It is still a widespread assumption that metaphysics and ontology deal with roughly the same questions. They are supposed to be concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and to give an account of the meaning of 'existence' or 'being' in line with the broadest possible metaphysical assumptions. Against this, Markus Gabriel proposes a radical form of ontological pluralism that divorces ontology from metaphysics, understood as the most fundamental theory of absolutely everything. He argues that the concept of existence (...) is incompatible with the existence of the world and therefore proposes his innovative no-world-view. In the context of recent debates surrounding new realism and speculative realism, Gabriel also develops the outlines of a realist epistemological pluralism. His idea here is that there are different forms of knowledge that correspond to the plurality of fields of sense that must be acknowledged in order to avoid the trap of metaphysics. (shrink)

I would like to discuss the claim that the resources of plural reference and plural quantification are sufficient for the purpose of paraphrasing all ordinary statements apparently concerned with composite material objects into plural statements concerned exclusively with simples.

The doctrine that whatever could exist does exist leads to a proliferation of possibly concrete objects given certain principles of recombination. If, for example, there could have been a large infinite number of concrete objects, then there is at least the same number of possibly concrete objects in existence. And further cardinality considerations point to a tension between the preceding doctrine and the Cantorian conception of the absolutely infinite. This paper develops a parallel problem for a variety of possible worlds (...) accounts of modality which eschew the commitment to a plethora of possibly concrete objects. Moreover, the difficulty is importantly different from more familiar threats of paradox exemplified by certain descendants of Russell's paradox of propositions and Kaplan's paradox. (shrink)

Ethical issues at the workplace have once again become topical and important due to considerable adverse publicity surrounding reports of unethical business practices by corporate managers. Accordingly, this paper re-visits the question of whether gender, age and work experience do have an effect on ethical judgement, using 655 business students as respondents. This is necessary as business students are likely to become managers during their career and will face complex ethical concerns and dilemmas in their daily, routine affairs. The findings (...) currently demonstrate that females are more ethically aware than their male counterparts – that is, there are differences between males and females regarding ethical judgement. There is also evidence to suggest that age is a factor that does impact on ethical judgement. However, we also found evidence to suggest that in some cases, the age factor does not necessarily have a significant impact on ethical awareness. The results further indicate that there is a difference in ethical judgement related to work experience. However, at the same time, in one question there is no evidence to suggest the claim that work experience does impact significantly on ethical judgement. Overall, it appears that ethical awareness does increase alongside work experience. (shrink)

Two semantic theories of proper names are explained and assessed. The theories are Burge’s treatment of proper names as complex demonstratives and Larson and Segal’s quasi-descriptivist account of names. The two theories are evaluated for empirical plausibility. Data from deficits, processing models, developmental studies and syntax are all discussed. It is concluded that neither theory is fully confirmed or refuted by the data, but that Larson and Segal’s theory has more empirical plausibility.

David Kaplan observed in Kaplan that the principle \\) cannot be verified at a world in a standard possible worlds model for a quantified bimodal propositional language. This raises a puzzle for certain interpretations of the operator Q: it seems that some proposition p is such that is not possible to query p, and p alone. On the other hand, Arthur Prior had observed in Prior that on pain of contradiction, ∀p is Q only if one true proposition is Q (...) and one false proposition is Q. The two observations are related: ∀p is elusive in that it is not possible for the proposition to be uniquely Q. Kaplan based his model-theoretic observation on Cantor’s theorem, but there is a less well-known link between this simple set-theoretic observation and Prior’s remark. We generalize the link to develop a heuristic designed to move from Cantor’s theorem to the observation that a variety of sentences of the bimodal language express propositions that cannot be Q uniquely. We highlight the analogy between some of these results and some set-theoretic antinomies and suggest that the phenomenon is richer than one may have anticipated. (shrink)

I will present a short overview of Hintikka’s main ideas in logic, starting with his early work on constituents and model sets, continuing with his contributions to epistemic logic, up to his later work in game-theoretical semantics and the Interrogative Model of Inquiry.

Musical systems develop associations over time between aspects of musical form and concepts from outside of the music. Experienced listeners internalize these connotations, such that the formal elements bring to mind their extra-musical meanings. An example of musical form-meaning mapping is the association that Western listeners have between the major and minor modes and happiness and sadness, respectively. We revisit the emotional semantics of musical mode in a study of 44 American participants (musicians and non-musicians) who each evaluated the relatedness (...) of 96 melody-word pairs. Among the tonal melodies, we manipulated mode (major and minor) and timbre (clarinet and flute) while systematically controlling for other musical factors including pitch register and melodic contour. Similarly, among the English words, we manipulated word affect (happy and sad) while systematically controlling for other lexical factors including frequency and word length. Results demonstrated that participants provided a higher proportion of related responses for major melodies paired with happy words and minor melodies paired with sad words than for the reverse pairings. This interaction between mode and word affect was highly significant for both musicians and non-musicians, albeit with a larger effect for the former group. Further interactions with timbre suggested that while both clarinet and flute conveyed happiness when in the major mode, the clarinet was somewhat more successful than the flute at conveying sadness in the minor mode. Debriefing questionnaires suggested that the majority of the participants, including all of the non-musicians, had no awareness of the major-minor manipulation, and instead directed their attention to register and contour. We argue that the affective character of the major and minor modes is but one example of form-meaning mapping in music, and suggest further exploration of the roles of timbre, register, and contour in conveying musical emotions. (shrink)

The Russell–Myhill theorem threatens a familiar structured conception of propositions according to which two sentences express the same proposition only if they share the same syntactic structure and their corresponding syntactic constituents share the same semantic value. Given the role of the principle of universal instantiation in the derivation of the theorem in simple type theory, one may hope to rehabilitate the core of the structured view of propositions in ramified type theory, where the principle is systematically restricted. We suggest (...) otherwise. The ramified core of the structured theory of propositions remains inconsistent in ramified type theory augmented with axioms of reducibility. This is significant because reducibility has been thought to be perfectly consistent with the ramified approach to the intensional antinomies. Nor is the addition of reducibility to ramified type theory sufficient to restore other intensional puzzles such as Prior’s paradox or Kripke’s puzzle about time and thought. (shrink)

This paper looks at the question of what regions of space are possibly exactly occupied by a material object.

The proper limit to paternalist regulation of citizens' private lives is a recurring theme in political theory and ethics. In the present study, we examine the role of beliefs about free will and determinism in attitudes toward libertarian versus paternalist policies. Throughout five studies we find that a scientific deterministic worldview reduces opposition toward paternalist policies, independent of the putative influence of political ideology. We suggest that exposure to scientific explanations for patterns in human behavior challenges the notion of personal (...) autonomy and, in turn, undermines libertarian arguments against state paternalism appealing to autonomy and personal choice. (shrink)

Independence‐Friendly logic introduced by Hintikka and Sandu studies patterns of dependence and independence of quantifiers which exceed those found in ordinary first‐order logic. The present survey focuses on the game‐theoretical interpretation of IF‐logic, including connections to solution concepts in classical game theory, but we shall also present its compositional interpretation together with its connections to notions of dependence and dependence between terms.

In continuation with the New Thought movement that arose in the United States in the 19th Century, there is now a massive self-help industry that markets books and seminars. This industry has also extended to healthcare in the form of positive thinking, i.e., the idea that happy thoughts are essential for health. While some of these claims may seem reasonable and commonsensical, they are not free of problems. This article posits that positive thinking has some ethical underpinnings. Extreme positive thinking (...) may promote alternative forms of medicine that ultimately substitute effective treatment, and this is unethical. The emphasis on positive thinking for cancer patients may be too burdensome for them. Likewise, unrestricted positive thinking is not necessarily good for mental health. After considering the ethics of positive thinking, this article proposes a more realistic approach. (shrink)

Philosopher, c’est, pense-t-on, faire de l’histoire de la philosophie ; c’est lire et interpréter les textes canoniques des grands penseurs de la tradition européenne en suivant l’enchaînement des idées depuis les Grecs anciens. Cette manière de pratiquer la philosophie est devenue tellement naturelle qu’elle en a oublié sa propre historicité. D’où la nécessité de la mettre en évidence en examinant de près ses multiples conséquences. C’est justement un des objectifs de l’analytique des pratiques philosophiques entreprise dans le présent ouvrage. -/- (...) Ce livre propose en même temps une logique historique et herméneutique alternative s’inscrivant en faux contre la philosophie contemporaine, notamment dans ses diverses tentatives de « rupture », plus ou moins superficielles sur le plan pratique. Dans un dialogue avec les sciences humaines et sociales, il reprend à nouveaux frais et d’un tout autre point de vue les trois moments privilégiés de notre histoire de « la » philosophie (le commencement, le tournant moderne, le moment présent). Ne visant pourtant pas à entériner la réduction de la philosophie à une pratique historique et herméneutique, il s’agit avant tout de mettre en lumière la contingence d’une telle détermination afin de déplacer les marges de manœuvre imposées aux penseurs d’aujourd’hui et faire de la place à d’autres pratiques théoriques (qu’elles soient historiques et herméneutiques ou non). Le résultat, c’est une investigation méthodologique dont les enjeux et les conséquences dépassent de loin les limites de la philosophie dans son acceptation traditionnelle. -/- Approximate English Translation: -/- Philosophy, we tend to think, amounts to doing the history of philosophy, to reading and interpreting the canonical texts of the great thinkers of the European tradition, following the sequence of ideas since the ancient Greeks. This way of practicing philosophy has become so natural—at least within the ‘continental’ tradition—that it has forgotten its own historicity. It is for this reason that it is necessary to bring it to light by examining its multiple consequences. This is precisely one of the objectives of the analytic of philosophic practices undertaken in the present work. -/- This book proposes, at the same time, an alternative historical and hermeneutic logic that critically distances itself from contemporary philosophy, particularly in its diverse attempts to propose a “rupture,” which remain more or less superficial at a practical level. In dialogue with the social and human sciences, it reassesses, from an entirely different point of view, the three privileged moments of our supposed history of philosophy (the beginning, the modern turn, the present moment). It does not aim, however, at endorsing the reduction of philosophy to a historical and hermeneutic practice. It is above all a matter of bringing to light the contingency of such a determination in order to displace the margins of maneuverability imposed on thinkers today and to make room for other theoretical practices (if they be historical and hermeneutic or not). The result is a methodological investigation whose stakes and consequences far surpass the limits of philosophy as it is traditionally understood. (shrink)

This article is a libertarian critique of incest laws. On the basis of the libertarian “harm principle”, one must ask what exactly is the harm that incest brings forth. Traditionally, anthropologists have tried to rationalize the incest taboo in various theories, and lawmakers have used these principles as grounds for the criminalization of incest. These principles are the preservation of family structure, the enhancement of alliances and the avoidance of genetic risks. While I acknowledge that these rationalizations are plausible, I (...) argue that they are still not sufficient grounds for the preservation of incest laws, and consequently, there is an ethical need to reform them. (shrink)

We give three counterexamples to the folklore claim that in an arbitrary theory, if a complete type p over a set B does not divide over $C\subseteq B$, then no extension of p to a complete type over $\operatorname {acl}(B)$ divides over C. Two of our examples are also the first known theories where all sets are extension bases for nonforking, but forking and dividing differ for complete types (answering a question of Adler). One example is an $\mathrm {NSOP}_1$ theory (...) with a complete type that forks, but does not divide, over a model (answering a question of d’Elbée). Moreover, dividing independence fails to imply M-independence in this example (which refutes another folklore claim). In addition to these counterexamples, we summarize various related properties of dividing that are still true. We also address consequences for previous literature, including an earlier unpublished result about forking and dividing in free amalgamation theories, and some claims about dividing in the theory of generic $K_{m,n}$ -free incidence structures. (shrink)

In this paper we show that first-order languages extended with partially ordered connectives and partially ordered quantifiers define, under a certain interpretation, their own truth-predicate. The interpretation in question is in terms of games of imperfect information. This result is compared with those of Kripke and Feferman.

Ranging from behavioral to molecular levels of analysis, this informative study presents the results of recent research into the biochemistry and neural mechanisms of imprinting. Horn discusses some of the difficulties that researchers have encountered in analyzing the neural basis of memory and describes ways in which these difficulties have been overcome through the analysis of memories underlying habituation and imprinting. He also considers the biochemical consequences of imprinting and its cerebral localization, and examines the relationships between human and animal (...) memory. (shrink)

Atomism is the thesis that every object is composed of atoms. This principle is generally regimented by means of an atomicity axiom according to which every object has atomic parts. But there appears to be a sense that something is amiss with atomistic mereology. We look at three concerns, which, while importantly different, involve infinite descending chains of proper parts and have led some to question standard formalizations of atomism and composition in mereology.

La singularité de la démarche philosophique de Gabriel Marcel vient de ce qu'elle renoue avec ses origines socratiques ; elle se fonde résolument sur le concret, c'est-à-dire le corps-propre (par oposition au corps-objet ou instrument), la sensation traitée comme manière d'être au monde plutôt que comme message, la mémoire, la volonté.

We show that a coherent theory of partially ordered connectives can be developed along the same line as partially ordered quantification. We estimate the expressive power of various partially ordered connectives and use methods like Ehrenfeucht games and infinitary logic to get various undefinability results.

This paper tries to link Ethology to Biosemiotics by analysing the similarities between some triadic relationships like biosemiotics’ Object—Representamen—Interpretant and the one established in Ethology between Sign-stimuli— Innate Releasing Mechanism—Modal Action Pattern, or the one potentially established in communication networks comprising Sender—Receiver—Eavesdropper. I argue here that a collaborative relationship is supported by the fact that the observational method used by Ethology is based on the triadic relationship Sender—Receiver—Eavesdropper. This method, by introducing the human observer at the Interpreter/Eavesdropper place, is not (...) only applicable to the direct study of animal communication, but also to the interpretation of all other animal behaviour by assuming that behaviour is a sign/signal system on its own, for us to interpret and decode. (shrink)

Examines Albert Schweitzer's philosophy in an attempt to determine whether he is Christian.