Reasoning under uncertainty, that is, making judgements with only partial knowledge, is a major theme in artificial intelligence. Professor Paris provides here an introduction to the mathematical foundations of the subject. It is suited for readers with some knowledge of undergraduate mathematics but is otherwise self-contained, collecting together the key results on the subject, and formalising within a unified framework the main contemporary approaches and assumptions. The author has concentrated on giving clear mathematical formulations, analyses, justifications and consequences of the (...) main theories about uncertain reasoning, so the book can serve as a textbook for beginners or as a starting point for further basic research into the subject. It will be welcomed by graduate students and research workers in logic, philosophy, and computer science as a textbook for beginners, a starting point for further basic research into the subject, and not least, an account of how mathematics and artificial intelligence can complement and enrich each other. (shrink)

The paper describes and proves completeness theorems for a series of proof systems formalizing common sense reasoning about uncertain knowledge in the case where this consists of sets of linear constraints on a probability function.

The series of conversations between Angela Y. Davis and Eduardo Mendieta entitled Abolition Democracy is a powerful investigation of the failed moral imagination of imperial democracies. After examining their discussion of how truncated political discourses enable abuses in both war and imprisonment, I look to the “exceptional” status of war prisons such as at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. I argue that domestic prisons, like international war prisons, are means for the paradigmatic functioning of the exception in modern democracy, as described (...) by Giorgio Agamben, and thus constitute no less of an “ultimate carceral threat.” Within the domestic prison, the legal status of inmates is virtually suspended and they are reduced to bare life. I conclude that we may yet share the hopes of Davis and Mendieta for an abolition democracy, and that such a democracy would bear the echoes of the unconditional sovereignty “to come” theorized by Jacques Derrida. (shrink)

We’ve all heard people say ‘Beauty is only skin-deep’, or ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’: our culture promulgates a conception of beauty as subjective, superficial, and independent of other values like moral goodness or knowledge and understanding. Yet our taste in beauty affects many aspects of our lives, sometimes playing a decisive––and often detrimental––role in areas as wide-ranging as our identity and self-esteem, our morally salient decisions, and our relationship to the environment. This presents us with a (...) choice: we can either ignore the facts––leaving our conception of beauty unchanged and allowing our taste to influence much in our lives while either not acknowledging such influence, or perhaps seeking to reprimand it; or we can take the power of beauty seriously and seek to harmonise our taste with our values. I argue for the latter option, and propose a way of bringing beauty and taste in line with what matters to us using the notion of functional beauty. Adopting this strategy, I suggest, can have a powerful––and positive––impact on our self-esteem and wellbeing, our relationship to others, as well as our attitudes towards the environment. (shrink)

Iconic signs are overrepresented in the vocabularies of young deaf children, but it is unclear why. It is possible that iconic signs are easier for children to learn, but it is also possible that adults use iconic signs in child-directed signing in ways that make them more learnable, either by using them more often than less iconic signs or by lengthening them. We analyzed videos of naturalistic play sessions between parents and deaf children aged 9–60 months. To determine whether iconic (...) signs are overrepresented during child-directed signing, we compared the iconicity of actual parent productions to the iconicity of simulated vocabularies designed to estimate chance levels of iconicity. For almost all dyads, parent sign types and tokens were not more iconic than the simulated vocabularies, suggesting that parents do not select more iconic signs during child-directed signing. To determine whether iconic signs are more likely to be lengthened, we ran a linear regression predicting sign duration, and found an interaction between age and iconicity: while parents of younger children produced non-iconic and iconic signs with similar durations, parents of older children produced non-iconic signs with shorter durations than iconic signs. Thus, parents sign more quickly with older children than younger children, and iconic signs appear to resist that reduction in sign length. It is possible that iconic signs are perceptually available longer, and their availability is a candidate hypothesis as to why iconic signs are overrepresented in children’s vocabularies. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAlthough formative of modern value theory, the moral beauty view—which states that moral virtue is beautiful and moral vice is ugly—is now mostly neglected by philosophers. The two contemporary defences of the view mostly capitalize on its intuitive attractiveness, but to little avail: such considerations hardly convince sceptics of what is nowadays a rather unpopular view. Historically, the view was supported by thought experiments; and although these greatly increase its plausibility, they also raise empirical questions, which they leave unanswered. Here, (...) I offer a novel defence of the moral beauty view, capitalizing on empirical evidence and arguing via an inference to the best explanation. (shrink)

We show that in Polyadic Pure Inductive Logic the Invariance Principle, based on consideration of symmetry with respect to automorphisms, has only a trivial solution, namely the polyadic equivalent of Carnap’s $$c_0$$ c 0. (This extends a result proved earlier in the unary case.) We then consider the Exchangeable Invariance Principle, a symmetry principle which is a weakening of the Invariance Principle and has been proven to be strictly stronger than the Permutation Invariance Principle. We show that the Exchangeable Invariance (...) Principle follows from Spectrum Exchangeability, a principle not obviously based on symmetry but based on irrelevance, that is treating certain features as irrelevant for the purpose of belief assignment, and that the converse does not hold. We conclude that Spectrum Exchangeability is the strongest currently known rational principle of belief assignment in Pure Inductive Logic that does not lead to the aforementioned trivial solution. (shrink)

John Ayrton Paris, writer and physician, became a member of the Linnean Society in 1810, and served as president of the Royal College of Physicians from 1844 until his death. Intended for children and originally composed for the author's family, this three-volume work about science was first published in 1827. Dedicated to the writer Maria Edgeworth and with illustrations by George Cruikshank, it aims 'to blend amusement with instruction', since youth, as Paris writes, 'is naturally addicted to amusement'. Topics covered (...) in Volume 1 include momentum, geometry, elasticity and rotatory motion; the science behind these is demonstrated using a yo-yo, a jack-in-the-box and a slingshot, among various other toys and games. A fascinating and popular text in the history of science education, the engaging narrative seeks to prove 'how profitably, and agreeably, the machinery of fiction may be worked for the dissemination of truth'. (shrink)

When there is a conflict between parents and the physician over appropriate care due to an infant whose decision prevails? What standard, if any, should guide such decisions?This article traces the varying standards articulated over the past three decades from the proposal in Duff and Campbell’s 1973 essay that these decisions are best left to the parents to the Baby Doe Regs of the 1980s which required every life that could be salvaged be continued. We conclude with support for the (...) policy articulated in the 2007 guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics on non-intervention or withdrawal of intensive care for high-risk newborns. (shrink)

Les rencontres avec les travaux d'Anne-Françoise Schmid que présente cet ouvrage, mettent la philosophie générique au coeur des pratiques contemporaines des sciences, ouvrant ainsi une nouvelle voie pour la création épistémologique. Comment produire une description non disciplinaire des sciences? Qu'est-ce qui permet aux sciences d'être conceptives? - De quoi a-t-on besoin pour une science sans exclusions? Quels sont les nouveaux opérateurs de rigueur des sciences contemporaines? Les travaux d'Anne-Françoise Schmid montrent que les objets contemporains des sciences ne se prêtent pas (...) à des définitions standard, et que les convergences de perspectives disciplinaires ne permettent pas non plus d'assurer un point de vue théorique unifié, mais seulement des trajectoires particulières et multiples. Il n'y a pas d'objet sans rapport à l'objet. Ce rapport n'est pas simplement une mise en contexte, elle met en jeu l'intime et l'intention des chercheurs. Les disciplines cachent cet aspect. Sa philosophie travaille à la mise en lumière des opérations qui permettent l'ouverture d'un espace générique : c'est-à-dire un espace qui ne dépend pas d'une seule discipline et qui est condition d'une nouvelle mise en relation des concepts d'humain et de sciences. Les contributions de cet ouvrage mettent en évidence des nouvelles logiques de découpage, de réarticulation et d'invention de concepts dans une grande diversité de champs disciplinaires. Ce livre offre une entrée dans un espace générique. Le générique permet de voir ainsi ce que l'on ne voit pas avec l'épistémologie classique."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Este trabajo es una reconstrucción hipotética de la desaparecida iglesia románica medieval de Samper de Calanda, que se basa en las fuentes documentales conservadas y en los materiales procedentes de su fábrica, reutilizados en la iglesia barroca actual. Destacan sendos dinteles de puerta insertos en las paredes norte y sur, cuyo diseño se debe al arquitecto Giacomo de Vignola, que fechamos en el siglo xvii. Palabras clave: iglesias románicas, iglesias barrocas, Giacomo Vignola, arquitectura renacentista, siglo XVII This work is a (...) hypothetical rebuilding of the missing medieval Romanesque church of Samper de Calanda, wich is based on preserved sources of information and material from its masonry, which have been reused in the existent church, which was built during the Baroque period. We must speak about two separate lintels in north and south walls, designed by architect Giacomo de Vignola, dated in the 17thcentury. Key words: Romanesque churches, Baroque churches, Giacomo Vignola, Renaissance architecture. (shrink)

This paper corrects three widely held misunderstandings about Maxent when used in common sense reasoning: That it is language dependent; That it produces objective facts; That it subsumes, and so is at least as untenable as, the paradox-ridden Principle of Insufficient Reason.

This article will continue Jose Medina's work on “resistant imaginations” by developing the concepts of “internal resistant imagination” and “external resistant imagination” through readings of Assata Shakur's and Mamphela Ramphele's autobiographies. By introducing the problem of location and its relation to race it will show that one's geographical location affects their location in relation to hegemonic imaginations. This in turn requires different strategies of resistance. Using Medina's work this article will argue that Shakur and Ramphele explore these two different avenues (...) for undoing harmful truths within racist and sexist hegemonic imaginaries. (shrink)

La filosofía para hacer las paces de Martínez Guzmán aborda las competencias y las capacidades que los seres humanos tenemos para la transformación de los conflictos por medios pacíficos. Desde esta concepción de la condición humana, la defensa de un más que necesario cambio en la noción de la política local y global y la propuesta del giro epistemológico, Martínez Guzmán indaga la relación entre conflicto y cooperación como dos caras de una misma moneda, y pone el énfasis en la (...) importancia del reconocimiento a través de la justicia y del amor para hacernos las paces, superando, así, las llamadas “luchas por el reconocimiento”.Martinez Guzman’s Philosophy for making peace approaches the competencies and the capabilities that human beings have for the peaceful conflict transformation. From this conception of the human condition, the author explores the relationship between conflict and cooperation as two sides of the same coin, at the same time that he emphasizes the importance of recognition through justice and love to make peace, thus overcoming the so-called "struggles for recognition." This study takes also into account the defense of a more than necessary change in the notion of local and global politics and Martinez Guzman’s proposal of the epistemological turn. (shrink)

According to immoralists, some artworks are better aesthetically in virtue of their immorality. A. W. Eaton recently offered a novel defence of this view, seeking to overcome shortcomings in previous accounts, thereby occasioning a reconsideration of immoralism. Yet, as I argue in this paper, Eaton’s attempt is unsuccessful, insofar as it consists partly of inadequately supported claims, and partly—and more interestingly, albeit paradoxically––of covert moralist assumptions that are, eo ipso, incompatible with immoralism. I then turn to a parallel debate in (...) ethics concerning the possibility of admirable immorality, suggesting that a consideration of the state of that debate further supports my argument against immoralism. I close by suggesting some strategies by which immoralists may offer a rejoinder, although I note that their prospects are rather dim, not least because available defences of immoralism and similar positions all seem to share the same flawed pattern. (shrink)

This paper is a sequel to an earlier result of the authors that in making inferences from certain probabilistic knowledge bases the maximum entropy inference process, ME, is the only inference process respecting “common sense.” This result was criticized on the grounds that the probabilistic knowledge bases considered are unnatural and that ignorance of dependence should not be identified with statistical independence. We argue against these criticisms and also against the more general criticism that ME is representation dependent. In a (...) final section, however, we provide a criticism of our own of ME, and of inference processes in general, namely that they fail to satisfy compactness. (shrink)

Philosophical aesthetics has recently been expanding its purview—with exciting work on everyday aesthetics, somaesthetics, gustatory aesthetics, and the aesthetics of imperceptibilia like mathematics and human character—reclaiming territory that was lost during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the discipline begun concentrating almost exclusively on the philosophy of art and restricted the aesthetic realm to the distally perceptible. Yet there remains considerable reluctance towards acknowledging the aesthetic character of many of these objects. This raises an important question—partly made salient again by (...) the ongoing expansion of the aesthetic domain, and partly by the fact that many still seem resistant to this aesthetic diversification—which aestheticians seem to avoid: what, if anything, constrains the scope of beauty or the aesthetic? I argue that form, construed as comprising a degree, however minimal, of experienceable complexity, is necessary and sufficient for an object's candidature for the possession of aesthetic properties. Such a condition serves to discriminate between attempts to expand the scope of the aesthetic that are legitimate and those that are not. If correct, my view suggests that the aesthetic realm, though not limitless, is very broad indeed—but this, I think, is as it should be. (shrink)

Ugliness is a neglected topic in contemporary analytic aesthetics. This is regrettable given that this topic is not just genuinely fascinating, but could also illuminate other areas in the field, seeing as ugliness, albeit unexplored, does feature rather prominently in several debates in aesthetics. This paper articulates a ‘deformity-related’ conception of ugliness. Ultimately, I argue that deformity, understood in a certain way, and displeasure, jointly suffice for ugliness. First, I motivate my proposal, by locating a ‘deformity-related’ conception of ugliness in (...) aesthetic tradition, offering examples in support, and rejecting related alternative suggestions. Second, I argue that the proposal boasts considerable merits. Not only does it capture much of what we ordinarily think of as ugly, but it also comprises an objective criterion for ugliness, offers unity and comprehensiveness, and is informative and explanatorily potent. Third, I discuss a number of objections, thereby demonstrating that the proposal withstands reflective scrutiny. (shrink)

One of the most pertinent sites of investigation in Fanon studies is the question of how Fanon theorizes the imbrication of gender with that of race and colonialism. For many, his silence or disavowals, whether explicit or implicit, allow an uncritical masculinism to slip into his theories of subjectivity, subjugation, and revolution. This article contributes to these discussions by arguing that for Fanon, gender and race are colonial technologies rather than natural sites of experience. Bringing together Fanon's recently translated clinical (...) writings and his political essay on the revolutionary roles of Algerian women in the war against French colonization, it is possible to see how Fanon theorizes the French imposition of gender norms as attempts to engineer the social reproduction of a marginalized and racialized population. In short, gender is an implicitly racialized technology in French colonial society whose aim is the naturalization of political and sexual arrangements of power that justify the continuation of French occupation. Fanon works to demystify gender and race as technologies so that the colonized may seize them in the interest of their own liberatory invention. (shrink)

This paper concerns the question of how to draw inferences common sensically from uncertain knowledge. Since the early work of Shore and Johnson (1980), Paris and Vencovská (1990), and Csiszár (1989), it has been known that the Maximum Entropy Inference Process is the only inference process which obeys certain common sense principles of uncertain reasoning. In this paper we consider the present status of this result and argue that within the rather narrow context in which we work this complete and (...) consistent mode of uncertain reasoning is actually characterised by the observance of just a single common sense principle (or slogan). (shrink)

I offer a set of sufficient conditions for beauty, drawing on Parsons and Carlson’s account of ‘functional beauty’. First, I argue that their account is flawed, whilst falling short of...

There is a tendency in contemporary (analytic) aesthetics to consider- ably restrict the scope of things that can be beautiful or ugly. This peculiarly modern tendency is holding back progress in aesthetics and robbing it of its potential contribution to other domains of inquiry. One view that has suffered neglect as a result of this tendency is the moral beauty view, whereby the moral virtues are beautiful and the moral vices are ugly. This neglect stems from an assumption to the (...) effect that virtues and vices simply cannot be beautiful or ugly. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it develops an account of form, under which, it argues, possession of form suffices for an object’s candidature for beauty and ugliness. Second, it argues that, under the foregoing proposal, the moral beauty view turns out to be a coherent position, and so should be taken seriously in both aesthetics and ethics. (shrink)

The children were nestled all snug in their beds.While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.Clement Moore's cherished ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas captures the hopes, dreams and visions...

We present six significant open problems in Pure Inductive Logic, together with their background and current status, with the intention of raising awareness and leading ultimately to their resolution.

Taking my cue from the longest-standing theory of beauty to date, which identified beauty with formal properties such as order, harmony, and proportion, I argue that wellformedness—understood under a tripartite account comprising abstract, categorial, and functional species—is a necessary condition for beauty, which itself comprises three corresponding species. To this end, I offer a new conception of wellformedness along with a clear taxonomy of both beauty and wellformedness. My account reverses the common tendency to treat species of beauty that are (...) independent of considerations of objects’ functions or kinds as paradigmatic and others as derivative, construing instead all three species as interrelated. In doing so, my proposal sheds considerable light on the concept of beauty, provides a measure of objectivity in our understanding thereof, clarifies the conceptual terrain in the philosophy of beauty, and elucidates some central links between beauty, form, and our interests and values. (shrink)

The Clinton administration's revised rules regulating but not prohibiting the common practice in managed care of linking physician compensation with cost cutting and control of services demonstrates the complexity of ethical issues in managed care. As originally proposed, the federal guidelines on payment for Medicare and Medicaid services would have precluded any interrelationship between payment to physicians and delivery of services. Such a restriction would have gutted the primary mechanism in managed care plans to curb the unacceptably high cost of (...) healthcare delivery: making physicians directly responsible for cost control by placing them at direct financial risk. At first blush such a linkage seems to involve an obvious and irreconcilable conflict of interest. How can a physician be responsible for the well-being of a patient while at the same time aware that a proportion of his or her income is linked to the provision of cost-conscious care? (shrink)

La historia personal y profesional de Carlos París discurre al hilo de la convulsa historia de España del último medio siglo, y la narra con una honestidad de la que muy pocos pueden hacer gala. Así, sin ira y sin tapujos, describe, por ejemplo, cómo pasó de una adhesión inicial a presupuestos falangistas a ser candidato del PCE, valorando cada etapa y cada motivo de cambio con un gran sentido crítico. Por su pluma desfilan también personajes fundamentales en la vida (...) española de los últimos cincuenta años con quienes Carlos París ha tenido una sólida relación, como Manuel Fraga, Javier Solana, Manuel Castells, Rosa Regàs, Ricardo de la Cierva, José Antonio Maravall, José María Valverde, Nicolás Sartorius y un largo etcétera. De la lectura de estas memorias se desprende, en fin, el retrato de una gran figura intelectual y humana que jamás se ha limitado a ser convidado de piedra ni en su país ni en el tiempo que le ha tocado vivir.Carlos París (Bilbao, 1925) es Catedrático Emérito de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, en la que fundó su Departamento de filosofía y de cuya Facultad de Filosofía y Letras fue elegido decano en las primeras elecciones. Es Doctor Honoris Causa por la Universidad de Valencia y ha sido Presidente de la Sociedad Española de Filosofía y del Ateneo Científico, Literario y Artístico de Madrid. Su obra ha sido objeto de diversos estudios y congresos internacionales, y recientemente se ha creado un Foro dedicado al análisis y difusión de su pensamiento. Hay que destacar, sobre todo, sus ensayos: Física y filosofía, 1952; Crítica de la civilización nuclear, 1985 o Fantasía y razón moderna-Don Quijote, Odiseo y Fausto, 2001, entre muchos otros; y también sus obras de creación literaria: la novela Bajo constelaciones burlonas (1981) o el libro de relatos La machina speculatrix-Cuatro sarcasmos sobre el mundo actual (1989). (shrink)

Ten years of educational reform have not brought dramatic improvements. In Ideology and Educational Reform, David Paris traces the underlying ideological problems that make genuine reform difficult. These include different and often conflicting beliefs concerning the proper role of public education as well as the public's natural ambivalence about schools as government agencies.Paris describes three major themes in public education—common school, human capital, and clientelism. He critically evaluates current policies and proposed reforms associated with each of these topics, including moral (...) education, the school-economy relationship, school choice, and the delivery of social services. Paris proposes better ways for dealing with ideological problems in school practice, and he suggests appropriate directions for policy reform. (shrink)