This paper explores the ways in which resource limitations influence the nature of perceptual and cognitive processes. A framework is developed that allows early visual processing to be analyzed in terms of these limitations. In this approach, there is no one ``best'' system for any visual process. Rather, a spectrum of systems exists, differing in the particular trade-offs made between performance and resource requirements.

In early 2017, Nevada amended its Uniform Determination of Death Act, in order to clarify the neurologic criteria for the determination of death. The amendments stipulate that a determination of death is a clinical decision that does not require familial consent and that the appropriate standard for determining neurologic death is the American Academy of Neurology’s guidelines. Once a physician makes such a determination of death, the Nevada amendments require the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment within twenty-four hours with limited exceptions. (...) Neurologists have generally supported Nevada’s amendments for clarifying the diagnostic standard and limiting the ability of family members to challenge it. However, it is more appropriate to view the Nevada amendments with concern. Even though the primary purpose of the UDDA is to ensure that all functions of a person’s entire brain have ceased, the AAN guidelines do not accurately assess this. In addition, by characterizing the determination of death as solely a clinical decision, the Nevada legislature has improperly ignored the doctrine of informed consent, as well as the beliefs of particular faiths and cultures that reject brain death. Rather than resolving controversies regarding brain death determinations, the Nevada amendments may instead instigate numerous constitutional challenges. (shrink)

Social media platforms offer convenient, instantaneous social sharing on a mass scale with tremendous impact on public perceptions, opinions, and behavior. There is a need to understand why information spreads including the human motivations, cognitive processes, and neural dynamics of large-scale sharing. This study introduces a novel approach for investigating the effect social media messaging and in-person discussion has on the inter-brain dynamics within small groups of participants. The psychophysiological impact of information campaigns and narrative messaging within a closed social (...) media environment was assessed using 24-channel wireless EEG. Data were acquired from three- or four-person groups while subjects debated contemporary social issues framed by four scenarios of varying controversy: investing in ethical vs. unethical corporations, selecting travel destination based on social awareness, determining verdict in a murder trial and the punishment of life in prison or death penalty, and decision to vaccinate. Pre-/post-scenario questionnaires assess the effects of the social media information. Inter-brain coherence between subject pairs on each social issue discussed by subjects was analyzed by concordance, agreement vs. disagreement, and by group unanimity, unanimous vs. not unanimous. Subject pairs that agreed on the social issues raised in the scenarios had significantly greater inter-brain coherence in gamma frequency range than disagreeing pairs over cortical regions known to be involved in social interactions. These effects were magnified when comparing groups where subject pairs were unanimous in their stance on the social issues for some but not all scenarios. While there was considerable overlap between scenarios in what EEG channels were significant, there was enough variability to indicate the possibility of scenario-specific effects on inter-brain coherence. (shrink)

ObjectivesTo compare changes in the number and amount of payments received by orthopedic and non-orthopedic surgeons from industry between 2014 and 2017.MethodsUsing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Open Payment database from 2014 to 2017, we conducted a retrospective cohort study of industry payments to surgeons, including general payments and research payments.ResultsAmong orthopedic surgeons, the total number of general payments decreased from 248,698 in 2014 to 241,966 in 2017, but their total value increased from $97.1 million in 2014 (...) to $110.2 million in 2017. Among non-orthopedic surgeons, the total number decreased from 604,884 in 2014 to 582,490 in 2017, while the total value remained stable at approximately $159 million. Between 2014 and 2017, there was a differential increase in the median number of general payments received by non-orthopedic when compared to orthopedic surgeons (incidence rate ratio, 1.09; 95% CI, 1.08–1.09; p < 0.001), but a differential decline in the median value of general payments (− 8.9%; 95% CI, − 9.5%, − 8.4%; p < 0.001). Findings were consistent when stratified by nature of payment. In contrast, between 2014 and 2017, there was neither a differential change in the median number nor median value of research payments received by non-orthopedics.ConclusionExamination of a natural experiment of prior public disclosure of payments to orthopedic surgeons suggests that the Physician Payment Sunshine Act was associated with an increase in the number, but a decline in the value, of general payments received by non-orthopedic surgeons, but not on research payments received. (shrink)

This is an exploratory and expository paper, comparing display logic formulations of normal modal logics with labelled sequent systems. We provide a translation from display sequents into labelled sequents. The comparison between different systems gives us a different way to understand the difference between display systems and other sequent calculi as a difference between local and global views of consequence. The mapping between display and labelled systems also gives us a way to understand labelled systems as properly structural and not (...) just as systems encoding modal logic into first-order logic. (shrink)

Different natural deduction proof systems for intuitionistic and classical logic —and related logical systems—differ in fundamental properties while sharing significant family resemblances. These differences become quite stark when it comes to the structural rules of contraction and weakening. In this paper, I show how Gentzen and Jaśkowski’s natural deduction systems differ in fine structure. I also motivate directed proof nets as another natural deduction system which shares some of the design features of Genzen and Jaśkowski’s systems, but which differs again (...) in its treatment of the structural rules, and has a range of virtues absent from traditional natural deduction systems. (shrink)

We present a new frame semantics for positive relevant and substructural propositional logics. This frame semantics is both a generalisation of Routley–Meyer ternary frames and a simplification of them. The key innovation of this semantics is the use of a single accessibility relation to relate collections of points to points. Different logics are modeled by varying the kinds of collections used: they can be sets, multisets, lists or trees. We show that collection frames on trees are sound and complete for (...) the basic positive distributive substructural logic $\mathsf {B}^+$, that collection frames on multisets are sound and complete for $\mathsf {RW}^+$ (the relevant logic $\mathsf {R}^+$, without contraction, or equivalently, positive multiplicative and additive linear logic with distribution for the additive connectives), and that collection frames on sets are sound for the positive relevant logic $\mathsf {R}^+$. The completeness of set frames for $\mathsf {R}^+$ is, currently, an open question. (shrink)

In barely the space of one generation, Athens was transformed from a conventional city-state into something completely new--a region-state on a scale previously unthinkable. This book sets out to answer a seemingly simple question: How and when did the Athenian state attain the anomalous size that gave it such influence in Greek politics and culture in the classical period? Many scholars argue that Athens's incorporation of Attica was a gradual development, largely completed some two hundred years before the classical era. (...) Anderson, however, suggests that it is not until the late sixth century that we see the first systematic attempts by the Athenian polis to integrate all of Attica. Anderson first takes issue with the prevailing view of Cleisthenes' landmark political reforms of 508-7 b.c., arguing that they were animated by a more comprehensive vision of regional political community in Attica. The Athenians' strengthened the state by establishing institutional mechanisms that would allow inhabitants of the Attic periphery to participate as never before in the life of the center. The creation of a suitable physical setting for the new order was accompanied by religious, military, and symbolic innovations. Regional participation in Athenian affairs was stimulated by encouraging the Attic populace to imagine themselves, for the first time ever, as members of a single, like-minded, self-governing political community. Greg Anderson is Assistant Professor of Classics and History, University of Illinois at Chicago. (shrink)

Many logics in the relevant family can be given a proof theory in the style of Belnap's display logic. However, as originally given, the proof theory is essentially more expressive than the logics they seek to model. In this paper, we consider a modified proof theory which more closely models relevant logics. In addition, we use this proof theory to show decidability for a large range of substructural logics.

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 22-24.

This book introduces an important group of logics that have come to be known under the umbrella term 'susbstructural'. Substructural logics have independently led to significant developments in philosophy, computing and linguistics. _An Introduction to Substrucural Logics_ is the first book to systematically survey the new results and the significant impact that this class of logics has had on a wide range of fields.The following topics are covered: * Proof Theory * Propositional Structures * Frames * Decidability * Coda Both (...) students and professors of philosophy, computing, linguistics, and mathematics will find this to be an important addition to their reading. (shrink)

Nowadays references to the afterlife-angels strumming harps, demons brandishing pitchforks, God enthroned on heavenly clouds-are more often encountered in New Yorker cartoons than in serious Christian theological reflection. Speculation about death and its sequel seems to embarrass many theologians; however, as Greg Garrett shows in Entertaining Judgment, popular culture in the U.S. has found rich ground for creative expression in the search for answers to the question: What lies in store for us after we die? The lyrics of Madonna, (...) Los Lonely Boys, and Sean Combs; the plotlines of TV's Lost, South Park, and The Walking Dead; the implied theology in films such as The Dark Knight, Ghost, and Field of Dreams; the heavenly half-light of Thomas Kinkade's popular paintings; the ghosts, shades, and after-life way-stations in Harry Potter; and the characters, situations, and locations in the Hunger Games saga all speak to our hopes and fears about what comes next. In a rich survey of literature and popular media, Garrett compares cultural accounts of death and the afterlife with those found in scripture. Denizens of the imagined afterlife, whether in heaven, hell, on earth, or in purgatory, speak to what awaits us, at once shaping and reflecting our deeply held-if often somewhat nebulous-beliefs. They show us what rewards and punishments we might expect, offer us divine assistance, and even diabolically attack us. Ultimately, we are drawn to these stories of heaven, hell, and purgatory--and to stories about death and the undead--not only because they entertain us, but because they help us to create meaning and to learn about ourselves, our world, and, perhaps, the next world. Garrett's deft analysis sheds new light on what popular culture can tell us about the startlingly sharp divide between what modern people profess to believe and what they truly hope and expect to find after death--and how they use those stories to help them understand this life. (shrink)

In the near future developments in non-invasive prenatal testing may soon provide couples with the opportunity to test for and diagnose a much broader range of heritable and congenital conditions than has previously been possible. Inevitably, this has prompted much ethical debate on the possible implications of NIPT for providing couples with opportunities for reproductive choice by way of routine prenatal screening. In view of the possibility to test for a significantly broader range of genetic conditions with NIPT, the European (...) Society of Human Genetics and American Society of Human Genetics recommend that, pending further debate, prenatal screening for reproductive choice should only be offered where concerning serious congenital conditions and childhood disorders. In support of this recommendation, the ESHG and ASHG discuss a number of ethical issues on which they prompt further debate: the informational privacy of the future child, the trivialization of abortion, the risk of information overload, and issues of distributive justice. This paper responds to this call with further reflection on each ethical issue and how it relates to the moral justification of providing couples with opportunities for meaningful reproductive choice. The paper concludes that whilst there may be good reasons for qualifying the scope of any unsolicited prenatal screening offer to serious congenital conditions and childhood disorders, if prenatal screening is justified for providing couples with opportunities for meaningful reproductive choice, then health services may have obligations to empower couples with the same opportunity where concerning other conditions. (shrink)

Providing a wide-ranging account of the narrative properties of photographs, Greg Battye focuses on the storytelling power of a single image, rather than the sequence. Drawing on ideas from painting, drawing, film, video, and multimedia, he applies contemporary research and theories drawn from cognitive science and psychology to the analysis of photographs. Using genuine forensic photographs of crime scenes and accidents, the book mines human drama and historical and sociological authenticity to argue for the centrality of the perception and (...) representation of time in photographic narrativity. (shrink)

In an attempt to address the theoretical gap between linguistics and philosophy, a group of semanticists, calling itself the Generic Group, has worked to develop a common view of genericity. Their research has resulted in this book, which consists of a substantive introduction and eleven original articles on important aspects of the interpretation of generic expressions. The introduction provides a clear overview of the issues and synthesizes the major analytical approaches to them. Taken together, the papers that follow reflect the (...) current state of the art in the semantics of generics, and afford insight into various generic phenomena. (shrink)

I argue that aesthetic ideas should play a significant role in archaeological explanation. I sketch an account of aesthetic interests which is appropriate to archaeological contexts. I illustrate the role of aesthetics through a discussion of the transition from signals to symbols. I argue that the opposition in archaeological debate between explanation and interpretation is one we should reject.

This paper maps Hardt and Negri’s use of Deleuze philosophical commitment to the control society as a temporal phenomena in the context of education. Education is important because it is pushed and pulled by those vectors that Hardt and Negri see as central tensions in late capitalism: localism vs globalisation, discipline vs control, codes vs axioms, metrics vs expertise and so on. In Empire, Hardt and Negri represent Empire as a form of governance that responds to the passing from disciplinary (...) societies to societies of control. The societies of control are central to their concept of Empire defined “as a regime of the production of identity and difference, or really of homogenization and heterogenization”. Empire, then, is a macropolitics that produces, or infiltrates, subjectivation as a means to affect the self within globalising and localising regimes. This paper takes up Hardt and Negri’s challenge in two areas. First concerns what appears to be the collapse of the ideal of publicness within public school systems. The second provocation concerns the digital, or presumptive, economy of online and adaptive learning systems. (shrink)

Alfred Tarski’s work on truth has played such a central role in the discourse on truth that most coming to it for the first time have probably already heard a great deal about what is said there. Unfortunately, since the work is largely technical and Tarski was only tan- gentially philosophical, a certain incautious assimilation dominates many philosophical discussions of Tarski’s ideas, and so, examining Tarski on the concept of truth is in many ways an act of unlearning. -/- In (...) this paper I focus on those key ideas in Tarski’s work that have made a lasting impact on the philosophical discourse. These are the notions of T-sentence, Convention T, Tarskian truth definition, and Tarski’s general limiting theses on the expressibility and definability of truth. Though these ideas are in name familiar, we will seek in this essay to uncover and remove certain widespread misunderstandings of each. Tarski’s name also features prominently in discussions of the liar paradox, so we will take time out to explain Tarski’s connection to this ancient puzzle. (shrink)

Human activity is causing high rates of biodiversity loss. Yet, surprisingly little is known about the extent to which socioeconomic factors exacerbate or ameliorate our impacts on biological diversity. One such factor, economic inequality, has been shown to affect public health, and has been linked to environmental problems in general. We tested how strongly economic inequality is related to biodiversity loss in particular. We found that among countries, and among US states, the number of species that are threatened or declining (...) increases substantially with the Gini ratio of income inequality. At both levels of analysis, the connection between income inequality and biodiversity loss persists after controlling for biophysical conditions, human population size, and per capita GDP or income. Future research should explore potential mechanisms behind this equality-biodiversity relationship. Our results suggest that economic reforms would go hand in hand with, if not serving as a prerequisite for, effective conservation. (shrink)

Alasdair Urquhart’s work on models for relevant logics is distinctive in a number of different ways. One key theme, present in both his undecidability proof for the relevant logic R and his proof of the failure of interpolation in R, is the use of techniques from geometry. In this paper, inspired by Urquhart’s work, I explore ways to generate natural models of R+\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$^+$$\end{document} from geometries, and different constraints that an accessibility relation (...) in such a model might satisfy. I end by showing that a set of natural conditions on an accessibility relation, motivated by geometric considerations, is jointly unsatisfiable. (shrink)

This dissertation is a critical examination of dialetheism, the view that there are true contradictions. Dialetheism's proponents argue that adopting the view will allow us to solve hitherto unsolved problems, including the well-known logical paradoxes. ;Dialetheism faces three kinds of challenge. Challenges of the first kind put in doubt the intrinsic coherence of dialetheism. It can be claimed, for example, that it is incoherent for a claim to be both true and false; that claims known to be false cannot be (...) accepted; that claims known to be false cannot be rationally accepted; and that dialetheism entails the falsity of some of its own theoretical claims. The second kind of challenge concerns the use of paraconsistent logics, which dialetheists must adopt on pain of accepting the truth of every proposition. I examine a number of paraconsistent logics, and conclude that either they come at an unacceptably high price or they do not support the dialetheist project. ;I devote most attention to the third kind of challenge, according to which dialetheism fails to provide the promised solutions to the paradoxes and other previously intractable problems, and so we lose the major motivation for the theory. Proponents claim that dialetheism allows for the solution of numerous problems, particularly in metaphysics, law, and logic. In the case of metaphysics, it is claimed that dialetheism allows us to deal with puzzles involving change, vagueness, and motion. However, I argue that the proposed solution does not eliminate the old metaphysical problems, and in fact gives rise to new ones. In the case of law, it is claimed that dialetheism can allow us to deal with legal contradiction. I argue there are more plausible means of solving such conflicts. The strongest case for dialetheism is that it allows us to solve logical and semantic paradoxes of self-reference, some of which have endured for well over two thousand years. I construct a paradox that the dialetheist cannot accommodate, and which shows that dialetheism never provided a solution to the paradoxes at all, even in their more familiar forms. (shrink)

A key aspect of teaching ‘development’ is understanding the conundrums and tensions between balance and imbalance with constructs of global and...

The aim of this book is twofold: to explain the reconciliation of religion and politics in the work of John Locke, and to explore the relevance of that reconciliation for politics in our own time. Confronted with deep social divisions over ultimate beliefs, Locke sought to unite society in a single liberal community. Reason could identify divine moral laws that would be acceptable to members of all cultural groups, thereby justifying the authority of government. Greg Forster demonstrates that Locke's (...) theory is liberal and rational but also moral and religious, providing an alternative to the two extremes of religious fanaticism and moral relativism. This account of Locke's thought will appeal to specialists and advanced students across philosophy, political science and religious studies. (shrink)

Wendy S. Parker and I have advanced an inductive-risk approach to the provision of climate information that relies on the contextual values of information users. This approach aims to improve the e...

Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising--on campus as well as nationally. How did this happen? First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into (...) American childhood and education: What doesn't kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths--and the resulting culture of safetyism--interferes with young people's social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life. Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to promote the spread of these untruths. They explore changes in childhood such as the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. They examine changes on campus, including the corporatization of universities and the emergence of new ideas about identity and justice. They situate the conflicts on campus within the context of America's rapidly rising political polarization and dysfunction. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines. (shrink)

This essay is structured around the bifurcation between proofs and models: The first section discusses Proof Theory of relevant and substructural logics, and the second covers the Model Theory of these logics. This order is a natural one for a history of relevant and substructural logics, because much of the initial work — especially in the Anderson–Belnap tradition of relevant logics — started by developing proof theory. The model theory of relevant logic came some time later. As we will see, (...) Dunn’s algebraic models [76, 77] Urquhart’s operational semantics [267, 268] and Routley and Meyer’s relational semantics [239, 240, 241] arrived decades after the initial burst of activity from Alan Anderson and Nuel Belnap. The same goes for work on the Lambek calculus: although inspired by a very particular application in linguistic typing, it was developed first proof-theoretically, and only later did model theory come to the fore. Girard’s linear logic is a different story: it was discovered though considerations of the categorical models of coherence.. (shrink)

George Orwell wondered why oppressed proletariats in the communist and capitalist worlds did not rise up and replace the governments that oppressed them with something better for them. This is a puzzle we still face today, wherever a majority faces exploitation. The chapter examines the question of why exploited peoples don’t replace exploitative governments in their own best interest, whether through revolution or through the ballot box. The question is examined through the lens of the political philosophy and political fiction (...) of George Orwell, with special attention to how his philosophy applies to the modern USA and the Trump administration. It is argued that in the modern US, there are many reasons why the masses are exploited, but the most important is that they don’t understand the nature of their exploitation. Citizens are often isolated in reality bubbles. Our basic human irrationality, hypocrisy, and willingness to rewrite the past, are harnessed and used against us. International conflicts stoke nationalism and prevent the masses from finding a common identity with the masses worldwide. Within the US, conflicts between different social groups pit the masses against one another, and prevent them from recognizing their common condition. (shrink)

Natural deduction with alternatives extends Gentzen–Prawitz-style natural deduction with a single structural addition: negatively signed assumptions, called alternatives. It is a mildly bilateralist, single-conclusion natural deduction proof system in which the connective rules are unmodi_ed from the usual Prawitz introduction and elimination rules — the extension is purely structural. This framework is general: it can be used for (1) classical logic, (2) relevant logic without distribution, (3) affine logic, and (4) linear logic, keeping the connective rules fixed, and varying purely (...) structural rules. The key result of this paper is that the two principles that introduce kinds of irrelevance to natural deduction proofs: (a) the rule of explosion (from a contradiction, anything follows); and (b) the structural rule of vacuous discharge; are shown to be two sides of a single coin, in the same way that they correspond to the structural rule of weakening in the sequent calculus. The paper also includes a discussion of assumption classes, and how they can play a role in treating additive connectives in substructural natural deduction. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rationalist Empiricism: A Theory of Speculative Critique by Nathan BrownGreg EllermannBrown, Nathan. Rationalist Empiricism: A Theory of Speculative Critique. Fordham University Press, 2021. 318pp.Nathan Brown's Rationalist Empiricism is, above all, a book about philosophical method. It is also a highly significant study of the conceptual architecture of Marxism, developed by way of a critical return to the lesson of Althusser. Drawing on a range of disparate materials–from the (...) works of Descartes, Hume, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, and Meillassoux to contemporary experiments in digital photography and metrology–Brown demonstrates the necessity of "a mutual interruption of reason and experience" (31) for any theoretical or political practice that would avoid falling into ideological complacency.The book opens with an appraisal of "the speculative turn" (1) in 21st-century thought, a turn Brown characterizes as an intellectual dead-end. He remarks that the various new materialisms and object-oriented ontologies of the last decades were united by an inattention to method. Unconcerned to establish the necessity of their claims or with the relation between reasoning and reality, these philosophies made assertions instead of arguments; they mistook dogmatism for speculation.For Brown, it is the dialectic–specifically, the dialectic of reason and experience–that promises to renew the possibility of speculative thinking. Such renewal will entail refusing "the severance of speculation from critique" (2). It also requires thinking through a more basic problem: the relation between rationalism and empiricism. While rationalism "explore[s] what has to be thought according to the internal order and consistency of ideas," empiricism, as Brown has it, "claim[s] the genesis of ideas in experience" (3). Since Kant's first Critique, this binary and the effort to overcome it have set the terms of philosophical debate. Brown's striking contention is that the search for a synthesis or a hidden ground uniting these two positions (as, for instance, in Deleuze or Michel Henry) invariably leads us back to the transcendental–an improvement on the dogmatism of contemporary theory but a reduction of knowledge to "conditions of experience" [End Page 128] nonetheless (47). Brown therefore proposes another path: "a relational disjunction of rationalism and empiricism" animated by "the critical power of the tension between [them] to check one another's claims and to propel those claims further" (3). In other words, he develops a methodological dialectic whose two poles-the rationalist and the empiricist-alternately take on speculative and critical functions. There is no static alignment of the key categories in Brown's book. "Speculation and critique cannot be parceled out," he writes, "according to the division of reason and experience. Metaphysics, science, politics: each of these fields relies integrally upon the conflict and complementarity of reason and experience, their 'epistemological polarity'" (250). In Bachelard's terms, pivotal for the overall argument, reason and experience must be allowed to "transmute," "propel," and "say 'no' to one another" (8). It is their ungrounded dialectical relation that sustains true speculative thought.This methodological position has profound ontological implications. Looking to Althusser, Brown finds the beginnings of a theory of rationalist empiricism in the structural Marxist notion of the "concrete-in-thought" (15-16): the self-critical and experimentally verified knowledge of a science. Crucially, for Althusser there can be no concrete-in-thought without a "concrete-real," external to theory itself (15). Developing to the fullest this underappreciated point, Brown shows that rationalist empiricism must be a realism. Thus, the book's second, third, and fourth chapters elaborate a continuous argument concerning "the primacy of being over thought" (59), and the relationship between speculative and scientific knowledge. The central question is how speculation might extend or "extrapolate from the exteriorizing force of science, without being reducible to its forms of experience" (261). Refracting Hegel's Logic through the thought of Heidegger and Meillassoux, Brown ultimately offers a new account of the ontological difference–between being and beings, between speculative truth and "ontic," scientific knowledge–that privileges neither side and insists on their coordination. Once again, he declines to seek a synthesis, arguing that "true critique" (as Hegel characterized his speculative method) depends on "the ontological primacy of becoming" (91), on an absolute time bound up with... (shrink)

The problem with model-theoretic modal semantics is that it provides only the formal beginnings of an account of the semantics of modal languages. In the case of non-modal language, we bridge the gap between semantics and mere model theory, by claiming that a sentence is true just in case it is true in an intended model. Truth in a model is given by the model theory, and an intended model is a model which has as domain the actual objects of (...) discourse, and which relates these objects in an appropriate manner. However, the same strategy applied to the modal case seems to require an intended modal model whose domain includes mere possibilia. Building on recent work by Christopher Menzel (Synthese 85 (1990)), I give an account of model-theoretic semantics for modal languages which does not require mere possibilia or intensional entities of any kind. Menzel has offered a representational account of model-theoretic modal semantics that accords with actualist scruples, since it does not require possibilia. However, Menzel's view is in the company of other actualists who seek to eliminate possible worlds, but whose accounts tolerate other sorts of abstract, intensional entities, such as possible states of affairs. Menzel's account crucially depends on the existence of properties and relations in intension. I offer a purely extensional, representational account and prove that it does all the work that Menzel's account does. The result of this endeavor is an account of model theoretic semantics for modal languages requiring nothing but pure sets and the actual objects of discourse. Since ontologically beyond what is prima facie presupposed by the model theory itself. Thus, the result is truly an ontology-free model-theoretic semantics for modal languages. That is to say, getting genuine modal semantics out of the model theory is ontologically cost-free. Since my extensional account is demonstrably no less adequate, and yet is at the same time more ontologically frugal, it is certainly to be preferred. (shrink)

introduction Rhetoric/Memory/Place Carole Blair, Greg Dickinson, and Brian L. Ott The story is told of the poet Simonides of Ceos who, after chanting a poem ...

Combining non-classical (or sub-classical) logics is not easy, but it is very interesting. In this paper, we combine nonclassical logics of negation and possibility (in the presence of conjunction and disjunction), and then we combine the resulting systems with intuitionistic logic. We will find that Kracht's results on the undecidability of classical modal logics generalise to a non-classical setting. We will also see conditions under which intuitionistic logic can be combined with a non-intuitionistic negation without corrupting the intuitionistic fragment of (...) the logic. (shrink)

This book examines Rousseau’s ideas about the natural transparency of human intention, the loss of this transparency in the opaque cities of Europe, and the possibility of its restoration within small republican communities. The author weaves together Rousseau’s provocative conjectures about transparency and opaqueness to provide an original interpretation of Rousseau’s political thought and its bearing on several contemporary controversies. He also argues that civic cooperation in Rousseau’s model republic requires mutual surveillance; that Hobbes’s argument for a sovereign state assumes (...) the natural opacity of human intention; and that Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” cannot efficiently coordinate the self-interested choices of opaque traders. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that proponents of deliberative democracy too quickly assume that the idea of reciprocity is the best moral foundation. I further argue that a more fundamental ground, namely that of reversibility, is overlooked, a ground that transforms the nature of deliberative interaction. Thus, my aim is to develop this alternate ground and indicate how it augments the notion of democratic reciprocity. I demonstrate how the appeal to reason by proponents of deliberative democracy is an epistemic ground (...) from which a notion of reciprocity emerges that regulates what is and is not deliberatively acceptable. I contend, however, thatsuch a reliance on this epistemic ground of reason overlooks a more fundamental ground without which reciprocity is impossible. This other ground that I develop is what I call the phenomenological ground of reversibility. (shrink)

From Machiavellian city officials to big-time mobsters, corrupt beat cops, and overzealous G-men, Boardwalk Empire is replete with philosophically compelling characters who find themselves in philosophically interesting situations. This book is directed at thoughtful fans of the show. Here, readers discover parallels between the events in Boardwalk Empire and contemporary political events. Twenty philosophers address issues in political philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, feminism, and metaphysics. Is Nucky Thomson a Machiavellian prince or a Nietzschean superman? Is Jimmy's resentment towards Nucky justified, given (...) that Jimmy would never have come into existence had his parents not met? What can be said about the ethics of lying in the seedy world of bootlegging? Agent Van Alden’s unique religious attitudes bring a warped sense of morality to the Boardwalk universe. One chapter brings to light the moral character of Van Alden’s God. Other chapters explores the roles that storytelling, deception, and gender play in the show. (shrink)

Splitting livers allows two people (usually an adult and a child) to receive a liver transplant from one donated adult liver, but the risks to the adult recipient are greater than if they had received the equivalent whole liver. It has been suggested, therefore, that splitting livers harms adult recipients. Without liver splitting, however, there would be few livers available for children, and paediatric waiting time and waiting list mortality would significantly increase. In this paper, we argue that although splitting (...) livers makes adults worse off, this should be considered sub-optimal benefit rather than harm. We explore justifications for sub-optimally benefitting adults in this way and consider alternatives to the current approach. We argue that splitting livers masks the more fundamental problem of low paediatric donation rates and that increasing the number of paediatric donations would improve the situation for both adult and paediatric liver patients. (shrink)

Russell probes Morgenthau's realist ethics and the underpinnings of the nuclear threat in a technologically evolving modern world with increasingly obsolescent national boundaries.

There is much to learn from and admire in Danielle Wenner's "Nondomination and the Limits of Relational Autonomy." The core claim Wenner advances is that the very concerns that have motivated feminist relational autonomy theorists would be better pursued by foregoing their concern with autonomy and pursuing instead the political aim of promoting a neorepublican conception of freedom as nondomination. While leaving open the possibility that "autonomy speak may remain valuable in some contexts", Wenner nevertheless claims that "for the purposes (...) of understanding and combating relations of oppression and subjection, freedom as nondomination provides a more useful conceptual apparatus than the ideal of... (shrink)