It is shown that, given any finite set of pairs of random events in a Boolean algebra which are correlated with respect to a fixed probability measure on the algebra, the algebra can be extended in such a way that the extension contains events that can be regarded as common causes of the correlations in the sense of Reichenbach's definition of common cause. It is shown, further, that, given any quantum probability space and any set of commuting events in it (...) which are correlated with respect to a fixed quantum state, the quantum probability space can be extended in such a way that the extension contains common causes of all the selected correlations, where common cause is again taken in the sense of Reichenbach's definition. It is argued that these results very strongly restrict the possible ways of disproving Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle. (shrink)

Philosophers and linguists alike tend to call a semantic theory ‘Russellian’ just in case it assigns to sentences in which definite descriptions occur the truth-conditions Russell did in ‘On Denoting’. This is unfortunate; not all aspects of those particular truth-conditions do explanatory work in Russell's writings. As far as the semantics of descriptions is concerned, the key insights of ‘On Denoting’ are that definite descriptions are not uniformly referring expressions, and that they are scope-bearing elements. Anyone who accepts these two (...) claims can account for Russell's puzzle cases the way he did. Russell had no substantive argument for the claim that ‘The F is G’ entails ‘There is at most one F’; in fact, he had important misgivings about it. I outline an argument against this claim, and I argue that by holding on to uniqueness contemporary semanticists make a momentous mistake: they keep the illusion alive that there is a way to account for linguistic meaning without addressing what linguistic expressions are for. (shrink)

Philosophers and linguists alike tend to call a semantic theory ‘Russellian’ just in case it assigns to sentences in which definite descriptions occur the truth-conditions Russell did in ‘On Denoting’. This is unfortunate; not all aspects of those particular truth-conditions do explanatory work in Russell's writings. As far as the semantics of descriptions is concerned, the key insights of ‘On Denoting’ are that definite descriptions are not uniformly referring expressions, and that they are scope-bearing elements. Anyone who accepts these two (...) claims can account for Russell's puzzle cases the way he did. Russell had no substantive argument for the claim that ‘The F is G’ entails ‘There is at most one F’; in fact, he had important misgivings about it. I outline an argument against this claim, and I argue that by holding on to uniqueness contemporary semanticists make a momentous mistake: they keep the illusion alive that there is a way to account for linguistic meaning without addressing what linguistic expressions are for. (shrink)

Több politikatudománnyal foglalkozó kötettel jelentkezett már Szabó Márton, aki eddigi kutatásait összegezve, egy alternatív szemléletű politikatudomány szemléletébe és kutatásába kívánja bevezetni olvasóit. Célja, hogy bizonyítsa: a politika reális valóságában meghatározó módon jelen van az egyének nyilvános és közös értelmezése és diskurzusa. Hogy a politika ezért nem tekinthető pusztán csak objektív rendszernek, hanem emberek által teremtett és értelmezett valóság. A szerző ezen szemlélet jegyében hét nagyobb egységben mutatja be a politika minden fontos területét, kezdve a politikai tények összetett természetével, folytatva a (...) politikai cselekvések és megismerési módok sajátosságaival. Külön vizsgálja az intézményi kereteket, a politika szereplőit, a politikai ügyeket. Kritikailag elemzi az empirikus politikatudományi kutatás meghatározó területeit, végül a politikatudomány sokféleségével foglalkozik. A vaskos kötetet forrás- és irodalomjegyzék zárja. (shrink)

This article examines the methodology of a core branch of contemporary political theory or philosophy: “analytic” political theory. After distinguishing political theory from related fields, such as political science, moral philosophy, and legal theory, the article discusses the analysis of political concepts. It then turns to the notions of principles and theories, as distinct from concepts, and reviews the methods of assessing such principles and theories (e.g., the reflective-equilibrium method), for the purpose of justifying or criticizing them. Finally, it looks (...) at a recent debate on how abstract and idealized political theory should be, and assesses the significance of disagreement in political theory. The discussion is carried out from an angle inspired by the philosophy of science. (shrink)

The paper sets out to offer an alternative to the function/argument approach to the most essential aspects of natural language meanings. That is, we question the assumption that semantic completeness (of, e.g., propositions) or incompleteness (of, e.g., predicates) exactly replicate the corresponding grammatical concepts (of, e.g., sentences and verbs, respectively). We argue that even if one gives up this assumption, it is still possible to keep the compositionality of the semantic interpretation of simple predicate/argument structures. In our opinion, compositionality presupposes (...) that we are able to compare arbitrary meanings in term of information content. This is why our proposal relies on an ‘intrinsically’ type free algebraic semantic theory. The basic entities in our models are neither individuals, nor eventualities, nor their properties, but ‘pieces of evidence’ for believing in the ‘truth’ or ‘existence’ or ‘identity’ of any kind of phenomenon. Our formal language contains a single binary non-associative constructor used for creating structured complex terms representing arbitrary phenomena. We give a finite Hilbert-style axiomatisation and a decision algorithm for the entailment problem of the suggested system. (shrink)

By the age of two, children are able to engage in highly elaborate games of symbolic pretense, in which objects and actions in the actual world are taken to stand for objects and actions in a realm of make-believe. These games of pretense are marked by the presence of two central features, which I will call quarantining and mirroring (see also Leslie 1987; Perner 1991). Quarantining is manifest to the extent that events within the pretense-episode are taken to have effects (...) only within that pretense-episode (e.g. the child does not expect that ‘spilling’ ( pretend) ‘tea’1 will result in the table really being wet), or more generally, to the extent that proto-beliefs and proto-attitudes concerning the pretended state of affairs are not treated as beliefs and attitudes relevant to guiding action in the actual world. Mirroring is manifest to the extent that features of the imaginary situation that have not been explicitly stipulated are derivable via features of their real-world analogues (e.g. the child does expect that if she up-ends the teapot above the table, then the table will become wet in the pretense), or, more generally to the extent that imaginative content is taken to be governed by the same sorts of restrictions that govern believed content. (shrink)

The present article proposes an integration between cultural psychology and developmental science. Such an integration would draw on the cultural-psychology principle of culture-psyche interactions, as well as on the developmental-science principle of person↔︎context relations. Our proposed integration centers on acculturation, which is inherently both cultural and developmental. Specifically, we propose that acculturation is governed by specific transactions between the individual and the cultural context, and that different types of international migrants (e.g., legal immigrants, undocumented immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, crisis migrants) (...) encounter quite different culture-psyche interactions and person↔︎context relations. We outline the ways in which various acculturation-related phenomena, such as acculturation operating at macro-level versus micro-level time scales, can be viewed through cultural and developmental lenses. The article concludes with future directions in research on acculturation as an intersection of cultural and developmental processes. (shrink)

Bellʼs 1964 theorem causes a severe problem for the notion that correlations require explanation, encapsulated in Reichenbachʼs principle of common cause. Despite being a hallmark of scientific thought, dropping the principle has been widely regarded as much less bitter medicine than the perceived alternative—dropping relativistic causality. Recently, however, some authors have proposed that modified forms of Reichenbachʼs principle could be maintained even with relativistic causality. Here we break down Reichenbachʼs principle into two independent assumptions—the principle of common cause proper and (...) factorization of probabilities. We show how Bellʼs theorem can be derived from these two assumptions plus relativistic causality and the law of total probability for actual events, and we review proposals to drop each of these assumptions in light of the theorem. In particular, we show that the non-commutative common causes of Hofer-Szabó and Vecsernyés fail to have an analogue of the notion that the common causes can explain the observed correlations. Moreover, we show that their definition can be satisfied trivially by any quantum product state for any quantum correlations. We also discuss how the conditional states approach of Leifer and Spekkens fares in this regard. (shrink)

We prove a generalization of the Elekes–Szabó theorem [G. Elekes and E. Szabó, How to find groups?, Combinatorica 32 537–571 ] for relations defina...

Consider the class of contextually sensitive expressions whose context invariant meanings arguably do not suffice to secure semantic values in context. Demonstratives and demonstrative pronouns are the examples of such expressions that have received the most attention from philosophers. However, arguably this class of contextually sensitive expressions includes among other expressions modals, conditionals, tense, gradable adjectives, possessives, ‘only’, quantifiers, and expressions that take implicit arguments (e.g. ‘ready’ in sentences like ‘Molly is ready.’). Most theorists, including me, think that since the (...) context invariant meanings of such expressions do not by themselves secure semantic values in context for these expressions, they must be supplemented in some way in context in order to secure semantic values in context. For this reason, I call these expressions supplementives. I just said that supplementives need some sort of supplementation to secure semantic values in context. Of course, the question of what form the supplementation in context takes is controversial. For example, ever since Kaplan claimed that the semantic value of a demonstrative or demonstrative pronoun in context is the demonstratum of its associated demonstration, there has been a lively controversy over whether that or some other account is the correct one. Call an account of how a given supplementive secures a semantic value in context a metasemantics for the supplementive. In King [2018] I argue that all supplementives have felicitous uses in which they haven’t been assigned unique semantic values in context. This conclusion is somewhat surprising, since many uses of supplementives in which they have not been assigned unique semantic values in context are quite infelicitous. I call felicitous uses of supplementives in which they haven’t been assigned unique semantic values in context instances of felicitous underspecification. The central idea is that in cases of felicitous underspecification, supplementives get assigned a range of candidates for being their semantic values in contexts rather than being assigned unique semantic values in contexts. Consider an example. Glenn and I are out surfing at Lost Winds beach. There are some surfers to our south stretching a quarter mile or so down the beach. I notice that some surfers in an ill-defined group to our immediate south are getting incredible rides. I say to Glenn looking south toward them ‘Those guys are good.’ It seems easy to imagine that nothing in the context of utterance determines a unique group of surfers as the semantic value in context of ‘Those guys’. For example, it is easy to imagine that I didn’t intend any specific, unique group to be the semantic value in context. Instead, there is a range of overlapping groups that are legitimate candidates for being the semantic value in context of ‘Those guys’. Nonetheless, my utterance is felicitous: Glenn had no qualms about my utterance and took it to be impeccably acceptable. So this is an instance of felicitous underspecification. As its title suggests, felicitous underspecification is the main topic of the present book. Here is a summary of what is in each chapter. Chapter 1 provides examples of felicitous underspecification for a variety of supplementives. In each case of felicitous underspecification considered in Chap. 1, I say how I think conversational participants update the Stalnakerian common ground after accepting the utterance of the sentence containing a felicitous underspecified use of a supplementive. I do so without there formulating a principle that determines the updates in question. In Chap. 2, I formulate such a principle and illustrate its predictions with some of the cases of felicitous underspecification considered in Chap. 1. I claim the principle correctly predicts the updates discussed in Chap. 1. In Chap. 3, I consider and discuss the mechanism that I claim associates ranges of candidate semantic values in context with felicitous underspecified uses of supplementives. In Chap. 4, I discuss cases in which felicitous underspecified uses of supplementives are embedded in certain ways: under negation, and under ‘believes’ and ‘doubts’. In Chap. 5 I take up I take up the question of why sentences containing felicitous underspecified uses of supplementives are felicitous in the contexts in which they are uttered. In particular, I formulate a notion of a context being appropriate for an LF, where an LF is felicitous in a context only if the context is appropriate for the LF. In particular, an LF ϕ containing a use of an underspecified supplementive in a context c will be felicitous only if c is appropriate for ϕ. In Chap. 6, I take up some problems that arise with underspecified uses of pronouns, demonstratives and possessives and consider revising the appropriateness condition of Chap. 5. (shrink)

The Principle of Compositionality is the principle stating that the meaning of an expression is a function of (and only of) the meanings of its parts together with the method by which those parts are combined. The paper concerns the relationship between this principle and the phenomenon of context dependence. In a compositional language, it seems, the meaning of an expression depends upon the meanings of its parts in a bottom-up fashion, so some philosophers (e.g. Fodor&Lepore) argued that compositionality places (...) a context-independence constraint on the properties of lexical meanings. However, some others philosphers (e.g. Szabo, Recanati) don’t see context--dependence as a challenge to the compositionality of language. This poses questions about the methodological status of the principle of compositionality, possible justifications of the principle, and various constraints on language required by compositional semantics. In the article I propose a version of the principle of compositionality which can help us deal with the phenomenon of context dependence. Then I investigate its formal representation and the effective arguments from context-dependence against thus formulated principle of contextual compositionality. The last part of the article concerns the relationship between the computability of a function and the compositional interpretation of a sentence. (shrink)

Introductory Remarks Reading these excellent commentaries we already wish we had written another book – a more comprehensive, clearer, and better defended one than what we have. We are, however, quite fond of the book we ended up with, and so we've decided that, rather than to yield, we'll clarify. These contributions have helped us do that, and for that we are grateful to our critics. We're lucky in that many (so far about twenty1) extremely able philosophers have read and (...) commented on our work in print. A slightly discouraging fact is that all these commentators seem to think we are completely, utterly mistaken. On the positive side: Our critics seem to disagree about what we're completely wrong about. On the one hand, radical contextualists (e.g. Travis) find our objections against them off the mark, but our objections to moderate contextualism dead-on. On the other hand, the moderate contextualists (e.g. Szabo) think that our objections against them fail, but our objections to radical contextualism are strong (Szabo, concludes that we ‘present strong arguments against radical contextualism, but only a weak case against moderate contextualism’). This means we've got our work cut out for us – defending the middle ground from every which way – something we are more than pleased to do. We start with general points of clarification, points it will be useful to reference from time to time when discussing each commentary. (General Comment #4 is the most important, and we reference it repeatedly in what follows.) General Comment #1: Our View isn't Radical.. (shrink)

Reading these excellent commentaries we already wish we had written another book—a more comprehensive, clearer, and better defended one than what we have. We are, however, quite fond of the book we ended up with, and so we’ve decided that, rather than to yield, we’ll clarify. These contributions have helped us do that, and for that we are grateful to our critics. We’re lucky in that many (so far about twenty)1 extremely able philosophers have read and commented on our work (...) in print. A slightly discouraging fact is that all these commentators seem to think we are completely, utterly mistaken. On the positive side: Our critics seem to disagree about what we’re completely wrong about. On the one hand, radical contextualists (e.g. Travis) find our objections against them off the mark, but our objections to moderate contextualism dead-on. On the other hand, the moderate contextualists (e.g. Szabo) think that our objections against them fail, but our objections to radical contextualism are strong (Szabo, concludes that we ‘present strong arguments against radical contextualism, but only a weak case against moderate contextualism’). This means we’ve got our work cut out for us—defending the middle ground from every which way— something we are more than pleased to do. We start with general points of clarification, points it will be useful to reference from time to time when discussing each commentary. (General Comment #4 is the most important, and we will make reference to it repeatedly in what follows.). (shrink)

In recent years part of the literature on probabilistic causality concerned notions stemming from Reichenbach’s idea of explaining correlations between not directly causally related events by referring to their common causes. A few related notions have been introduced, e.g. that of a “common cause system” (Hofer-Szabó and Rédei in Int J Theor Phys 43(7/8):1819–1826, 2004) and “causal (N-)closedness” of probability spaces (Gyenis and Rédei in Found Phys 34(9):1284–1303, 2004; Hofer-Szabó and Rédei in Found Phys 36(5):745–756, 2006). In this paper we (...) introduce a new and natural notion similar to causal closedness and prove a number of theorems which can be seen as extensions of earlier results from the literature. Most notably we prove that a finite probability space is causally closed in our sense iff its measure is uniform. We also present a generalisation of this result to a class of non-classical probability spaces. (shrink)

In the tradition of Stalnaker there is a number of well-known problems that need to be addressed, because revision of iterated belief modalities is required in this case. These problems have already been investigated in detail in recent works on DDL Leitgeb/Segerberg 2007)and DEL see e.g. Ditmarsch et. Another strategy would be to maintain and revise assumptions independently of the beliefs of an agent.I will briefly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each of these views. In both views, assumptions constitute (...) the subjective context in which an agent interprets an utterance and encounters the world. The result of an interpretation is in turn checked against the agent’s original beliefs, and if the checking operation succeeds the agent revises his beliefs by the result in the normal way described by the AGM paradigm. The second of the above questions needs to be addressed on the basis of concrete examples. Considering utterance like David is ready’ or ‘John is tall’that from a contextualist viewpoint express semantically incomplete content in the sense of Bach is needed in order to obtain a useful model of the checking step, since fortunately not everybody believes everything that other people say. These requirements put the theory of interpretation based on assumptions in the frontline of ongoing research on the implementation of belief revision and update in dynamic logics. Such a theory might also be useful for contextualist accounts of strong knowledge, as it can be argued convincingly that when a knowledge ascription appears to be context-sensitive, this is so because the embedded proposition is context-sensitive and not because knowledge itself is context-sensitive. Hence,the context-sensitivity of embedded propositions in knowledge claims and how different agents in the same situation arrive at different assessments about them may be explained by an inferential theory of interpretation similar to the one outlined here but with another underlying concept of assumptions. Literature Alchourrón, C. E. ; Gärdenfors, P. & Makinson, D., 'On the logic of theory change: partial meet contraction and revision functions', Journal of Symbolic Logic, 510-530. Bach, K., 'Minimalism for Dummies: Reply to Cappelen and Lepore', Technical report, University of San Fransisco, Department of Philosophy. Bach, K., Context ex Machina, in án Gendler Szabó, ed.,'Semantics versus Pragmatics', Oxford UP, Oxford, pp. 16-44. Ditmarsch, H. v. ; Hoek, W. v. d. & Kooi, B., Dynamic Epistemic Logic, Kluwer. Gärdenfors, P., Knowledge in Flux, MIT Press. Leitgeb, H. & Segerberg, K., 'Dynamic doxastic logic: why, how, and where to? ', Synthese155, 167-190. Stalnaker, R., Assertion, in. Cole, ed.,'Pragmatics', Academic Press, New York, pp. 315-332. Stalnaker, R., 'Common Ground', Linguistics and Philosophy25, 701- -721. (shrink)

In this paper we give a positive answer to a problem posed by G. Hofer-Szabo and M. Redei regarding the existence of infinite common cause systems. An example of a countably infinite CCS is presented, as well as the proof that no CCSs of greater cardinality exist.

Books reviewed:Kenneth J. Howell, God's Two Books: Copernican Cosmology and Biblical Interpretation in Early Modern ScienceRichard A. Horsley and Neil Asher Silberman, The Message and the Kingdom: How Jesus and Paul Ignited a Revolution and Transformed the Ancient WorldJ. Painter, 1, 2, and 3 John Sarah Coakley, Re‐thinking Gregory of Nyssa Andrew Jotischky, The Carmelites and Antiquity: Mendicants and their Pasts in the Middle AgesTerryl N. Kinder, Cistercian Europe: Architecture of ContemplationM. G. Snape, English Episcopal Acta, 24: Durham 1153–1195Gillian R. (...) Knight, The Correspondence between Peter the Venerable and Bernard of Clairvaux: a Semantic and Structural AnalysisRichard Rex, The LollardsKathleen Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Ages: Image Worship and Idolatry in England, 1350–1500Norman Housley, Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400–1536Anthony Levi, Renaissance and Reformation: The Intellectual GenesisAnne T. Thayer, Penitence, Preaching and the Coming of the ReformationMarjo Kaartinen, Religious Life and English Culture in the ReformationAnne Dillon, The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic CommunityCharles Libois SJ, Monumenta Proximi‐Orientis. V. Égypte Charles Libois SJ, Monumenta Proximi‐Orientis. VI. Égypte Michael Davies, Graceful Reading: Theology and Narrative in the Works of John BunyanDavid Womersley, Gibbon and the ‘Watchmen of the Holy City’. The Historian and his Reputation, 1776–1815Anthony C. Thiselton, A Concise Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of ReligionDavid Naugle, Worldview: The History of a ConceptRobert Kane, Free Will Tamar Szabo Gendler and James Hawthorne, Conceivability and PossibilitySimon Critchley, On Humour Gerard J. Pendrick, Antiphon the Sophist: The FragmentsA. A. Long, Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to LifeVictor Nuovo, John Locke: Writings on ReligionTerry Pinkard, German Philosophy 1760–1860: The Legacy of IdealismBrian Shanley, The Thomist TraditionGianni Vattimo, Nietzsche: An IntroductionAmy Laura Hall, Kierkegaard and the Treachery of LovePeter V. Zima, Deconstruction and Critical TheoryL. Gormally, Culture of Life – Culture of DeathMark E. Graham, Joseph Fuchs on Natural Law Norman M. Ford, The Prenatal Person. Ethics from Conception to BirthOnora O'Neill, Autonomy and Trust in BioethicsEllen Frankel Paul, Fred D.Miller Jr. and Jeffrey Paul, Should Differences in Income and Wealth Matter? (shrink)

Now in its fourth edition, Rational Diagnosis and Treatment: Evidence-Based Clinical Decision - Making is a unique book to look at evidence-based medicine and the difficulty of applying evidence from group studies to individual patients._ The book analyses the successive stages of the decision process and deals with topics such as the examination of the patient,_the reliability of clinical data, the logic of diagnosis, the fallacies of uncontrolled therapeutic experience and the need for randomised clinical trials and meta-analyses. It is (...) the main theme of the book that, whenever possible, clinical decisions must be based on the evidence from clinical research, but the authors also explain the pitfalls of such research and the problems involved in applying evidence from groups of patients to the individual patient._ For this new edition, the sections on placebo and meta-analysis and on alternative medicine have been thoroughly updated, and there is more focus on insufficient reporting of harms of interventions. The sections on different research designs describe advantages and limitations, and the increased medicalisation and the effects of cancer screening on health people are noted. A section on academic freedom when clinicians collaborate with industry and ghost authors is added._ This essential reference work integrates the science and statistical approach of evidence-based medicine with the art and humanism of medical practice; distinguishing between data, sets of data, knowledge and wisdom, and their application. Such an intellectually challenging book is ideal for both medical students and doctors who require theoretical and practical clinical skills to help ensure that they apply theory in practice. (shrink)

The social aspects of causality in medicine and healthcare have been emphasized in recent debates in the philosophy of science as crucial factors that need to be considered to enable, among others, appropriate interventions in public health. Therefore, it seems central to recognize the bearing of social causes (broadly understood, e.g., social inequalities and socio-economic status) in bringing about certain concrete pathologies. Being aware of the relevance of social causes in medicine and healthcare is particularly important in the face of (...) the role that artificial intelligence-based systems (such as machine learning algorithms) are increasingly playing in these high-stakes fields. In fact, these systems bear the dangerous potential of concealing relevant social causes. This is highly problematic not only because it reinforces issues of distributive injustice but also because it can pave the way for issues of epistemic injustice. The central aim of this chapter is to make a first effort to point out possible connections between the importance of recognizing social causes in medicine and healthcare and forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

After briefly reviewing the standard set-theoretic resolutions of the Burali-Forti paradox, we examine how the paradox arises in set theory formalized with plural quantifiers. A significant choice emerges between the desirable unrestricted availability of ordinals to represent well-orderings and the sensibility of attempting to refer to ‘absolutely all ordinals’ or ‘absolutely all well-orderings’. This choice is obscured by standard set theories, which rely on type distinctions which are obliterated in the setting with plurals. Zermelo's attempt ( 1930 ) to secure (...) ordinal representability of arbitrary well-orderings through relativization of quantification to set-theoretic models is reviewed and found wanting. The natural modal-structural recasting provides, it is claimed, a good repair. (shrink)

Three basic political positions on embryo research will be identified as libertarian, conservative, and social-democratic. The Human Embryo Research Panel will be regarded as an expression of the social-democratic position. A taxonomy of the ethical issues addressed by the Panel will then be developed at the juncture of political and ethical modes of reflection. Among the arguments considered will be those for the separability of the abortion and embryo research debates; arguments against the possibility of the preembryo being a person, (...) especially arguments associated with totipotency and the significance of the primitive streak; and the various reasons for regulating embryo research, including those associated with respect for the preembryo, the protection of traditional views of human procreation, and the prevention of commercialization. (shrink)

Studies of coexistence are based ultimately on the assumption that competitive exclusion is a general and accredited phenomenon in nature. However, the ecological and evolutionary impact of interspecific competition is of questionable significance. Review of three reputed examples of competitive exclusion in the field (Aphytis wasps, red and grey squirrels, and triclads) demonstrates that the widely-accepted competition-based interpretations are unlikely, that alternative explanations are overlooked, and that all other reported cases need critical reinvestigation. Although interspecific competition does undoubtedly occur, the (...) evidence suggests it is usually too weak and intermittent a force to achieve competitive exclusion or any other ecologically-significant result, except perhaps rarely and on a minor scale. Coexistence and community structure are therefore not ecological conditions to be especially accounted for, especially since their inherently comparative methods generate information that is largely superficial. Alternative questions that relate directly to species, the units of diversity, are discussed and they emphasize the primary habitat requirements of species, which are fixed during speciation. Neither the comparative approach of coexistence studies, nor the investigation of pattern is likely to be profitable, since the acquisition of species-specific characteristics during speciation requires historical research. At least one alternative theory of ecology, based on the close adaptation of organisms to the environment, is available. (shrink)

Some earlier remarks Michael Dummett made on Gödel’s theorem have recently inspired attempts to formulate an alternative to the standard demonstration of the truth of the Gödel sentence. The idea underlying the non-standard approach is to treat the Gödel sentence as an ordinary arithmetical one. But the Gödel sentence is of a very specific nature. Consequently, the non-standard arguments are conceptually mistaken. In this paper, both the faulty arguments themselves and the general reasons underlying their failure are analysed. The analysis (...) reveals the true nature of the epistemological relation between the Gödel sentence and its numerical instances. (shrink)