This book describes in detail the relationship between symbolic representations of knowledge and abstract states of knowledge, exploring along the way the foundations of knowledge, knowledge bases, knowledge-based systems, and knowledge representation and reasoning. The idea of knowledge bases lies at the heart of symbolic, or "traditional," artificial intelligence. A knowledge-based system decides how to act by running formal reasoning procedures over a body of explicitly represented knowledge—a knowledge base. The system is not programmed for specific tasks; rather, it is (...) told what it needs to know and expected to infer the rest. This book is about the logic of such knowledge bases. It describes in detail the relationship between symbolic representations of knowledge and abstract states of knowledge, exploring along the way the foundations of knowledge, knowledge bases, knowledge-based systems, and knowledge representation and reasoning. Assuming some familiarity with first-order predicate logic, the book offers a new mathematical model of knowledge that is general and expressive yet more workable in practice than previous models. The book presents a style of semantic argument and formal analysis that would be cumbersome or completely impractical with other approaches. It also shows how to treat a knowledge base as an abstract data type, completely specified in an abstract way by the knowledge-level operations defined over it. (shrink)

Thinking, Language, and Experience was first published in 1989.Hector-Neri Castañeda's intricate and provocative essays have been widely influential, especially his work in epistemology and ethics, and his theory on the relation of thought to action. The fourteen essays in Thinking, Language, and Experience -- half of them written expressly for this volume -- demonstrate the breadth and richness of his recent work on the unitary structure of human experience.A comprehensive, unified study of phenomena at the intersection between experience, thinking, language, (...) and reality, this book focuses on singular reference -- that is, reference to individuals insofar as they are thought of as individuals: indicators, quasi-indicators, proper names, singular descriptions. Castañeda establishes a large number of new facts -- linguistic, semantic, psychological, and sociological -- about the workings of language in human experience, and from them develops a network of new theories, all grounded in his comprehensive Guise Theory.These theories offer a systematic account for: the structure of human experience and the world at large; the mental powers required to think of the world and to undergo experiences; self-consciousness; the language for thinking of other minds; perception and the interaction between indexical reference and perceptual fields; and the role of subjectivity in perception and intentional action. (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene como propósito aportar algunos elementos para una reflexión sobre los procesos de industrialización en la provincia de Catamarca - Argentina en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. Para orientarnos en esta dirección partiremos del proyecto de una enciclopedia genética propuesta por el filósofo Gilbert Simondon cómo propuesta de abordaje. Luego analizaremos el espíritu enciclopédico presente en los escritos económicos de Federico Schickendantz y Samuel Lafone Quevedo estructurados como máquinas de enseñar. Por último, presentaremos la descripción de dos (...) objetos técnicos creados por el D. Mardoqueo Molina y Bazán elaborada en estos escritos. Consideramos que estos objetos técnico aportaron un paradigma de inteligibilidad para la construcción de ciertas imágenes del porvenir de la actividad industrial en la provincia de Catamarca en estos escritos. Desde nuestra perspectiva, la falta de una estado metaestable a nivel social, necesario para amplificar estas imágenes del provenir, impidieron el desarrollo de una mentalidad técnica. (shrink)

En este trabajo utilizaremos la tipología schmittiana de pares conceptuales teológico-políticos como marco interpretativo para estudiar cómo el panteísmo fue considerado en la Alemania decimonónica como una doctrina revolucionaria en un sentido político. Esto lo haremos presentando brevemente los antecedentes ilustrados de esta problemática y analizando tanto los debates sobre la personalidad de Dios surgidos a raíz de la publicación de Das Leben Jesu de Strauß como los textos de la izquierda hegeliana en los que se reconoce explícitamente un proyecto (...) político revolucionario vinculado al panteísmo. (shrink)

Therapy for metaphysics -- Concepts, rules, and the spirit of recognition -- Meaning and meanings -- Reference and presence -- Truth and correspondence -- Emancipating theology.

In this paper we investigate a categorical equivalence between square root qMV-algehras (a variety of algebras arising from quantum computation) and a category of preordered semigroups.

The purpose of this work is to shed some light on some aspects of hermeneutic analysis, specifically with respect to the qualitative/quantitative distinction, conceptual elements regarding hermeneutics and some elements concerning its analytical and practical uses.

The philosophy of history of 1804 and 1805 enables Fichte to place his natural right, developed previously at Jena, against a diachronic background. This means that Fichte does not reason merely synchronically from a timeless conception of society and state. From a synchronic viewpoint, Fichte cannot solve the problem of the control of political power because he has to draw on the assumption of a virtuous ephorate. This assumption is not consistent with the Fichtean ideal of a philosophy of right (...) completely independent from moral considerations. Thus, the control of government is possible only if at least a group of citizens can go beyond the mere rational egoism. This new temporal conception of the state leads Fichte to think that the problems of consistency of his theory of Jena are unavoidable, given that a society integrated by egoist individuals cannot be sustained. However, his later philosophy of history enables Fichte to state the inexorable annihilation of this type of community and gives place to an ensuing epoch, when citizens are not self-interested anymore. (shrink)

This is a presentation about joint work between Hector Zenil and Jean-Paul Delahaye. Zenil presents Experimental Algorithmic Theory as Algorithmic Information Theory and NKS, put together in a mixer. Algorithmic Complexity Theory defines the algorithmic complexity k(s) as the length of the shortest program that produces s. But since finding this short program is in general an undecidable question, the only way to approach k(s) is to use compression algorithms. He shows how to use the Compress function in Mathematica to (...) give an idea about the compressibility of various sequences. However, the idea of applying a compression algorithm breaks down for very short sequences. This is true not only for the Compress function, but also for any other compression algorithm. Zenil's approach is to construct a metric of algorithmic complexity for short sequences from scratch. He defines the algorithmic probability as the probability that an arbitrary program produces a sequence. The basic idea is to run a whole class of computational devices such as Turing Machines or Cellular Automata, and compute the distributions of the sequences they generate. Zenil presents a comparison of frequency distributions of sequences generated by 2-state 3-color Turing Machines and 2-color radius 1 Cellular Automata. He also compared these distributions to distributions found in data from the real world, and found that not only there is correlation across different systems, but also that the distributions are rather stable, and the difference between the distributions in abstract systems and real-world data can be attributed to noise. In his paper Zenil elaborates on the nature of the noise he has encountered. Zenil conjectures that the correlation distances between different systems decreases with a larger number of steps, and converge in the infinite limit case. (shrink)

In the framework of the topos approach to quantum mechanics we give a representation of physical properties in terms of modal operators on Heyting algebras. It allows us to introduce a classical type study of the mentioned properties.

This is an issue of our quarterly journal Hume Papers on Public Policy - the journal of the David Hume Institute.

One of the most striking experiences of my early days as a postgraduate student of medieval Scots law was an encounter with a twelfth-century charter which, apart from being written in Latin, might have served as a model or template for the land transfer documents which I had learned how to draft the previous year in the undergraduate class called Conveyancing. Alliterative thoughts came into my head—conveyancing, conservatism, consistency, continuity—but also the question of when this seeming stability was first achieved, (...) and how it crossed from Latin into the formal Scots-law English of my own day. Joanna Kopaczyk’s fascinating study of legal language in Scottish towns from the late middle ages to the Reformation in Scotland does not address the conveyancing question but it raises similar issues about legal and administrative record-keeping, addressing them from the perspective of historical linguistics. She is interested in the tendency of both law and language towa .. (shrink)

In Thomas Aquinas, the place regarding memory doesn't seem to be a central issue and, anyhow, for many, it may be seen old-fashioned. However, only the study on his work will allow us to reach more certain statements and eventually, a task that we won't develop here, see its plausibility today. Hence, I set out to present an approach to his treatment in regard to memory, limiting the discussion, not in exclusive, to two texts of the Treatise on Human Nature, (...) included in the first part of the Summa theologiae. I'm referring to the distinction of the inner senses in quaestio 78, articulus 4 and the elucidation of the relation between memory and intellect in quaestio 79, articuli 6 and 7. We will move therefore through sensibility, intellect and memory, asking the question if sensibility and intellect are soul's capacities, which is the nature of memory in reference to them? (shrink)

We have now provided an overall simple theoretical account of the structure of perceptual experience proto-philosophically examined in Part I. The next task is to find the proper logical machinery to formulatte those accounts rigorously.

¿En qué consiste la aplicación más justa de la ley, en aplicarla al pie de la letra en todos los casos o permitir al juez cierto margen para interpretarla? A lo largo de este texto presentaremos cómo no han sido pocos los partidarios de un “literalismo” a la hora de aplicar la ley, y para ello explicaremos lo sucedido durante la Revolución Francesa. Basados en la opinión de Rousseau, los ilustrados franceses creían que el legislador, en tanto que creador de (...) la ley, era el que mejor conocía el espíritu de la misma, luego la interpretación de la ley por parte del jurista era arbitraria. Dicho de otra manera: la labor del juez se entendía nada más como la inferencia de una conclusión a partir de ciertas premisas (la ley y el caso). Aristóteles, sin embargo, ya había previsto este problema. Entonces, el propósito de este escrito es (1) explicar qué ha llevado a querer aplicar la ley al pie de la letra, (2) cuáles son sus riesgos y (3) la solución que Aristóteles propone a este asunto, en donde hablaremos sobre la prudencia y el juez como «ley dotada de vida». (shrink)

Este artículo propone que la crítica de arte que lleva a cabo Octavio Paz guarda una estrecha relación con su visión poética, particularmente la que se expone en El arco y la lira. Asimismo, aunque teóricamente hablando esta crítica se distancia de las posturas ideológicas, pues considera la producción artístico-literaria como fuente de libertad en sí, aquí vemos que al final la crítica de Paz también llega a ser ideológica y es a través de la ideología como generará su crítica (...) en contra de los murales de Siqueiros y Rivera; sin embargo, Paz será más condescendiente con la visión estética de Orozco, precisamente porque Orozco encaja dentro de su visión poética, y dentro de -en principio- su agenda no ideológica. (shrink)

En este texto abordamos el papel de la escuela en la producción de lo común y la diferencia como mandatos del Estado en el marco de los procesos de producción-reproducción del orden social. Inicialmente, discutimos lo común como relato de ficción demandado a la escuela durante los procesos de formación del Estado-nación. A continuación, abordamos lo común producido por la escuela, como efecto desbordado del relato de ficción de lo común-universal. Finalmente, analizamos el mandato de la escuela contemporánea para la (...) producción de la diversidad-diferencia, como nuevo régimen de verdad en la producción del individuo solipsista y las comunidades cerradas hiperfragmentadas. Como cierre, planteamos la paradoja de este nuevo mandato escolar para la producción de la diversidad-diferencia en un momento histórico en el que se ha consolidado un cierto común que podría servir de plataforma para disputar ese orden capitalista que hoy, como reverso, es lo único común globalizado. (shrink)

Introducción a la comprensión del mito -- Los orígenes de la tradición mitológica occidental -- Poética de las tradiciones narrativas -- La recepción del mito en la cultura audiovisual contemporánea -- Los argumentos universales -- Los argumentos universales (II): el viaje a un planeta desconocido.

Este trabajo busca, en primer lugar, explicar por qué se puede considerar el aforismo como género filosófico en Nietzsche. Dos hipótesis se ofrecen a consideración. Tal vez, el aforismo es solamente un instrumento encargado de atacar la escritura filosófica tradicional (la argumentación continua en sus diversas formas), o, tal vez, es un género que halla su razón en una necesidad que brota del centro mismo de la filosofía de Nietzsche: el aforismo visto como expresión del cuerpo- pensamiento. El trabajo se (...) inclina a mostrar la viabilidad de esta segunda opción y, a partir de ella, la emergencia de un segundo problema. ¿Cómo es posible postular necesidad o razón en el centro de una filosofía del devenir? ¿Cómo conciliar la forma fragmentaria del aforismo con la voluntad de sistema? La conclusión será que, llevada al extremo, cualquier lectura de la obra de Nietzsche , como deseo de constituir una mirada global de su pensamiento, choca con la experiencia de una multiplicidad de autores y obras recogidos bajo el nombre Nietzsche. La voluntad de sistema conduce a la autodestrucción de la obra y de su intento de lectura. (shrink)