Unconditionals are syntactic conditionals whose affirmation affirms their consequent, unconditionally. Prominent instances were addressed by J.L. Austin ('There are biscuits if you want some') and Nelson Goodman (even-if 'semifactuals'). Their detailed features are explained in a Decision-Theoretic Semantics (DTS) which extends, by certainty and relevance conditions, the "CCCP" conditional probability construal of conditionals due to Ernest Adams and others. The construal of assertions of conditionals as conditional acts, defended by Keith DeRose and Richard Grandy in 1999 against objections arising from (...) Austin's unconditionals, is shown to be incompatible with any known version of CCCP. However, an ad-hoc decision-theoretic construal of their proposal is seen to work for Austin's unconditionals, albeit for these only. The DTS account of unconditionals hinges on stochastic independence or irrelevance conditions. For Austin's variant, it also involves changes in the expectations of non-indicator random variables, i.e. properly valuational relevance relations. The widely assumed speaker's knowledge presumption for assertion in general is reconstrued non-transcendently as a proposal to update to ostensible common certainty. This imperative replaces the factive 'T-axiom', KA-> A, of modal logical explications of knowledge to yield an doxastically imperatival, but evidence-sensitive theory of assertoric truth claims. On such a basis, Max Black's and G.E. Moore's ostensibilist account of assertors representing themselves as knowing is defended against Tim Williamson's 1996 and Igor Douven's 2006 respective deontic proposals for a knowledge or rational credibility requirement. Moreover, ostensibly unconditional, unhedged assertion is reconciled with a reality of dimly perceived potential defeaters on recognizing it to be a tacit semifactual, if need be. (shrink)

Bodies of collective knowledge evolve through individual action, like all products that have a use. They also can be evaluated from the engineer's optimizing design perspective. But can individual participants in their making recognize local optimality? Can they work to realize it? Are they unable to act seriosly in a way that would ensure acquisition of a certain suboptimal design feature? One might hope for a simple answer: appeal to innate constraints on the form of categorization. But such constraints cannot (...) wholly pre-empt the need for individual checks and thus for agency. The use of categorial schemes engages facts about the world that do not leap to the eye. They are unlike syntactic or phonological constraints of language, or edge-and orientation-detection algorithms of visual perception. What we should thus be looking for will be modest: constraints, innate or otherwise, that rule out the choice of categorial schemes which are clearly suboptimal and that are, in principle, open to agents' instant observation. We look to a limited if important domain of systematic knowledge: medical diagnostic knowledge. (shrink)

This collection includes twenty original philosophical essays in honour of Wolfgang Spohn. The contributions mirror the scope of Wolfgang Spohn’s work. They address topics from epistemology (e.g., the theory of ranking functions, belief revision, and the nature of knowledge and belief), philosophy of science (e.g., causation, induction, and laws of nature), the philosophy of language (e.g., the theory of meaning and the semantics of counterfactuals), and the philosophy of mind (e.g., intentionality and free will), as well as problems of ontology, (...) logic, the theory of practical rationality, and meta-philosophy. ― Contributors: Ansgar Beckermann, Wolfgang Benkewitz, Bernd Buldt, Ralf Busse, Christoph Fehige, Wolfgang Freitag, Gordian Haas, Volker Halbach, Franz Huber, Andreas Kemmerling, Manfred Kupffer, Hannes Leitgeb, Godehard Link, Arthur Merin, Thomas Müller, Julian Nida-Rümelin, Martine Nida-Rümelin, Hans Rott, Holger Sturm, Thomas Ede Zimmermann, Alexandra Zinke. (shrink)

Richard’s funeral Mass was celebrated in the Oratory Church, Oxford on 30 October 2024. A church Richard was thoroughly familiar with because of the Latin Masses he attended there. He would often d...

Arthur Madigan presents a clear, accurate new translation of the third book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, together with two related chapters from the eleventh book. Madigan's accompanying introduction and commentary give detailed guidance to these texts, in which Aristotle sets out the main questions of metaphysics and assesses the main answers to them, and which serve as a useful introduction not just to Aristotle's own work on metaphysics but to classical metaphysics in general.

1m Studienjahr 1953/54 hielt ich an der Universitat Wien als Gast­ professor Vorlesungen und Seminare uber die gegenwartige analytische Philosophie in USA und England. Auf Grund einer Einladung durch die philosophische Fakultat, die hauptsachlich der Initiative von em. o. o. Professor Dr. VICTOR KRAFT zu verdanken war, wurde mir zu diesem Zweck yom amerikanischen State Department ein "Fulbright"­ Stipendium gewahrt. Das vorliegende Buch entsprang dieser Tatigkeit. Es ware jedoch ohne die sachverstandige und enthusiastische Mitarbeit von Dr. PAUL FEYERABEND, dem ich (...) hiermit meinen herzlichen Dank aussprechen will, kaum in so kurzer Zeit zustandegekommen. Fragmente eines Vorlesungsmanuskriptes lagen nur fUr die ersten drei Kapitel vor. Dr. FEYERABEND verfertigte die fehlenden Partien ex post facto auf Grund der N otizen, die er sich, als auBergewohnlich aktiver "Horer", bei den Vorlesungen und Seminaren machte. Ich unterzog sein Manuskript einer grundlichen Revision, hier und dort auch Erweiterungen anbringend; der groBte Teil des Buches entstand auf diese Weise. Auch die anregenden Diskussionen mit Dr. FEYERABEND, innerhalb und auBerhalb der Vor­ lesungen und Seminare, waren ein betrachtlicher Ansporn zum Schreiben dieses Buches. (shrink)

There seem to me, however, to be serious flaws in Goodman's intricate chain of argument, which I wish to examine in some detail.

One observes regulation at every biological level. Organisms, cells, and biochemical processes operate efficiently, normally wasting neither material nor energy, and adjusting their functions to external influences. Nature evidently has evolved mechanisms specifically dedicated to regulation at many levels. What is the molecular basis of this control?In the 1950s these molecular control mechanisms began to be explored seriously. The discoveries of feedback inhibition of enzyme activity were important because they gave an initial example of how regulation is achieved at the (...) molecular level. We showed that certain enzymes are composed of two parts, one for catalysis and another distinct part present only to regulate this catalysis. Catalytic activity can be either stimulated or inhibited when a small molecule in the environment combines with the enzyme's regulatory site. In particular, a final product of a metabolic pathway generates a feedback loop which automatically limits its own excessive production, by combining with the regulatory site of an early enzyme in that pathway. Later studies showed that catalytic and regulatory structures of some enzymes could be separated physically.The discovery of regulatory sites and their interaction with molecules unrelated to their substrates was the basis for the generalized allosteric concept. This concept extends the regulatory site idea to a wide variety of processes such as control of gene expression, hormone action, and cellular growth. (shrink)

The Pajama (Pardee, Jacob, Monod) experiment provided a breakthrough in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which gene expression is regulated. Today, twenty‐five years later it provides a paradigm for thinking about problems of gene expression, such as growth regulation and differentiation. From this experiment emerged entities such as repressors, regulatory genes, the operon as a group of jointly controlled genes, and messenger RNA.

We prove three theorems concerning Laver indestructibility, strong compactness, and measurability. We then state some related open questions.

Contents.--The pursuit of values.--Science and values.--Biological viewpoints.--Mental attitudes.--Ethics.--Religion.--The management of life.--The social mind social progress.--Government.--International relations.--Education.--Proportion in education.--The American college.--Objective experience.

The authors of “The Two Front War on Reproductive Rights” make a profoundly important observation—“Because zygotes, embryos and fetuses early in gestation are neither viable nor independent without...

We construct a model for the level by level equivalence between strong compactness and supercompactness in which the least supercompact cardinal κ has its strong compactness indestructible under adding arbitrarily many Cohen subsets. There are no restrictions on the large cardinal structure of our model.

We prove two theorems concerning indestructibility properties of the first two strongly compact cardinals when these cardinals are in addition the first two measurable cardinals. Starting from two supercompact cardinals $\kappa _1 < \kappa _2$, we force and construct a model in which $\kappa _1$ and $\kappa _2$ are both the first two strongly compact and first two measurable cardinals, $\kappa _1$ ’s strong compactness is fully indestructible, and $\kappa _2$ ’s strong compactness is indestructible under $\mathrm {Add}$ for any (...) ordinal $\delta $. This provides an answer to a strengthened version of a question of Sargsyan found in [17, Question 5]. We also investigate indestructibility properties that may occur when the first two strongly compact cardinals are not only the first two measurable cardinals, but also exhibit nontrivial degrees of supercompactness. (shrink)

We force and construct models in which there are non-supercompact strongly compact cardinals which aren't measurable limits of strongly compact cardinals and in which level by level equivalence between strong compactness and supercompactness holds non-trivially except at strongly compact cardinals. In these models, every measurable cardinal κ which isn't either strongly compact or a witness to a certain phenomenon first discovered by Menas is such that for every regular cardinal λ > κ, κ is λ strongly compact iff κ is (...) λ supercompact. (shrink)

We explore Woodin's Universality Theorem and consider to what extent large cardinal properties are transferred into HOD (and other inner models). We also separate the concepts of supercompactness, supercompactness in HOD and being HOD-supercompact. For example, we produce a model where a proper class of supercompact cardinals are not HOD-supercompact but are supercompact in HOD. Additionally we introduce a way to measure the degree of HOD-supercompactness of a supercompact cardinal, and we develop methods to control these degrees simultaneously for a (...) proper class of supercompact cardinals. Finally, we also produce a model in which the unique supercompact cardinal is also the only strongly compact cardinal, no cardinal is supercompact up to an inaccessible cardinal, level by level inequivalence holds and the unique supercompact cardinal is not HOD-supercompact. (shrink)

We show that the consistency of the theories “ holds below ” + “there is an injection ” + “both and fail” and + “ holds below ” + “there is an injection ” + “ satisfies the tree property” follow from the appropriate supercompactness hypotheses. These provide answers in a choiceless context to certain long‐standing open questions concerning, weak square, approachability, and the tree property. There is nothing special about, and the injection into can be from any ordinal λ (...) (which means that pcf theory can fail badly in the models constructed if ). (shrink)

We show the relative consistency of ℵ1 satisfying a combinatorial property considered by David Fremlin (in the question DU from his list) in certain choiceless inner models. This is demonstrated by first proving the property is true for Ramsey cardinals. In contrast, we show that in ZFC, no cardinal of uncountable cofinality can satisfy a similar, stronger property. The questions considered by D. H. Fremlin are if families of finite subsets of ω1 satisfying a certain density condition necessarily contain all (...) finite subsets of an infinite subset of ω1, and specifically if this and a stronger property hold under MA + ¬CH. Towards this we show that if MA + ¬CH holds, then for every family ? of ℵ1 many infinite subsets of ω1, one can find a family ? of finite subsets of ω1 which is dense in Fremlins sense, and does not contain all finite subsets of any set in ?.We then pose some open problems related to the question. (shrink)

For any ordinal δ, let λδ be the least inaccessible cardinal above δ. We force and construct a model in which the least supercompact cardinal κ is indestructible under κ-directed closed forcing and in which every measurable cardinal δ < κ is < λδ strongly compact and has its < λδ strong compactness indestructible under δ-directed closed forcing of rank less than λδ. In this model, κ is also the least strongly compact cardinal. We also establish versions of this result (...) in which κ is the least strongly compact cardinal but is not supercompact. (shrink)