Deontic Logic goes back to Ernst Mally’s 1926 work, Grundgesetze des Sollens: Elemente der Logik des Willens [Mally. E.: 1926, Grundgesetze des Sollens: Elemente der Logik des Willens, Leuschner & Lubensky, Graz], where he presented axioms for the notion ‘p ought to be the case’. Some difficulties were found in Mally’s axioms, and the field has much developed. Logic of Knowledge goes back to Hintikka’s work Knowledge and Belief [Hintikka, J.: 1962, Knowledge and Belief: An Introduction to the Logic of (...) the Two Notions, Cornell University Press] in which he proposed formal logics of knowledge and belief. This field has also developed quite a great deal and is now the subject of the TARK conferences. However, there has been relatively little work combining the two notions of knowledge (belief) with the notion of obligation. (See, however, [Lomuscio, A. and Sergot, M.: 2003, Studia Logica 75 63–92; Moore, R. C.: 1990, In J. F. Allen, J. Hendler and A. Tate (eds.), Readings in Planning, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Mateo, CA]) In this paper we point out that an agent’s obligations are often dependent on what the agent knows, and indeed one cannot reasonably be expected to respond to a problem if one is not aware of its existence. For instance, a doctor cannot be expected to treat a patient unless she is aware of the fact that he is sick, and this creates a secondary obligation on the patient or someone else to inform the doctor of his situation. In other words, many obligations are situation dependent, and only apply in the presence of the relevant information. Thus a case for combining Deontic Logic with the Logic of Knowledge is clear. We introduce the notion of knowledge based obligation and offer an S5, history based Kripke semantics to express this notion, as this semantics enables us to represent how information is transmitted among agents and how knowledge changes over time as a result of communications. We consider both the case of an absolute obligation (although dependent on information) as well as the (defeasible) notion of an obligation which may be over-ridden by more relevant information. For instance a physician who is about to inject a patient with drug d may find out that the patient is allergic to d and that she should use d′ instead. Dealing with the second kind of case requires a resort to non-monotonic reasoning and the notion of justified belief which is stronger than plain belief, but weaker than absolute knowledge in that it can be over-ridden. This notion of justified belief also creates a derived notion of default obligation where an agent has, as far as the agent knows, an obligation to do some action a. A dramatic application of this notion is our analysis of the Kitty Genovese case where, in 1964, a young woman was stabbed to death while 38 neighbours watched from their windows but did nothing. The reason was not indifference, but none of the neighbours had even a default obligation to act, even though, as a group, they did have an obligation to take some action to protect Kitty. (shrink)

Recent articles in Religious Studies have underscored the questions of whether Buddhism presents any empirical doctrines, and whether, if it does, such doctrines are false or vacuous. In what follows I want to sketch an interpretation of Buddhism according to which it does not offer doctrines which are empirically false, on the one hand, or trivially true on the other. In doing so I take my cue from an earlier, and by now classic, paper by H. H. Price. For the (...) exposition of Buddhism I take the Pali Nikāyas, the single most significant collection of texts in the Buddhist tradition. The particular doctrine which is the focus of discussion here is the kammavāda or ‘karma view’ of early Indian Buddhism, for it is the focus of much of the recent literature cited above and a doctrine which some have thought amenable to statement in empirical terms. (shrink)

Geannoteerde briefwisseling van de twee geleerden over het vraagstuk van de evolutie.

The biological sciences study (bio)complex living systems. Research directed at the mechanistic explanation of the "live" state truly requires a pluralist research program, i.e. BioComplexity research. The program should apply multiple intra-level and inter-level theories and methodologies. We substantiate this thesis with analysis of BioComplexity: metabolic and modular control analysis of metabolic pathways, emergence of oscillations, and the analysis of the functioning of glycolysis.

This paper is a summary and extension of almost four decades of research directed toward an explication of the human mind. To achieve a precise, testable proposition that defines mind, I follow a historically rich tradition of materialism. First, an empirical basis is established wherein electropsychologically measured events from the brain, eyes, somatic and speech musculature occur almost simultaneously during a variety of cognitions. The inference is that these covert reactions form components of neuromuscular circuits governed by cybernetic principles. Conversely, (...) when the striated musculature is totally inactive, cognitions are absent. The conclusion is that muscular components of the circuits are necessary for cognitions. An explication of the human mind emerges as the selective interaction of bodily systems to generate contents of mind and to program covert and overt behavior. Clinical and educational applications follow. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:171. JACOBITISM AND DAVID HUME: THE IDEOLOGICAL BACKLASH FOILED It has often been said, and with some truth, that one of the weaknesses of the Jacobite movement was its lack of a systematic ideology or of a truly firstrate mind to expound its doctrines. There are of course those who would claim that in an earlier period Charles Leslie or Francis Atterbury easily fulfilled the necessary conditions as expositors, (...) and that this tradition was continued in the years immediately before the '45 by Carte and Chevalier Ramsay. Yet there were weaknesses in Jacobite doctrine, some of which will be noted below. It is less often realised that, qua logical cogency, the arguments of the Whigs and other opponents of Jacobitism were, to say the least, in no better case. In a word, anti-Jacobite ideology completely failed in the task of devastating the Stuarts and their followers. This failure is apparent when we consider the writings of David Hume, who addressed himself on many occasions, either explicitly or implicitly, to the question of Jacobitism. One of Hume's aims was to give the Revolution settlement and the Hanoverian succession the respectable intellectual basis it did not possess from official Whig ideology. In this aim Hume unquestionably failed, his arguments being either internally inconsistent or lacking in the intellectual rigour necessary to topple his targets. Following the method attributed to Karl Popper by Brian Magee, it will be instructive at this point to consider the anti-Jacobite case, not at its weakest, but at its strongest. In a word, it is proposed to consider in detail the political writings on the issue of Jacobitism of a man widely acknowledged to be the greatest British thinker of the eighteenth century and one of the finest philosophers of the ages. If the 172. most powerful mind in British philosophy was unable to contrive a theory or theories that could unseat Jacobitism as an ideology, this tends to indicate that the intellectual supports of the' doctrine were nothing like so feeble as Whig apologists claimed, and that historians have been rather too quick to claim that eighteenth-century Jacobitism depended on a defunct or discredited belief-system. First, however, two comments are necessary. Neither Jacobitism itself nor Hume's own writings possess the coherence the scholar might ideally wish for. Hume's critique has to be extracted from books and essays written over a thirty-year period, and none of these is a work of political theory per se. Moreover, these works address differing audiences and assume quite different things about the knowledge and philosophical acumen of their readers. This is quite apart from the fact that on some important issues Hume changed his mind over the years. At this level assessing Hume's meaning is often as difficult as the notorious problem of pinning down the 'real' Marx. As for Jacobitism, its ideology is difficult to articulate, since it was composed of many heterogeneous strands. The ideology of English Jacobites was a 'partial' view of the world. It embraced the pre-1688 Tory notions of hereditary and indefeasible right, passive obedience and non-resistance. It took in the 'Country' critique of corruption and its nostalgia for a lost 'golden age'. The ideology of Scottish Jacobitism came nearer to being a Weltanschauung. Apart from its role as an ideology of nationalism, stressing the importance of a unique Scottish culture, it depended on a providential and mystical view of the world. Basically, there were three types of ideological Jacobitism. The first type, whose major 173. tenets had been exhaustively debated during the period 1688-1720, concerned the notions of divine, indefeasible right, passive obedience and nonresistance. This doctrine, particularly associated with pro-Stuart polemicists like Charles Leslie and Francis Atterbury, was still very much alive in Jacobite circles by 1745, though the debate between Whig and Tory on its implications had to some extent given way to the debate between exponents of Court and Country positions. The second type was Jacobitism as an ideology of Scottish nationalism. This was particularly associated with the mystics of NorthEastern Scotland like Chevalier Ramsay, and was a powerful influence in the '45 rebellion. The third type was Jacobitism as... (shrink)

In discussing questions of free will, Soviet philosophers fail to distinguish conditions from causes. This makes them unable to understand the very opponents they like to criticize.

Una de las competencias importantes de un máster universitario de introducción a la investigación es la innovación y un aspecto importante es cómo gestionarla. Para responder a las necesidades que la Sociedad demanda a través de los diversos programas de investigación y desarrollo que las distintas empresas lanzan, hace falta personal técnico capaz de llevar a cabo dichos proyectos y de gestionarlos bien. Las universidades han lanzado diversos programas de enseñanza para cubrir estas necesidades de conocimientos técnicos pero hace falta (...) también dotar a los investigadores de formación adecuada en su gestión. En este artículo se presenta la experiencia de los autores tras dos años impartiendo la asignatura optativa “Gestión de proyectos de investigación electrónicos bajo criterios de calidad” en el Máster de Ingeniería Electrónica, con el objetivo de fomentar esta habilidad en los alumnos mediante el conocimiento y la práctica del proceso de gestión de los proyectos electrónicos de investigación, desarrollo e innovación tecnológica. (shrink)