I offer an argument in defense of four-dimensionalism, the view that objects are temporally, as well as spatially extended. The argument is of the inference-to-the-best-explanation variety and is based on relativistic considerations. It deals with the situation in which one and the same object has different three-dimensional shapes at the same time and proceeds by asking what sort of thing it must be in order to present itself in such different ways in various "perspectives" (associated with moving reference frames) without (...) being different from itself. I argue that the best answer is that the object must be four-dimensional. It will then have differing 3D shapes in different perspectives because such shapes are intrinsic properties of its 3D parts. (shrink)

The structures of everyday life, where religious identity is constructed, are analysed in the article of Boreyko Yuri Grigorovich «The structures of everyday life in the design of religious identity». Determined that the basis of personal and group religious identity are mental structures, symbolic actions, rituals, language.

in D. Dieks (ed.), The Ontology of Spacetime, Vol. 2. Elsevier, forthcoming.

This is the first part of a two part work on the monadic theory of short orders (embedding neither ω 1 nor ω 1 * ). This part provides the technical groundwork for decidability results. Other applications are possible.

Most four-dimensionalists, including both worm and stage theorists, endorse mereological universalism, the thesis that any class of objects has a fusion. But the marriage of fourdimensionalism and universalism is unfortunate and unprofitable: it creates a recalcitrant problem for stage theory’s account of lingering properties, such as writing ‘War and Piece’ and traveling across the tennis court, which take time to be instantiated. This makes it necessary to impose a natural restriction on diachronic composition.

How should intellectualists respond to apparent Gettier-style counterexamples? Stanley offers an orthodox response which rejects the claim that the subjects in such scenarios possess knowledge-how. I argue that intellectualists should embrace a revisionary response according to which knowledge-how is a distinctively practical species of knowledge-that that is compatible with Gettier-style luck.

In this paper I develop three different arguments against the thesis that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. Knowledge-that is widely thought to be subject to an anti-luck condition, a justified or warranted belief condition, and a belief condition, respectively. The arguments I give suggest that if either of these standard assumptions is correct then knowledge-how is not a kind of knowledge-that. In closing I identify a possible alternative to the standard Rylean and intellectualist accounts of knowledge-how. This alternative view (...) illustrates that even if the arguments given here succeed it might still be reasonable to hold that knowing how to do something is a matter of standing in an intentional relation to a proposition other than the knowledge-that relation. (shrink)

Yuri Balashov sets out major rival views of persistence--endurance, perdurance, and exdurance--in a spacetime framework and proceeds to investigate the implications of Einstein's theory of relativity for the debate about persistence. His overall conclusion--that relativistic considerations favour four-dimensionalism over three-dimensionalism--is hardly surprising. It is, however, anything but trivial. Contrary to a common misconception, there is no straightforward argument from relativity to four-dimensionalism. The issues involved are complex, and the debate is closely entangled with a number of other philosophical disputes, (...) including those about the nature and ontology of time, parts and wholes, material constitution, causation and properties, and vagueness. (shrink)

Although considerations based on contemporary space-time theories, such as special and general relativity, seem highly relevant to the debate about persistence, their significance has not been duly appreciated. My goal in this paper is twofold: (1) to reformulate the rival positions in the debate (i.e., endurantism [three-dimensionalism] and perdurantism [four-dimensionalism, the doctrine of temporal parts]) in the framework of special relativistic space-time; and (2) to argue that, when so reformulated, perdurantism exhibits explanatory advantages over endurantism. The argument builds on the (...) fact that four-dimensional entities extended in space as well as time are relativistically invariant in a way three-dimensional entities are not. (shrink)

This paper is a reaction to the following remark by grzegorczyk: "the compound sentences are not a product of experiment. they arise from reasoning. this concerns also negations; we see that the lemon is yellow, we do not see that it is not blue." generally, in science the truth is ascertained as indirectly as falsehood. an example: a litmus-paper is used to verify the sentence "the solution is acid." this approach gives rise to a (very intuitionistic indeed) conservative extension of (...) the heyting logic satisfying natural duality laws. (shrink)

Color FilmAs if from darkness, from gloom, from nothing —this moment is sewn through us like a thread —from above our shoulders — from primeval night —a shining river. A flying light.Onto the screen, onto a white calm,onto a cloth, onto the ground of spatial fields,it flies through the eyeless dark,it's as voluminous as seed or salt.And in this theater, where light's been banished,where even streetlight fades away completely,other light channels vibrate,and reflections wander through the eye.The curtains open up — (...) the wings of a gate.The screen shifts our eyes and soulsso that we reach new perspectives,blown by the wind into the changingof colors, landscapes, rooms,we touch fire, earth, water.But no! Not those! And not like that!There's a wall here, the screen's always a wall.So, when the shades are opened and it's over,daylight pours through the aisles,we walk as if from underground corridors,we reach for cigarettes in our pockets.We exit like a flood, like a tide,and start talking again.O reality, blinding and sublime!We learn to love. We learn to see.StanzasThose years are slowly fading.Our house was by the railroad stationwhere engines covered in soot hammeredand invisible locomotives roared at night.Pedestrians passed by our porch,their moods dependent on loveand weather, coats and sorrowscarried over their shoulders, invisibleswords drawn but hesitant — as if awaitingtournament trumpets to launch their lives.The acacia (the one that was cut down later)grew according to a centuries-long spanof rain and sun and, like a lively banner,the windows reflected its green flash.And there was lilac, a skinny creature,diminished from the leaves to the roots.But once a year it flushed numb madlyand flourished although it was in pain.(It's worth mentioning the elderberry —dense, aromatic, and luminous,and how, after trembling on the bush,a rainbow surfaced through the drizzle.)Those lands were also full of winter —Christmassy and audacious, like an invasion,and a piercing whirlwind flew inthrough cold doorways and frozen windows.And in the lanterns oranges burned,buckets clanking through the morning,snow trampled after a blizzard,brown brick ovens roaring inside houses...Those years are fading like those legends,but who will weave us sweeter memories?Elegy for the SixtiesSummer, the smell of a soccer ball, elderberry, currant,couples made out in the evening bushes,and when the twilight descended beyond the river,the stony sidewalks smelled of warm rain.The soccer ball flew over antennas and linden trees,its body leather and cosmic.From grape-covered arbors, with pubescent sobs,songs of the prodigy Robertino spread through the world.The night thickened instantly, the ball meltedin the darkness, lamps lit up in the orchards and porches,a mysterious depth opened in a treetop,the shadows on the faded curtains spoke.The ball never came back: disappeared in the distance.Frogs croaked from neglected fountainsin the park where there were dances every night,where a saxophone wheezed, where they carried knives.The ball remained in the air, and the years unfoldedlike sandy seas, like salty deserts,and spooky carousels horrendously circledand creaked for us, as in a dream, until morning.The Museum of AntiquitiesHow the two of us walkthe cramped labyrinths of an old house!...Tapestries and trumpetsglorify an unknown couple,as if seeingour conspiracy:every toucha warm flash.And then again and againwe passin the mirrors.The clock with blazonsindicates, as always, it's two,and sneaking after usmaybe anguish, maybe a fugue...Passing portraitsand palanquinsan echo of footstepswalks with us.We disappeared somewhere for a long time(for two hundred years?For three hundred?).And when it gets dark,from unheated rooms(I seem to have behaved well,I did nothing wrong),into hot neon lightswe return forever.I carry you in my hand,and life is so vast... (shrink)

In spite of the fact that true arithmetic reduces to the monadic second-order theory of the real line, Peano arithmetic cannot be interpreted in the monadic second-order theory of the real line.

In the current era of the Sustainable Development Goals, many countries are attempting to strengthen their health system and achieving Universal Health Coverage. The Korean National Health Insurance system functions as a core element of health financing, contributing to achieving UHC by promoting public health and social security through insurance benefits for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, childbirth, and health promotion. The Republic of Korea achieved 100% NHI coverage of the target population in 1989, 12 years after the introduction of the (...) social insurance system. However, poor coverage of health services and lack of financial protection are major obstacles to achieving UHC. Therefore, the Korean government announced and implemented ‘Moon Jae-in Care’ in August 2017 to enhance the coverage rate of NHI by 70%. First, this study reviews the existing health insurance system in Korea from the perspective of health financing and UHC. Second, it analyses ‘Moon Jae-in Care’, based on the main framework of UHC. Third, it considers the ethical implications of these developments, with focus on the principles of equity, fairness, autonomy, and solidarity. Although the NHI reform is expected to propel Korean health care closer to UHC, many ethical, social, and political issues remain. (shrink)

A new proof is given of the celebrated theorem of M. Davis, H. Putnam and J. Robinson concerning exponential Diophantine representation of recursively enumerable predicates. The proof goes by induction on the defining scheme of a partial recursive function.

This introduction surveys the biography and major works of Liu Zehua, a leading scholar of China's intellectual history, political thought, and political culture. It explores the impact of Liu Zehua's personal experience, in particular the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution, on his conceptualization of Chinese political culture as subjugated to the overarching principle of monarchism. Liu Zehua's critical engagement with China's past distinguishes him from proponents of revival of traditional values and makes him one of the powerful opponents of cultural (...) conservatives in China. (shrink)

In this paper, the ethical, legal, and social implications of Thailand’s surrogacy regulations from both domestic and global perspectives are explored. Surrogacy tourism in Thailand has expanded since India strengthened its visa regulations in 2012. In 2015, in the wake of a major scandal surrounding the abandonment of a surrogate child by its foreign intended parents, a law prohibiting the practice of surrogacy for commercial purposes was enacted. Consequently, a complete ban on surrogacy tourism was imposed. However, some Thai physicians (...) and surrogate mothers cross into neighboring countries to provide foreign clients with the commercial surrogacy services that are forbidden in Thailand. Under this legislation, the needs of Thai couples who are unable to conceive are accommodated by legally accessible, non-commercial surrogacy services; however, there is currently no provision in place aimed at protecting the rights and interests of surrogate mothers and children. It is widely believed that the abolition of surrogacy tourism, an industry that give rise to several major scandals, and legal access to surrogacy by Thai couples were the Thai government’s primary goal in implementing this legislation. (shrink)

Is there a successful regress argument against intellectualism? In this article I defend the negative answer. I begin by defending Stanley and Williamson's (2001) critique of the contemplation regress against Noë (2005). I then identify a new argument – the employment regress – that is designed to succeed where the contemplation regress fails, and which I take to be the most basic and plausible form of a regress argument against intellectualism. However, I argue that the employment regress still fails. Drawing (...) on the previous discussion, I criticise further regress arguments given by Hetherington (2006) and Noë (2005). (shrink)

This paper explores the question of what makes diagrammatic representations effective for human logical reasoning, focusing on how Euler diagrams support syllogistic reasoning. It is widely held that diagrammatic representations aid intuitive understanding of logical reasoning. In the psychological literature, however, it is still controversial whether and how Euler diagrams can aid untrained people to successfully conduct logical reasoning such as set-theoretic and syllogistic reasoning. To challenge the negative view, we build on the findings of modern diagrammatic logic and introduce (...) an Euler-style diagrammatic representation system that is designed to avoid problems inherent to a traditional version of Euler diagrams. It is hypothesized that Euler diagrams are effective not only in interpreting sentential premises but also in reasoning about semantic structures implicit in given sentences. To test the hypothesis, we compared Euler diagrams with other types of diagrams having different syntactic or semantic properties. Experiment compared the difference in performance between syllogistic reasoning with Euler diagrams and Venn diagrams. Additional analysis examined the case of a linear variant of Euler diagrams, in which set-relationships are represented by one-dimensional lines. The experimental results provide evidence supporting our hypothesis. It is argued that the efficacy of diagrams in supporting syllogistic reasoning crucially depends on the way they represent the relational information contained in categorical sentences. (shrink)

I examine the issue of persistence over time in thecontext of the special theory of relativity (SR). Thefour-dimensional ontology of perduring objects isclearly favored by SR. But it is a different questionif and to what extent this ontology is required, andthe rival endurantist ontology ruled out, by thistheory. In addressing this question, I take theessential idea of endurantism, that objects are whollypresent at single moments of time, and argue that itcommits one to unacceptable conclusions regardingcoexistence, in the context of SR. (...) I then propose anddiscuss a plausible account of coexistence forperduring objects, which is free of these defects. This leaves the endurantist room for some maneuvers. I consider them and show that they do not really helpthe endurantist out. She can accommodate the notionof coexistence in the relativistic framework only atthe cost of renouncing central endurantist intuitions. (shrink)

Previous work suggests that Asians allocate more attention to configuration information than Caucasian Americans do. Yet this cultural variation has been found only with stimuli such as natural scenes and objects that require both feature- and configuration-based processing. Here, we show that the cultural variation also exists in face perception—a domain that is typically viewed as configural in nature. When asked to identify a prototypic face for a set of disparate exemplars, Japanese were more likely than Caucasian Americans to use (...) overall resemblance rather than feature matching. Moreover, in a speeded identity-matching task, Japanese were more accurate than Americans in identifying the spatial configuration of features (e.g., eyes). Together, these findings underscore the robustness of culture’s influences on cognition. (shrink)

On the B-theory of time, the experiences we have throughout our conscious lives have the same ontological status: they all tenselessly occur at their respective dates. But we do not seem to experience all of them on the same footing. In fact, we tend to believe that only our present experiences are real, to the exclusion of the past and future ones. The B-theorist has to maintain that this belief is an illusion and explain the origin of the illusion. The (...) paper argues that this cannot be properly done unless one rejects endurantism in favor of the stage view of persistence. (shrink)

I had excruciating back pain last night. The next day I went to a spa and the pain disappeared. Psychologically speaking, my pain is gone. Where is it, speaking ontologically? Atheorists have an easy time here (more or less). But B-theorists who think that persons persist by enduring are in trouble. Why am I finding myself at this particular time, with this particular set of experiences, rather than at numerous other times, with different experiences, despite the fact that all times (...) are on the same ontological footing and I am wholly present at all of them? I argue that the Puzzle of the Experience of the Present is a real challenge for B-theorists, and the best way to deal with it is to adopt the stage view of persistence. (shrink)

This ambitious book looks into the reasons for the exceptional durability of the Chinese empire, which lasted for more than two millennia (221 B.C.E. - 1911 C.E.). Yuri Pines identifies the roots of the empire's longevity in the activities of thinkers of the Warring States period (453-221 B.C.E.), who, in their search for solutions to an ongoing political crisis, developed ideals, values, and perceptions that would become essential for the future imperial polity. In marked distinction to similar empires worldwide, (...) the Chinese empire was envisioned and to a certain extent 'preplanned' long before it came into being. As a result, it was not only a military and administrative construct, but also an intellectual one. Pines makes the argument that it was precisely its ideological appeal that allowed the survival and regeneration of the empire after repeated periods of turmoil. "Envisioning Eternal Empire" presents a panoptic survey of philosophical and social conflicts in Warring States political culture. By examining the extant corpus of preimperial literature, including transmitted texts and manuscripts uncovered at archaeological sites, Pines locates the common ideas of competing thinkers that underlie their ideological controversies. This bold approach allows him to transcend the once fashionable perspective of competing 'schools of thought' and show that beneath the immense pluralism of Warring States thought one may identify common ideological choices that eventually shaped traditional Chinese political culture. The result is a refreshingly novel look at the foundational period in Chinese intellectual history. (shrink)

Philosophical considerations have been essentially involved in the origin and development of the steady-state cosmological theory. These considerations include an explicit uniformitarian methodology and implicit metaphysical views concerning the status of natural laws in a changing universe. I shall examine the foundations of SST by reconstructing its early history. Whereas the strong uniformitarian methodology of SST found no support in the subsequent development of cosmology, the idea of a possible influence the global structure of the universe may have on the (...) laws of physics operative in it has been assimilated by the standard big bang theory as it made its remarkable progress in recent decades. (shrink)

Background In an increasingly globalized world, legal protocols related to health care that are both effective and culturally sensitive are paramount in providing excellent quality of care as well as protection for physicians tasked with decision making. Here, we analyze the current medicolegal status of brain death diagnosis with regard to end-of-life care in Japan, China, and South Korea from the perspectives of front-line health care workers. Main body Japan has legally wrestled with the concept of brain death for decades. (...) An inability to declare brain death without consent from family coupled with cultural expectations of family involvement in medical care is mirrored in other Confucian-based cultures and may complicate care for patients from these countries when traveling or working overseas. Within Japan, China, and South Korea, medicolegal shortcomings in the diagnosis of brain death act as a great source of stress for physicians and expose them to potential public and legal scorn. Here, we detail the medicolegal status of brain death diagnosis within Japan and compare it to China and South Korea to find common ground and elucidate the impact of legal ambiguity on health care workers. Conclusion The Confucian cultural foundation of multiple Asian countries raises common issues of family involvement with diagnosis and cultural considerations that must be met. Leveraging public education systems may increase awareness of brain death issues and lead to evolving laws that clarify such end-of-life issues while protecting physicians from sociocultural backlash. (shrink)

This book is a collection of articles on research that attempts to connect logic and mathematics with empirical and cognition. There have been various such a...

Epistemic logic is usually employed to model two aspects of a situation: the factual and the epistemic aspects. Truth, however, is not always attainable, and in many cases we are forced to reason only with whatever information is available to us. In this paper, we will explore a four-valued epistemic logic designed to deal with these situations, where agents have only knowledge about the available information, which can be incomplete or conflicting, but not explicitly about facts. This layer of available (...) information or evidence, which is the object of the agents’ knowledge, can be seen as a database. By adopting this sceptical posture in our semantics, we prepare the ground for logics where the notion of knowledge—or more appropriately, belief—is entirely based on evidence. The technical results include a set of reduction axioms for public announcements, correspondence proofs, and a complete tableau system. In summary, our contributions are twofold: on the one hand we present an intuition and possible application for many-valued modal logics, and on the other hand we develop a logic that models the dynamics of evidence in a simple and intuitively clear fashion. (shrink)

Four-dimensionalism, or perdurantism, the view that temporally extended objects persist through time by having (spatio-)temporal parts or stages, includes two varieties, the worm theory and the stage theory. According to the worm theory, perduring objects are four-dimensional wholes occupying determinate regions of spacetime and having temporal parts, or stages, each of them confined to a particular time. The stage theorist, however, claims, not that perduring objects have stages, but that the fundamental entities of the perdurantist ontology are stages. I argue (...) that considerations of special relativity favor the worm theory over the stage theory. (shrink)

The rapid development of natural language processing in the last three decades has drastically changed the way professional translators do their work. Nowadays most of them use computer-assisted translation or translation memory tools whose evolution has been overshadowed by the much more sensational development of machine translation systems, with which TM tools are sometimes confused. These two language technologies now interact in mutually enhancing ways, and their increasing role in human translation has become a subject of behavioral studies. Philosophers and (...) linguists, however, have been slow in coming to grips with these important developments. The present paper seeks to fill in this lacuna. I focus on the semantic aspects of the highly distributed human–computer interaction in the CAT process which presents an interesting case of an extended cognitive system involving a human translator, a TM tool, an MT engine, and sometimes other human translators or editors. Considered as a whole, such a system is engaged in representing the linguistic meaning of the source document in the target language. But the roles played by its various components, natural as well as artificial, are far from trivial, and the division of linguistic labor between them throws new light on the familiar notions that were initially inspired by rather different phenomena in the philosophy of language, mind, and cognitive science. (shrink)

The Spring and Autumn Annals of Master Yan. Translated and annotated by Olivia Milburn. Sinica Leidensia, vol. 128. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Pp. xxx + 485. €161, $193.

In this study, Knauff and Johnson-Laird's visual impedance hypothesis is applied to the domain of external representations and diagrammatic reasoning. We show that the use of real objects and augmented real objects can control human interpretation and reasoning about conditionals. As participants made inferences, they also moved objects corresponding to premises. Participants who moved real objects made more invalid inferences than those who moved AR objects and those who did not manipulate objects. Our results showed that real objects impeded conditional (...) reasoning, but AR objects did not. These findings are explained by the fact that real objects may over-specify a single state that exists, while AR objects suggest multiple possibilities. (shrink)

Des Jardins (1976) and Dreher (1990) have suggested that Plato's Line should be thought of as divided in the mean and extreme ('golden') ratio. I examine their arguments, as well as other reasons that could be brought up in support of the 'golden division' of the Line, and show that all of them are wanting.