Relevance and argumentation: How bald can you get

This paper is concerned with vagueness in language, its relation to logico-philosophical questions on the one hand, and to so-called syncategorematic terms and their linguistic use on the other hand. It attempts to show that it is not language itself which is vague but rather the way we use it.     

The countable homogeneous universal model of B 2

We give a detailed account of the Algebraically Closed and Existentially Closed members of the second Lee class B ₂ of distributive p-algebras, culminating in an explicit construction of the countable homogeneous universal model of B ₂. The axioms of Schmid [7], [8] for the AC and EC members of B ₂ are reduced to what we prove to be an irredundant set of axioms. The central tools used in this study are the strong duality of Clark and Davey [3] for B ₂ and the method of Clark [2] for constructing AC and EC algebras using a strong duality. Applied to B ₂, this method transfers the entire discussion into an equivalent dual category X ₂ of Boolean spaces which carry a pair of tightly interacting orderings. The doubly ordered spaces of X ₂ prove to be much more readily constructed and analyzed than the corresponding algebras in B ₂.     

RALPH WENDELL BURHOE IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract. Ralph Burhoe has sought to preserve “traditional religious wisdom,” but he emphasizes science as a new revelation. His relation to philosophical positivism and his insistence on including in a scientific theology only views that reflect the scientific worldview constitute major philosophical and theological problems. This essay considers the influence of several historical precursors—Francis Ellingwood Abbot, George Burman Foster, and Shailer Mathews of the “Chicago School” of theology, Douglas Clyde Macintosh, and, especially, Henry Nelson Wieman—which has contributed to a favorable reception of Burhoe's ideas. Social problems such as the youth revolution of the 1960s and indifference to the lack of intellectual credibility of religious beliefs have, however, hindered reception of his ideas. The conclusion notes some tasks that must yet be accomplished in order to continue Burhoe's work, particularly that of increasing the general level of education in the sciences.     

Two arguments against lying

Kant and Sidgwick are at opposite extremes on whether we may tell paternalistic lies. I trace the extremism to their views about ethical concepts. Sidgwick thinks fundamental ethical concepts must be precise. Common Sense morality says we may tell paternalistic lies to children but not to sane adults. Because the distinction between a child and an adult is imprecise, Sidgwick thinks this principle cannot be fundamental, and must be based on the (precise) principle of utility, which often mandates paternalistic lies to adults. Kant thinks that ethical concepts are ideals of reason, which do not fit the world precisely because the world is imperfect. We lie to children and the insane because they are irrational, but no one is perfectly rational. We must treat all persons with the respect due to rational agents, so the pressure of the theory is toward not lying to anyone. Decisions about where to draw the line must be made pragmatically and to some extent arbitrary. But fear of this is not a good reason to abandon ethical ideals for utilitarianism.     

REALISM AND OPENNESS IN SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

Abstract. Intrinsic to rigorous knowledge of God is the recognition that positive theological concepts and statements about God arising under the compelling claims of God's reality upon the human mind must have an open revisable structure. A similar combination of critical realism and ontological openness is apparent in the profound change that has taken place in the rational structure of rigorous science from the radical dualism and closed causal system of classical mechanics to the unifying world view and open dynamic field-theories of modern physics. It is argued that the intersection of theological and natural science in their epis-temological foundations can enhance their ontological commitment and heuristic thrust.     

Object knowledge and the emergence of language

Infants' spontaneous play with objects was examined for evidence of developments in object knowledge in relation to the emergence of words and the single-word period in language development. Subjects were 7 girls and 7 boys, from different ethnic and economic backgrounds, who were studied longitudinally from 9 months to 26 months of age. Two types of displacements of objects in relation to one another were identified in the children's play: separations and constructions. The development of constructions was associated with the emergence of words, and constructions increased with age while separations decreased. The development of specific constructions, which account for knowledge of the particular properties of objects, was more strongly associated with a vocabulary spurt at the end of the single-word period than with chronological age. Despite the wide variation in the infants' ages when developments in language and play were reached, relations between achievements in the two domains were consistent among them, as confirmed with the Friedman test, p<.001. The results are discussed in terms of the cognitive developments required for play with objects and saying words.     

Further generalization technology: Accounting for natural covariation in generalization assessment

In recent years, the assessment of generalization effects has become a major priority of applied behavior analysis. In this paper we propose a set of procedures to increase the accuracy of generalization assessments by accounting for the degree of natural covariation between treated and untreated behaviors. Scatterplot analyses were used (a) to assess the amount of baseline and postbaseline covariation between behaviors, (b) to determine if the observed generalization effect was due to a preexisting covariation between the behaviors, and (c) to assess if there is a significant change in the strength of the relationship between the behaviors as a function of the intervention. Six hypothetical sets of data are used to demonstrate how these procedures provide more accurate and detailed generalization assessment.