Against Stepping Back: A Critique of Contextualist Approaches to the Semantic Paradoxes

A number of philosophers have argued that the key to understanding the semantic paradoxes is to recognize that truth is essentially relative to context. All of these philosophers have been motivated by the idea that once a liar sentence has been uttered we can ‘step back’ and, from the point of view of a different context, judge that the liar sentence is true. This paper argues that this ‘stepping back’ idea is a mistake that results from failing to relativize truth to context in the first place. Moreover, context-relative liar sentences, such as ‘This sentence is not true in any context’ present a paradox even after truth has been relativized to context. Nonetheless, the relativization of truth to context may offer us the means to avoid paradox, if we can justifiably deny that a sentence about a context can be true in the very context it is about.     

归纳接受与知识

归纳推理的结论进入知识集合的时候有一个“跳跃”的过程。根据什么规则接受归纳结论是归纳逻辑研究中的一个重要问题。概率接受规则与知识集合应当满足的一致性条件和演绎封闭条件之间存在着不协调,这种不协调性导致了抽彩悖论。该文介绍有代表性的归纳接受理论,指出归纳接受问题对归纳逻辑发展的影响。     

平行竞争还是序列加工?——来自空间关系推理的脑电证据

本研究应用事件相关电位技术探讨推理的双重加工理论中两个系统T1与T2之间的相互作用关系。研究假设逻辑推理者(LR)的推理过程启动T2系统,而非逻辑推理者(IR)在推理过程中会启动T1系统,工作记忆的参与与否作为区分T1与T2系统的指标。研究结果显示空间关系三段论推理可分为识别-对比-推导-保持四个阶段,两类推理者在推导阶段与结果保持阶段存在明显差异。LR的推导与保持阶段需要工作记忆广泛参与,而IR的推导过程主要进行视觉操作,在保持阶段抑制信念冲突,这个过程不依赖工作记忆。这表明LR的推理过程主要启动T2系统,IR的推理过程有T1系统参与,对信念与逻辑冲突的探测不需要T2参与,符合混合模型。     

Developmental grey matter changes in superior parietal cortex accompany improved transitive reasoning

The neural basis of developmental changes in transitive reasoning in parietal regions was examined, using voxel-based morphometry. Young adolescents and adults performed a transitive reasoning task, subsequent to undergoing anatomical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans. Behaviorally, adults reasoned more accurately than did the young adolescents. Neural results showed (i) less grey matter density in superior parietal cortex in the adults than in the young adolescents, possibly due to a developmental period of synaptic pruning; (ii) improved performance in the reasoning task was negatively correlated with grey matter density in superior parietal cortex in the adolescents, but not in the adult group; and (iii) the latter results were driven by the more difficult trials, requiring greater spatial manipulation. Taken together, the results support the idea that during development, regions in superior parietal cortex are fine-tuned, to support more robust spatial manipulation, resulting in greater accuracy and efficiency in transitive reasoning.     

Forever is Always Finite: Reflections on Radical Life Extension

This essay reflects on the Radical Life Extension movement from six critical perspectives: RLE (1) ignores the benefits of finitude; (2) perpetuates the denial of death by seeking to vanquish it; (3) disregards the paradoxical nature of death as problem and mystery; (4) turns death and the Bronze Dream into idols; (5) overlooks a plethora of ethical dilemmas; and (6) fails to ask the central life question: “how well can we live?.” RLE is not only problematic: it is redundant. Being kept in the love of God forever is a different kind of ‘radical life extension’ that includes finitude and death.     

矛盾视角下调节焦点在领导力领域的应用

根据调节焦点理论, 个体在追求目标和选择行动策略的过程中存在两种调节焦点：促进型调节焦点的个体以利益最大化为目标, 倾向用“接近式”的方式达成目标; 防御型调节焦点的个体以损失最小化为目标, 倾向用“避免式”的方式达成目标。近年来, 调节焦点理论在领导力领域的研究中得到了广泛应用, 但关于两种调节焦点之间的关系及两者共同作用的研究却十分稀少。在回顾调节焦点在领导力领域研究的应用现状的基础上, 本文指出了矛盾视角的必要性和可行性, 并基于矛盾理论, 提出了未来研究的发展方向。     

Atheism and Dialetheism; or, ‘Why I Am Not a (Paraconsistent) Christian’

In ‘Theism and Dialetheism’, Cotnoir explores the idea that dialetheism (true contradictions) can help with some puzzles about omnipotence in theology. In this note, I delineate another aspect of this project. Dialetheism cannot help with one big puzzle about another classic ‘omni’ property, omnibenevolence—the famous problem of evil. For someone (including a dialetheist) who thinks that the existence of evil is a knock-down argument against traditional theism, it is a knock-down argument against dialetheic theism, too.     

Philosophy for Computers: Some Explorations in Philosophical Modeling

Philosophical modeling has a long and distinguished history, but the computer offers new and powerful prospects for the creation and manipulation of models. It seems inevitable that the computer will become a major tool in future philosophical research. Here I offer an overview of explorations in philosophical computer modeling that we in the Group for Logic and Formal Semantics at SUNY Stony Brook have undertaken: explorations regarding (1) the potential emergence of cooperation in a society of egoists, (2) self-reference and paradox in fuzzy logic, (3) a fractal approach to formal systems, and (4) on-going explorations with models for the emergence of communication. The attempt is not to give a detailed report on any of these but to give a bird s-eye view of them all, emphasizing the general form that the models take, the philosophical motivations behind them, and the kinds of philosophical results that they may have to offer.     

Probabilistic Cause and the Thirsty Traveler

In this paper I start by briefly presenting an analysis of token cause and of token causal relevance that I developed elsewhere, and then apply it to the famous thirsty traveler riddle. One general outcome of the analysis of causal relevance employed here is that in preemption cases (early or late) the preempted cause is not a cause since it is causally irrelevant to the effect. I consider several variations of the thirsty traveler riddle. In the first variation the first enemy emptied the canteen and the second enemy threw it away. On this variation, the act of neither enemy comes out, on the analysis employed here, as causally relevant to, and thus not as a cause of, the fact that the traveler died, but the conjunction of the two acts is a cause of it. This version is a case of mutual preemption. I argue that it has the same structure as the voting paradox, which thus has an analogous solution. In the standard version, in which the first enemy added poison to the water in the traveler's canteen, the act of the second enemy (who threw the canteen away) comes out, on the analysis used here, as causally relevant to and as a cause of the fact that the traveler died, but the act of the first enemy comes out as neither. I also make a comparison with Lewis' accounts, and discuss alternative treatments of the puzzle such as those of Hart and Honore and of Gavison, Margalit, and Ullmann-Margalit.     

Generalized Logical Consequence: Making Room for Induction in the Logic of Science

We present a framework that provides a logic for science by generalizing the notion of logical (Tarskian) consequence. This framework will introduce hierarchies of logical consequences, the first level of each of which is identified with deduction. We argue for identification of the second level of the hierarchies with inductive inference. The notion of induction presented here has some resonance with Popper's notion of scientific discovery by refutation. Our framework rests on the assumption of a restricted class of structures in contrast to the permissibility of classical first-order logic. We make a distinction between deductive and inductive inference via the notions of compactness and weak compactness. Connections with the arithmetical hierarchy and formal learning theory are explored. For the latter, we argue against the identification of inductive inference with the notion of learnable in the limit. Several results highlighting desirable properties of these hierarchies of generalized logical consequence are also presented.