The aim of this paper is to highlight an individualist streak in both Davidson’s conception of language and Chomsky’s. In the first part of the paper, I argue that in Davidson’s case this individualist streak is a consequence of an excessively strong conception of what the compositional nature of linguistic meaning requires, and I offer a weaker conception of that requirement that can do justice to both the publicity and the compositionality of language. In the second part of the paper, (...) I offer a comparison between Davidson’s position on the unreality of public languages, and Chomsky’s position regarding the epiphenomenal status of “externalized” languages. In Chomsky’s case, as in Davidson’s, languages are individuated in terms of the formal theories that serve to account for their systematic structure, and this assumption rests upon a similarly strong and similarly questionable understanding of what it is to employ finite means in pursuit of an infinite task. The alternative, at which I can only hint, is a view of language as a social and historical reality, i.e., a realm of social fact that cannot be exhausted by any formal theory and cannot be reduced to properties of individual speakers. (shrink)

In this work I bring a conception of language and meaning as a shared institution to bear upon rule-following scepticism, i.e., upon the sceptical problem concerning the semantic determinacy of expressions involving infinite or indefinitely large and open extensions. Such scepticism proceeds from the observation that the extensions of expressions of this kind are not uniquely determined by epistemically accessible facts, to conclude that the expressions in question are indeterminate in point of extension, and that their meaning must consist in (...) their use. ;In the first chapter of this work, I argue that rule-following considerations by themselves do not suffice to establish these conclusions, and that additional premises are needed. I consider both internalist and extensionalist schemes to supplement the sceptical argument. I find such schemes lacking in persuasive support. Chapter 2, in particular, concentrates on Kripke's well known exegesis of Wittgenstein's argument, and on the internalist requirements upon which it is based. ;In Chapter 3, I offer an externalist account of the normative aspect in rule following. On the account I give, the rule one is projecting is determined extensionally by one's position in a community in which his projections would be corrected and evaluated by other members, and from which one has acquired the rule in the first place through a chain of communication, rather than by one's own projections, taken in isolation, which constitute only a partial understanding of the rule in question. This account is not designed to refute scepticism; rather its aim is to account for the normativity of rule-following in ways which do not invoke the internalist requirement upon which rule following scepticism is based. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue against moral dualism in the understanding of the nature of evil, namely the conception of evil as an independent source of guidance, in opposition to the good, rather than a failure in pursuit of an apparent good. Focusing on moral evil as the intentional infliction of gratuitous pain and suffering by one human being on another, i.e., pain and suffering that are not required by a morally acceptable purpose, I argue against two (...) forms of such dualism. Value dualism divides moral value into antithetical normative principles, good and evil, each with its own guiding power. On this view, evil can intelligibly be pursued for its own sake, rather than a failure of some kind in acting “under the guise of the good.” Agent dualism divides human agents, based on character and disposition, into followers of good and followers of evil. On this view, the pursuit of evil can be accounted for in terms of basic character traits and dispositions, not related to more fundamental motives, reasons, or choices. In both versions humanity is divided into two moral classes. I argue that the two forms of moral dualism discussed in this paper fail to render evil perpetrators intelligible in terms of reasons for action. While suggesting, in line with accounts by Arendt (1951, 1963, 1978), Anscombe (1963) and Neiman (2002), a non-dualist account of evil-doing as a dysfunction in the pursuit of intelligible goals, I will go on to criticize dualistic views of both kinds in the work of philosophers such as Velleman (1992), Silber (2012), Bernstein (2002), Hacker (2021), and Kekes (1990). (shrink)

We introduce a novel, linguistic-like method of genome analysis. We propose a natural approach to characterizing genomic sequences based on occurrences of fixed length words from a predefined, sufficiently large set of words (strings over the alphabet {A, C, G, T} ). A measure based on this approach is called compositional spectrum and is actually a histogram of imperfect word occurrences. Our results assert that the compositional spectrum is an overall characteristic of a long sequence i.e., a complete genome or (...) an uninterrupted part of a chromosome. This attribute is manifested in the similarity of spectra obtained on different stretches of the same genome, and simultaneously in a broad range of dissimilarities between spectral representations of different genomes. High flexibility characterizes this approach due to imperfect matching and as a result sets of relatively long words can be considered. The proposed approach may have various applications in intra- and intergenomic sequence comparisons. (shrink)

When individuals cannot make up their mind, they sometimes use a random decision-making aid such as a coin to make a decision. This aid may also elicit affective reactions: A person flipping a coin may (dis)like the outcome, and thus decide according to this feeling. We refer to this process as catalysing decisions and to the aid as catalyst. We investigate whether using a catalyst may not only elicit affect but also result in more affect-based decision making. We used different (...) online studies that examine affect-driven decisions by investigating scope insensitivity (indirect behavioural measure) and self-reported weight given to feelings versus reasons in hypothetical donation decisions. Study 1a showed that a catalyst (a lottery wheel) lead to more scope insensitive (i.e. affect-driven) donations. Study 1b included several changes and did not replicate these results. Study 2 (preregistered) examined scope insensitivity but did not replicate previous results; Study 3 (preregistered) looked at the weight given to feelings versus reason. Although catalyst (compared to control) participants descriptively reported relying more on feelings, this difference did not reach significance. In contrast to lay beliefs, results do not indicate support for the hypothesis that using a catalyst results in more affect-based hypothetical donation decisions. (shrink)

Cynthia's apparition is upbraiding Propertius ior having forgotten her so soon. In spite of their former love, he had not been present at her death, and, because of his neglect, her funeral had been a mean affair, lacking not merely any signs of affection, but any semblance of ordinary decent feeling. In a succession of couplets tracing the regular stages of a Roman funeral from the deathbed to the final rites of the cremation, this lack of respect and affection is (...) particularized: no loving voice had been heard in her dying moments ; her body had been laid out to await the funeral with little thought for what was seemly at such a time ; on the day of the funeral Propertius had not put on mourning or shown signs of grief ; the funeral procession had moved with indecorous haste to the city gate ; Propertius had not been present at the cremation, and no perfumes had been poured on the flames ; no customary final offerings had been made to the ashes. (shrink)

In the _World Library of Educationalists_, international experts themselves compile career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces – extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, major theoretical and practical contributions – so the world can read them in a single manageable volume, allowing readers to follow the themes of their work and see how it contributes to the development of the field. Mary James has researched and written on a range of educational subjects which encompass (...) curriculum, pedagogy and assessment in schools, and implications for teachers´ professional development, school leadership and policy frameworks. She has written many books and journals on assessment, particularly assessment for learning and is an expert on teacher learning, curriculum, leadership for learning and educational policy. Starting with a specially written introduction in which Mary gives an overview of her career and contextualises her selection, the chapters are divided into three parts: Educational Assessment and Learning Educational Evaluation and Curriculum Development Educational Research and the Improvement of Practice Through this book, readers can follow the different strands that Mary James has researched and written about over the last three decades, and clearly see her important contribution to the field of education. (shrink)

An accessible selection of Professor Gombrich's best and most characteristic writing.

Les débuts pathologiques de l'aventure américaine -- Prélude à l'émigration norvégienne vers l'Amérique : Kierkegaard en Norvège au XIXe siècle -- Les travaux remarquables de David Swenson -- Les choix théoriques de Walter Lowrie, ou comment Søren Kierkegaard fut métamorphosé en "S.K." -- Quelques interprétations anglophones marquantes : Collins, Thomte, Thomas, Holmer, Sponheim (James Collins, Reidar Thomte, John Heywood Thomas, Paul Holmer, Paul Sponheim--interprète de Kierkegaard) -- Le Kierkegaard de Howard Vincent Hong et Edna Hong : un Kierkegaard-phare pour les (...) recherches à venir. (shrink)

Scale invariance is considered in the context of gravitational theories where the action, in the first order formalism, is of the form S=∫ L 1 Φ d 4 x+∫ L 2 $\sqrt{-g}$ d 4 x where the volume element Φ d 4 x is independent of the metric. For global scale invariance, a “dilaton” φ has to be introduced, with non-trivial potentials V(φ)=f 1 eαφ in L 1 and U(φ)=f 2 e 2αφ in L 2 . This leads to non-trivial (...) mass generation and a potential for φ which is interesting for inflation. Interpolating models for natural transition from inflation to a slowly accelerated universe at late times appear naturally. This is also achieved for “Quintessential models,” which are scale invariant but formulated with the use of volume element Φ d 4 x alone. For closed strings and branes (including the supersymmetric cases), the modified measure formulation is possible and does not require the introduction of a particular scale (the string or brane tension) from the begining but rather these appear as integration constants. (shrink)

How can we find any satisfying assignment for a Boolean formula that has many satisfying assignments? There exists an obvious randomized algorithm for solving this problem: one can just pick an assignment at random and check the truth value of the formula for this assignment, this is iterated until a satisfying assignment occurs. Does there exist a polynomial-time deterministic algorithm that solves the same problem? This paper presents such an algorithm and shows that its worst-case running time is linear when (...) input formulas are in k-CNF and a fraction of satisfying assignments is greater than a constant. This algorithm is almost the same as the algorithm proposed by Monien and Speckenmeyer in the early 1980s for less than 2n steps 3-SAT decision.Another result of this paper is that if a formula in k-CNF has many satisfying assignments, then there exists a short satisfying assignment, i.e. an assignment of truth values to a small number of variables. The proposed algorithm yields just such a short satisfying assignment. We also show that there exist formulas in general CNF having many satisfying assignments, that have no short satisfying assignments. (shrink)