This is a case study of goldsmith craft apprenticeship learning and recognition. The study includes 13 participants in a goldsmith's workshop. The theoretical approach to recognition and learning is inspired by sociocultural theory. In this article recognition is defined with reference to Hegel’s understanding of the concept as a transformed struggle of granting acknowledgement to another person plus receiving acknowledgement as a person. It is argued that the notion of recognition can enhance sociocultural notions of learning. In analysing the case (...) study of apprenticeship learning, the article suggests that recognition is expressed in the act of participants staking their lives to prove their autonomy, in work activity in terms of the role of artefacts and in the form of abstract and concrete recognition. Finally recognition is discussed in relation to learning and development. The study concludes that recognition is an important category not only to explain apprenticeship learning but also to give a sociocultural explanation of learning in general. (shrink)

For many years—and with some energy since Laudan’s “Confutation of Convergent Realism” —the scientific realist has sought to accommodate examples of false-yet-successful theories in the history of science. One of the most prominent strategies is to identify ‘success fueling’ components of false theories that themselves are at least approximately true. In this article I develop both sides of the debate, introducing new challenges from the history of science as well as suggesting adjustments to the divide et impera realist strategy. A (...) new ‘recipe’ for the prospective identification of working/idle posits is considered. (shrink)

In this book, Peter Achinstein proposes and defends several objective concepts of evidence. He then explores the question of whether a scientific method, such as that represented in the four "Rules for the Study of Natural Philosophy" that Isaac Newton invoked in proving his law of gravity, can be employed in demonstrating how the proposed definitions of evidence are to be applied to real scientific cases.

Generalization of the standard behavior longitudinal genetic factor model for the analysis of interindividual phenotypic variation to a genetic state space model for the analysis of intraindividual variation enables the possibility to estimate subject-specific heritabilities.

We compare astronomers' removal of Pluto from the listing of planets and psychiatrists' removal of homosexuality from the listing of mental disorders. Although the political maneuverings that emerged in both controversies are less than scientifically ideal, we argue that competition for "scientific authority" among competing groups is a normal part of scientific progress. In both cases, a complicated relationship between abstract constructs and evidence made the classification problem thorny.

Working in constructive set theory we formulate notions of constructive topological space and set-generated locale so as to get a good constructive general version of the classical Galois adjunction between topological spaces and locales. Our notion of constructive topological space allows for the space to have a class of points that need not be a set. Also our notion of locale allows the locale to have a class of elements that need not be a set. Class sized mathematical structures need (...) to be allowed for in constructive set theory because the powerset axiom and the full separation scheme are necessarily missing from constructive set theory. We also consider the notion of a formal topology, usually treated in Intuitionistic type theory, and show that the category of set-generated locales is equivalent to the category of formal topologies. We exploit ideas of Palmgren and Curi to obtain versions of their results about when the class of formal points of a set-presentable formal topology form a set. (shrink)

Theories of explanation are characterized as being either pragmatic or non-pragmatic, without a clear sense of what this is supposed to mean. The present paper offers a definition of a "pragmatic explanation-sentence", and in terms of this, of a "pragmatic theory of explanation". It is argued that van Fraassen's theory of explanation, despite claims to the contrary, is not genuinely pragmatic. By contrast, the author's own "illocutionary" theory is pragmatic. Attention is devoted particularly to sentences of the form "E is (...) a good explanation of q", which, it is urged, are pragmatic in a strong sense. In defense of this claim, and of the advantages of a pragmatic account generally, appeal is made to Rutherford's 1911 subatomic explanation of the results of his scattering experiments. Implications of a pragmatic theory are drawn for the debate between realists and anti-realists and absolutists and relativists. (shrink)

This chapter shows how al-Kindī interweaves ideas from Greek cosmology to give a theory that can explain the efficacy of astrology and how God’s providence is dispersed by means of heavenly influence. A concrete example is found in al-Kindī’s works on meteorology, since he thinks that weather is produced by celestial causation. The mechanics of this causation are explained differently in different works, which leads to a consideration of the authenticity of On Rays, which is ascribed to al-Kindī, and its (...) place in his corpus. Finally, the chapter considers whether al-Kindī’s account commits him to determinism, and whether he thinks universal causal determinism is compatible with human freedom. (shrink)

Young’s paper (2012) offers an interesting and fruitful extension to recent work on Cotard’s syndrome, and in particular, a philosophical investigation of how and why beliefs around death and non-existence frequently co-occur with beliefs around immortality. In this brief response, we discuss a few issues from the paper. Namely, the issue of Cotard delusion being a natural kind, the seeming paradox of death and immortality and its relation to wider culture and literature, and the utility of the concept of misplaced (...) being. (shrink)

Peter Vardy explains the philosophic process that has led to post-modernism - with its rejection of a single truth - and charts the political, social, environmental and personal consequences of undermining the distinction between truth and falsity.

In this paper we first develop a logic independent account of relevant implication. We propose a stipulative denition of what it means for a multiset of premises to relevantly L-imply a multiset of conclusions, where L is a Tarskian consequence relation: the premises relevantly imply the conclusions iff there is an abstraction of the pair such that the abstracted premises L-imply the abstracted conclusions and none of the abstracted premises or the abstracted conclusions can be omitted while still maintaining valid (...) L-consequence. Subsequently we apply this denition to the classical logic consequence relation to obtain NTR-consequence, i.e. the relevant CL-consequence relation in our sense, and develop a sequent calculus that is sound and complete with regard to relevant CL-consequence. We present a sound and complete sequent calculus for NTR. In a next step we add rules for an object language relevant implication to the sequent calculus. The object language implication reflects exactly the NTR-consequence relation. One can see the resulting logic NTR-> as a relevant logic in the traditional sense of the word. By means of a translation to the relevant logic R, we show that the presented logic NTR is very close to relevance logics in the Anderson-Belnap-Dunn-Routley-Meyer tradition. However, unlike usual relevant logics, NTR is decidable for the full language, Disjunctive Syllogism and Adjunction are valid, and neither Modus Ponens nor the Cut rule are admissible. (shrink)

We introduce a new axiom scheme for constructive set theory, the Relation Reflection Scheme . Each instance of this scheme is a theorem of the classical set theory ZF. In the constructive set theory CZF–, when the axiom scheme is combined with the axiom of Dependent Choices , the result is equivalent to the scheme of Relative Dependent Choices . In contrast to RDC, the scheme RRS is preserved in Heyting-valued models of CZF– using set-generated frames. We give an application (...) of the scheme to coinductive definitions of classes. (shrink)

This chapter deals with al-Kindī’s metaphysics, which in this context means theology and the idea that being is an emanation or creation from God. Depending on the Neoplatonists, especially Proclus, al-Kindī proves God’s existence by arguing for the need for a “true One”, whose absolute simplicity rules out a multiplicity of divine attributes.

A generalized inclusion frame consists of a set of points W and an assignment of a binary relation $R\sb{w}$ on W to each point w in W. Generalized inclusion frames whose $R\sb{w}$ are partial orders are called comparison frames. Conditional logics of various comparative notions, for example, Lewis's V-logic of comparative possibility and utilitarian accounts of conditional obligation, model the dyadic modal operator $>$ on comparison frames according to the following truth condition: $\alpha > \beta$ "holds at w" iff every (...) point in the truth set of $\alpha$ bears $R\sb{w}$ to some point where $\beta$ holds. ;In this essay I provide a relational frame theory which embraces both accessibility semantics and g.i. semantics as special cases. This goal is achieved via a philosophically significant generalization of universal strict implication which does not assume accessibility as a primitive. Within this very general setting, I provide the first axiomatization of the dyadic modal logic corresponding to the class of all g.i. frames. Various correspondences between dyadic logics and first order definable subclasses of the class of g.i. frames are established. Finally, some general model constructions are developed which allow uniform completeness proofs for important sublogics of Lewis' V. (shrink)

Working in the weakening of constructive Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory in which the subset collection scheme is omitted, we show that the binary refinement principle implies all the instances of the exponentiation axiom in which the basis is a discrete set. In particular binary refinement implies that the class of detachable subsets of a set form a set. Binary refinement was originally extracted from the fullness axiom, an equivalent of subset collection, as a principle that was sufficient to prove that the (...) Dedekind reals form a set. Here we show that the Cauchy reals also form a set. More generally, binary refinement ensures that one remains in the realm of sets when one starts from discrete sets and one applies the operations of exponentiation and binary product a finite number of times. (shrink)

Frederick Kronz constructs interesting examples in an attempt to show deficiencies in my concept of evidence and the advantages in Carnap's positive relevance idea. His discussion raises general questions of importance in developing an adequate account of scientific evidence questions about the relationship between evidence and belief and the role of emphasis in determining evidence. His examples are challenging, but do they work?

Peter Spirtes. Conditional Independence in Directed Cyclic Graphical Models for Feedback.

The primary aim of this important study is to produce a reliable account of Peter Martyr’s life before he left Italy in 1542. Earlier biographers had been content to follow the Swiss Calvinist Josiah Simler, who knew Peter Martyr in later years, delivered his funeral oration and published it in 1563. Dr McNair has tried ‘to delve beneath Simler to contemporary records’. He has discovered, for example, that Peter Martyr was born in 1499 not, as is usually (...) said, in 1500. He has been concerned to find out when Peter Martyr left his order and his Church, suggesting that there is little reason to believe that his apostasy began in his years at the University of Padua, 1518-26; it was in Naples, between 1537 and 1540, when he came to know Juan de Valdés, that Peter Martyr’s conversion took place. ‘He arrived a reformer after the order of Ximénez, he left a reformer after the order of Zwingli’, writes Dr McNair, meaning by this the Zwingli of the years immediately before 1523, when he wished to go further than Erasmus but not so far as Luther. (shrink)

This paper endeavours to unravel the dialectical structure embedded within St. John of the Cross’ delineation of the phase of purgation in the economy of mysticism. Two correlative opposites that figure prominently in some systems of theistic mysticism are infinite-finite and grace-effort. The premise of this paper is that those pairings are not dichotomous contraries but are opposites that are amenable to some form of reconciliation. With the aid of a triadic dialectical scheme it is possible to map out the (...) dialectical relations between relevant concepts within mystical purgation, characterized as ‘night’ by St. John, and perhaps achieve some advance in the elucidation of the pairings’ constitutive elements. (shrink)

The articles in this collection are dedicated to the proposition that human beings make history, not just in the sense of being agents of change in the here and ...

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