In, Jeremy Avigad makes a novel and insightful argument, which he presents as part of a defence of the ‘Standard View’ about the relationship between informal mathematical proofs and their corresponding formal derivations. His argument considers the various strategies by means of which mathematicians can write informal proofs that meet mathematical standards of rigour, in spite of the prodigious length, complexity and conceptual difficulty that some proofs exhibit. He takes it that showing that and how such strategies work is a (...) necessary part of any defence of the Standard View.In this paper, I argue for two claims. The first is that Avigad’s list of strategies is no threat to critics of the Standard View. On the contrary, this observational core of heuristic advice in Avigad’s paper is agnostic between rival accounts of mathematical correctness. The second is that that Avigad’s project of accounting for the relation between formal and informal proofs requires an answer to a prior question: what sort of thing is an informal proof? His paper havers between two answers. One is that informal proofs are ultimately syntactic items that differ from formal derivations only in completeness and use of abbreviations. The other is that informal proofs are not purely syntactic items, and therefore the translation of an informal proof into a derivation is not a routine procedure but rather a creative act. Since the ‘syntactic’ reading of informal proofs reduces the Standard View to triviality, makes a mystery of the valuable observational core of his paper, and underestimates the value of the achievements of mathematical logic, he should choose some version of the second option. (shrink)

Presents general information about meteorology, weather, and climate and includes more than thirty activities to help study these topics, including making a ...

The economic explanation of individual behaviour, even behaviour outside the traditional province of the market, projects a distinctively economic image on the minds of the agents involved. It suggests that, in regard to motivation and rationality, they conform to the profile of homo economicus. But this suggestion, by many lights, flies in the face of common sense; it conflicts with our ordinary assumptions about how we each feel and think in most situations, certainly most non-market situations, and about how that (...) feeling and thought manifests itself in action. What, then, to conclude? That common sense is deeply in error on these matters? That, on the contrary, economics is in error—at least about non-market behaviour—and common sense sound? Or that some form of reconciliation is available between the two perspectives? This paper is an attempt to defend a conciliationist position. (shrink)

Technological advances in veterinary medicine have produced considerable progress in the diagnosis and treatment of numerous diseases in animals. At the same time, veterinarians, veterinary technicians, and owners of animals face increasingly complex situations that raise questions about goals of care and correct or reasonable courses of action. These dilemmas are frequently controversial and can generate conflicts between clients and health care providers. In many ways they resemble the ethical challenges confronted by human medicine and that spawned the creation of (...) clinical ethics committees as a mechanism to analyze, discuss, and resolve disagreements. The staff of the North Carolina State University Veterinary Hospital, a specialty academic teaching institution, wanted to investigate whether similar success could be achieved in the tertiary care veterinary setting. We discuss the background and rationale for this method, as well as the approach that was taken to create a clinical ethics committee. (shrink)

This article represents a short reflective essay in honour of the Old Testament scholar Eben Scheffler. It focuses on the writing of the history of ancient Israel texts; examines different approaches to address the history of texts: minimalist and maximalist; and illustrates a minimalist approach in reference to the figure of the Israelite king Jeroboam II.

An experiment was performed to investigate the effects of practice and spacing on retention of Japanese–English vocabulary paired associates. The relative benefit of spacing increased with increased practice and with longer retention intervals. Data were fitted with an activation‐based memory model, which proposes that each time an item is practiced it receives an increment of strength but that these increments decay as a power function of time. The rate of decay for each presentation depended on the activation at the time (...) of the presentation. This mechanism limits long‐term benefits from further practice at higher levels of activation and produces the spacing effect and its observed interactions with practice and retention interval. The model was compared with another model of the spacing effect (Raaijmakers, 2003) and was fit to some results from the literature on spacing and memory. (shrink)

This volume contains nine chapters of translation, by a range of leading scholars, focusing on core themes in the philosophy of Zhu Xi (1130-1200), one of the most influential Chinese thinkers of the later Confucian tradition. -/- Table of Contents: Chapter One: Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Ethics by Philip J. Ivanhoe Chapter Two: Moral Psychology and Cultivating the Self by Curie Virág Chapter Three: Politics and Government by Justin Tiwald Chapter Four: Poetry, Literature, Textual Study, and Hermeneutics by On-cho Ng (...) Chapter Five: Social Conditions of His Time by Beverly Bossler Chapter Six: Heaven, Ghosts and Spirits, and Ritual by Hoyt Tillman Chapter Seven: Criticisms of Buddhism, Daoism, and the Learning of the Heart-mind by Ellen Neskar and Ari Borrell Chapter Eight: Science and Natural Philosophy by Yung Sik Kim Chapter Nine: Zhu Xi's Commentarial Work: Abiding in the Mean and the Constant by Daniel Gardner. (shrink)

Why does Sen maintain that people are capable of putting their own goals offline and deliberating and acting out of sheer commitment to others? How can he endorse such a rejection of the belief-desire model of agency? The paper canvasses three explanations and favors one that ascribes an unusual position to Sen: the belief that so far as agents remain in the belief-desire mould, they cannot deliberate on the basis of reasons other than those that derive from standing goals that (...) form an integrated system. What he thinks of as deliberation on the basis of commitment is just the sort of deliberation that involves the formation of a novel, perhaps occasion-specific goal in which the good of another is prioritised. (shrink)

Argues i) that part of what it is to understand what is being asked, when we ask whether something is good, is being able to distinguish stopping points in a series of "Why?" questions, and ii) that this ability explains how we can reason from observable facts to conclusions about value.

From the legendary inventor Daedalus to Goethe's tragic Faust, from the automata-making magicians of E.T.A Hoffmann to Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein – ...

For twenty years, D. H. Mellor has promoted an influential defence of a view of time he first called the ‘tenseless’ view, but now associates with what he calls the ‘B-theory.’ It is his defence of this view, not the view itself, which is generally taken to be novel. It is organized around a forcefully presented attack on rival views which he claims to be a development of McTaggart's celebrated argument that the ‘A-series’ is contradictory. I will call this attack (...) ‘Mellor's McTaggart.’ Although it has received much critical attention, it has not been well understood. For one thing, it has changed over the years in a way that is little appreciated. Whereas Mellor's original version amounts to a dilemma each horn of which contains a single strand of argument, later statements of the first horn contain a second strand of argument unannounced. I shall be concerned to disentangle these strands. I shall also show them to have been largely anticipated by Gareth Evans. However, my main aim is not the clarification of Mellor's McTaggart, but its refutation. I shall show that there is a rival to Mellor's view of time against which the first horn of the dilemma begs the question both as originally presented, and as supplemented. This rival is a ‘Priorean’ version of the ‘presentist’ doctrine that only what is present exists. Although Prior himself gave McTaggart's own argument short shrift, in refuting Mellor's development of it I do not merely resurrect Prior's moves. Mellor's McTaggart introduces specifically semantic considerations. It focuses not as McTaggart did on presentness and futurity etc., but on the truth-values of tokens of propositions in which presentness and futurity etc. are ascribed. Consequently, its refutation requires an answer, from the perspective of a presentist metaphysics, to a question which came to the fore only after Prior's death. The question is this: How should semantic theory be developed in the light of the need for a theory of linguistic understanding? Though Evans flirted with the issue of how this question should be answered from a presentist perspective, the answer he articulates is wrong. I shall do no more than sketch the correct answer. That is all a refutation of Mellor's McTaggart requires. (shrink)

Phenomenal consciousness and social cognition are interlocking capacities, but the relations between them have yet to be systematically investigated. In this paper, I begin to develop a theoretical and empirical framework for such an investigation. I begin by describing the phenomenon known as social pain: the affect associated with the perception of actual or potential damage to one’s interpersonal relations. I then adduce a related phenomenon known as affective contagion: the tendency for emotions, moods, and other affective states to spread (...) from person to person in social contexts. Experimental studies of these two phenomena suggest that affective consciousness depends on perception of the social world in much the same way that it depends on perception of the body – in short, that consciousness is ‘socially embodied’. In the second part of the paper I argue that the distinctive sociality of our species, especially its moral dimension, rests heavily on our ability to represent the conscious states of others. In closing, I put these ideas together and show how they point to a circular causal-mechanistic nexus between consciousness and social mindedness. (shrink)

We critically investigate and refine Dunn's relevant predication, his formalisation of the notion of a real property. We argue that Dunn's original dialectical moves presuppose some interpretation of relevant identity, though none is given. We then re-motivate the proposal in a broader context, considering the prospects for a classical formalisation of real properties, particularly of Geach's implicit distinction between real and ''Cambridge'' properties. After arguing against these prospects, we turn to relevance logic, re-motivating relevant predication with Geach's distinction in mind. (...) Finally we draw out some consequences of Dunn's proposal for the theory of identity in relevance logic. (shrink)

In 2001, the algebraico-tree-theoretic simplicity hierarchical structure of J. H. Conway’s ordered field${\mathbf {No}}$of surreal numbers was brought to the fore by the first author and employed to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for an ordered field (ordered$K$-vector space) to be isomorphic to an initial subfield ($K$-subspace) of${\mathbf {No}}$, i.e. a subfield ($K$-subspace) of${\mathbf {No}}$that is an initial subtree of${\mathbf {No}}$. In this sequel, analogous results are established forordered exponential fields, making use of a slight generalization of Schmeling’s conception of (...) atransseries field. It is further shown that a wide range of ordered exponential fields are isomorphic to initial exponential subfields of$({\mathbf {No}}, \exp )$. These include all models of$T({\mathbb R}_W, e^x)$, where${\mathbb R}_W$is the reals expanded by aconvergent Weierstrass system W. Of these, those we calltrigonometric-exponential fieldsare given particular attention. It is shown that the exponential functions on the initial trigonometric-exponential subfields of${\mathbf {No}}$, which includes${\mathbf {No}}$itself, extend tocanonicalexponential functions on theirsurcomplexcounterparts. The image of the canonical map of the ordered exponential field${\mathbb T}^{LE}$oflogarithmic-exponentialtransseries into${\mathbf {No}}$is shown to be initial, as are the ordered exponential fields${\mathbb R}((\omega ))^{EL}$and${\mathbb R}\langle \langle \omega \rangle \rangle $. (shrink)

Le but de cet article, par l'introduction d'un terme spécifique, transocialisation, est de suggérer un fondement philosophique et théologique unifié pour des interprétations pratico-sociales, d'abord des actions de Jésus de Nazareth à table avec des pécheurs et à la Dernière Cène, puis de la transmutation et de la distribution des éléments du pain et du vin lors de la liturgie eucharistique, et, pour finir, de la grâce objective qui est immédiatement accordée aux communiants et de la grâce d'intention qui doit (...) se manifester dans leur pratique du don de soi. (shrink)

Diversity is important for the resilience of food systems, as well as for its own sake. Just how diverse are the systems that produce our food? I explore this question with a focus on wheat and bread and North America, and even more specifically in baking, milling and farming. Although the opacity of food and agricultural systems makes definitive answers difficult, these segments appear to be increasingly uniform with respect to ownership, geography, varieties and genes. There are also important countertrends, (...) and while efforts to resist uniformity are currently small, they are making some progress in maintaining or even increasing diversity in some areas. (shrink)

A landmark work of environmental philosophy that seeks to transform the debate about climate change. As the icecaps melt and the sea levels rise around the globe—threatening human existence as we know it—climate change has become one of the most urgent and controversial issues of our time. For most people, however, trying to understand the science, politics, and arguments on either side can be dizzying, leading to frustrating and unproductive debates. Now, in this groundbreaking new work, two of our most (...) renowned thinkers present the realities of global warming in the most human of terms—everyday conversation—showing us how to convince even the most stubborn of skeptics as to why we need to act now. Indeed, through compelling Socratic dialogues, Philip Kitcher and Evelyn Fox Keller tackle some of the thorniest questions facing mankind today: Is climate change real? Is climate change as urgent as the “scientists” make it out to be? How much of our current way of life should we sacrifice to help out a generation that won’t even be born for another hundred years? Who would pay for the enormous costs of making the planet "green?" What sort of global political arrangement would be needed for serious action? These crucial questions play out through familiar circumstances, from an older husband and wife considering whether they should reduce their carbon footprint, to a first date that evolves into a passionate discussion about whether one person can actually make a difference, to a breakfast that becomes an examination over whether or not global warming is really happening. Entertaining, widely accessible, and thoroughly original, the result promises to inspire dialogue in many places, while also giving us a line of reasoning that explodes the so-far impenetrable barriers of obfuscation that have surrounded the discussion. While the Paris Agreement was an historic achievement that brought solutions within the realm of possibility, The Seasons Alter is a watershed book that will show us how to make those possibilities a reality. (shrink)

The mechanisms responsible for the fine tuning of development, where the wildtype phenotype is reproduced with high fidelity, are not well understood. The difficulty in approaching this problem is the identification of mutant phenotypes indicative of a defect in these fine‐tuning control mechanisms. Evolutionary biologists have used asymmetry as a measure of developmental homeostasis. The rationale for this was that, since the same genome controls the development of the left and right sides of a bilaterally symmetrical organism, departures from symmetry (...) can be used to measure genetic or environmental perturbations. This paper examines the relationship between asymmtry and resistance to organophosphorous insecticides in the Australian sheep blowfly, Lucilia cuprina. A resistance gene, Rop‐1, which encodes a carboxylesterase enzyme, also confers a significant increase in asymmetry. Continued exposure of resistant populations to insecticide has selected a dominant suppressor of the asymmetry phenotype. Genetic evidence indicates that the modifier is the L. cuprina Notch homologue. (shrink)

Engaging variously with the legacy of Paul L. Lehmann, these essays argue for a reorientation in Christian theology that better honours the formative power of ...

Comic moralism holds that some moral properties impact negatively on the funniness of certain items that possess them. Strong versions of the doctrine deem the impact to be devastating: the possession of such a property by one of these items ensures the item is not funny. Weak versions deem the impact merely damaging: any funniness one of the items possesses is diminished, but not destroyed, by its possession of the property. Various species of comic moralism hold, respectively, various moral properties (...) to impact negatively on funniness. For example, one species holds as much of the property “manifests attitudes that are morally wrong,” but other species hold as much of different moral properties. Comic moralism, or a species of it, can be unrestricted, or restricted, depending on whether it pertains to all the items that possess the negatively impacting moral property or properties, or to just a subset of these items. (shrink)

Is there a place for directive teaching when it comes to moral education in the Community of Inquiry? Michael Hand think s that we should make room for it. While some common restrictions on the role of the teacher in the Community of Inquiry and the kinds of questions with which it deals appear to militate against it, he argues that they either have no force or are intellectually or educationally misguided. In evaluating what Hand has to say, I examine (...) the justificatory framework of moral standards within which he sets out his arguments and then look at how those arguments fare in light of that examination. (shrink)