Most agents can acquire information about their environments as they operate. A good plan for such an agent is one that not only achieves the goal, but is also executable, i.e., ensures that the agent has enough information at every step to know what to do next. In this paper, we present a formal account of what it means for an agent to know how to execute a plan and to be able to achieve a goal. Such a theory is (...) a prerequisite for producing specifications of planners for agents that can acquire information at run time. It is also essential to account for cooperation among agents. Our account is more general than previous proposals, correctly handles programs containing loops, and incorporates a solution to the frame problem. It can also be used to prove programs containing sensing actions correct. (shrink)

Strangers, Gods and Monster is a fascinating look at how human identity is shaped by three powerful but enigmatic forces. Often overlooked in accounts of how we think about ourselves and others, Richard Kearney skillfully shows, with the help of vivid examples and illustrations, how the human outlook on the world is formed by the mysterious triumvirate of strangers, gods and monsters. Throughout, Richard Kearney shows how strangers, gods and monsters do not merely reside in myths or fantasies (...) but constitute a central part of our cultural unconscious. Above all, he argues that until we understand better that the Other resides deep within ourselves, we can have little hope of understanding how our most basic fears and desires manifest themselves in the external world and how we can learn to live with them. (shrink)

Why is debate over the free will problem so intractable? In this broad and stimulating look at the philosophical enterprise, Richard Double uses the free will controversy to build on the subjectivist conclusion he developed in The Non-Reality of Free Will (OUP 1991). Double argues that various views about free will--e.g., compatibilism, incompatibilism, and even subjectivism--are compelling if, and only if, we adopt supporting metaphilosophical views. Because metaphilosophical considerations are not provable, we cannot show any free will theory to (...) be most reasonable. Metaphilosophy and Free Will deconstructs the free will problem and, by example, challenges philosophers in other areas to show how their philosophical argumentation can succeed. (shrink)

O mundo está em dificuldades e a matemática está envolvida. Somos educadores de matemática - professores, pesquisadores, ativistas. Qual é a nossa resposta? Qual é a nossa responsabilidade? Na primeira parte deste texto, sintetizo as características da educação matemática de que podemos precisar: responsabilidade, crítica, imaginação, incerteza, conduzida em um espírito de relacionamento ético, humildade, liberdade de aprendizado e reconhecimento do valor fundamental de cada ser humano, criatura não humana, idioma, cultura e ecossistema, e nossa dependência deles para nossa própria (...) existência e sobrevivência. Na segunda parte, proponho o dialogismo como uma postura epistemológica para a educação matemática da qual essas características decorrem. Desenvolvo alguns dos fundamentos epistemológicos do dialogismo, baseando-me particularmente no trabalho de Bakhtin sobre a linguagem e sua filosofia do ato. Essas ideias incluem significado, resposta, capacidade de resposta, interdependência e não-finalidade. Ilustro essas ideias em relação a duas situações: linguagem e diversidade cultural nas salas de aula de matemática; e o papel da matemática no contexto da biodiversidade. Concluo enfatizando que pensar dialogicamente sobre a matemática em uma época de problemas aponta para a importância de nossa responsabilidade uns com os outros em cada momento de nossa existência. (shrink)

The numerous difficulties facing the traditional Humean regularity approach to the problem of causation have been discussed in the literature at great length. In view of the current interest in possible worlds semantics, it is not surprising that the only serious alternative treatment of causation presently available, the counterfactual approach, has been explored recently as a means of circumventing the apparently unresolvable difficulties facing regularity causal theories. It is the purpose of this paper to suggest that such a strategy holds (...) little promise. Specifically, I will argue that, in addition to giving rise to problems directly analogous to those facing regularity accounts, the counterfactual approach fails in principle to reflect important properties of causal relations as we understand them intuitively. David Lewis's possible worlds account, the most comprehensive counterfactual theory to date, is further criticized for implicit problems with natural lawhood even more serious than those typically raised for regularity accounts, for additional inadequacies in its analysis of causal relations, and for its failure to satisfy basic empiricist epistemological standards. (shrink)

"And I have felt / A presence that disturbs me with the joy / Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime."--William Wordsworth A Sense Sublime is a record of a life lived during the last years of the twentieth century on the northern edge of the tallgrass prairies of Illinois, where seas of flowing grasses give way to the glaciated hills of Wisconsin. With camera in hand, Richard Quinney walked the streets and byways and traveled the country roads. Quinney watched (...) through his viewfinder the rising and passing of all things, giving attention to the wonder of daily existence. He captures the transcendental landscape; land and sky powerfully meld into one. The black and white of shadow on snow explores the light and darkness we know and experience in human existence. Gothic images of weathered homes and barns of long-gone settlers and shaded cemeteries still haunt the landscape, while romantic vistas of clouds majestically drifting over magnificent prairies instill an agrarian sublimity akin to Wordsworth or Thoreau. The photographs, from the end of a century, document the passing of the seasons and the years. Quinney's photographs are historical artifacts, framed of portions of the world within his spiritual eye, the camera's viewfinder. The photos, accompanied with notes from Quinney's journals, as well as the words of others, are extensions of the long tradition of transcendental writers, romantic poets, and landscape painters. They are Quinney's own attempt to solve the mystery of human existence and a way to experience the sublime in everyday life. These were the years lived as a camera. (shrink)

Peirce’s True Gorgias is a brief dialogue from his essay “Grounds of Validity of the Laws of Logic”, published in 1869. The True Gorgias exposes the fallacy of existential import. It has received no sustained attention in the secondary literature, perhaps because the fallacy is now familiar. Peirce’s assessment of the fallacy involved in the reasoning, however, changes between 1865 and 1869, and he only arrives at the contemporary account of existential import in 1880. Moreover, a careful examination of the (...) context in which the True Gorgias appears reveals it provides an argument in support of Peirce’s early Aristotelian realism about universals in contradistinction to non-Aristotelian varieties of realism advocated by W.T. Harris, editor of the journal in which the True Gorgias was published. (shrink)

When examined together, Swedburg argues, these books and other writings constitute an interesting alternative model of economic thinking, as well as a major contribution to political economy that deserves a place in contemporary discussions ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 453 PAUL HENRY (19o6-1984) Paul Henry was a renowned scholar of Plotinus and Neo-Platonism. Born in Louvain, the son of a chemistry professor at the university there, he was sent to school in England during World War I. He then returned to Belgium, and studied philosophy and theology at Louvain, and joined the Society of Jesus. He did further studies in Paris in Middle Eastern culture, and (...) studied Arabic in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. In Rome he did further studies and received an S.T.D. from the Pontifical Gregorian University, as well as a Licentiate in Sacred Scripture from the Pontifical Gregorian University. He was appointed professor at the Institut Catholique in Paris. He published several fundamental studies on Plotinus and the development of NeoPlatonism in Western thought. He and Hans Rudolf Schwyzer of Zurich collaborated on the critical edition of Plotinus's Enneads,and he and his former student, Pierre Hadot, produced the critical edition of the theological treatises of Marius Victorinus. Paul Henry made his first visit to the United States in 1952 where he was a visiting professor at Fordham. At a meeting of the American Philosophical Association that year he met Richard Popkin. They became close friends. This led to Henry being invited to be a visiting professor at the University of Iowa, to give the Foster lecture on the immortality of the soul at the University of California, Berkeley, and to his later being appointed a regular professor at the University of California, San Diego. He also was a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Duke, Northwestern, the College of New Rochelle and St. John's University in New York. Paul Henry was an important consultant and adviser to the JournaloftheHistoryofPhilosophy in its early years. With his vast erudition, his understanding of the different kinds of scholarship being undertaken in Europe and America, in Catholic and non-Catholic institutions, he was able to assist us in finding the best scholarly articles, the best referees and reviewers of materials in many fields. Paul Henry was a person of immense charm, vivacity and humanity. He was able to break down barriers between people of differing backgrounds, and to form deep, abiding friendships with students and scholars all over the world. He took great interest in a variety of ventures to increase learning and understanding in intellectual history. His concerns ranged from early Christian thought, pagan Neo-Platonism, the fusion of the two in Victorinus and Augustine, up to leading intellectual ideas in modern European thought such as the structuralism of LeviStrauss and the theology of Teilhard de Chardin. He encouraged young and maturing scholars in America and Europe, and tried to bring out the very best of their abilities. He encouraged the understanding of different thought systems, the appreciation of their strengths and weaknesses. And, perhaps as much as any one in the post-second-World-War period, he encouraged frank and open discussions between Catholic and non-Catholic scholars, and thereby built many bridges. Those who knew him have profited immensely from his learning, wisdom and humanity. Those who worked to launch and develop the Journal are especially grateful for his help and support in the early days of this venture. We hope that his scholarship will encourage many others to develop fresh understandings of Neo-Platonism and its importance in the philosophical, theological and scientific world, from ancient times to the present. He will be sorely missed, but he has left a great legacy to those working in the history of philosophy. RICHARD H. POPKIN... (shrink)

As one of the earliest Western physics teachers, Richard Rufus of Cornwall helped transform Western natural philosophy in the 13th century. But despite the importance of Rufus's works, they were effectively lost for 500 years, and the Physics commentary is the first complete work of his ever to be printed. Rufus taught at the Universities of Paris and Oxford from 1231 to 1256, at the very time when exposure to Aristotle's ibri naturales was revolutionizing the academic curriculum; indeed Rufus (...) gave the earliest surviving lectures on physics and metaphysics. Rufus not only expounded the views of Aristotle and the commentator Averroes, but he also challenged them, and this lively discussion proved to be enormously influential. Rufus rejected Aristotle's theory of projectile motion, and this rival view was later adopted by Franciscus de Marchia. His revised account of the place of the heavens was taken up by Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas; and his defence of creation, still considered a cogent reply to Aristotle's claims for a beginningless universe, was to be embraced by both Bacon and Bonaventure. Professor Wood's meticulous edition sheds light on that Crucial period when the medieval West for the first time acquired a comprehensive scientific account of the cosmos. (shrink)

Since the publication of the original edition in 1947, Richard McKeon's _Introduction to Aristotle _has become the standard text for a variety of courses in philosophy and the humanities. For this revised and enlarged edition, Professor McKeon has completely rewritten his General Introduction and his introductions to the particular works. He has also expanded the collection to include material from _On the Parts of Animals_ and the _Rhetoric_. Aristotle's contribution to Western civilization is enormous. Our language, our distinctions, our (...) ways of thinking, all are profoundly affected by his work. Since an understanding of Aristotle is indispensable for the understanding of our own culture, the ready availability of his work is crucial. This collection, for students and general readers alike, provides in one volume _Posterior Analytics_, _De Anima_, _Nicomachean Ethics_, and _Poetics_, complete and unabridged, together with generous selections from _Physics, On the Parts of Animals, Metaphysics, Politics, _and_ Rhetoric_. These works, together with Professor McKeon's revised introductions, provide a convenient and thorough exposure to the works of Aristotle and to the structural interrelations in the Aristotelian system of thought. (shrink)

In this paper, I reflect on the puzzle that machine learning presents to social theory to develop an account of its distinct impact on social reality. I start by presenting how machine learning has presented a challenge to social theory as a research subject comprising both familiar and alien characteristics (1.). Taking this as an occasion for theoretical inquiry, I then propose a conceptual framework to investigate how algorithmic models of social phenomena relate to social reality and what their stochastic (...) mode of operation entails in terms of their sociality (2.). Analyzed through a theoretical lens that relies on central tenets of sociological systems theory, I find that machine learning implies a distinct epistemic transformation, based on how algorithmic modeling techniques process meaning as represented in data embedded in vector space. Building on this characterization, I introduce my conceptualization of stochastic technology as distinct from mechanistic technologies that rely on causal fixation (3.). Based on this understanding, I suggest that real-world applications of machine learning are often characterized by a constitutive tension between the stochastic properties of their outputs and the ways in which they are put to use in practice. Focussing on the large language models LaMDA and ChatGPT, I examine the epistemological implications of LLMs to account for the confusion of correlation and causality as the root of this tension. Next, I illustrate my theoretical conception by way of discussing an essay on image models by German media artist Hito Steyerl (4.). Following a critical reflection on Steyerl's characterization of Stable Diffusion as a “white box ”, I finally propose to conceive ofmachine learning-based technologies as stochastic contingency machines that transform social indeterminacy into contingent observations of social phenomena (5.) In this perspective, machine learning constitutes an epistemic technology that operates on meaning as extractable from data by means of algorithmic data modeling techniques to produce stochastic accounts of social reality. (shrink)

This provocative book explores the difficulties surrounding the attempt to understand the relationship between literary and political discourse. It examines the initial formulation of these difficulties in Georgian Britain, and traces them through the cultural debates of the Victorian men of letters to the critical ideologies of the twentieth-century literary academy. Richard Bourke offers an incisive critique of the way in which the idea of Culture has been used as a means of resolving the failure to establish an adequate (...) theory of politics in the wake of the French Revolution. (shrink)

Abe Kobo was one of Japan's greatest postwar writers, widely recognized for his imaginative science fiction and plays of the absurd. However, he also wrote theoretical criticism for which he is lesser known, merging literary, historical, and philosophical perspectives into keen reflections on the nature of creativity, the evolution of the human species, and an impressive range of other subjects. Abe Kobo tackled contemporary social issues and literary theory with the depth and facility of a visionary thinker. Featuring twelve essays (...) from his prolific career -- including "Poetry and Poets," written in 1944, and "The Frontier Within, Part II," written in 1969 -- this anthology introduces English-speaking readers to Abe Kobo as critic and intellectual for the first time. Demonstrating the importance of his theoretical work to a broader understanding of his fiction -- and a richer portrait of Japan's postwar imagination -- Richard F. Calichman provides an incisive introduction to Abe Kobo's achievements and situates his essays historically and intellectually. (shrink)

A revised and expanded version of a talk given by Richard Rorty on the occasion of the award of the Meister-Eckhart Sachbuch preis in December 2001, the article provides for its author an occasion for highlighting the latest developments regarding the condition of reli- gion, religiosity, belief, faith, and atheism. Starting from the common sense and rather numerous instances of those who are „religiously unmusical,“ Richard Rorty looks briefly at the meandering course of secularization, endors- ing the idea (...) that the conflict between science and religion is a struggle for supremacy between two institutions. Dealing mostly with Gianni Vattimo’s book Credere di credere, the American philosopher builds, in his unmistak- able style, rich in highlights and shades, a case for the question of the (post)modernist believer, but also an occasion to notice the entrenching line separating the religious from the non-religious person, as two opposing ways of interpreting transcendence: as dependence, for the religious person; as hope, for the non-religious one. (shrink)

Ponderings II–VI begins the much-anticipated English translation of Martin Heidegger's "Black Notebooks." In a limited edition binding, this series of small notebooks with black covers, Heidegger confided sundry personal observations and ideas over the course of 40 years. The five notebooks in this volume were written between 1931–1938 and thus chronicle Heidegger's year as Rector of the University of Freiburg during the Nazi era. Published in German as volume 94 of the Complete Works, these challenging and fascinating journal entries shed (...) light on Heidegger's philosophical development regarding his central question of what it means to be, but also on his relation to National Socialism and the revolutionary atmosphere of the 1930s in Germany. Readers previously familiar only with excerpts taken out of context may now determine for themselves whether the controversy and censure the "Black Notebooks" have received are deserved or not. This faithful translation by Richard Rojcewicz opens the texts in a way that captures their philosophical and political content while disentangling Heidegger's notoriously difficult language. (shrink)