Christopher Columbus did not know, on October 12, 1492, that he had reached a new world. Rather he believed, along with his crew, that he had crossed the ocean separating western Europe from east Asia; or, at the very least, that they were nearing the rich lands described by Marco Polo, which the Genoan had read about and his crew knew of, at least by reputation. In short, Columbus's ideas about the land he had just reached were considerably more inexact (...) than those that Fernão d'Ulmo - that is to say, the Flemish explorer Ferdinand Van Olmen, Commander-Grantee in the service of João II, who presided at Terceira des Açores - had flaunted before the King. Indeed d'Ulmo was to play a more important role in the history of Portuguese discoveries than did Prince Henry the Navigator himself. In 1487, the year in which the great Portuguese sovereign was deciding between three possible routes to the Indies, d'Ulmo (as he is named in a royal diploma, dated July 24, 1486), or de Olmos as he is called in Las Casas's Historia de Indias, had proposed to the King that he “dar achada huûa grande ylha ou ylhas o terra firme per costa que se presume ser a ylha das Sete Cidades.” His proposal was thus to undertake a voyage to the Antilles, where the cartographers of that time placed the Isle of the Seven Cities, and where d'Ulmo conjectured that a neighboring continent (terra firme) might be located. Columbus himself returned from his voyage five years later. In the meantime, d'Ulmo had perished, perhaps having reached this continent whose existence he - but not Columbus - had foreseen. As to the history of the discovery of America: even if we don't know whether d'Ulmo reached it, we do know that Columbus was unaware that he himself had. (shrink)

In this paper a corporate social responsibility audit is developed following the underlying methodology of the quality award/excellence models. Firstly the extent to which the quality awards already incorporate the development of social responsibility is examined by looking at the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the European Quality Award. It will be shown that the quality awards do not yet include ethical aspects in relation to social responsibility. Both a clear definition of social responsibility and an improved audit instrument (...) are required. A definition and an audit instrument are developed which stimulate movement in that direction and help organisations to reflect on their position in relation to social responsibility. (shrink)

We propose a dynamic logic of lying, wherein a ‘lie that $\varphi $ ’ (where $\varphi $ is a formula in the logic) is an action in the sense of dynamic modal logic, that is interpreted as a state transformer relative to the formula $\varphi $ . The states that are being transformed are pointed Kripke models encoding the uncertainty of agents about their beliefs. Lies can be about factual propositions but also about modal formulas, such as the beliefs of (...) other agents or the belief consequences of the lies of other agents. We distinguish two speaker perspectives: (Obs) an outside observer who is lying to an agent that is modelled in the system, and (Ag) an agent who is lying to another agent, and where both are modelled in the system. We distinguish three addressee perspectives: (Cred) the credulous agent who believes everything that it is told (even at the price of inconsistency), (Skep) the skeptical agent who only believes what it is told if that is consistent with its current beliefs, and (Rev) the belief revising agent who believes everything that it is told by consistently revising its current, possibly conflicting, beliefs. The logics have complete axiomatizations, which can most elegantly be shown by way of their embedding in what is known as action model logic or in the extension of that logic to belief revision. (shrink)

What is empiricism? There can be no authoritative answer to any such question. A historian of philosophy can at best try to call what is common to philosophers who either identified themselves, or have traditionally been identified, as empiricists. But what has set those philosophers apart from others, and especially from those whom they criticized, may not be captured in common views or doctrines. The historian may, in trying to fix the label, rely tacitly on a view of what philosophical (...) positions are and how they are to be identified. Finally, it is typical of philosophers who decide to range themselves under some pre-existing banner ("empiricism", "pragmatism", "phenomenology") to change the very philosophy they take on, as much as did their historical heroes in their day. I will here try to give a sustained argument about what empiricism cannot be, and then enter upon a tentative exploration of what it should be (taken to be). (shrink)

Gödel always claimed that he did not know Skolem's Helsinki lecture when writing his dissertation. Some questions and doubts have been raised about this claim, in particular on the basis of a library slip showing that he had requested Skolem's paper in 1928. It is shown that this library slip does not constitute evidence against Gödel's claim, and that, on the contrary, the library slip and other archive material actually corroborate what Gödel said.

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

This volume contains a selection of papers from the International Conference on Argumentation by prominent international scholars of argumentation theory. It provides an insightful cross-section of the current state of affairs in argumentation research. It will be of interest to all those working in the field of argumentation theory and to all scholars who are interested in recent developments in this field.

Contemporary epistemological and cognitive studies, as well as recent trends in computer science and game theory have revealed an increasingly important and intimate relationship between Information, Interaction, and Agency. Agents perform actions based on the available information and in the presence of other interacting agents. From this perspective Information, Interaction, and Agency neatly ties together classical themes like rationality, decision-making and belief revision with games, strategies and learning in a multi-agent setting. Unified by the central notions Information, Interaction, and Agency, (...) the essays in this volume provide refreshing methodological perspectives on belief revision, dynamic epistemic logic, von Neumann games, and evolutionary game theory; all of which in turn are central approaches to understanding our own rationality and that of other agents. (shrink)

Pioneering researchers claim that telepsychiatry presents the possibility of improving both the quality and quantity of patient care for populations in general as well as for those in rural and remote locations. The prevalence of, and literature on telepsychiatry has increased dramatically in the last decade, covering all aspects of research endeavors. However, little can be found on the topic of ethics in telepsychiatry. Using various clinical scenarios we may provide insight into the moral challenge in telepsychiatry—the lack of in-person (...) contact. The difficulty is to articulate what the significance of in-person contact is and further, its meaning in the therapeutic relationship between the patient and the physician. Using the personalist perspective and related philosophical approaches we may sketch an idea of the patient as person, existentially considered as a relational and bodily human being. By applying Brennan’s model for health technology assessment we may evaluate the morally troubling aspect of telepsychiatry—a lack of in-person contact—on this philosophical sketch of the person. This consideration is crucial when developing policies to guide the use of telepsychiatry in order to maintain the quality of care. (shrink)

Let R be a relational variable of arity m, and let ¯ x be an m-tuple of variables. Let φ be a first order formula that is positive in R, i.e., all occurrences of R in φ are in the scope of an even number of negations. Then λRλ¯.

It is well established by now that computer science has a number of concerns in common with natural language understanding. Common themes show up in particular with algorithmic aspects of text processing. This chapter gives an overview of border crossings from NLP to CS and back. Starting out from syntactic analysis, we trace our route via a philosophical puzzle about meaning, Hoare correctness rules for dynamic semantics, error state analysis of presupposition, equational reasoning about state change, programming with frameworks originally (...) devised for natural language semantics, and the logic of incremental processing. In many cases methods and perspectives developed on one side of the border proved quite useful on the other side, although usually it becomes clear after a while that tools have to be redesigned to fit. The chapter ends with a sketch of the emerging contours of a ‘proper treatment of context in natural language’ that is more than just an application of a logic designed for program analysis. (shrink)

Functions of type n are characteristic functions on n-ary relations. In Beyond the Frege Boundary [6], Keenan established their importance for natural language semantics, by showing that natural language has many examples of irreducible type n functions, where he called a function of type n reducible if it can be represented as a composition of functions of type 1 . We will give a normal form theorem for functions of type n , and use this to show that natural language (...) has many examples of irreducible type n functions in a much stronger sense, where we take a function to be reducible if it can be represented as a composition of functions of lower types. (shrink)

The first thing that struck me in your lecture is that according to the description you gave, the development of Chinese philosophy in the last decades has been determined by social and political developments. This is true for the three hot topics you have distinguished. The reflection on practice found its starting point in a statement of Deng Xiaoping that forced Chinese Marxist philosophers to answer the question of how this statement might be incorporated in Marxism, and thus to reflect (...) on the role and status of practice in Marxist philosophy. The same seems to be true for the debate on humanism, and for the later development towards the study of man. As you have presented it, the debate on humanism was prompted by a reflection on the tragedies of the Cultural Revolution and led, basically, to an interrogation of the link between humanism and Marxism; whereas the reasons for the booming of the Study of Man were the need for reforms, needs caused by recent social developments, and the needs of human development. Research in the study of man is, as you say, the conscious reaction to the historical trends of recent years. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that law has two oftenneglected functions: the expressive and thecommunicative functions. They are especially importantfor legislation on moral issues, such as biomedicalethics and anti-discrimination law. The communicativefunction of law is a complex one: law may create anormative framework, a vocabulary to structurenormative discussions, as well as institutions andprocedures that promote further discussion. Theexpressive function of law is at stake when itexpresses which fundamental standards, which valuesare regarded as important. The recognition of thesefunctions is not only (...) important for descriptivepurposes; it is also fruitful for normative theory. (shrink)