Since Aristotle and the Stoa, there has been a clash, worsened by modern predicate logic, between logically defined operator meanings and natural intuitions. Pragmatics has tried to neutralize the clash by an appeal to the Gricean conversational maxims. The present study argues that the pragmatic attempt has been unsuccessful. The “softness” of the Gricean explanation fails to do justice to the robustness of the intuitions concerned, leaving the relation between the principles evoked and the observed facts opaque. Moreover, there are (...) cases where the Gricean maxims fail to apply. A more adequate solution consists in the devising of a sound natural logic, part of the innate cognitive equipment of mankind. This account has proved successful in conjunction with a postulated cognitive mechanism in virtue of which the universe of discourse is stepwise and recursively restricted, so that the negation selects different complements according to the degree of restrictedness of Un. This mechanism explains not only the discrepancies between natural logical intuitions and known logical systems; it also accounts for certain systematic lexicalization gaps in the languages of the world. Finally, it is shown how stepwise restriction of Un produces the ontogenesis of natural predicate logic, while at the same time resolving the intuitive clashes with established logical systems that the Gricean maxims sought to explain. (shrink)

The prime purpose of this paper is, first, to restore to discourse-bound occasion sentences their rightful central place in semantics and secondly, taking these as the basic propositional elements in the logical analysis of language, to contribute to the development of an adequate logic of occasion sentences and a mathematical (Boolean) foundation for such a logic, thus preparing the ground for more adequate semantic, logical and mathematical foundations of the study of natural language. Some of the insights elaborated in this (...) paper have appeared in the literature over the past thirty years, and a number of new developments have resulted from them. The present paper aims at providing an integrated conceptual basis for this new development in semantics. In Section 1 it is argued that the reduction by translation of occasion sentences to eternal sentences, as proposed by Russell and Quine, is semantically and thus logically inadequate. Natural language is a system of occasion sentences, eternal sentences being merely boundary cases. The logic has fewer tasks than is standardly assumed, as it excludes semantic calculi, which depend crucially on information supplied by cognition and context and thus belong to cognitive psychology rather than to logic. For sentences to express a proposition and thus be interpretable and informative, they must first be properly anchored in context. A proposition has a truth value when it is, moreover, properly keyed in the world, i.e. is about a situation in the world. Section 2 deals with the logical properties of natural language. It argues that presuppositional phenomena require trivalence and presents the trivalent logic ${\rm PPC}_{3}$ , with two kinds of falsity and two negations. It introduces the notion of Σ-space for a sentence A (or / A /, the set of situations in which A is true) as the basis of logical model theory, and the notion of / ${\bf P}^{A}$ / (the Σ-space of the presuppositions of A), functioning as a 'private' subuniverse for / A /. The trivalent Kleene calculus is reinterpreted as a logical account of vagueness, rather than of presupposition. ${\rm PPC}_{3}$ and the Kleene calculus are refinements of standard bivalent logic and can be combined into one logical system. In Section 3 the adequacy of ${\rm PPC}_{3}$ as a truth-functional model of presupposition is considered more closely and given a Boolean foundation. In a noncompositional extended Boolean algebra, three operators are defined: $1_{a}$ for the conjoined presuppositions of a, ã for the complement of a within $1_{a}$ , and â for the complement of $1_{a}$ within Boolean 1. The logical properties of this extended Boolean algebra are axiomatically defined and proved for all possible models. Proofs are provided of the consistency and the completeness of the system. Section 4 is a provisional exploration of the possibility of using the results obtained for a new discourse-dependent account of the logic of modalities in natural language. The overall result is a modified and refined logical and model-theoretic machinery, which takes into account both the discourse-dependency of natural language sentences and the necessity of selecting a key in the world before a truth value can be assigned. (shrink)

In this important new study, Pieter Duvenage shows that Habermas’s work on aesthetics, far from being marginal to his core concerns, is central to understanding and evaluating Habermas's entire theoretical enterprise. This important new study shows that Habermas's work on aesthetics is central to understanding and evaluating his entire theoretical enterprise. Duvenage demonstrates that, in the first phase of his intellectual career, Habermas emphasizes the communicative and societal relevance of art; in the second phase, the idea of a communicative (...) aesthetics is worked out in terms of a theory of rationality. Reveals that Habermas’s later work offers a third, albeit undeveloped, alternative that suggests a convergence of the two. Offers a critical perspective on the role of aesthetics in Habermas's work and proposes possible alternatives. (shrink)

In this reply I further defend my claim that the transcendental should always remain a primary concern for philosophy of technology as a philosophical enterprise, contra the empirical turn’s rejection of it. Yet, instead of emphasizing the non-technological conditions of technology, as ‘classic’ thinkers of technology such as Heidegger did, it should recognize technology itself as the transcendental operator par excellence. Starting from Heidegger’s ontological understanding of transcendence I show that while technical artifacts may indeed always conform to a certain (...) horizon of understanding, they also constitute this horizon in specific ways. Following Stiegler I show that concrete technologies (technology with a small ‘t’) are not just empirical effects of an overarching movement of transcendence (Technology with a capital ‘T’) but are originally constitutive of it. In response to Romele’s critique that the social, language, images, imaginaries, symbols, etc. are also transcendentals, I argue that all these phenomena are always already conditioned by technical milieus. As for Besmer’s contention that I offer a reductive interpretation of postphenomenology’s notion of multistability, I argue that there are decisive systemic and organological limits to multistability offered by technical artefacts and that all variation in use and implementation is always constrained by inherent technical tendencies and processes of concretization. Agreeing with Besmer that the transcendental and the empirical should be understood not oppositional but compositional I argue that technology may be that which constantly ‘mediates’ between the two. (shrink)

Introduction -- 1. The settling of a language -- 2. The Whorf hypothesis -- 3. Relativism or a universal theory? -- 4. What does language have to do with logic and mathematics? -- 5. A test bed for grammatical theories -- 6. The Chomsky hierarchy in perpsective -- 7. Reflexivity and identity in language and cognition -- 8. The generalized logic hierarchy and its cognitive implications -- 9. The intensionalization of extensions.

In various publications over the past years, Floridi has developed a theory of semantic information as well-formed, meaningful, and truthful data. This theory is more or less orthogonal to the standard entropy-based notions of information known from physics, information theory, and computer science that all define the amount of information in a certain system as a scalar value without any direct semantic implication. In this context the question rises what the exact relation between these various conceptions of information is and (...) whether there is a real need to enrich these mathematically more or less rigid definitions with a less formal notion of semantic information. I investigate various philosophical aspects of the more formal definitions of information in the light of Floridi’s theory. The position I defend is that the formal treatment of the notion of information as a general theory of entropy is one of the fundamental achievements of modern science that in itself is a rich source for new philosophical reflection. This makes information theory a competitor of classical epistemology rather than a servant. In this light Floridi’s philosophy of information is more a reprise of classical epistemology that only pays lip service to information theory but fails to address the important central questions of philosophy of information. Specifically, I will defend the view that notions that are associated with truth, knowledge, and meaning all can adequately be reconstructed in the context of modern information theory and that consequently there is no need to introduce a concept of semantic information. (shrink)

Dr Seuren's study deals with the problem of presenting an adequate model of grammatical description. The model he proposes conforms in its main outlines to the transformational generative grammar established by Chomsky, but differs in important respects. These mainly affect that part of Chomsky's syntactic component known as the 'base', which generates basic or 'deep' structures. In the model of the base proposed here two main constituents are distinguished for every deep structure representation of a sentence, vis-a-vis the operators and (...) the nucleus. The deep structure of a sentence is thus seen to be very similar to the logical structure of a proposition. The arguments given in support of this analysis are based on mainly on considerations of simplicity and semantic adequacy. (shrink)

Aristotle's philosophically most explicit and sophisticated account of the concept of a (primary-)universal proof is found, not in "Analytica Posteriora" 1.4, where he introduces the notion, but in 1.5. In 1.4 Aristotle merely says that a universal proof must be of something arbitrary as well as of something primary and seems to explain primacy in extensional terms, as concerning the largest possible domain. In 1.5 Aristotle improves upon this account after considering three ways in which we may delude ourselves into (...) thinking we have a primary-universal proof. These three sources of delusion are shown to concern situations in which our arguments do establish the desired conclusion for the largest possible domain, but still fail to be real primary-universal proofs. Presupposing the concept of what may be called an immediate proof, in which something is proved of an arbitrary individual, Aristotle in response now demands that a proof be immediate of the primary thing itself and goes on to sketch a framework in which an intensional criterion for primacy can be formulated. For the most part this article is a comprehensive and detailed commentary on Aristotle's very concise exposition in 1.5. One important result is that the famous passage 74a17-25 referring to two ways of proving the alternation of proportions cannot be used as evidence for the development of pre-Euclidean mathematics. (shrink)

This article has two general aims. It first of all critically reconsiders the empirical turn’s dismissal of transcendentalism in the philosophy of technology, in particular through the work of Ihde and Verbeek, and defends the continuing relevance of the notion of the transcencental in thinking about technology today, illustrating this mainly through a reading of Stiegler’s understanding of the human condition as a technical condition and his view of human (noetic) evolution as proceeding from a process of technical exteriorization. The (...) crucial issue that is missed by postphenomenology and the empirical turn is that technology itself in its empiricity occupies the (periodically changing) place of the transcendental. It thus fails to consider the transcendental operativity of technical artifacts within its own empiricist stance. Secondly, it argues for the continuing importance and usefulness of the idea of Technology with a capital T, equally discarded by the representatives of the empirical turn, in particular against the emerging backdrop of the Anthropocene as the age of decisive anthropogenic forcing of the planet and the growing dominance of what has recently been called the technosphere in Earth system science. With Stiegler I show that a proper, inherent dynamic of technology must be acknowledged historically, anthropologically, techno-evolutionarily as well as (techno)phenomenologically. I conclude by demonstrating that our time of planetary crisis summons us to redirect our attention to technology from the empirical to the transcendental, and from the micro-level to the macro-level again. (shrink)

In this reply I try to show that, contrary to Milberry’s apparent assertion, the general intellect of the multitude does not have the explanatory robustness she accredits to it. Digital network technologies are currently overwhelmingly effective in proletarianizing and disempowering the cognitariat and only an active technopolitics of deproletarianization could reverse this hegemonic situation. In my response to Verbeek, I attempt to correct his misinterpretation of the Stieglerian approach as being dialectical in nature and show that, far from reinstating the (...) humanist dichotomy between human beings and technologies, my analysis assumes their original, albeit fundamentally ambiguous and even ‘uncanny’ [unheimlich] interconnection. I conclude with pointing out some implications of this view for a ‘really realistic’ political theory of technology. (shrink)

La teoría democrática rara vez se ajusta a las prácticas democráticas y las fluctuaciones de la opinión pública rara vez coincide con la cobertura de ese mismo actor político en los medios de comunicación. En septiembre de 2010, el partido anti-inmigración sueco, los Sweden Democrats (SD), superaron el límite electoral necesario para participar en el parlamento de Suecia y su popularidad no ha cesado de crecer. En este artículo, analizamos el efecto que tiene la exposición mediática en las fluctuaciones de (...) las encuestas de opinión sobre los partidos políticos, o el llamado efecto mediático. Nuestros resultados muestran que el efecto mediático es más intenso en el caso del SD que en el de otros partidos parlamentarios. La exposición mediática repercute en ocasiones, pero no en el mismo grado ni necesariamente en el mismo momento. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to show how the African philosopher - Kwasi Wiredu - constructs an ethnic perspectival model of ethics from the structure of kinship relations found among the Akans of Ghana. The specifics of this structure generate a notion of particularity in morals, which is carried from its origins in civil society, through a process of contested dialogue, into civic society where it is validated as norm-setter in an actual public forum of debate. The dynamics of this (...) forum ensures that the renewal of tradition remains an ongoing process and that a participatory ethos remains ascendant. I hope that my interpretation and reconstruction of Wiredu is correct. I have not attempted to cover the entire picture of Akan ethics, but only that part of it which deals with members of Akan society, and not strangers. (shrink)

To Bauman the incongruities of life are best reflected in an analytical effort that moves between perspectives without forcing them into a synthesis. He seems to arrogate the right to inconsistency when operating from points of view. This violates a curious requirement of scholarly discourse: an author is free to select his conceptual framework and method — but once they are selected, he must stick to them. This practically inviolable rule of consistency might come (as Bauman himself suggests) from the (...) juridical pretensions sociology had from its birth. Consistency gives an aura to academicians who feel called to legislate, judge and legitimize. To Bauman, however, truth in judgement, reality in empirical studies and responsibility in practical affairs are approached by a constant movement between incongruous points of view. These ambitions make heavy demands on the composition of his writing. In many stretches of linear argument, imagery is interjected, showing lateral connections and complications — conversely, in many pieces of interpretation causal explanations intrude. A discourse with all these boundary violations is rather suspect in modern eyes. When Bauman contaminates the purity of analytical lines with terminology from other branches, he is demonstrating in a stylistic way that our reality is multitudinous — be it premodern enchantment, ambivalence in modernity or liberated postmodern polyvalence. (shrink)

Statistics from both South Africa and the United States of America indicate that the phenomenon of violence amongst youths is increasing. This implies that a larger number of youths are being exposed to the experience of violence and thus present with the complex and multi-dimensional effects of such an experience. Past research has centred mostly on the causative factors that can be statistically represented, with little focus being paid to the juveniles’ in-depth, subjective experience of the phenomenon. For the male (...) adolescent, the experience of the phenomenon of violence is complex, diverse and may span across many aspects of his life, including physical, psychological, personal and social dimensions. Three participants were sourced from the Leeuwkop Juvenile Correctional Facility in Johannesburg and interviewed for the purpose of this study. The participants were selected based on their age (between 13 and 19 years of age) and the type of crime that they had committed (assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, common assault or indecent assault). In accordance with the phenomenological approach, open-ended interviews were used as a research method in order to allow for the participants’ unique and subjective experience of the phenomenon to emerge. The researchers found that the phenomenon of violence is characterised by the juveniles’ experience of external events that provoke a certain response manifesting itself in violent behaviour. The responses described by the participants were mostly emotional in nature and included emotions such as anger, rage and fury. The experience of violence also holds certain consequences for the male juvenile offender. The most common consequence experienced by all three participants was their subsequent arrest and incarceration in a correctional facility. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 11, Edition 1 May 2011, iii-v. (shrink)

In this dialogue with Yuk Hui, Pieter Lemmens explains the discipline called philosophy of technology and gives a concise overview of the most important contemporary approaches within this field. He also offers a critical evaluation of what are probably the two most salient characteristics of contemporary philosophy of technology, the so-called “empirical turn” and the “ethical turn,” which are deeply related and partly reflect the discipline’s on-going alignment with the global neoliberal agenda of exclusively profit-driven technological innovation. He also (...) critically reflects on recent developments in the molecular and informational life sciences such as genomics, metabolomics, bioinformatics and synthetic biology. (shrink)

: This article focuses on cognitive enhancement technologies and their possible anthropological implications, and argues for a reconsideration of the human-technology relation so as to be able to better understand and assess these implications. Current debates on cognitive enhancement consistently disregard the intimate intertwinement of humans and technology as well as the fundamentally technogenic nature of anthropogenesis. Yet, an adequate assessment of CET requires an in-depth and up-to-date re-conceptualization of both. Employing insights from the work of Bernard Stiegler, this article (...) proposes an organology and pharmacology of CE. What is typical about new CET is their interiorizing nature, which can be expected to fundamentally reshape organological configurations. Starting from the premise that CE is a phenomenon that predominantly unfolds within the current conjuncture of cognitive capitalism, I will present the issue of cognitive proletarianization as being of crucial importance for considering CE. I conclude by providing some methodological guidelines for the development of a positive pharmacology of CET and by suggesting that CET should be considered as technologies of the self sensu Michel Foucault. (shrink)

Drawing on cognitive moral development and moral identity theories, this study empirically examines the moral antecedents and consequences of authentic leadership. Machiavellianism, an individual difference variable relating to the use of the ‘end justifies the means’ principle, is predicted to affect the link between morality and leadership. Analyses of multi-source, multi-method data comprised case studies, simulations, role-playing exercises, and survey questionnaires were completed by 70 managers in a large public agency, and provide support for our hypotheses. Our findings reveal that (...) Machiavellianism offsets the positive relationship between moral reasoning and authentic leadership. Specifically, we show that when Machiavellianism is high, both the positive relationship between moral reasoning and authentic leadership, and the positive relationship between authentic leadership and moral actions, are reversed. This study offers new insights on the underlying processes contributing to the emergence of leaders’ authentic behavior and moral action. Implications for the moral development of leaders, and directions for improved leadership training are provided. (shrink)

The making and taking of psychotropic drugs, whether on medical prescription or as self-medication, whether marketed by pharmaceutical companies or clamoured for by an anxious population, has been an integral part of the twentieth century. In this modern era of speed, uncertainty, pleasure and anguish the boundaries between healing and enhancing the mind by chemical means have been redefined. Long before Prozac would become a household name for an ‘emotional aspirin’ did consumers embrace the idea and practice of taking psychotropics (...) not only to treat mental illness but also to make them feel better about living in a modern world. The Freudian promise that each individual can remake him- or herself in the pursuit of health and happiness was helpful in promoting and legitimizing the idea and practice of seeking wellness on prescription. We will argue that the modern consumer-driven political culture of medicine will continue to transverse the boundaries of therapy and enhancement of the mind into the largely unexplored territories of human cognition and behaviour. However exciting, this endeavour will come at the cost of further widening the problem of iatrogenic addiction in the age of happiness pills as ‘botox’ for the mind. (shrink)

We generalize the modal interpretation of quantum mechanics so that it may be applied to composite systems represented by arbitrary density operators. We discuss the interpretation these density operators receive and relate this to the discussion about the interpretation of proper and improper mixtures in the standard interpretation.

‘The art of living with ICTs ’ today not only means finding new ways to cope, interact and create new lifestyles on the basis of the new digital technologies individually, as ‘consumer-citizens’. It also means inventing new modes of living, producing and, not in the least place, struggling collectively, as workers and producers. As the so-called digital revolution unfolds in the context of a neoliberal cognitive and consumerist capitalism, its ‘innovations’ are predominantly employed to modulate and control both production processes (...) and consumer behavior in view of the overall goal of extracting surplus value. Today, the digital networks overwhelmingly destroy social autonomy, instead engendering increasing social heteronomy and proletarianization. Yet it is these very networks themselves, as technical pharmaka in the sense of French ‘technophilosopher’ Bernard Stiegler, that can be employed as no other to struggle against this tendency. This paper briefly explores this possibility by reflecting upon current diagnoses of our ‘technological situation’ by some exemplary post-operaist Marxists from a Stieglerian, pharmacological perspective. (shrink)

This paper investigates the impact of negative screening on the investment universe as well as on financial performance. We come up with a novel identification process and as such depart from mainstream socially responsible investing literature by concentrating on individual firms’ conduct and by studying a much wider range of issues. Firstly, we study the size and financial performance of fourteen potentially controversial issues: abortion, adult entertainment, alcohol, animal testing, contraceptives, controversial weapons, fur, gambling, genetic engineering, meat, nuclear power, pork, (...) stem cells, and tobacco. We investigate an international sample of more than 1,600 stocks for more than twenty years. We then analyze the impact of applying negative screens to a market portfolio. Our findings suggest that the choice for negative screening strategies does matter for the size of the investment universe as well as for risk-adjusted return performance. Investing in controversial stocks in many cases results in additional risk-adjusted returns, whereas excluding them may reduce financial performance. These findings suggest that there are opportunity costs to negative screening. (shrink)

Contrary to received opinion, the Aristotelian Square of Opposition (square) is logically sound, differing from standard modern predicate logic (SMPL) only in that it restricts the universe U of cognitively constructible situations by banning null predicates, making it less unnatural than SMPL. U-restriction strengthens the logic without making it unsound. It also invites a cognitive approach to logic. Humans are endowed with a cognitive predicate logic (CPL), which checks the process of cognitive modelling (world construal) for consistency. The square is (...) considered a first approximation to CPL, with a cognitive set-theoretic semantics. Not being cognitively real, the null set Ø is eliminated from the semantics of CPL. Still rudimentary in Aristotle’s On Interpretation (Int), the square was implicitly completed in his Prior Analytics (PrAn), thereby introducing U-restriction. Abelard’s reconstruction of the logic of Int is logically and historically correct; the loca (Leaking O-Corner Analysis) interpretation of the square, defended by some modern logicians, is logically faulty and historically untenable. Generally, U-restriction, not redefining the universal quantifier, as in Abelard and loca, is the correct path to a reconstruction of CPL. Valuation Space modelling is used to compute the effects of U-restriction. (shrink)

Historical knowledge, this noted Dutch historian declares, should be a result of free investigation and criticism. Since it deals with facts, not imagination, it cannot be cast into a predetermined mold to fit a unified pattern of arbitrary principles. "The most we can hope for," he states, "is a partial rendering, an approximation, of the real truth about the past." In this succinct analysis of the philosophy and method of history, Professor Geyl examines the prevailing concepts of history and the (...) new "awareness of distance" from the past that was lacking in earlier historians. History, he points out, provides an elucidation of the present and its problems by showing them in perspective. This important study of the historical point of view is based on the author's Terry Lecture at Yale. (shrink)

This review considers Semantic Syntax and Slavic Transformational Syntax particularly in the light of their contributions to the theory of grammar. Semantic Syntax is shown to have a polemical bias against the Aspects model and toward generative semantics. Its editor's position in the constellation of semantic logicians is defined; pro-Chomskian objections to the logical-cognitive semantic theory are advanced. Slavic Transformational Syntax is comprised of essays with a wide range of theoretical stances; the insights of the radical case grammar of James (...) Miller are compared with those of Semantic Syntax. Remarks on deixis by Richard Brecht are discussed in relationship to semantic-logic approaches. Certain similarities of Jakobsonian functionalism and generative semantics are discussed. (shrink)