By pointing to deep philosophical confusions endemic to cognitive science, Wittgenstein might seem an enemy of computational approaches. We agree that while Wittgenstein would reject the classicist’s symbols and rules approach, his observations align well with connectionist or neural network approaches. While many connectionisms that dominated the later twentieth century could fall prey to criticisms of biological, pedagogical, and linguistic implausibility, current connectionist approaches can resolve those problems in a Wittgenstein-friendly manner. We present the basics of a Vector Symbolic Architecture (...) formalism, inspired by Smolensky, and indicate how high-dimensional vectors can operate in a context-sensitive and object-independent manner in biologically plausible time scales, reflecting Wittgenstein’s notions of language-games and family resemblance; we show how “soft” symbols for such a formalism can be formed with plausible learning cycles using Sparse Distributed Memory, resolving disputes surrounding Wittgenstein’s private language argument; and show how connectionist networks can extrapolate meaningful patterns to solve problems, providing “ways to go on” without explicit rules, which indicates linguistic plausibility. Connectionism thus provides a systematicity and productivity that is more than a mere implementation of a classical approach, and provides Wittgenstein-friendly and Wittgenstein-illuminating models of mind and language for cognitive science. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Physicists and the Bomb Thermonuclear Weapons and the Cold War Atoms for Peace Deterrence, Détente, 9/11 and Dirty Bombs Nuclear Waste Climate Crisis Conclusion References and Further Reading.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Ultimately, the book offers a Peircean alternative to the educational theories implied in the pragmatism of John Dewey and of Richard Rorty.

The difference between our interpretations can be put most succinctly by saying that whereas his is based on the works preceding Science and the Modern World, principally The Concept of Nature and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge ; mine finds the key in the works which succeed it, principally Process and Reality. Indeed it seems to me that the use of some such help from other works of Whitehead is inevitable. After a number of determined sallies, I (...) have been forced to conclude that SMW is in itself unintelligible. If we are to make any coherent sense of it we must, I believe, construe its cryptic utterances in the light of a more systematic exposition of Whitehead's basic categories. And the difficulty in this procedure lies in the fact that there are two expositions available for this purpose--that of the earlier and that of the later works--which differ in certain crucial respects. (shrink)

Bringing continental sensibilities and skill to his project, David Janssens has abandoned the line of defense heretofore used by North American intellectuals to shield Leo Strauss from criticism: Janssens wastes no time trying to prove Strauss was a liberal democrat, frankly admits his atheism, and emphasizes the continuity and European origins of his thought. Nevertheless committed to defending Strauss even at his most vulnerable points, Janssens is compelled to anchor his new defensive position on a misreading of what he calls (...) "an inconspicuous footnote" in Philosophie und Gesetz (1935). (shrink)

Adolf Grünbaum, following J.J.C. Smart, has argued that the A‐Theory of time is untenable due to its inability to answer the question, uniquely attending the A‐theory, as to why it is now 2000. I argue, however, that Grünbaum's explication of the question's meaning makes the question a triviality. But there may be lurking here a somewhat different question, which is meaningful on a A‐Theory of time, the answer to which may have surprising implications concerning the past infinitude of time.

Richard Taft’s discussion focuses on the undoubted fact that a shift occurs in Hegel’s attitude to art. This shift served to put increasing distance between him and the approaches of Schelling and Hölderlin to the issue. Hegel became the defender of the supremacy of philosophy against any Romantic effort to assert art’s superiority, also against the traditional theological subordination of philosophy to religion. It is clear, and Taft is helpful here, that the younger Hegel was not insistent on the primacy (...) of philosophy in this sense. Taft helps us focus on important facets in Hegel’s shift: the cooling of Hegel’s youthful ardor with respect to the Hellenic ideal, the chastening of excessively utopian ideals, the shift in the function of art from the ancient world to modernity, and the importance of the systematic ideal in Hegel’s philosophical development. (shrink)

Woodin has shown that if there is a measurable Woodin cardinal then there is, in an appropriate sense, a sharp for the Chang model. We produce, in a weaker sense, a sharp for the Chang model using only the existence of a cardinal \ having an extender of length \.

The main characteristics of the elections of 13th October 1985 seem to be the following.The turnout, as appears from the number of laid down ballot papers in relation to the number of registered voters, is slightly declining compared with 1981. It indeed amounted to 93.59 % against 94.56 % four years before. This rate of participation averages those of previous elections.The number of blank and spoilt ballot papers is rising very slightly. It totalled 7.45 % for the House of Representatives, (...) against 7.37 % in 1981. This is again an average percentage compared with the previous general elections. It is considerably lower than the number of blank and spoilt ballot papers at the European elections of both 1979 and 1984.The extent of the shifts in votes is much lower than in 1981 and also averages those of the last year's elections.The votes are moving in a very similar way in the three regions of the country, although with one notable exception : the loss suffered by the PVV in Flanders. Apart from that, the Christian Democrats are registering a gain in the northern and southern parts of the country as well as in Brussels as far as the CVP is concerned ; the extent of the Socialist advance is the same in the three regions ; the loss suffered by the nationalist parties is general and the «green» lists are reinforcing their breakthrough everywhere.The parties of the outgoing coalition are improving their result, which very seldom happens at Belgian elections: Christian Democrats and Liberals are indeed progressing by 2.26 %. Another noteworthy element, however, is the fact that the ahead movement of the main oppositionparties is even more important than the majority's as the Socialists obtained 3.25 % more of the valid votes. Of course this double success took place at the expense of the nationalist parties, the Communists and some smaller lists.The shift in seats does not exactly reflect the shift in votes, because of a different distribution of the seats between the provinces, on the one hand, due to the variations in the number of inhabitants, and because of the concentration on certain lists of the allocation of the last seat, on the other. (shrink)