This book investigates context-sensitivity in natural language by examining the meaning and use of a target class of theoretically recalcitrant expressions. These expressions-including epistemic vocabulary, normative and evaluative vocabulary, and vague language -exhibit systematic differences from paradigm context-sensitive expressions in their discourse dynamics and embedding properties. Many researchers have responded by rethinking the nature of linguistic meaning and communication. Drawing on general insights about the role of context in interpretation and collaborative action, Silk develops an improved contextualist theory of (...) CR-expressions within the classical truth-conditional paradigm: Discourse Contextualism. The aim of Discourse Contextualism is to derive the distinctive linguistic behavior of a CR-expression from a particular contextualist interpretation of an independently motivated formal semantics, along with general principles of interpretation and conversation. It is shown how in using CR-expressions, speakers can exploit their mutual grammatical and world knowledge, and general pragmatic reasoning skills, to coordinate their attitudes and negotiate about how the context should evolve. The book focuses primarily on developing a Discourse Contextualist semantics and pragmatics for epistemic modals. The Discourse Contextualist framework is also applied to other categories of epistemic vocabulary, normative and evaluative vocabulary, and vague adjectives. The similarities/differences among these expressions, and among context-sensitive expressions more generally, have been underexplored. The development of Discourse Contextualism in this book sheds light on general features of meaning and communication, and the variety of ways in which context affects and is affected by uses of language. Discourse Contextualism provides a fruitful framework for theorizing about various broader issues in philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science. (shrink)

Conscience and Conscientious Objection of Health Care Professionals Refocusing the Issue Content Type Journal Article Pages 351-364 DOI 10.1007/s10730-009-9113-x Authors Natasha T. Morton, The University of Western Ontario Ontario Canada N6A 5B9 Kenneth W. Kirkwood, Arthur and Sonia Labatt Health Sciences Building London Ontario Canada N6A 5B9 Journal HEC Forum Online ISSN 1572-8498 Print ISSN 0956-2737 Journal Volume Volume 21 Journal Issue Volume 21, Number 4.

The universal homogeneous triangle-free graph, constructed by Henson [A family of countable homogeneous graphs, Pacific J. Math.38(1) (1971) 69–83] and denoted H3, is the triangle-free analogue of the Rado graph. While the Ramsey theory of the Rado graph has been completely established, beginning with Erdős–Hajnal–Posá [Strong embeddings of graphs into coloured graphs, in Infinite and Finite Sets. Vol.I, eds. A. Hajnal, R. Rado and V. Sós, Colloquia Mathematica Societatis János Bolyai, Vol. 10 (North-Holland, 1973), pp. 585–595] and culminating in work (...) of Sauer [Coloring subgraphs of the Rado graph, Combinatorica26(2) (2006) 231–253] and Laflamme–Sauer–Vuksanovic [Canonical partitions of universal structures, Combinatorica26(2) (2006) 183–205], the Ramsey theory of H3 had only progressed to bounds for vertex colorings [P. Komjáth and V. Rödl, Coloring of universal graphs, Graphs Combin.2(1) (1986) 55–60] and edge colorings [N. Sauer, Edge partitions of the countable triangle free homogenous graph, Discrete Math.185(1–3) (1998) 137–181]. This was due to a lack of broadscale techniques. We solve this problem in general: For each finite triangle-free graph G, there is a finite number T(G) such that for any coloring of all copies of G in H3 into finitely many colors, there is a subgraph of H3 which is again universal homogeneous triangle-free in which the coloring takes no more than T(G) colors. This is the first such result for a homogeneous structure omitting copies of some nontrivial finite structure. The proof entails developments of new broadscale techniques, including a flexible method for constructing trees which code H3 and the development of their Ramsey theory. (shrink)

In 2008 Science Magazine and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science hosted the first ever Dance Your PhD Contest in Vienna, Austria. Calls for submission to the second, third, and fourth annual Dance Your PhD contests followed suit, attracting hundreds of entries and featuring scientists based in the US, Canada, Australia, Europe and the UK. These contests have drawn significant media attention. While much of the commentary has focused on the novelty of dancing scientists and the function of (...) dance as an effective distraction for overworked researchers, this article takes seriously the relationship between movement and scientific inquiry and draws on ethnographic research among structural biologists to examine the ways that practitioners use their bodies to animate biological phenomena. It documents how practitioners transform their bodies into animating media and how they conduct body experiments to test their hypotheses. This ‘body-work’ helps them to figure out how molecules move and interact, and simultaneously offers a medium through which they can communicate the nuanced details of their findings among students and colleagues. This article explores the affective and kinaesthetic dexterities scientists acquire through their training, and it takes a close look at how this body-work is tacitly enabled and constrained through particular pedagogical techniques and differential relations of gender and power. This article argues that the Dance Your PhD contests, as well as other performative modalities, can expand and extend what it is possible for scientific researchers to see, say, imagine and feel. (shrink)

Today many scholars seem to agree that citizens should be involved in expert deliberations on science and technology issues. This interest in public deliberation has gained attraction in many practical settings, especially in the European Union, and holds the promise of more legitimate governance of science and technology. In this article, the authors draw on the European Commission’s report ‘‘Taking the European Knowledge Society Seriously’’ to ask how legitimate these efforts to ‘‘democratize’’ scientific expertise really are. While the report borrows (...) from deliberative democrats’ normative accounts of legitimacy, the authors identify a tension between the principles for legitimate rule prescribed by deliberative democratic theory and the report’s celebration of diversity and dissent. While this inconsistency suggests that the legitimacy of deliberative governance arrangements is justified on empirical rather than normative grounds, it remains an open question whether studies of science and technology offer enough empirical support for such a justification. In this article, the authors address this pressing question and propose three possible responses. (shrink)

Within the context of applied bioethical reasoning, various conceptions of the human body are focused upon by the author in relation to normative notions of autonomy.

“Ethics” is used as a label for a new kind of expertise in the field of science and technology. At the same time, it is not clear what ethical expertise consists in and what its political status in modern democracies can be. Starting from the “participatory turn” in recent social research and policy, we will argue that bioethical reasoning has to include public views of and attitudes towards biomedicine. We will sketch the outlines of a bioethical conception of “public understanding (...) of ethics,” addressing three different issues: the methodological relevance of moral questions and problems raised by lay persons in everyday life regarding biomedicine and technology, the normative relevance of such lay moralities for the justification of ethical decisions, and the necessity of public deliberation in this context. Finally, we draw conclusions in view of the concepts and methods such a conception of “public understanding of ethics” should employ. (shrink)

A general method for constructing a new class of topological Ramsey spaces is presented. Members of such spaces are infinite sequences of products of Fraïssé classes of finite relational structures satisfying the Ramsey property. The Product Ramsey Theorem of Sokič is extended to equivalence relations for finite products of structures from Fraïssé classes of finite relational structures satisfying the Ramsey property and the Order-Prescribed Free Amalgamation Property. This is essential to proving Ramsey-classification theorems for equivalence relations on fronts, generalizing the (...) Pudlák–Rödl Theorem to this class of topological Ramsey spaces. To each topological Ramsey space in this framework corresponds an associated ultrafilter satisfying some weak partition property. By using the correct Fraïssé classes, we construct topological Ramsey spaces which are dense in the partial orders of Baumgartner and Taylor generating p-points which are k-arrow but not \-arrow, and in a partial order of Blass producing a diamond shape in the Rudin-Keisler structure of p-points. Any space in our framework in which blocks are products of n many structures produces ultrafilters with initial Tukey structure exactly the Boolean algebra \\). If the number of Fraïssé classes on each block grows without bound, then the Tukey types of the p-points below the space’s associated ultrafilter have the structure exactly \. In contrast, the set of isomorphism types of any product of finitely many Fraïssé classes of finite relational structures satisfying the Ramsey property and the OPFAP, partially ordered by embedding, is realized as the initial Rudin-Keisler structure of some p-point generated by a space constructed from our template. (shrink)

This paper investigates properties of \(\sigma \) -closed forcings which generate ultrafilters satisfying weak partition relations. The Ramsey degree of an ultrafilter \({\mathcal {U}}\) for _n_-tuples, denoted \(t({\mathcal {U}},n)\), is the smallest number _t_ such that given any \(l\ge 2\) and coloring \(c:[\omega ]^n\rightarrow l\), there is a member \(X\in {\mathcal {U}}\) such that the restriction of _c_ to \([X]^n\) has no more than _t_ colors. Many well-known \(\sigma \) -closed forcings are known to generate ultrafilters with finite Ramsey degrees, (...) but finding the precise degrees can sometimes prove elusive or quite involved, at best. In this paper, we utilize methods of topological Ramsey spaces to calculate Ramsey degrees of several classes of ultrafilters generated by \(\sigma \) -closed forcings. These include a hierarchy of forcings due to Laflamme which generate weakly Ramsey and weaker rapid p-points, forcings of Baumgartner and Taylor and of Blass and generalizations, and the collection of non-p-points generated by the forcings \({\mathcal {P}}(\omega ^k)/\mathrm {Fin}^{\otimes k}\). We provide a general approach to calculating the Ramsey degrees of these ultrafilters, obtaining new results as well as streamlined proofs of previously known results. In the second half of the paper, we calculate pseudointersection and tower numbers for these \(\sigma \) -closed forcings and their relationships with the classical pseudointersection number \({\mathfrak {p}}\). (shrink)

Scientific and medical contraceptive standards are commonly believed to have begun with the advent of the oral contraceptive pill in the late 1950s. This article explains that in Britain contraceptive standards were imagined and implemented at least two decades earlier by the Family Planning Association, which sought to legitimize contraceptive methods, practice and provision through the foundation of the field of contraceptive science. This article charts the origins of the field, investigating the three methods the association devised and employed to (...) achieve its goal of effecting contraceptive regulation. This was through the development of standardized methods to assess spermicidal efficacy; the establishment of quality, strength and manufacturing standards for rubber prophylactics; and the institution of animal trials to ensure the safety of specific contraceptives. The association publicized the results of its scientific testing on proprietary contraceptives in its annual Approved List of contraceptives. This provided doctors and chemists with a definitive register of safe and effective methods to prescribe. (shrink)

The definition of consumerism is multifaceted, extending from the consumption of goods and services to its more negative connotations: the obsessive consumption of goods, exploitation of the people who create them and greed. In a society heavily influenced by consumerism, we find ourselves manipulated by social media and targeted advertising to buy goods or to cultivate a certain lifestyle, raising important ethical questions about responsibility and our autonomy to make decisions. How has the nature of how we create and consume (...) goods evolved and how is this linked to moral responsibility and autonomy? Can it also be argued that there is aesthetic appreciation to be gained from some of the items that we create and consume? (shrink)

In a review of the cell biology and heredity studies of 1900–1910, Bernardino Fantini argues that the choice of an experimental subject or organism was crucial in opening up new discoveries and new theories for specific fields of research.69 Thinking on a broader level, Bütschli expressed a similar view when he stated that an understanding of the true nature and structure of the “elementary organism” was crucial to the whole of biology. In this article we have traced the impact of (...) Bütschli's unicellular model of protozoa up to the general acceptance of the eukaryotic cell as nature's primary organism. We have also seen that Bütschli's vision in the Studien gave birth to Protistenforschung and Zellforschung, sister sciences whose task it was to further and integrate knowledge of the living cell. Of necessity, we have confined ourselves to German scientific developments. However, our attempt to recapture and define the unity and meaning of a biology of the “cell-microcosm” has given us pause to reconsider the development and nature of Wilhelmian biological science. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of the meaning of `ought', and the distinction between weak necessity modals (`ought', `should') and strong necessity modals (`must', `have to'). I argue that there is nothing specially ``strong'' about strong necessity modals per se: uses of `Must p' predicate the (deontic/epistemic/etc.) necessity of the prejacent p of the actual world (evaluation world). The apparent ``weakness'' of weak necessity modals derives from their bracketing whether the necessity of the prejacent is verified in the actual world. (...) `Ought p' can be accepted without needing to settle that the relevant considerations (norms, expectations, etc.) that actually apply verify the necessity of p. I call the basic account a modal-past approach to the weak/strong necessity modal distinction (for reasons that become evident). Several ways of implementing the approach in the formal semantics/pragmatics are critically examined. The account systematizes a wide range of linguistic phenomena: it generalizes across flavors of modality; it elucidates a special role that weak necessity modals play in discourse and planning; it captures contrasting logical, expressive, and illocutionary properties of weak and strong necessity modals; and it sheds light on how a notion of `ought' is often expressed in other languages. These phenomena have resisted systematic explanation. In closing I briefly consider how linguistic inquiry into differences among necessity modals may improve theorizing on broader philosophical issues. (shrink)

Natasha McKeever argues that prima facie, a friends-with-benefits relationship can be, at the same time, a good friendship. This is because sex is compatible with friendship in that it can complement and potentially even strengthen the three core characteristics of friendship: mutual liking, mutual caring, and mutual sharing. She acknowledges that, by generating uncertainty and having the potential to generate feelings of romantic love, sex does pose risks to friendship. However, she argues that while these risks are significant considerations, (...) they can be mitigated and managed and so do not provide strong reasons against friends-with-benefits relationships. (shrink)

Expressivism promises an illuminating account of the nature of normative judgment. But worries about the details of expressivist semantics have led many to doubt whether expressivism's putative advantages can be secured. Drawing on insights from linguistic semantics and decision theory, I develop a novel framework for implementing an expressivist semantics that I call ordering expressivism. I argue that by systematically interpreting the orderings that figure in analyses of normative terms in terms of the basic practical attitude of conditional weak preference, (...) the expressivist can explain the semantic properties of normative sentences in terms of the logical properties of that attitude. Expressivism's problems with capturing the logical relations among normative sentences can be reduced to the familiar, more tractable problem of explaining certain coherence constraints on preferences. Particular attention is given to the interpretation of wide-scope negation. The proposed solution is also extended to other types of embedded contexts—most notably, disjunctions. (shrink)

Relative to a hyperstrong cardinal, it is consistent that measure one covering fails relative to HOD. In fact it is consistent that there is a superstrong cardinal and for every regular cardinal κ, κ + is greater than κ + of HOD. The proof uses a very general lemma showing that homogeneity is preserved through certain reverse Easton iterations.

Refugees and asylum seekers may experience challenges related to pre-arrival experiences, structural disadvantage after migration and during resettlement requiring the need for special protection when participating in research. The aim was to review if and how people with refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds have had their need for special protection addressed in national and international research ethics guidelines. A systematic search of grey literature was undertaken. The search yielded 2187 documents of which fourteen met the inclusion criteria. Few guidelines addressed (...) specific ethical considerations for vulnerable groups much less people with refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds. One guideline explicitly addressed vulnerability for refugees and asylums seekers. To ensure members of ethics committees and researchers consider the potential challenges of conducting research with these groups, guidelines may need to be supplemented with a refugee and asylum seeker specific research ethics framework. Such a framework may be necessary to optimally protect people with refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds in research. (shrink)

There exists a considerable body of work on epistemic logics for resource-bounded reasoners. In this paper, we concentrate on a less studied aspect of resource-bounded reasoning, namely, on the ascription of beliefs and inference rules by the agents to each other. We present a formal model of a system of bounded reasoners which reason about each other’s beliefs, and investigate the problem of belief ascription in a resource-bounded setting. We show that for agents whose computational resources and memory are bounded, (...) correct ascription of beliefs cannot be guaranteed, even in the limit. We propose a solution to the problem of correct belief ascription for feasible agents which involves ascribing reasoning strategies , or preferences on formulas, to other agents, and show that if a resource-bounded agent knows the reasoning strategy of another agent, then its ascription of beliefs to the other agent is correct in the limit. (shrink)

This paper establishes a connection between structure sensitive categorial inference and classical modal logic. The embedding theorems for non-associative Lambek Calculus and the whole class of its weak Sahlqvist extensions demonstrate that various resource sensitive regimes can be modelled within the framework of unimodal temporal logic. On the semantic side, this requires decomposition of the ternary accessibility relation to provide its correlation with standard binary Kripke frames and models.

This chapter develops an account of the meaning and use of various types of legal claims, and uses this account to inform debates about the nature and normativity of law. The account draws on a general framework for implementing a contextualist theory, called 'Discourse Contextualism' (Silk 2016). The aim of Discourse Contextualism is to derive the apparent normativity of claims of law from a particular contextualist interpretation of a standard semantics for modals, along with general principles of interpretation and (...) conversation. Though the semantics is descriptivist, it avoids Dworkin’s influential criticism of so-called “semantic theories of law,” and elucidates the nature of “theoretical disagreements” about the criteria of legal validity. The account sheds light on the social, interpersonal function of normative uses of language in legal discourse. It also gives precise expression to Hart’s and Raz’s intuitive distinctions among types of legal claims (internal/external, committed/detached), while giving them a uniform type of analysis. The proposed semantics and pragmatics of legal claims provides a fruitful framework for further theorizing about the nature and metaphysics of law, the relation between law and morality, and the apparent practical character of legal language and judgment. Discourse Contextualism provides a solid linguistic basis for a broader account of legal discourse and practice. (shrink)

We present a framework for verifying systems composed of heterogeneous reasoning agents, in which each agent may have differing knowledge and inferential capabilities, and where the resources each agent is prepared to commit to a goal (time, memory and communication bandwidth) are bounded. The framework allows us to investigate, for example, whether a goal can be achieved if a particular agent, perhaps possessing key information or inferential capabilities, is unable (or unwilling) to contribute more than a given portion of its (...) available computational resources or bandwidth to the problem. We present a novel temporal epistemic logic, BMCL-CTL , which allows us to describe a set of reasoning agents with bounds on time, memory and the number of messages they can exchange. The bounds on memory and communication are expressed as axioms in the logic. As an example, we show how to axiomatise a system of agents which reason using resolution and prove that the resulting logic is sound and complete. We then show how to encode a simple system of reasoning agents specified in BMCL-CTL in the description language of the Mocha model checker (Alur et al., Proceedings of the tenth international conference on computer-aided verification (CAV) , 1998), and verify that the agents can achieve a goal only if they are prepared to commit certain time, memory and communication resources. (shrink)

(2013). Open Access Digital Data Sharing: Principles, Policies and Practices☆. Social Epistemology: Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 47-67. doi: 10.1080/02691728.2012.760663.

The effective reasoning capability of an agent can be defined as its capability to infer, within a given space and time bound, facts that are logical consequences of its knowledge base. In this paper we show how to determine the effective reasoning capability of an agent with limited memory by encoding the agent as a transition system and automatically verifying whether a state where the agent believes a certain conclusion is reachable from the start state. We present experimental results using (...) the Model Based Planner (MBP) which illustrates how the length of the deduction varies for different memory sizes. (shrink)

This paper argues that a standard analysis of modals from formal semantics suggests a solution to the detaching problem — the problem of whether un-embedded 'ought'-claims can "detach" (be derived) from hypothetical imperatives and their antecedent conditions. On a broadly Kratzerian analysis, modals have a skeletal conventional meaning and receive a particular reading (e.g., deontic, epistemic, teleological) only relative to certain forms of contextual supplementation. I argue that 'ought'-claims can detach — subject to an important qualification — but only as (...) long as the 'ought's in the conditional premise and conclusion are interpreted relative to the same ordering sources. Although modus ponens can be shown to fail with hypothetical imperatives, the cases in question do not constitute a failure of detachment in the sense that ethicists have cared about. Rival wide-scoping accounts are proven to be linguistically problematic. They make incorrect predictions about the meanings of hypothetical imperatives, and founder in response to quantificational variants of the detaching problem. (shrink)

We propose a framework for modelling situated resource-bounded agents. The framework is based on an objective ascription of intentional modalities and can be easily tailored to the system we want to model and the properties we wish to specify. As an elaboration of the framework, we introduce a logic, OBA, for describing the observations, beliefs, goals and actions of simple agents, and show that OBA is complete, decidable and has an efficient model checking procedure, allowing properties of agents specified in (...) OBA to be verified using standard theorem proving or model checking techniques. (shrink)

Local perceptions of protected areas are important for conservation and the sustainability of protected areas. We undertook qualitative and ethnographic fieldwork to explore relationships between people and protected areas in the Blouberg mountain range, South Africa. The history of land use and current relationships with protected areas reveal legacies of marginalisation and immiseration, giving credence to a theory of traumatic nature. The impacts of traumatic nature manifest themselves in local discourses and narratives of nature, protected areas and conservation.

The generic ultrafilter${\cal G}_2 $forced by${\cal P}\left/\left$was recently proved to be neither maximum nor minimum in the Tukey order of ultrafilters, but it was left open where exactly in the Tukey order it lies. We prove${\cal G}_2 $that is in fact Tukey minimal over its projected Ramsey ultrafilter. Furthermore, we prove that for each${\cal G}_2 $, the collection of all nonprincipal ultrafilters Tukey reducible to the generic ultrafilter${\cal G}_k $forced by${\cal P}\left/{\rm{Fin}}^{ \otimes k} $forms a chain of lengthk. Essential to (...) the proof is the extraction of a dense subsetεkfrom +which we prove to be a topological Ramsey space. The spacesεk,k≥ 2, form a hierarchy of high dimensional Ellentuck spaces. New Ramsey-classification theorems for equivalence relations on fronts on εkare proved, extending the Pudlák–Rödl Theorem for fronts on the Ellentuck space, which are applied to find the Tukey and Rudin–Keisler structures below${\cal G}_k $. (shrink)

We extend the hierarchy of finite-dimensional Ellentuck spaces to infinite dimensions. Using uniform barriers [Formula: see text] on [Formula: see text] as the prototype structures, we construct a class of continuum many topological Ramsey spaces [Formula: see text] which are Ellentuck-like in nature, and form a linearly ordered hierarchy under projections. We prove new Ramsey-classification theorems for equivalence relations on fronts, and hence also on barriers, on the spaces [Formula: see text], extending the Pudlák–Rödl theorem for barriers on the Ellentuck (...) space. The inspiration for these spaces comes from continuing the iterative construction of the forcings [Formula: see text] to the countable transfinite. The [Formula: see text]-closed partial order [Formula: see text] is forcing equivalent to [Formula: see text], which forces a non-p-point ultrafilter [Formula: see text]. This work forms the basis for further work classifying the Rudin–Keisler and Tukey structures for the hierarchy of the generic ultrafilters [Formula: see text]. (shrink)

This paper develops a contextualist account of certain recalcitrant embedding phenomena with epistemic modals. I focus on three prominent objections to contextualism from embedding: first, that contextualism mischaracterizes subjects’ states of mind; second, that contextualism fails to predict how epistemic modals are obligatorily linked to the subject in attitude ascriptions; and third, that contextualism fails to explain the persisting anomalousness of so-called “epistemic contradictions” in suppositional contexts. Contextualists have inadequately appreciated the force of these objections. Drawing on a more general (...) framework for implementing a contextualist theory, I argue that we can derive the distinctive embedding behavior of epistemic modals from a particular contextualist interpretation of a standard semantics for modals, general mechanisms of local interpretation, and typical features of discourse contexts. Examining embedding phenomena with epistemic modals raises difficult broader issues about conventionalization and pragmatic reasoning, the varieties of context-sensitive language, and the roles of context in interpretation. The paper concludes by briefly examining how the proposed contextualist account compares with certain relativist/expressivist accounts. (shrink)

Gender differences in children’s and adults’ time use are well documented, but few have examined the intervening period—young adulthood. Because many Americans navigate higher education in young adulthood, college time use provides insight into how gendered behaviors evolve during this critical life stage. Using three years of time use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen and latent transition analysis, I examine gender differences in time use within and across the college years for those in selective institutions. Among students (...) whose time use is consistent throughout college, I find that women exhibit academically-oriented time use more often, and men exhibit socially oriented time use more often. However, many men transition from social time use at the beginning of college to academic time use toward the end—to the extent that gender gaps in academic time use converge by the third year. I argue that men and women construct distinct college pathways, and that men, in particular, must reroute their time use to accommodate gendered expectations for the transition to adulthood. (shrink)