In this article, I establish a theory of knowledge approach for evaluating the use of computers for educational purposes at the university. In so doing, I trace part of the history of the “enabling factor” of Artificial Intelligence in this sector, an important element that has been integrated into everyday learning environments. The result of my reflection is a dialogical structure, directly inspired by past technology assessment research, which illustrates the conceptual advancement of researchers in the field of learning technologies. (...) The notions covered have implications in future policy-related discourse with regards to education. (shrink)

Professor Brenda Baker's recent critique of the Canadian Law Reform Commission's treatment of general standards for criminal liability adds to a growing body of critical theory concerning such standards and their relation to criminal justice. From within the perspective of this same critical movement, I assess the strengths and weaknesses of Professor Baker's efforts and of similar lines of argument in the work of Professor George Fletcher. I find two significant flaws in their shared approach. The first is confusion as (...) to the proper level for analysis of liability standards and, hence, for criticism of the "orthodox" view. This leads Professors Baker and Fletcher to concentrate on issues of culpability rather than responsibility (and to conflate these issues). The second flaw is an error in comprehension of the faults of the orthodox view and, hence, in recognition of the fundamental character of views opposed to that orthodoxy. This leads both theorists to overemphasize a suspect and unilluminating distinction between normative and descriptive approaches to liability problems. The rest of the article is devoted to an overview of my own approach to problems of liability and a general critique of the orthodox view in light of that approach. I argue that the fundamental issue is the relation of liability standards to a conception of agent responsibility. The primary fault of orthodoxy lies, then, in the cognitivist model of responsibility on which it relies. Against this, I propose use of a capacities model of responsibility as the basis for standards of liability. These two models are outlined and compared in final sections. (shrink)

At some point before the late fifth centurya.d.an unidentified writer compiled and affixed to each book of Dio'sRoman Historyan index, most notably comprising a table of contents and an excerpt of the consularfasti. Of dubious provenance these paratexts have played a peripheral role in the editorial history of the work. Bekker and Dindorf, with somewhat puritanical zeal, removed them from the main text of their editions of theRoman Historyin the belief that they were not by Dio's hand. Conversely, the stereotyped (...) edition of Dio's history produced under the auspices of Karl Tauchnitz at Leipzig in 1818 provided Latin translations of the indices, but omitted the Greek. Dio's more recent editors have restored them to their editions of theRoman History, despite questions over their origins. (shrink)

A coordinate-free formulation is established for (semi) classical particle-field interactions. The exterior language of spacetime chains and De-Rham currents enables the description to include extended strings and membranes besides point particles. Treating physical fields in terms of sections of particular bundles, a unified account of interactions is presented in terms of an intrinsic action principle on a bundle of jets over spacetime. The theory is illustrated by considering the specific model of point particles with intrinsic spin covariantly coupled to theU(1) (...) andSL(2, C) connections describing the electromagnetic and gravitational fields, respectively. The notion of dual spin is examined in this context and coupled equations for this particle-field system are explicitly derived in a local chart. Attention is drawn to the global implications of the theory. (shrink)

– The paper explores first the postulational basis and significance of‘measures of information’in current information theory and their possible relations to physical entropy and Brillouin's‘negentropy’regarded as the negative of entropy. For some purposes, the same pattern or formal structure may be abstracted from both‘entropy’and‘information’. The paper analyzes, in the second place, the mathematical analogies which have been traced between information theory and quantum mechanics and argues that the analogies have but a limited value when we come to grips with the (...) deeper, and yet unsolved, problems of quantum theory. Lastly it is urged that the indiscriminate extensions of statistical and information‐theoretic methods, and of quantum‐mechanical analogies, e.g.‘linguistic duality’, to psycholinguistics, literary and aesthetic Gestalten, can result only in crude exaggerations. Dialectical methodology requires the continual reformulation of all scientific descriptions which have to reckon perpetually with the richness of human materials. (shrink)

The kleptocratic supremacy of the praetorian prefect C. Fulvius Plautianus was felt throughout the city of Rome, the Empire and even beyond the imperial frontiers. Indeed, for the senatorial historian Dio Cassius, there was no more picturesque demonstration of Plautianus' acquisitiveness than his seizure of strange striped horse-like creatures from ‘islands in the Erythraean Sea’. The passage, as preserved in the text of Xiphilinus' Epitome, reads as follows : καὶ τέλος ἵππους Ἡλίῳ τιγροειδεῖς ἐκ τῶν ἐν τῇ Ἐρυθρᾷ θαλάσσῃ νήσων, (...) πέμψας ἑκατοντάρχους, ἐξέκλεψεν·In the end he even stole tiger-like horses to Helios from the islands in the Erythraean Sea, having sent some centurions to carry out the task. (shrink)

We give a survey of the study of nonstandard models in recursion theory and reverse mathematics. We discuss the key notions and techniques in effective computability in nonstandard models. and their applications to problems concerning combinatorial principles in subsystems of second order arithmetic. Particular attention is given to principles related to Ramsey's Theorem for Pairs.