in terms of e-possibility. But this version of the argument is unsound. More importantly, the skeptic has a strong prima facie objection at her disposal, which applies to both interpretations of the argument. If this objection is valid, Engels argument does not hold. But once it is invalidated, his argument is superfluous.     

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     

Three views of demonstrative reference

Three views of demonstrative reference are examined: contextual, intentional, and quasi-intentional. According to the first, such reference is determined entirely by certain publicly accessible features of the context. According to the second, speaker intentions are criterial in demonstrative reference. And according to the third, both contextual features and intentions come into play in the determination of demonstrative reference. The first two views (both of which enjoy current popularity) are rejected as implausible; the third (originally proposed by Kaplan in Dthat) is argued to be highly plausible.     

Demonstrative utterances

Conclusion We have worked out a small part of a program originally devised by Kaplan which included a clarification of the phrase y intends to demonstrate x. The analysis of demonstrative utterances, combined with a theory of deferred ostensive reference, enabled us to account for a much larger class of utterances (accompained by a relevant gesture) than expected. Regrettably, the analysis forces more questions on us than it answers. Although I have used the term gesture quite freely without providing any sort of explication, there is much more to say about gestures and their relation to speech. Especially questions concerning the ontological nature of gestures (What kind of a thing is a gesture anyway?), their epistemological status (How can we tell gestures apart from other actions?), and their semantic status (What makes a gesture have meaning?) have remained largely unexplored. To my knowledge, no philosopher in the analytic tradition has addressed those issues in any systematic manner.     

Rules of Existential Quantification into "Intensional Contexts"

Propositional and notional attitudes are construed as relations (-in-intension) between individuals and constructions (rather than propositrions etc,). The apparatus of transparent intensional logic (Tichy) is applied to derive two rules that make it possible to export existential quantifiers without conceiving attitudes as relations to expressions (sententialism).     

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.     

Was Marx an ethical humanist?

Zusammenfassung Während der letzten zehn Jahre wurde viel über den Humanismus des jungen Marx gesprochen. Osteuropäische Marxisten, die bemüht sind, ihren Anti-Stalinismus durch Berufung auf die Autorität von Marx selbst zu untermauern, gebrauchen den Ausdruck Humanismus in einem ungenauen Sinn, etwa gleichbedeutend mit Anthropozentrismus. Aber wenn man sagt, daß Marx Haltung anthropozentrisch sei, so sind damit die Hauptfragen erst gestellt, nicht schon gelöst.Humanismus mag etwa soviel wie Säkularismus bedeuten — der Mensch, nicht Gott, wird als im Mittelpunkt stehend gedacht. Die anthropozentrische Haltung kann verschiedene Formen annehmen, vor allem die Formen, die man als Humanismus der Ideale und als Humanismus der Prinzipien bezeichnen könnte. Der Humanismus der Ideale ist ausdrücklich an derZukunft orientiert, der Humanismus der Prinzipien aber an derGegenwart. Nur ein Humanismus der Prinzipien, dem es darum geht, den Eigenwert existierender Individuen zu behaupten und zu verteidigen, verdient es, ethischer Humanismus genannt zu werden. Marx, sogar der jüngste Marx, war kein ethischer Humanist in diesem Sinn. Und nur ein Humanismus in diesem strengen Sinn würde einen philosophischen Standort bieten, von dem aus man den Stalinismus oder Neo-Stalinismus angreifen könnte.Marx war ein Säkularist, und er entwarf ein humanistisches Ideal für die Zukunft, aber humanistische Prinzipien für die Gegenwart lehnte er ab. Er betonte, daß nur dem nicht entfremdeten, produktiven Individuum der kommunistischen Zukunft ein eigener Wert zukomme. Bis dahin haben Individuen nur einen geschichtlich instrumentalen Wert: jene, die an der Verwirklichung der kommunistischen Gesellschaft arbeiten, sind zu respektieren; diejenigen, welche dabei Widerstand leisten oder versagen, müssen ausschließlich als Hindernisse auf dem Wege des geschichtlichen Fortschritts behandelt werden.In diesem Sinn ist der Leninismus und sogar der Stalinismus und Neo-Stalinismus in dem zukunftsorientierten Humanismus der Ideale des jungen Marx einbegriffen, oder zumindest davon nicht ausgeschlossen. Selbst der jüngste Marx machte sich den Modeirrtum des 19. Jahrhunderts zu eigen — den Irrtum des aufgeschobenen Wertes oder des zeitlich verstellten Wertes und nahm damit eine mit dem ethischen Humanismus grundsätzlich unvereinbare Position ein.

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An earlier, and much shorter, version of this paper was read at a session on Marxism and Humanism at the Fourteenth International Philosophy Congress in Vienna, September 4, 1968, and published in Vol. II of the Congress Proceedings, Vienna, 1968, pp. 69–73.     

Branching space-time

Branching space-time is a simple blend of relativity and indeterminism. Postulates and definitions rigorously describe the causal order relation between possible point events. The key postulate is a version of everything has a causal origin; key defined terms include history and choice point. Some elementary but helpful facts are proved. Application is made to the status of causal contemporaries of indeterministic events, to how splitting of histories happens, to indeterminism without choice, and to Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen distant correlations.     

On two arguments for the indeterminacy of personal identity

Both arguments are based on the breakdown of normal criteria of identity in certain science-fictional circumstances. In one case, normal criteria would support the identity of person A with each of two other persons, B and C; and it is argued that, in the imagined circumstances, A=B and A=C have no truth value. In the other, a series or spectrum of cases is tailored to a sorites argument. At one end of the spectrum, persons A and B are such that A=B is clearly true; at the other end, A and B are such that the identity is clearly false. In between, normal criteria of identity leave the truth or falsehood of A=B undecided, and it is argued that in these circumstances A=B has no truth value.These arguments are to be understood counterfactually. My claim is that, so understood, neither establishes its conclusion. The first involves a pair of counterfactual situations that are equally possible or tied. If A=B and A=C have no truth value, a counterfactual conditional with one of them as consequent and an antecedent that is true in circumstances in which either is true should have no truth value. Intuitively, however, any such counterfactual is false. The second argument can be seen to invite an analogous response. If this is right, however, there is an important disanalogy between this and the classical paradox of the heap. If the disanalogy is only apparent, the argument shows at most that the existence of persons can be indeterminate.     

Existential Responsibility - The Civic Virtue

Responsibility can cast light on the context of consensus, conflict, and education. In terms of juridical responsibility, the person responds to a defined claim or duty. Education as an alive relationship between unique persons is characterized by existential responsibility - the response to a unique and problematic situation. Depending on which kind of society we are referring to, responsibility will serve society best as juridical responsibility when it is a closed society and as existential responsibility when it is an open democratic society. Education as such will create the potentiality of provocation of conflicts in any kind of society.     

From negation to “notion”: Cognitive processes and argumentative strategies

Summary This article deals with the role of negation as a language and cognitive operation. Such a topic is treated here within the framework of the argumentative strategies which consist in making certain cognitive landmarks of the discourse flip over with the intent of imposing the necessity to choose between two types of notions, aiming at the transformation of this choice into an implication. The reference here to the Aristotelian logic of Prior Analytics appears to be more efficient than any other contemporary logic and the author intends to give account of the role of negation as contrary coming into play on an operational and cognitive basis in all the argumentative strategies which oscillate reciprocally from universal to particular.     

Some problems concerning the logic of grammatical modifiers

This paper consists principally of selections from a much longer work on the semantics of English. It discusses some problems concerning how to represent grammatical modifiers (e.g. slowly in x drives slowly) in a logically perspicuous notation. A proposal of Reichenbach's is given and criticized; then a new theory (apparently discovered independently by myself, Romain Clark, and Richard Montague and Hans Kamp) is given, in which grammatical modifiers are represented by operators added to a first-order predicate calculus. Finally some problems concerning applications of adjectives to that-clauses and gerundive-clauses are discussed.     

Natural predicates and topological structures of conceptual spaces

In the framework of set theory we cannot distinguish between natural and non-natural predicates. To avoid this shortcoming one can use mathematical structures as conceptual spaces such that natural predicates are characterized as structurally nice subsets. In this paper topological and related structures are used for this purpose. We shall discuss several examples taken from conceptual spaces of quantum mechanics (orthoframes), and the geometric logic of refutative and affirmable assertions. In particular we deal with the problem of structurally distinguishing between natural colour predicates and Goodmanian predicates like grue and bleen. Moreover the problem of characterizing natural predicates is reformulated in such a way that its connection with the classical problem of geometric conventionalism becomes manifest. This can be used to shed some new light on Goodman's remarks on the relative entrenchment of predicates as a criterion of projectibility.     

Kenneth Strike on Liberalism,Citizenship and the Private Interest in Schooling

After indicating a number of points of agreement with the argument 0eveloped by Kenneth Strike in his article Liberalism, Citizenship and the Private Interest in Schooling, this article identifies and explores a number of queries and criticisms which arise in relation to that argument. These queries and criticisms relate especially to the nature and extent of the expansiveness involved in Strike's conception of public or common educational influence, and to the implications and justification of the claim that private educational interests enjoy a greater salience and recognition on Strike's view of public or common educational influence than on some alternative views.