Signal-detection methodology may be used to disentangle sensory from judgmental effects when analyzing sex differences in pain. An illustrative example is given by reanalyzing a published category-scaling experiment in terms of detection-theory indices. As a result, the apparent sex difference is recast in terms of a judgmental bias. [berkley].

The article attempts to portray architecture as a spatial medium and to analyse the processing and storage of information, objects and persons. In doing so, architectural space becomes not only the effect of these medial operations, but it also forms and materializes these processes at the same time. Openings are characterized as fundamental elements of architectural media. Also, in this regard, such classic elements as doors and windows in the sense of a room perceived as a perforated membrane, acquire a (...) new medial quality. (shrink)

In “Lectio 55” of his Notule libri Priorum, Robert Kilwardby discussed various objections that had been raised against Aristotle’s Theses. The first thesis, AT1, says that no proposition q is implied both by a proposition p and by its negation, ∼p. AT2 says that no proposition p is implied by its own negation. In Prior Analytics, Aristotle had shown that AT2 entails AT1, and he argued that the assumption of a proposition p such that (∼p → p) would be “absurd”. (...) The unrestricted validity of AT1, AT2, however, is at odds with other principles which were widely accepted by medieval logicians, namely the law Ex Impossibili Quodlibet, EIQ, and the rules of disjunction introduction. Since, according to EIQ, the impossible proposition (p ∧ ∼p) implies every proposition, it also implies ∼(p∧∼p), in contradiction to AT2. Furthermore, by way of disjunction introduction, the proposition (p∨∼p) is implied both by p and by ∼p, in contradiction to AT1. Kilwardby tried to defend AT1, AT2 against these objections by claiming that EIQ holds only for accidental but not for natural implications. The second argument, however, cannot be refuted in this way because Kilwardby had to admit that every disjunction (p ∨ q) is naturally implied by its disjuncts. He therefore introduced the further requirement that, in order to constitute a genuine counterexample to AT1, (p → q) and (∼p → q) have to hold “by virtue of the same thing”. In a recently published paper, Spencer Johnston accepted this futile defence of AT1 and developed a formal semantics that would fit Kilwardby’s presumably connexive implication. This procedure, however, is misguided because the remaining considerations of Lesson 55  which were entirely ignored by Johnston  show that Kilwardby eventually recognized that AT2 is bound to fail. After all he concluded: “So it should be granted that from the impossible its opposite follows, and that the necessary follows from its opposite”. (shrink)

Leibniz's development of a "calculus universalis" stands and falls with his theory of negation. During the entire period of the elaboration of the algebra of concepts, L1, Leibniz had to struggle hard to grasp the difference between propositional and conceptual negation. Within the framework of syllogistic, this difference seems to disappear because 'Omne A non B' may be taken to be equivalent to ‘Omne A est non-B’. Within the "universal calculus", however, the informal quantifier expression 'omne' is to be dropped. (...) Accordingly, ‘A non est B' expresses only the propositional negation of ‘A est B' and is hence logically weaker than ‘A est non-B'. Besides Leibniz's cardinal error of confusing propositional and conceptual negation the following issues are dealt with in this paper: -"Aristotelian" vs. "Scholastic" Syllogistic; – Metalinguistic theory of the truth-predicate; -Individual-concepts vs. concepts in general. (shrink)

Freud’s metapsychology has been interpreted in a number of different ways. Some scholars see him committed to classical scientism, others to genuine hermeneutics. Many Freud philologists suggest that he moved from an early scientism to hermeneutic methods in his later writings, and some think he misunderstood his own angle, thinking himself to be a natural scientist, but actually practising hermeneutics. The article first looks at Freud’s model of the soul and his remarks about psychoanalytic explanations and concludes that there is (...) overwhelming evidence for the contention that he conceived of psychoanalytic explanations in terms of causal explanations and that his metapsychology is, all things considered, scientistic. However, it seems that Freud did not clearly distinguish between causal and rational explanations. The article emphasizes that he could have found this distinction in the writings of Max Weber. In the last two sections, the article turns to a meticulous analysis of two vignettes describing Freud’s own treatment of two cases that he takes to be fine examples of the technique used in psychoanalytic treatment. It turns out that Freud himself looks at these cases and their treatment, throughout, in terms of rationality and irrationality. In particular, he seems to distinguish between an “external” irrationality and an “internal” rationality of neurotic diseases. He also seems to point to functions of neuroses representing certain solutions for mental disturbances. Thus, there is much evidence for assuming that in his psychoanalytic technique, Freud relied on genuine hermeneutic and functional methods; and therefore, Freud’s official metapsychology seems to be methodologically inconsistent with his analytic technique. (shrink)

Verfasser behandelt die Frage, ob die Naturwissenschaften ihre gegenwärtige Hauptfunktion, die Lieferung technikrelevanter Erkenntnisse, wirksamer als bisher erfüllen könnten, wenn sie sich nicht nur während revolutionärer Perioden, sondern ununterbrochen theoretisch pluralistisch entwickeln würden. Zuerst wird gezeigt, warum die Naturwissenschaften unter der Forderung nach maximaler Effektivität stehen, anschließend, daß diese Forderung durch einander abwechselnde pluralistische und nichtpluralistische Entwicklungsphasen in höherem Grade erfüllt wird als durch eine permanent pluralistische Entwicklung. Daraus wird geschlossen, daß eine Ersetzung der bisherigen Entwicklungsdynamik in den Naturwissenschaften durch (...) eine permanent pluralistische wenig Realisierungschancen hat. Mit Hilfe der Effektivitätsforderung wird ferner erklärt, warum auch während evolutionärer Perioden in einem gewissen Ausmaß theoretischer Pluralismus besteht, insbesondere, warum in der Praxis neue Theorien bei Mißerfolgen nicht strikt eliminiert werden, sondern Bewährungsfristen erhalten. (shrink)

Aristoteles hat seine Lehrschriften sicherlich sowohl als Vorlesungsmanuskripte für seine Schüler als auch für ein abstraktes Publikum und für die Nachwelt geschrieben. Denn wir finden sowohl Bezugnahmen auf seine Hörer als auch Bemerkungen, die einzelne seiner Thesen selbstbewusst im positiven Sinne mit der Leistung der Vorgänger vergleichen und in einen historischen Zusammenhang stellen, was nur sinnvoll ist, wenn der Vergleich von außen nachvollzogen warden konnte. Wieweit einzelne Schriften zu seinen Lebzeiten in Umlauf kamen, ist unbekannt.

The focus of this contribution lies on eighteenth-century chemistry up to Lavoisier’s anti-phlogistic chemical system. Some main features of chemistry in this period will be examined by discussing classificatory practices and the understanding of the substances these practices imply. In particular, the question will be discussed of whether these practices can be regarded as natural historical practices and, hence, whether chemistry itself was a special natural history (part I). Furthermore, discussion of the famous Methode de nomenclature chimique (1787) raises the (...) question of what modes of classification tell us about chemists’ understanding of the substances they deal with (part II). Finally, in investigating what taxonomic orders reveal about deep structures of chemists’ understanding of the world of substances, the contribution will examine the question of whether Lavoisier’s anti-phlogistic chemical system was a revolution on the level of a deep structure or a revision within the untouched frame of such a structure (part III). (shrink)

Laws are true lawlike sentences. But what is lawlikeness? Much effort went into investigating the issue, but the richer the concert of opinions became, the more apparent their deficiencies became too, and with it the profound importance of the issue for epistemology and philosophy of science.

Several problems arise with the Axiomatizability Theorem : Each 2-valued consequence is s.f.a . We mention in particular.

We present a reconstruction of so-called classical, formal or Mendelian genetics using a notation which we believe is more legible than that of earlier accounts, and lends itself easily to computer implementation, for instance in PROLOG. By drawing from, and emending, earlier work of Balzer and Dawe (1986,1997), the present account presents the three most important lines of development of classical genetics: the so-called Mendel's laws, linkage genetics and gene mapping, in the form of a theory-net. This shows that the (...) set theoretic representation format used in the structuralist approach to the philosophy of science also applies to the domain of genetic theories. There construction is intended to lend more clarity to theme thodological, philosophical and didactical discussions of the foundations of genetics, and on the other hand to defend a formally, logically minded view of theories which seems to have become contested through the work of Feyerabend, Kuhn and Kitcher. (shrink)

The early thirteenth century tract Ars Meliduna deals with the issue whether categorical propositions entail, or are entailed by, ‘continuing’ propositions, i.e. by implications. From the perspective of modern logic, with implication interpreted as a material, truth-functional connective, the first question has to be answered in the affirmative because, e.g. β entails (α ⊃ β). But conversely (α ⊃ β) ‘normally’ doesn’t entail the truth (or the falsity) of any of the components α, β; hence the second question should be (...) answered in the negative. These results cannot, however, be directly transferred to medieval logic because implication was there usually interpreted as a strict implication. Yet, within the framework of modal logic, one obtains parallel results. In particular, whenever β is necessary, then (α → β) must be true. Furthermore, if (α → β) is itself necessary, then it is entailed by α. Thus, in particular, ‘Socrates is a man’ entails the analytically true implication ‘If Socrates is a man, Socrates is an animal’, and the same premiss also entails the tautological consequent ‘If Socrates is white, Socrates is white’. (shrink)

Let an oracle be called low for prefix-free complexity on a set in case access to the oracle improves the prefix-free complexities of the members of the set at most by an additive constant. Let an oracle be called weakly low for prefix-free complexity on a set in case the oracle is low for prefix-free complexity on an infinite subset of the given set. Furthermore, let an oracle be called low and weakly for prefix-free complexity along a sequence in case (...) the oracle is low and weakly low, respectively, for prefix-free complexity on the set of initial segments of the sequence. Our two main results are the following characterizations. An oracle is low for prefix-free complexity if and only if it is low for prefix-free complexity along some sequences if and only if it is low for prefix-free complexity along all sequences. An oracle is weakly low for prefix-free complexity if and only if it is weakly low for prefix-free complexity along some sequence if and only if it is weakly low for prefix-free complexity along almost all sequences. As a tool for proving these results, we show that prefix-free complexity differs from its expected value with respect to an oracle chosen uniformly at random at most by an additive constant, and that similar results hold for related notions such as a priori probability. Furthermore, we demonstrate that on every infinite set almost all oracles are weakly low but are not low for prefix-free complexity, while by Shoenfield absoluteness there is an infinite set on which uncountably many oracles are low for prefix-free complexity. Finally, we obtain no-gap results, introduce weakly low reducibility, or WLK-reducibility for short, and show that all its degrees except the greatest one are countable. (shrink)

Straipsnyje parodoma, kad daugelis Viduramžių logikų manė, kad kai kurie „dėsniai“ galioja tik esant tam tikroms sąlygoms. Pavyzdžiui, Aristotelio, Boecijaus ir Abelardo ginti vadinamosios jungčių logikos (connexive logic) baziniai principai galioja tik galimų ar neprieštaringų antecedentų arba nebūtinų ar kontingentiškų konsekventų atžvilgiu. Panašus apribojimas galioja „dėsniui“ (kurį galimai gynė Chrisipas), kad kiekvienas teiginys yra suderinamas su pačiu savimi.

Der Beitrag fragt nach den Spezifika des Rhythmus-Diskurses in der frühen Sowjetunion unter dem Vorzeichen eine mechanistischen Menschenbilds. Rhythmus wurde vielfach nicht mehr als Reflex der »Natur« oder des »Lebens«, sondern als technisch regulierbare Größe gehandelt, die gleichwohl eine elementare Macht über den Menschen ausübt. Die tayloristische Arbeitsforschung und der davon inspirierte Konstruktivismus sahen in dieser Macht ein erstrangiges Mittel zur physischen Rekonstruktion des Menschen. Um 1930 verfielen solche Vorstellungen einer scharfen Kritik, wie an der Kampagne gegen den Foxtrott gezeigt (...) wird. (shrink)