This paper presents a framework for the generation of coherent elementary conversational sequences at the speech act level. We will embrace the notion of a cooperative dialogue game in which two players produce speech acts to transfer relevant information with respect to their commitments. Central to the approach is that participants try to achieve some sort of balanced cognitive state as a result of speech act generation and interpretation. Cognitive states of the participants change as a result of the interpretation (...) of speech acts and these changes provoke the production of a subsequent speech act. Describing the properties and the dynamics of the mental constructs that constitute the participants’ cognitive states, such as beliefs and commitments, in relation to the various dialogue contributions is an essential aspect of the game. Although simple in its basic form, the framework enables us to produce abstract conversations with some properties that agree strikingly with coherence structures found in, for instance, Conversation Analysis. (shrink)

The coronavirus pandemic has given an old question new traction: what exactly is the meaning of appeals to expert authority in politics? Though basing political decisions on the best available scientific and technical knowledge may be a plain task on the surface, and calls for ‘listening to science’ regularly maintain this perception, the relationship between expertise and politics is complicated. Given the particular centrality of expertise to global governance practices and institutions, what would an international political theory of expertise look (...) like? Two recent volumes on the subject offer highly original answers to this question. Read alongside each other, Lucile Maertens and Marieke Louis’ Why International Organizations Hate Politics and Jens Steffek’s International Organization as Technocratic Utopia bring to the fore the technocratic legacies and depoliticising tendencies of global governance. In this review essay, I first discuss the historical emergence of technocratically-inspired international organisations as portrayed by Jens Steffek, and then turn to Lucile Maertens’ and Marieke Louis’ practitioner-centred account of how depoliticisation works and is best understood analytically. I then offer a comparative discussion and propose that, with the help of both books, we can picture global governance as driven by a search for utopia. (shrink)

This paper presents a framework for the generation of coherent elementary conversational sequences at the speech act level. We will embrace the notion of a cooperative dialogue game in which two players produce speech acts to transfer relevant information with respect to their commitments. Central to the approach is that participants try to achieve some sort of balanced cognitive state as a result of speech act generation and interpretation. Cognitive states of the participants change as a result of the interpretation (...) of speech acts and these changes provoke the production of a subsequent speech act. Describing the properties and the dynamics of the mental constructs that constitute the participants’ cognitive states, such as beliefs and commitments, in relation to the various dialogue contributions is an essential aspect of the game. Although simple in its basic form, the framework enables us to produce abstract conversations with some properties that agree strikingly with coherence structures found in, for instance, Conversation Analysis. (shrink)

In open heterogeneous multi-agent systems, communication is hampered by lack of common ontologies. Ontologies may differ in naming conventions, granularity and scope. In such an environment, the agents must possess the right conversational skills to effectively exchange information even when the speaker's ontology is only approximately translatable to the hearer's ontology. Furthermore, the agents must be able to autonomously establish an ontology translation by exchanging parts of their ontologies. In this paper, we propose a layered communication protocol in which the (...) agents gradually build towards a semantically integrated system by establishing minimal and effective common ontologies. We tested our system, called ANEMONE, on a number of heterogeneous news agents. We show how these agents successfully exchange information on news articles, despite initial difficulties caused by heterogeneous ontologies. (shrink)

This is a review of Quantifiers, Logic, and Language, edited by Jaap van der Does and Jan van Eijk, published by CSLI (Center for the Study of Language and Information) Publications, Stanford, CA, in 1996.

Interpretation in science has gained little attention in the past because philosophers of science believed that interpretation belongs to the context of discovery or must be associated with meaning. But scientists often speak about interpretation when they report their findings. Elsewhere I have argue in favour of a pragmatic-rhetorical theory of explanation, and it is in light of this theory that I suggest we can understand interpretation in the natural sciences.

In this study of Robert Boyle's epistemology, Jan W. Wojcik reveals the theological context within which Boyle developed his views on reason's limits. After arguing that a correct interpretation of his views on 'things above reason' depends upon reading his works in the context of theological controversies in seventeenth-century England, Professor Wojcik details exactly how Boyle's three specific categories of things which transcend reason - the incomprehensible, the inexplicable, and the unsociable - affected his conception of what a natural philosopher (...) could hope to know. Also covered in detail is Boyle's belief that God had deliberately limited the human intellect in order to reserve a full knowledge of both theology and natural philosophy for the afterlife. (shrink)

The essays both represent a variety of epistemological approaches, including those of the humanities, social studies, natural science, sociology, psychology, and engineering sciences and reflect a diversity of philosophical traditions such ...

Non-invasive brain stimulation promises innovative experimental possibilities for psychology and neurosci- ence as well as new therapeutic and palliative measures in medicine. Because of its good risk–benefit ratio, non-invasiveness and reversibility as well as its low effort and cost it has good chances of becoming a wide- spread tool in science, medicine and even in lay use. While most issues in medical and research ethics such as informed consent, safety, and potential for misuse can be handled with manageable effort, the (...) real promise of brain stimulation does raise one prominent moral worry: it may lay the foundation of reliable, precise and stable manipulations of the mind. This article addresses this worry and concludes that it is not the possibility of manipulation, but the shift in our understanding of our mind which stands in need of careful consideration. (shrink)

L’inquiétude de la totalité de la vie, qui s’éveille chez certains esprits, les amène à créer des représentations canoniques, types de vie stylisée et unifiée. Les philosophes sont des créateurs de « canons » de vie philosophique ; mais on peut se demander s’il est possible de dresser un tableau idéal du philosophe qui pourrait lui servir en même temps de norme et de critère. Non, car la vie philosophique est un mouvement, un « acte imparfait » dont la fin (...) nous échappe ; nous la poursuivons par des voies profondément personnelles ; c’est pourquoi on ne saurait « canoniser » un philosophe. (shrink)

The topic of this paper is the perception of properties. It is argued that the perception of properties allows for a distinction between the sense of the identity and the sense of the qualitative nature of a property. So, for example, we might perceive a property as being identical over time even though it is presented as more and more determinate. Thus, you might see an object first as red and then as crimson red. In this case, the property is (...) perceived as identical over time, even though the sense of the qualitative nature (the redness, the crimson redness) of the property is changing. The distinction between the sense of identity and the sense of quality is explicated in terms of perceiving a particular property, a trope, and perceiving it as an instance of a universal. It is subsequently argued that the perceived tropes cannot constitute the phenomenal character of the perceptual experience. (shrink)

In recent years, it has become clear that Proclus has an elaborate metaphysics, not only of the higher realm, but also of the natural world. This chapter first delimits its topic by explaining what physics or philosophy of nature is in Proclus’ view: the hypothetical study of all causes, but especially the transcendent causes of the natural world. After briefly addressing the question whether the world is eternal, the author moves on to presenting these causes in due order: first the (...) many demiurges and other productive causes, the different products of the different demiurgies, the plurality of paradigmatic causes, nature as the proximate cause of bodies, and finally the ontology of bodies, as hylomorphic entities, analysable into immanent forms and different levels of substrate or matter. (shrink)

We connect learning algorithms and algorithms automating proof search in propositional proof systems: for every sufficiently strong, well-behaved propositional proof system [Formula: see text], we prove that the following statements are equivalent, (1) Provable learning. [Formula: see text] proves efficiently that p-size circuits are learnable by subexponential-size circuits over the uniform distribution with membership queries. (2) Provable automatability. [Formula: see text] proves efficiently that [Formula: see text] is automatable by non-uniform circuits on propositional formulas expressing p-size circuit lower bounds. Here, (...) [Formula: see text] is sufficiently strong and well-behaved if I.–III. hold: I. [Formula: see text] p-simulates Jeřábek’s system [Formula: see text] (which strengthens the Extended Frege system [Formula: see text] by a surjective weak pigeonhole principle); II. [Formula: see text] satisfies some basic properties of standard proof systems which p-simulate [Formula: see text]; III. [Formula: see text] proves efficiently for some Boolean function [Formula: see text] that [Formula: see text] is hard on average for circuits of subexponential size. For example, if III. holds for [Formula: see text], then Items 1 and 2 are equivalent for [Formula: see text]. We use the following modified notion of automatability in Item 2, the automating circuits output a [Formula: see text]-proof of a given formula (expressing a p-size circuit lower bound for a function [Formula: see text]) in non-uniform p-time in the length of a shortest [Formula: see text]-proof of a closely related but different formula (expressing an average-case subexponential-size circuit lower bound for the same function [Formula: see text]). If there is a function [Formula: see text] which is hard on average for circuits of size [Formula: see text], for each sufficiently big [Formula: see text], then there is an explicit propositional proof system [Formula: see text] satisfying properties I.-III., i.e. the equivalence of Items 1 and 2 holds for [Formula: see text]. (shrink)

This paper presents the ethical nihilism that looms in the condition of sex in the posthuman. It takes over from the backdrop of Hauskeller’s description of the singularity as having a “glorious sex life.” While such a condition is heavily leaning towards hedonistic ethics, the paper critiques that it merely masks nihilistic ethics. The pleasurable picture of ‘happy rapists’ and ‘masturbatory sex’ in posthumanity with sexual affluence faces a disturbing nothingness that caters to the extreme possibility of being sexless. Following (...) from Žižek’s exposition of Houellebecq’s novel The Elementary Particles, which runs counter to Houellebecq’s later novel The Possibility of an Island, the posthuman poses paradoxes that point to a nihilistic ethical domain. Later, the paper presents two paradoxes: First, the paradox of hedonism or happiness, and second, the paradox of wealth or nothingness. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 58 Heft: 4 Seiten: 453-472.

In the context of the current discussion about the ethical boundaries of humor, the study attempts to show that an approach based on Mukařovský’s functional theory is not only applicable to the discussion but also competitive. In the first part of the article, the author tries to answer the question of inserting a joke into the field of functions. He understands a joke as a sign that has in its most typical version a dominant f ictive-communicative function. It is precisely (...) in the dominance of the fictive-communicative function of the joke that he sees the reason for the borderline position of the joke between art and life. The fictiveness of jokes creates, on the one hand, the impression that they have as fictitious statements greater independence from nonaesthetic norms, similar to what works of art have. On the other hand, because of the communicative moment jokes have more potential to offend us than do artifacts with a dominant aesthetic function. The second part of the study is dedicated to the relationship between the joke and the listener and attempts to describe other forms in which the semantic energy of the joke can reveal itself. (shrink)

Ancien etudiant de Brentano et de Zimmerman, Kazimierz Twardowski, apres son election a la chaire de philosophie a Lvov en 1895, crea autour de lui un cercle d'etudiants et de collaborateurs exceptionnel, connu aujourd'hui sous le nom d'Ecole de Lvov-Varsovie. A mi-chemin entre Vienne et Cambridge, c'est a Lvov, et puis partiellement a Varsovie, que Jan Lukasiewicz, Stanislaw Lesniewski, Alfred Tarski, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Tadeusz Kotarbinski et bien d'autres encore, repenserent dans un esprit d'analyse les questions fondamentales de la philosophie du (...) langage, de la logique, de la philosophie des sciences et des mathematiques. Plus qu'une simple traduction, ce livre est une version revisee de la monographie desormais classique que Jan Wolenski, connu pour ses travaux non seulement en histoire de la philosophie analytique, mais aussi en epistemologie et en theorie de la verite, a consacree a l'Ecole de Lvov-Varsovie. (shrink)

Mathematical models are an important tool in the development ofsoftware technology, including programming languages and algorithms.During the last few years, a new class of such models has beendeveloped based on the notion of a mathematical game that isespecially well-suited to address the interactions between thecomponents of a system. This paper gives an introduction to thesegame-semantical models of programming languages, concentrating onmotivating the basic intuitions and putting them into context.

The sacred and the revolution Leszek Kołakowski and othersThe author examines the relationship between the sphere of the sacred and the phenomenon of the revolution. He points to the distinctiveness of Leszek Kołakowski’s position as compared to the views articulated by other representatives of the so-called Warsaw school of the history of ideas. He claims that Kołakowski’s philosophical programme, which takes into account the sacred and mythical dimension of the socio-political diagnoses, can help us to understand the Russian Revolution of (...) 1917 as well as other revolutionary movements and processes of the 20th century. He demonstrates that the sacred is an inherent aspect of the revolutionary mentality. Also, he argues that the ideologies which turned against religion in the name of the struggle with religious superstitions, in the end became quasi-religious. As a matter of fact, the revolutionary utopia may be perceived as a kind of crypto-religion involving such elements of the mythical thinking as a belief in the cognition of history, an assumption that the latter may be started anew, a belief in the possibility of the secular eschatology, etc. (shrink)

Masarykovy a Brentanovy snahy o překonání Humova skepticismu prostřednictvím počtu pravděpodobnosti lze chápat jako svého druhu "třetí cestu" mezi kantovským apriorismem a kapitulací před subtilními Humovými argumenty. U Masaryka je ono snažení součástí jeho projektu nové induktivní logiky, která (v návaznosti na Leibnize) by měla být logickým základem pro "umění vynalézat" (ars inveniendi). Masaryk akceptuje Humovu koncepci analytických soudů, ale zároveň inklinuje i ke koncepci Adolfa Ficka, v souladu s níž mají věty počtu pravděpodobnosti charakter syntetických soudů a priori; kromě (...) toho odkazuje pozoruhodným způsobem k Bernoulliho zákonu velkých čísel. Masarykovy úvahy vedou k závěru, že zákon velkých čísel zaručuje shodu mezi apriorními tvrzeními počtu pravděpodobnosti a empirickou skutečností, což podle Masaryka vyvrací "tresť" Humova skepticismu, spočívající v tvrzení, že rozum a zkušenost se vylučují. Vzhledem k tomu, že hlavním objektem Humovy kritiky byl pojem kauzality, je však nutno konstatovat, že Masarykovo snažení bylo neúspěšné, neboť žádná aplikace počtu pravděpodobnosti, jenž se zabývá náhodnými jevy, nemůže vést k založení kauzálního zákona (pokud tento zákon zahrnuje také tezi uniformity kauzální determinace). (shrink)