From Modal Discourse to Possible Worlds

The possible-worlds semantics for modality says that a sentence is possibly true if it is true in some possible world. Given classical prepositional logic, one can easily prove that every consistent set of propositions can be embedded in a ‘maximal consistent set’, which in a sense represents a possible world. However the construction depends on the fact that standard modal logics are finitary, and it seems false that an infinite collection of sets of sentences each finite subset of which is intuitively ‘possible’ in natural language has the property that the whole set is possible. The argument of the paper is that the principles needed to shew that natural language possibility sentences involve quantification over worlds are analogous to those used in infinitary modal logic.     

The self in transformation: the passage from a two- to a three-dimensional internal world

This paper seeks to describe some of the steps in the process of transformation from a two-dimensional to a three-dimensional inner world as experienced by a patient who had essentially used up her remaining vital resources. An important hurdle had first to be crossed when the analyst was required to demonstrate her capacity to survive with her in a two-dimensional claustrum, in a solitary confinement. Here, an oppositional defensive system had been created in which positive and negative personifications of vital but withdrawn energies ensured that she was locked within an interior world that sought to bar entry to anyone else, and where the possibility of the transformation of her self was disallowed. The patient had to accept the risk of breaching the system of self-defence before the analyst was allowed a mutual position within her interior world. A series of dreams tracks this transformation internally and in relation to the analyst.     

WILLIAM WHEWELL,THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS,AND THE MODERN SOLAR SYSTEM

Astronomers of the first half of the nineteenth century viewed our solar system entirely differently from the way twentieth‐century astronomers viewed it. In the earlier period the dominant image was of a set of planets and moons, both of which kinds of bodies were inhabited by intelligent beings comparable to humans. By the early twentieth century, science had driven these beings from every planet in our system except the Earth, leaving our solar system (and perhaps others) as more or less desolate regions for the most part bereft of intelligent life. This essay traces this extinction and its relation to religious thought, noting the role played in it by Sir John Herschel and especially by William Whewell. The inverse square laws for gravitation, heat radiation, and light receive special attention, as does the question of the relevance of the Christian notions of a divine incarnation and redemption.     

Truth as Translation – Part A

According to Tarski's Convention T, the adequacy of a truth definition is (implicitly) defined relatively to a translation mapping from the object language to the metalanguage; the translation mapping itself is left unspecified. This paper restates Convention T in a form in which the relativity to translation is made explicit. The notion of an interpreted language is introduced, and a corresponding notion of a translation between interpreted languages is defined. The latter definition is stated both in an algebraic version, and in an equivalent possible worlds version. It is a consequence of our definition that translation is indeterminate in certain cases. Finally, we give an application of our revised version of Convention T and show that interpreted languages exist, which allow for vicious self-reference but which nevertheless contain their own truth predicate. This is possible if only truth is based on a nonstandard translation mapping by which, e.g., the Liar sentence is translated to its own negation. In this part of the paper this existence result is proved only for languages without quantifiers; in Part B the result will be extended to first-order languages.     

Essai de représentation par des nombres réels d'une analyse infinite des notions individuelles dans une infinité de mondes possibles

The aim of this study is to try to make use of real numbers for representing an infinite analysis of individual notions in an infinity of possible worlds.As an introduction to the subject, the author shows, firstly, the possibility of representing Boole's lattice of universal notions by an associate Boole's lattice of rational numbers.But, in opposition to the universal notions, definable by a finite number of predicates, an individual notion, cannot (as Leibniz pointed out) admits this sort of definition, because each state of an individual subject is characterized by the values (present or absent, applicable or inapplicable) taken by an infinite number of predicates, each of whom may appear or disappear in the next state.The notion of degree of identification of an individual notion is then introduced and arithmetized by a rational number.As an individual notion can be defined by a convergent succession of degrees of identification, the real characteristic number of such an individual notion can be defined by the corresponding convergent succession of rational numbers, satisfying Cauchy's conditions for the convergence of successions.

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Essai de représentation par des nombres réels d'une analyse infinite des notions individuelles dans une infinité de mondes possibles

     

Kripke Frame with Graded Accessibility and Fuzzy Possible World Semantics

A possible world structure consist of a set W of possible worlds and an accessibility relation R. We take a partial function r(·,·) to the unit interval [0, 1] instead of R and obtain a Kripke frame with graded accessibility r Intuitively, r(x, y) can be regarded as the reliability factor of y from x We deal with multimodal logics corresponding to Kripke frames with graded accessibility in a fairly general setting. This setting provides us with a framework for fuzzy possible world semantics. The basic propositional multimodal logic gK (grated K) is defined syntactically. We prove that gK is sound and complete with respect to this semantics. We discuss some extensions of gK including logics of similarity relations and of fuzzy orderings. We present a modified filtration method and prove that gK and its extensions introduced here are decidable.     

Can Science Help Construct a New Global Ethic? The Development and Implications of Moral Transformation Theory

This paper reports the results of a ten-year search for consensus among scientific findings on the nature of the origin and development of moral sensitivity and morality. Significant agreement on six underlying factors was found. Based on these foundations, a new theory of moral transformation and a scientific "global ethic" relating to the global ethic of Hans Kung and the Parliament of the World's Religions is proposed. Fields surveyed include psychology, sociology, political science, economics, history, and gender and feminist studies in social science; physics and biology in natural science; and brain research, archaeology, and both old and new evolutionary studies and theory, including chaos, self-organizing, and other nonlinear theories, in systems science.     

The many-worlds theory of consciousness

This paper sketches a new and somewhat heterodox metaphysical theory of consciousness: the “many-worlds theory”. It drops the assumption that all conscious subjects’ experiences are features of one and the same world and instead associates different subjects with different “first-personally centred worlds”. We can think of these as distinct “first-personal realizers” of a shared “third-personal world”, where the latter is supervenient, in a sense to be explained. This is combined with a form of modal realism, according to which different subjects’ first-personally centred worlds are all real, though only one of them is present for each subject. The theory offers a novel way of capturing the irreducibly subjective nature of conscious experience without lapsing into solipsism. The paper also looks at some scientific theories of consciousness, such as integrated information theory, through the proposed lens and reconsiders the hard problem of consciousness.     

Causes,Conditions and Counterfactuals

The article deals with one particular problem created by the counterfactual analysis of causality à la Lewis, namely the context-sensitivity problem or, as I prefer to call it, the background condition problem. It appears that Lewis’ counterfactual definition of causality cannot distinguish between proper causes and mere causal conditions – i.e. factors necessary for the effect to occur, but commonly not seen as causally efficacious. The proposal is put forward to amend the Lewis definition with a condition, based on the notion of cotenability, which would eliminate the problem. It is shown that the corrected definition of causality leads to the transitivity of the causal relation. Possible objections to the proposed solution, involving the assumption of indeterminism and the preemption cases, are given a thorough consideration.     

Asymmetric peer selections among Blacks,Asians, and Whites in a virtual environment: Preliminary evidence for triangulated threat theory

Black, Asian, and White participants (N = 210) created self-resembling avatars and engaged in peer-selection tasks during social events in the virtual world, Second Life, that were designed to simulate various types of resource competition. Participants in merit-based resource competition settings had less diversity in their peer groups compared to participants in settings where no resource competition was present, and Asian participants had lower preference for Black peers. Furthermore, these relationships were mediated by out-group discomfort. Results are discussed in relation to partial support for triangulated threat theory of group relations among Blacks, Asians, and Whites.