In clinical endocrinology, it is often assumed that the results of thyroid hormone function tests (TFTs) before total thyroidectomy are considered euthyroid when the circulating concentrations of thyrotropin [TSH] and free thyroxine [FT4] are within the normal reference ranges. Postoperative thyroid replacement therapy with levothyroxine (L-T4) is aimed to reproduce the preoperative euthyroid condition. Currently, intra-individual changes in the euthyroid set point before and after total thyroidectomy are only partly understood. After total thyroidectomy, a greater postoperative [FT4] than preoperative [FT4] (...) for equivalent euthyroid [TSH] was found, with differences ranging from 3 to 8 pmol/L. This unexplained difference can be explained by the use of a mathematical model of the hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis set point theory. In this article, the postoperative HPT euthyroid set point was calculated using a dataset of total thyroidectomized patients with at least three distinguishable postoperative TFTs. The postoperative [TSH] set point was used as a homeostatic reference for the comparison of preoperative TFTs. The preoperative [FT4] value was equal to the postoperative [FT4] value in 50% of the patients, divided by a factor of ~ 1.25 (within +/- 10%). The factor of 1.25 stems from the lack of postoperative use of thyroidal triiodothyronine (T3). Furthermore, approximately 25% of the patients presented a greater preoperative [FT4] difference than postoperative [FT4]/1.25 combined with a normal [TSH] difference. Based on these observations, the effect of T3 on the value of the [FT4] set point was analyzed and explained from a control theory perspective. (shrink)

“The primary purpose of this book has been to provide a single source of containing the basic information about systematic and theoretical psychology which any student of psychology should have. It is mainly directed at the senior undergraduate major and the beginning of the graduate student.”-Publisher.

One approach to the paradoxes of self-referential languages is to allow some sentences to lack a truth value (or to have more than one). Then assigning truth values where possible becomes a fixpoint construction and, following Kripke, this is usually carried out over a partially ordered family of three-valued truth-value assignments. Some years ago Matt Ginsberg introduced the notion of bilattice, with applications to artificial intelligence in mind. Bilattices generalize the structure Kripke used in a very natural way, while making (...) the mathematical machinery simpler and more perspicuous. In addition, work such as that of Yablo fits naturally into the bilattice setting. What I do here is present the general background of bilattices, discuss why they are natural, and show how fixpoint approaches to truth in languages that allow self-reference can be applied. This is not new work, but rather is a summary of research I have done over many years. (shrink)

Bilattices, due to M. Ginsberg, are a family of truth value spaces that allow elegantly for missing or conflicting information. The simplest example is Belnap’s four-valued logic, based on classical two-valued logic. Among other examples are those based on finite many-valued logics, and on probabilistic valued logic. A fixed point semantics is developed for logic programming, allowing any bilattice as the space of truth values. The mathematics is little more complex than in the classical two-valued setting, but the result provides (...) a natural semantics for distributed logic programs, including those involving confidence factors. The classical two-valued and the Kripke/Kleene three-valued semantics become special cases, since the logics involved are natural sublogics of Belnap’s logic, the logic given by the simplest bilattice. (shrink)

The original version of this article unfortunately contains an unconverted data in footnotes 5, 9 and 13.

This book uses a critical lens to discuss live stream uses and misuses, as well as the impacts of live streaming on various fields. In the landscape of the historical evolution of communication technologies, this volume opens up a new space for discussing legal and ethical issues associated with the use of live streaming.

The main thesis of this dissertation is that John Dewey's conception of philosophy began and culminated with his concern about the problem of truth. It is asserted here that Dewey's mature conception of philosophy and his notion of truth may be quite profitable for resolving some of our more recent contemporary philosophical problems. To clarify his mature thoughts about philosophy and truth, this study surveys the stages of Dewey's development during his long life-time of ninety-three years. ;Using a general approach, (...) I trace the historical progression of his thinking and try to show the relevance of his conceptions of philosophy and truth to our contemporary problems. In doing so, I attempt to elucidate the terminological difficulties that he encountered with language while trying to communicate his own concept of philosophy and his notion of truth. Moreover, I examine criteria that may be used to judge Dewey's work in the field of philosophy in the Western tradition. Under the headings of Early, Middle and Later years, I provide a triadic survey of his life-work, focusing on his academic and religious views. My reflections try to provide information concerning the biological, semiotic, and psycholinguistic basis of his perspective, as it eventually evolved into a form of pragmatic naturalism. ;In concluding, I highlight Dewey's belief that the business of philosophy should deal with cultural problems. Focusing on the implications of his matured position, I try to show the importance of his perspective for solving some critical issues of our own time. A careful examination of his logic indicates that open-minded and honest communication must be the keystone to understanding his view. Therefore, I endeavor to illustrate the value of Dewey's mature concept of philosophy and his notion of truth for addressing some of our pressing problems in a practical manner. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to both discuss commands as a species of speech act and to discuss commands within the broader framework of how they are used and ...

The revival of interest in pragmatism and its practical relevance for democracy has prompted a reconsideration of John Dewey’s political philosophy. Dewey’s _The Public and Its Problems _ constitutes his richest and most systematic meditation on the future of democracy in an age of mass communication, governmental bureaucracy, social complexity, and pluralism. Drawing on his previous writings and prefiguring his later thinking, Dewey argues for the importance of civic participation and clarifies the meaning and role of the state, the proper (...) relationship between the public and experts, and the source of democracy’s legitimacy. These themes remain as important today as they were when Dewey first engaged them, and this is the work to which scholars consistently turn when assessing Dewey’s conception of democracy and what might be imagined for democracy in our own time. In this carefully annotated edition, Melvin L. Rogers provides an introductory essay that elucidates the philosophical and historical background of _The Public and Its Problems_ while explaining the key ideas of the book. He also provides a biographical outline of Dewey’s life and bibliographical notes to assist student and scholar alike. (shrink)

_The Undiscovered Dewey_ explores the profound influence of evolution and its corresponding ideas of contingency and uncertainty on John Dewey's philosophy of action, particularly its argument that inquiry proceeds from the uncertainty of human activity. Dewey separated the meaningfulness of inquiry from a larger metaphysical story concerning the certainty of human progress. He then connected this thread to the way in which our reflective capacities aid us in improving our lives. Dewey therefore launched a new understanding of the modern self (...) that encouraged intervention in social and natural environments but which nonetheless demanded courage and humility because of the intimate relationship between action and uncertainty. Melvin L. Rogers explicitly connects Dewey's theory of inquiry to his religious, moral, and political philosophy. He argues that, contrary to common belief, Dewey sought a place for religious commitment within a democratic society sensitive to modern pluralism. Against those who regard Dewey as indifferent to moral conflict, Rogers points to Dewey's appreciation for the incommensurability of our ethical commitments. His deep respect for modern pluralism, argues Rogers, led Dewey to articulate a negotiation between experts and the public so that power did not lapse into domination. Exhibiting an abiding faith in the reflective and contestable character of inquiry, Dewey strongly engaged with the complexity of our religious, moral, and political lives. (shrink)

Bilattices, introduced by M. Ginsberg, constitute an elegant family of multiple-valued logics. Those meeting certain natural conditions have provided the basis for the semantics of a family of logic programming languages. Now we consider further restrictions on bilattices, to narrow things down to logic programming languages that can, at least in principle, be implemented. Appropriate bilattice background information is presented, so the paper is relatively self-contained.

Suppose there are several experts, with some dominating others (expert A dominates expert B if B says something is true whenever A says it is). Suppose, further, that each of the experts has his or her own view of what is possible — in other words each of the experts has their own Kripke model in mind (subject, of course, to the dominance relation that may hold between experts). How will they assign truth values to sentences in a common modal (...) language, and on what sentences will they agree? This problem can be reformulated as one about many-valued Kripke models, allowing many-valued accessibility relations. This is a natural generalization of conventional Kripke models that has only recently been looked at. The equivalence between the many-valued version and the multiple expert one will be formally established. Finally we will axiomatize many-valued modal logics, and sketch a proof of completeness. (shrink)

The family of all stable models for a logic program has a surprisingly simple overall structure, once two naturally occurring orderings are made explicit. In a so-called knowledge ordering based on degree of definedness, every logic program P has a smallest stable model, sk P — it is the well-founded model. There is also a dual largest stable model, S k P, which has not been considered before. There is another ordering based on degree of truth. Taking the meet and (...) the join, in the truth ordering, of the two extreme stable models sk P and S.. (shrink)

Contract law doctrines can be ranged along various spectra. One of these spectra runs from the static to the dynamic. A contract law doctrine lies at the static pole of this spectrum if its application turns entirely on what occurred at the moment in time when a contract was formed. A contract law doctrine lies at the dynamic pole if its application turns in significant part on a moving stream of events that precede, follow, or constitute the formation of a (...) contract. Another spectrum runs from the binary to the multifaceted. Contract law doctrines are binary if they organize the experience within their scope into only two categories. Contract law doctrines are multifaceted if they organize the experience within their scope into several categories, including one or more intermediate categories. Classical contract law was a rigid, rather than a supple, instrument. Its rules were often responsive to neither the actual objectives of the parties, the actual facts and circumstances of the partiesâ transaction, nor the dynamic character of contracts. Instead, the rules of classical contract law were centered on a single moment in time, the moment of contract formation. accordingly, classical contract law doctrines were almost wholly static and also tended to be binary. The twentieth century witnessed the development of a modern contract law that has largely overthrown classical contract law. This overthrow has occurred in two ways. To begin with, in many cases modern contract law has reversed or fundamentally modified the rules of classical contract law. More important than the overthrow of specific rules of classical contract law, however, has been the overthrow of the deep structure of classical contract law. Where classical contract law had an overriding preference for rules that were objective and standardized, modern contract law has been highly flexible in adopting rules that are individualized and even subjective. Where classical contract law rules were typically binary, modern contract law rules are often multifaceted. Finally, where classical contract law was largely static, modern contact law is, in large part, dynamic. So, for example, static rules of interpretation have been replaced by dynamic rules that take into account events before and after the moment of contract formation; the static legal-duty rule has withered almost completely away, to be largely replaced by a dynamic modification regime that takes into account the value of ongoing reciprocity; a static judicial review of liquidated damages provisions is giving way to a dynamic review that takes account of the actual loss; and static offer-and-acceptance rules have been replaced by dynamic rules, such as the duty to negotiate in good faith. (shrink)

The logic S4LP combines the modal logic S4 with the justification logic LP, both axiomatically and semantically. We introduce a simple restriction on the behavior of constants in S4LP, having no effect on the LP sublogic. Under this restriction some powerful derived rules are established. Then these are used to show completeness relative to a semantics having what we call the local realizability property: at each world and for each formula true at that world there is a realization also true (...) at that world, where a realization is the result of replacing all modal operators with explicit justification terms. This is a part of a project to understand the deeper aspects of Artemov’s Realization Theorem. (shrink)

The first step in planning a lexicon of European political and legal concepts is to decide upon how it is to be organised. Among the principal alternatives are the formats of three German reference works on the history of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte) and the methods associated with John Pocock and Quentin Skinner. Although these German and Anglophone styles are often regarded as incompatible, on closer inspection, they turn out to be in many respects complementary, as Skinner has recently acknowledged. What would (...) such a format look like? Is it possible to overcome the difficulties inherent in attempting a lexicon combining continental and Anglophone political and legal concepts? (shrink)

A survey is given of the concepts of interaction (force) and matter, i.e., of process and substance. The development of these concepts, first in antiquity, then in early modern times, and finally in the contemporary system of quantum field theory is described. After a summary of the basic phenomenological attributes (coupling strengths, symmetry quantities, charges), the common ground of concepts of quantum field theory for both interactions and matter entities is discussed. Then attention is focused on the gauge principle which (...) has been developed to describe all interaction fields in the same way, and hopefully to unite them all into one unified field. While a similar unification of all fundamental types of matter fields (quarks and leptons) into one family may be possible (SU 5), there still remains at this level a duality between interaction quanta (bosons with spin 1) and matter particles (fermions with spin 1/2). Whether this duality may be removed in some future supersymmetric theory is not discussed in this paper. Nor is Quantum Gravitation discussed, though the analogy of the gauge principle for the three fundamental non-gravitational interactions (hadronic, electromagnetic and weak) to Einstein's principle of equivalence for gravitation in spacetime is noted. However, the equivalence concept is applied not to spacetime but to the internal spaces for the matter (or charge) fields which are the sources between which the fundamental interactions operate. The gauge principle states that a change in the measures of the internal space charge of gauge or phases of the matter fields is equivalent to, and can be compensated by, suitably introduced interaction fields. From such an interaction field, the gauge potential field in the internal space, one may derive a gauge force field by exterior differentiation.Geometrically, the collection of all internal spaces, one over each point of spacetime, constitutes a fiber bundle. The gauge potential field represents a connection on the fiber bundle, and the gauge force field is the curvature (calculated by taking the exterior derivative of the connection and adding to it the exterior product of the connection with itself). Thus, just as gravitational force is interpreted as spacetime curvature, so the three other fundamental forces are interpretable as internal space curvature. The Standard Model which unites the three non-gravitational fields into an SU c 3 ×SU 2×U 1 structure, and the grand unified model, SU 5, are discussed briefly, and difficulties are noted. Finally it is suggested that a composite model, based on more subtle structure, may be needed to remove the present obscurities and difficulties that stand in the way of a unified theory. (shrink)

First it will be necessary to examine the argument, and the meaning of the argument, by which Mr. Ingram-Pearson is led to uphold such an unusual position. Using the statement, "fairies do not exist," as his example, he observes: "In order to achieve its obvious status as a denial this statement must have some object of reference for its subject term; for denials which are denials of nothing are not denials in any sense at all." What, then, is the designate (...) of the term "fairies"? It is, we are told, "an existent [italics mine] which at least one person believes to be present in the world and which another person at the same time and in the same context believes is not there." To say that "fairies do not exist" is therefore to say that "certain entities, designated by the term 'fairies,' are not present in the world," or "specific entities, designated by the term 'fairies,' are really absent from the world." The latter statement is positive, and Mr. Ingram-Pearson tells us explicitly that positive statements cannot "succeed in making intelligible" something made intelligible by negative statements about non-existents; but he has in mind such "ordinary" positive statements as "fairies are imagined beings." In other words, it is not that negative statements about. (shrink)

An interpolation theorem holds for many standard modal logics, but first order $S5$ is a prominent example of a logic for which it fails. In this paper it is shown that a first order $S5$ interpolation theorem can be proved provided the logic is extended to contain propositional quantifiers. A proper statement of the result involves some subtleties, but this is the essence of it.

Few thinkers exerted a greater influence upon British thought and public policy between 1880 and 1914 than T. H. Green. In his appraisal Richter applies to Green, usually studied as a philosopher, the techniques of analysis taken from sociology and the history of ideas. The result is important both as a study of a man who considerably affected the thought of his time and also as a contribution to the social and intellectual history of Victorian England. The chapter headings include: (...) Idealism and the Crisis of the Evangelical Conscience; Metaphysical Foundations; the Principles of Political Obligation; From the Old Liberalism to the New: Private Property, Capitalism and State Intervention; and the Life of Citizenship. (shrink)

Among non-monotonic systems of reasoning, non-monotonic modal logics, and autoepistemic logic in particular, have had considerable success. The presence of explicit modal operators allows flexibility in the embedding of other approaches. Also several theoretical results of interest have been established concerning these logics. In this paper we introduce non-monotonic modal logics based on many-valued logics, rather than on classical logic. This extends earlier work of ours on many-valued modal logics. Intended applications are to situations involving several reasoners, not just one (...) as in the standard development. (shrink)

A sequent calculus of a new sort is extracted from the Prolog program leanTAP. This calculus is sound and complete, even though it lacks almost all structural rules. Thinking of leanTAP as a sequent calculus provides a new perspective on it and, in some ways, makes it easier to understand. It is also easier to verify correctness and completeness of the Prolog implementation. In addition, it suggests extensions to other logics, some of which are considered here.

BackgroundIn its 2015 decision in Montgomery v. Lanarkshire Health Board, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom overruled the long-standing, paternalistic prudent doctor standard of care in favour of a new reasonable patient standard which obligates doctors to make their patients aware of all material risks of the recommended treatment and of any reasonable alternative treatment. This landmark judgment has been of interest to the rest of the common law world. A judicial trend of invoking Montgomery to impose more stringent (...) requirements on doctors is discernible in subsequent decisions since then.Main bodyIn this narrative review, without questioning the idea that properly informed patients should play a more active role in procedures affecting their own health in furtherance of their autonomy, safety, and consumer rights, we identify and analyse, with the aid of realistic clinical thought experiments, three practical conundrums that the Montgomery standard may inflict on the daily work of doctors, unfairly exposing them to arbitrary legal risks.ConclusionsThese conundrums pertain to the ascertainment of the risks that must be disclosed to the patient under the test of ‘materiality’; the legal uncertainty as to the scope of the exceptions; and the actual ability of doctors to cope with the pressures of time. These conundrums offer ripe opportunities to rethink the proper role of judicially developed medical law in modern health care practice. (shrink)

This book contains new essays in honor of Melvin J. Lerner, a pioneer in the psychological study of justice. The contributors to this volume are internationally renowned scholars from psychology, business, and law. They examine the role of justice motivation in a wide variety of contexts, including workplace violence, affirmative action programs, helping or harming innocent victims and how people react to their own fate. Contributors explore fundamental issues such as whether people's interest in justice is motivated by self-interest (...) or a genuine concern for the welfare of others, when and why people feel a need to punish transgressors, how a concern for justice emerges during the development of societies and individuals, and the relation of justice motivation to moral motivation. How an understanding of justice motivation can contribute to the amelioration of major social problems is also examined. (shrink)

This volume argues that the commitment to justice is a fundamental motive and that, although it is typically portrayed as serving self-interest, it sometimes takes priority over self-interest. To make this case, the authors discuss the way justice emerges as a personal contract in children's development; review a wide range of research studying the influences of the justice motive on evaluative, emotional and behavioral responses; and detail common experiences that illustrate the impact of the justice motive. Through an extensive critique (...) of the research on which some alternative models of justice are based, the authors present a model that describes the ways in which motives of justice and self-interest are integrated in people's lives. They close with a discussion of some positive and negative consequences of the commitment to justice. (shrink)

Kleene’s well-known strong three-valued logic is shown to be one of a family of logics with similar mathematical properties. These logics are produced by an intuitively natural construction. The resulting logics have direct relationships with bilattices. In addition they possess mathematical features that lend themselves well to semantical constructions based on fixpoint procedures, as in logic programming.

Mahadevan (2018, AAAI Conference. https://people.cs.umass.edu/~mahadeva/papers/aaai2018-imagination.pdf) proposes that we are at the cusp of imagination science, one of whose primary concerns will be the design of imagination machines. Programs have been written that are capable of generating jokes (Kim Binsted’s JAPE), producing line-drawings that have been exhibited at such galleries as the Tate (Harold Cohen’s AARON), composing music in several styles reminiscent of such greats as Vivaldi and Mozart (David Cope’s Emmy), proving geometry theorems (Herb Gelernter’s IBM program), and inducing quantitative (...) laws from empirical data (Pat Langley, Gary Bradshaw, Jan Zytkow, and Herbert Simon’s BACON). In recent years, Dartmouth has been hosting Turing Tests in creativity in three categories: short stories, sonnets, and dance music DJ sets. In this post, I will provide a brief and non-exhaustive survey of some plausible responses to these imagination machines and the related prospects for our understanding of the imagination. (shrink)