This book gives a comprehensive overview of central themes of finite model theory – expressive power, descriptive complexity, and zero-one laws – together with selected applications relating to database theory and artificial intelligence, especially constraint databases and constraint satisfaction problems. The final chapter provides a concise modern introduction to modal logic, emphasizing the continuity in spirit and technique with finite model theory. This underlying spirit involves the use of various fragments of and hierarchies within first-order, second-order, fixed-point, and infinitary logics (...) to gain insight into phenomena in complexity theory and combinatorics. The book emphasizes the use of combinatorial games, such as extensions and refinements of the Ehrenfeucht-Fraissé pebble game, as a powerful way to analyze the expressive power of such logics, and illustrates how deep notions from model theory and combinatorics, such as o-minimality and treewidth, arise naturally in the application of finite model theory to database theory and AI. Students of logic and computer science will find here the tools necessary to embark on research into finite model theory, and all readers will experience the excitement of a vibrant area of the application of logic to computer science. (shrink)

Many known tools for proving expressibility bounds for first-order logic are based on one of several locality properties. In this paper we characterize the relationship between those notions of locality. We note that Gaifman's locality theorem gives rise to two notions: one deals with sentences and one with open formulae. We prove that the former implies Hanf's notion of locality, which in turn implies Gaifman's locality for open formulae. Each of these implies the bounded degree property, which is one of (...) the easiest tools for proving expressibility bounds. These results apply beyond the first-order case. We use them to derive expressibility bounds for first-order logic with unary quantifiers and counting. We also characterize the notions of locality on structures of small degree. (shrink)

Locality notions in logic say that the truth value of a formula can be determined locally, by looking at the isomorphism type of a small neighbourhood of its free variables. Such notions have proved to be useful in many applications. They all, however, refer to isomorphisms of neighbourhoods, which most local logics cannot test. A stronger notion of locality says that the truth value of a formula is determined by what the logic itself can say about that small neighbourhood. Since (...) the expressiveness of many logics can be characterized by games, one can also say that the truth value of a formula is determined by the type, with respect to a game, of that small neighbourhood. Such game-based notions of locality can often be applied when traditional isomorphism-based notions of locality cannot.Our goal is to study game-based notions of locality. We work with an abstract view of games that subsumes games for many logics. We look at three, progressively more complicated locality notions. The easiest requires only very mild conditions on the game and works for most logics of interest. The other notions, based on Hanf’s and Gaifman’s theorems, require more restrictions. We state those restrictions and give examples of logics that satisfy and fail the respective game-based notions of locality. (shrink)

Moral enhancement is an ostensibly laudable project. Who wouldn’t want people to become more moral? Still, the project’s approach is crucial. We can distinguish between two approaches for moral enhancement: direct and indirect. Direct moral enhancements aim at bringing about particular ideas, motives or behaviors. Indirect moral enhancements, by contrast, aim at making people more reliably produce the morally correct ideas, motives or behaviors without committing to the content of those ideas, motives and/or actions. I will argue, on Millian grounds, (...) that the value of disagreement puts serious pressure on proposals for relatively widespread direct moral enhancement. A more acceptable path would be to focus instead on indirect moral enhancements while staying neutral, for the most part, on a wide range of substantive moral claims. I will outline what such indirect moral enhancement might look like, and why we should expect it to lead to general moral improvement. (shrink)

MATERIALISTS claim that in principle mentality could be accounted for entirely by properties of matter. They must, of course, clarify, as far as possible, the precise scope of the concept "properties of matter." According to materialists there exists only one type of "substance" in the universe, namely matter. Sophisticated experimental and theoretical analyses have led contemporary physicists to interpret known material entities as being composed of two classes of elementary particles, namely quarks and leptons and constituents of interaction fields that (...) mediate interactions between some or all of the elementary particles and which comprise photons, gluons, intermediate bosons and gravitons. For instance, protons and neutrons are composed--by hypothesis--of quarks, while electrons are probably the most familiar leptons. Whether any analyzed and postulated elementary particles and constituents of interaction fields are "ultimate" components of matter can never be known. It remains always possible that more basic subcomponents of known components will be discovered. This has happened repeatedly throughout the history of physics. Hence, what physicists understand by the "physical properties" of the basic components of matter must always remain expressed in terms of usually intricate hypothetico-deductive theories which are tentative and fallible. Contemporary relativistic quantum mechanics of elementary particles and of interaction fields provide typical examples of such hypothetico-deductive theories relating to present known basic components of matter. (shrink)

The principle of “equivalence of care” in prison medicine is a principle by which prison health services are obliged to provide prisoners with care of a quality equivalent to that provided for the general public in the same country. It is cited in numerous national and international directives and recommendations.The principle of equivalence is extremely relevant from the point of view of normative ethics but requires adaptation from the point of view of applied ethics. From a clinical point of view, (...) the principle of equivalence is often insufficient to take account of the adaptations necessary for the organization of care in a correctional setting. The principle of equivalence is cost-effective in general, but has to be overstepped to ensure the humane management of certain special cases. (shrink)

One hundred inpatients on an acute hospital elderly care unit and 43 of their relatives were interviewed shortly before hospital discharge. Eighty per cent of elderly patients and their relatives were aware of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Television drama was their main source of information. Patients and relatives overestimated the effectiveness of CPR. Eighty-six per cent of patients were willing to be routinely consulted by doctors about their own CPR status, but relatives were less enthusiastic about routine consultation. Patients' and relatives' (...) views about the appropriateness of CPR did not differ significantly. Seventeen percent of patients did not desire CPR. However, 64 per cent of patients were ultimately willing to follow their doctor's advice about the appropriateness of CPR. The conclusion reached is that mentally competent, elderly patients but not their relatives should be routinely consulted about their own desire for CPR in order to avoid resuscitating patients against their wishes. Further research is required to find out how patients would feel about resuscitation if they were terminally ill or chronically confused, and how carers would feel about resuscitating such patients. (shrink)

Traditionally, surgical practice has been experiential and based on the contemporary understanding of basic mechanisms of disease. It was both a science and an art and depended to far too great an extent on the individualism and self belief of its main exponents. “Evidence based medicine” emerged in the 1980s and a new gospel of “Rules of Evidence” was introduced. There is no doubt that the net effect of EBM has been beneficial, but over reliance on randomised controlled trials and (...) the lack of generalisability of scientific evidence to individual patients has perhaps led to less enthusiasm for its tenets among surgeons. There are valid and spurious reasons for this that are discussed. The situation is improving but inevitable tensions remain between the surgeon committed to the individual patient here and now, and the clinical researcher whose focus is the benefit of future patients in the larger community. (shrink)

Cf. Jardine 1974a, p. 29; chapter 6 is 'an elegant account of developments in late scholastic debating exercises' (Jardine 1974b, 33). Cited Van den Burgh, 126 n. 95 re Grotius's method. cit. Mancosu 1996, 232 n. 39.

Volume 46, Issue 1, February 2025, Page 198-200.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

El presente texto efectúa un estudio narratológico de la novela de Jorge Volpi No será la Tierra. Se analiza la estructura contradictoria del libro, la multiplicidad de tramas, el narrador polifónico, el tiempo posapocalíptico, el espacio antiutópico y desencantado y los personajes, coprotagonistas del siglo XX. Todas estas características antes mencionadas contribuyen, en el ámbito de la desterritorialización, a desalojar posturas que tienden a anquilosarse en conceptos fijos y sin movimiento, por lo que los distintos rasgos narratológicos en las novelas (...) híbridas --aquellas que están compuestas por una yuxtaposición de subgéneros-- siempre estarán emparentados con las nociones de heterogeneidad, diversidad y pluralidad, en el marco de la caída de los grandes relatos del siglo XX. This text makes a narrative study of the novel by Jorge Volpi No será la Tierra.We analyze the contradictory structure of the book, the multiple frames, the polyphonic narrator, the post-apocalyptic time, the antiutopic and disenchanted space, and the characters, co-protagonists of the twentieth century. All these features contribute, in the field of deterritorialization, to vacate positions that tend to stiffen in fixed and motionless concepts, so that different narratologic features in hybrid novels --those that consist of a juxtaposition of subgenera-- always be related to the notions of heterogeneity, diversity and plurality, as part of the fall of the great stories of the twentieth century. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to clarify a confusion in the brain death literature between logical sufficiency/necessity and natural sufficiency/necessity. We focus on arguments that draw conclusions regarding empirical matters of fact from conceptual or ontological definitions. Specifically, we critically analyze arguments by Tom Tomlinson and Michael B. Green and Daniel Wikler. which, respectively, confuse logical and natural sufficiency and logical and natural necessity. Our own conclusion is that it is especially important in discussing the brain death issue to observe (...) the distinction between logical and natural sufficiency/necessity in a strict fashion. (shrink)