In a bustling repurposed factory space situated alongside the tracks of a busy commuter rail in a residential neighborhood in Somerville, Massachusetts, a group of nineteen roboticists, engineers, designers, and fabricators work together to build a two-ton, six-legged, rideable robot. The project, called “Stompy,” is part of a multidisciplinary class designed to teach adult students how to build giant robots on the cheap.1 Sparks fly and tools buzz, grind, and hiss as the team welds, machines, wires, and plumbs the behemoth. (...) The result is a massive network of raw steel stitched together with nuts and bolts, welded seams, and exposed hydraulics, poised—like the exoskeleton of some giant metal insect—for action.... (shrink)

The author describes an interpreted modal language and produces some clear examples of logical and analytic truths that are not necessary. These examples: (a) are far simpler than the ones cited in the literature, (b) show that a popular conception of logical truth in modal languages is incorrect, and (c) show that there are contingent truths knowable ``a priori'' that do not depend on fixing the reference of a term.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In the debate about the nature and identity of possible worlds, philosophers have neglected the parallel questions about the nature and identity of moments of time. These are not questions about the structure of time in general, but rather about the internal structure of each individual time. Times and worlds share the following structural similarities: both are maximal with respect to propositions (at every world and time, either p or p is true, for every p); both are consistent; both are (...) closed (every modal consequence of a proposition true at a world is also true at that world, and every tense-theoretic consequence of a proposition true at a time is also true at that time); just as there is a unique actual world, there is a unique present moment; and just as a proposition is necessarily true iff true at all worlds, a proposition is eternally true iff true at all times. In this paper, I show that a simple extension of my theory of worlds yields a theory of times in which the above structural similarities between the two are consequences. (shrink)

This study defines the relationship between humanism and liberalism by comparing the two Victorian figures who were most concerned with the preservation of humanistic values in a free and democratic society: Matthew Arnold and John Stuart Mill. The book sets apart Arnold and Mill from their contemporaries and points out their similarities to one another in discussions of their theories of history, poetry, their celebration of the contemplative life and their willingness to welcome democracy. At the same time it examines (...) the differences between the two men, which he uses to create a dialogue between humanism and liberalism on the question of how a high cultural ideal can be realized in democratic society. (shrink)

This paper examines the institutions for participatory governance that have been created in Chile through a case study of Huechuraba, a low income municipality in the Santiago metropolitan area. The case of Huechuraba suggests that in certain contexts, the meetings that take place between government officials and grassroots organizations can become a forum for the state to colonize public space and bolster the hegemony of the status quo by establishing the parameters of citizenship.

For thinkers such as Foucault and Deleuze, it is not possible to engage with metaphysical questions without simultaneously considering other, more political problems concerning the power relations...

Saint Augustine of Hippo was one of the most influential Western Christian theologians. Sri Aurobindo Ghose was a political revolutionary and later a spiritual master with a worldwide reputation. Augustine and Aurobindo were very different religiously and politically, but on the issue of justifying warfare, there are remarkable parallels between them. To begin, pragmatic considerations formed the core of most of their arguments. Furthermore, they buttressed their core points with considerations from the religious domain. These included discussing the inward disposition (...) of the warrior, countering ethical reservations about fighting, and mentioning possible, spiritual benefits from warfare. Yet, in spite of the parallels, the two men would have found little to agree on, as their approaches to both governance and religion were very different. Augustine’s approach was statist whereas Aurobindo’s was revolutionary. (shrink)

An eloquent and passionate examination of the opposition between Protestant conscience and Enlightenment reason in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Kant’s attempts to formulate a conception of the harmony of nature and freedom have two logical presuppositions. The first presupposition is separation of ought and is, which provides a logical formulation of the separation of freedom and nature. Kant might well have settled on the view that the separation between nature and freedom cannot be bridged. Why did Kant attempt to overcome said separation? The second presupposition of Kant’s project to bridge nature and freedom involves an ought→can inference, stating that (...) moral obligation implies the possibility of its fulfillment. There are at least two ways this inference can be understood. There is a weak sense of the inference, stating that no one is obliged to do the impossible. There is also a very strong sense of the inference, stating that if a moral obligation is found to obtain, it must then be possible to fulfill it. Kant interprets the ought→can inference in this strong as well as in the weak sense. Nature, the law-governed totality of what exists, must be understood as able to provide a suitable field for moral realization. The isomorphism between the lawfulness of nature and that of moral freedom animate Kant’s account of moral judgment, and will provide the main focus of the current investigation. Kant conceives of nature and freedom as twin kingdoms, thus providing a theoretical model validating this ought→can inference. The weaker sense of this ought→can inference does justice to moral judgment without requiring the awesome task of bridging nature and freedom. Why, then, should we maintain the strong ought→can inference in our post-Kantian situation? I suggest that Kant’s insistence on the strong ought→can inference may yield an ethical approach to the ever more powerful ways in which human beings technologically transform nature, including human nature itself. (shrink)

As of 2017, 65.6 million individuals have been displaced from their homes, fleeing their homelands in search of refuge from the violence, oppression, and chaos of civil war. The mass movement of people across internal and external borders only proves that there are certain aspects of the human condition that cannot be confined within the strict idea of territories and nation-states, that the political and legal approach in organising the interaction and relationships between people is deficient. I argue that there (...) is a need to recalibrate all existing ideologies in relation to the interactions and relationships between peoples coming from different parts of the world. In order to do this, I intend to examine the current legal norm and connect it to cosmopolitan ethics that are grounded on the idea of spatiality. Elucidating on the ideas presented by thinkers such as Seyla Benhabib, Anthony Kwame Appiah, Gloria Anzaldua, and Tetsuro Watsuji, I argue that to fully actualise cosmopolitan ethics we must investigate how space operates in the existence of man—a deterritorialised existence found in the borders. (shrink)

Excerpt from Heredity, Correlation and Sex Differences in School Abilities: Studies From the Department of Educational Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University The Relationships between the Different Abilities Involved in the Study of Arithmetic. By W. A. Fox and E. L. Thorndike. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving (...) the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

George Lucas, an internationally renowned authority on military ethics, passionately and persuasively submits the argument in his latest book that military strategy must surpass the outdated Clause...