Comprehensive account of constructive theory of first-order predicate calculus. Covers formal methods including algorithms and epi-theory, brief treatment of Markov’s approach to algorithms, elementary facts about lattices and similar algebraic systems, more. Philosophical and reflective as well as mathematical. Graduate-level course. 1963 ed. Exercises.

In _The Excessive Subject: A New Theory of Social Change_, Molly Anne Rothenberg uncovers an innovative theory of social change implicit in the writings of radical social theorists, such as Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj?i?ek. Through case studies of these writers' work, Rothenberg illuminates how this new theory calls into question currently accepted views of social practices, subject formation, democratic interaction, hegemony, political solidarity, revolutionary acts, and the ethics of alterity. Finding a common (...) dissatisfaction with the dominant paradigms of social structures in the authors she discusses, Rothenberg goes on to show that each of these thinkers makes use of Lacan's investigations of the causality of subjectivity in an effort to find an alternative paradigm. Labeling this paradigm 'extimate causality', Rothenberg demonstrates how it produces a nondeterminacy, so that every subject bears some excess; paradoxically, this excess is what structures the social field itself. Whilst other theories of social change, subject formation, and political alliance invariably conceive of the elimination of this excess as necessary to their projects, the theory of extimate causality makes clear that it is ineradicable. To imagine otherwise is to be held hostage to a politics of fantasy. As she examines the importance as well as the limitations of theories that put extimate causality to work, Rothenberg reveals how the excess of the subject promises a new theory of social change. By bringing these prominent thinkers together for the first time in one volume, this landmark text will be sure to ignite debate among scholars in the field, as well as being an indispensable tool for students. (shrink)

In _The Excessive Subject: A New Theory of Social Change_, Molly Anne Rothenberg uncovers an innovative theory of social change implicit in the writings of radical social theorists, such as Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj?i?ek. Through case studies of these writers' work, Rothenberg illuminates how this new theory calls into question currently accepted views of social practices, subject formation, democratic interaction, hegemony, political solidarity, revolutionary acts, and the ethics of alterity. Finding a common (...) dissatisfaction with the dominant paradigms of social structures in the authors she discusses, Rothenberg goes on to show that each of these thinkers makes use of Lacan's investigations of the causality of subjectivity in an effort to find an alternative paradigm. Labeling this paradigm 'extimate causality', Rothenberg demonstrates how it produces a nondeterminacy, so that every subject bears some excess; paradoxically, this excess is what structures the social field itself. Whilst other theories of social change, subject formation, and political alliance invariably conceive of the elimination of this excess as necessary to their projects, the theory of extimate causality makes clear that it is ineradicable. To imagine otherwise is to be held hostage to a politics of fantasy. As she examines the importance as well as the limitations of theories that put extimate causality to work, Rothenberg reveals how the excess of the subject promises a new theory of social change. By bringing these prominent thinkers together for the first time in one volume, this landmark text will be sure to ignite debate among scholars in the field, as well as being an indispensable tool for students. (shrink)

In this 2020 AFHVS Presidential Address, Molly Anderson suggests that we must push beyond the boundaries imposed by our training, institutional reward systems, political system and comfort zones in order to solve global challenges. She lists five challenges facing those who are trying to build more sustainable food systems: overcoming the technocratic and productivist approach of industrial agriculture, avoiding future pandemics, restoring degraded and depleted systems and resources, remaining united as a movement while creating collaborations with other movements, and (...) redistributing power across food system actors so that everyone can realize their human rights, including the right to food. She describes three ways that she has found to be effective in pushing beyond boundaries: international collaborations, interactions with global social movements, and anti-racist work. She links these “moments” of opportunity back to the five challenges, and concludes with advice to young scholars. (shrink)

Many of us agree that we ought not to wrong future people, but there remains disagreement about which of our actions can wrong them. Can we wrong individuals whose lives are worth living by taking actions that result in their very existence? The problem of justifying an answer to this question has come to be known as the non-identity problem.[1] While the literature contains an array of strategies for solving the problem,[2] in this paper I will take what I call (...) the harm-based approach, and I will defend an account of harming—which I call the existence account of harming—that can vindicate this approach. -/- Roughly put, the harm-based approach holds that, by acting in ways that result in the existence of individuals whose lives are worth living, we can harm and thereby wrong those individuals. An initially plausible way to try to justify this approach is to endorse the non-comparative account of harming, which holds that an event harms an individual just in case it causes her to be in a bad state, such that the state’s badness does not derive from a comparison between that state and some alternative state that the individual would or could have been in. However, many philosophers argue that the non-comparative account of harming is inadequate,[3] and one might be tempted to infer from this that any harm-based approach to the non-identity problem will fail. My proposal, which I call the existence account of harming, will show that this inference is faulty: we can vindicate the harm-based approach without relying on the non-comparative account of harming. (shrink)

Model theorists have been studying analytic functions since the late 1970s. Highlights include the seminal work of Denef and van den Dries on the theory of the p-adics with restricted analytic functions, Wilkie's proof of o-minimality of the theory of the reals with the exponential function, and the formulation of Zilber's conjecture for the complex exponential. My goal in this talk is to survey these main developments and to reflect on today's open problems, in particular for theories of valued fields.

(No abstract is available for this citation).

C-minimality is a variant of o-minimality in which structures carry, instead of a linear ordering, a ternary relation interpretable in a natural way on set of maximal chains of a tree. This notion is discussed, a cell-decomposition theorem for C-minimal structures is proved, and a notion of dimension is introduced. It is shown that C-minimal fields are precisely valued algebraically closed fields. It is also shown that, if certain specific ‘bad’ functions are not definable, then algebraic closure has the exchange (...) property, and for definable sets dimension coincides with the rank obtained from algebraic closure. (shrink)

John Dewey was a major figure of the American cultural and intellectual landscape in the first half of the twentieth century. While not the originator of American pragmatism, he was instrumental to its articulation as a philosophy and the spread of its influence beyond philosophy to other disciplines. His prolific writings encompass metaphysics, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, psychology, moral philosophy, the philosophies of religion, art, and education, and democratic political and international theory. The contributors to this Companion examine the (...) wide range of Dewey's thought and provide a critical evaluation of his philosophy and its lasting influence, both elsewhere in philosophy and on other disciplines. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 64 Heft: 5 Seiten: 740-756.

It is commonly claimed that when X coerces Y into consenting to Z φ-ing, Y’s consent is invalid, and Z is only permitted to φ if this reduces harm or increases optionality for Y. This article demonstrates that Y’s consent in such cases is valid if Y is choosing between options that include all those Z has a duty to offer Y and no autonomy-reducing options Z has a duty to not offer Y. When these conditions are met, Z acts (...) permissibly in φ-ing even if φ-ing does not reduce harm for Y or increase Y’s optionality. (shrink)

Consider a duty of beneficence towards a particular individual, S, and call a reason that is grounded in that duty a “beneficence reason towards S.” Call a person who will be brought into existence by an act of procreation the “resultant person.” Is there ever a beneficence reason towards the resultant person for an agent to procreate? In this paper, I argue for such a reason by appealing to two main premises. First, we owe a pro tanto duty of beneficence (...) to future persons; and second, some of us can benefit some of those persons by procreating. In support of the first premise I reject the presentist account of time in favor of the view that future persons are just as real as presently existing persons. I then argue that future persons are like us in all the morally relevant ways, and since we owe duties of beneficence to each other, we also owe duties of beneficence to future persons. In support of the second premise I offer an account of benefiting according to which an individual can be benefited by an action even if it makes her no better off than she would have been, had the action not been performed. This account of benefiting solves what I call the “non-identity benefit problem.” Finally, I argue that having a life worth living is a benefit, and some of us can cause some persons that benefit by causing them to exist. (shrink)

In this article, I consider some of the first appearances of a hypothesis of quantized energy between the years 1900 and 1913 and provide an analysis of the nature of the unificatory power of this hypothesis in a Bayesian framework. I argue that the best way to understand the unification here is in terms of informational relevance: on the assumption of the quantum hypothesis, phenomena that were previously thought to be unrelated turned out to yield information about one another on (...) the basis of agreeing measurements of the numerical value of Planck’s constant. (shrink)

The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to our understanding of scientific theory pursuit by providing a detailed case study on the development of early quantum theory, from roughly 1900 to 1916. I first elaborate on why this case should be considered an instance of piecemeal pursuit by presenting the historical quantum conjectures that were being used in different contexts. These conjectures gave varied interpretations of quantization. By comparing these conjectures, I identify a general quantum postulate that captures the (...) underlying assumption common to all the cases. I argue that it is possible to consider a general postulate about quantization even when its proper application is ambiguous in a given context, and that the postulate can be separated from different elements of the framework being used to investigate it. I show that the quantum postulate can be deemed promising by analysing the support it gains using a Bayesian framework. I first defend the use of such a framework by considering the purported inconsistencies in Planck's introduction of his quantum conjecture and how we should handle these. I then explicate two cases of support for the postulate. First, I show how we can use a particular solution to the Bayesian problem of old evidence to interpret the support the quantum postulate received by accounting for phenomena that had no previous explanation. Finally, I show that the quantum postulate is also supported by a unification argument, where unification is interpreted as informational relevance between the different domains of inquiry. (shrink)

This work provides a welcome antidote to some of the distortions and biases which the two dominant schools of Anglo-American philosophical thinking, logical positivism and ordinary language analysis have introduced into the philosophy of history in the past three or four decades. In particular, it challenges two powerful stereotypes: that philosophy and history are conceptually independent of each other; and that there exists a sharp division between "analytical" (reputable) and "speculative" (disreputable) philosophy of history. By offering and defending his own (...) conception of philosophy, the author seeks to show that there is indeed common ground between philosophy and history, that speculative philosophy of history lies between philosophy and history, not because it is neither philosophy nor history, but because it is both philosophy and history. Originally published in 1970. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

CHAPTER Addenda to Pure Combinatory Logic This chapter will treat various additions to, and modifications of, the subject matter of Chapters-7. ...

_ Source: _Volume 14, Issue 1, pp 73 - 87 According to action-relative accounts of harming, an action harms someone only if it makes her worse off in some respect than she would have been, had the action not been performed. Action-relative accounts can be contrasted with effect-relative accounts, which hold that an action may harm an individual in virtue of its effects on that individual, regardless of whether the individual would have been better off in the absence of the (...) action. In this paper, I argue that our judgments about the strength of the reason against harming lend support to effect-relative accounts over action-relative accounts. I first criticize Fiona Woollard’s argument for the claim that an effect-relative account of harming could ground only a weak reason against harming. I then argue for a set of three principles that can be conjoined with an effect-relative account to explain the strength of the reason against harming. (shrink)

Lorenzen, in his book Einführung in die operative Logik und Mathematik has given a relatively precise form of syntactical system which he calls a calculus. The present paper deals with the relationship of Lorenzen's notion of calculus with the notion of formal system . It is shown that the obs of a formal system can be represented as the theses of a calculus of a certain type just when the calculus has a property called the tectonic property, and conditions are (...) given under which one form of system can be transformed into the other.ZusammenfassungLorenzen hat in seinem Buch, Einführung in die operative Logik und Mathematik, eine ziemlich genaue Auffassung eines syntaktischen Systems angegeben, die er Kalkül nennt. Die vorliegende Abhandlung betrifft die Verwandtschaft dieses Lorenzenschen Begriffs mit dem eines formalen Systems . Es wird bewiesen, dass die « Obs » eines formalen Systems sich als die Thesen eines passenden Kalküls genau dann repräsentieren lassen, wenn dieser Kalkül eine gewisse Eigenschaft, die « tectonic property » heisst, besitzt; die Bedingungen für die Überführung einer Art von System in die andere werden aufgezeigt.RésuméLorenzen, dans son livre Einführung in die operative Logik und Mathematik, a exposé une forme assez précise de systéme syntaxique qu'il a appelée un calcul. L'article actuel traite les relations entre cette idée et celle d'un système formel . L'auteur dèmontre que les « obs » d'un système formel peuvent se représenter comme les thèses d'un calcul d'une certaine espèce justement quand le calcul a une propriété que l'on appelle « the tectonic property »; et it énonce des conditions pour qu'un type de système soit transformable en l'autre. (shrink)

Previous criteria of narrative coherence have failed to come to terms with narrative intelligibility. The principle of chronology is only a negative criterion. The one entity-one story criterion, which requires every episode to~ refer to one and the same entity, fails both in its positive and negative forms. The Aristotelian concept of necessary connection is useless for historians because there are no natural beginnings or endings in history. Yet genetic relationships in narrative, though they cannot be reduced to causal or (...) probabilistic relationships, do give coherences. History becomes science when historians transform stories into histories by seeking the mechanisms which underlie the genetic relationships between historical incidents. The construction of history in narrative form does not, therefore, cut the historian off from science, as positivists contend. (shrink)

In this first of three papers, a novel cognitive and psycho-linguistic non metric or non quantitative methodology developed for the analysis and validation of unconscious cognition and meaning in ostensibly literal verbal narratives is presented. Unconscious referents are reconceptualized as sub-literal referents. An integrally systemic, structural, and internally consistent set of operations is delineated and instantiated. The method is related to aspects of two models. The first is logico-mathematic structure; the second is linguistic syntax. After initially framing the problem that (...) the method addresses, along with some theoretical implications, historical precursors are briefly outlined. The method presents novel cognitive and linguistic operations. Though the method raises a number of issues of theory, research, and methodology, and makes a contribution to these areas, it stands independently, qua method. (shrink)

Hart and Honoré contend, in their book Causation in the Law, that causal appraisals in everyday life and in the law can be made, with justifiable confidence, without appealing to relevant general laws; that in order to grasp the workings of causal notions in everyday life and the law, it is sufficient to note that causes are events which interfere with or intervene in the course of events which would normally have taken place. This thesis is criticized on the ground (...) that what purport to be purely causal appraisals are hopelessly vulnerable to moral considerations, especially when such appraisals are presumed to take place in complete independence of scientific theory. (shrink)