In an extensive revision of this important book, first published by Plenum in 1980, a distinguished roster of contributors reconsider this much heralded ...

One of the challenges facing AI governance is the need for multiple scales. Universal human rights require a global scale. If someone asks AI if education is harmful to women, the answer should be “no” regardless of their location. But economic democratization requires local control: if AI’s power over an economy is dictated by corporate giants or authoritarian states, it may degrade democracy’s social and environmental foundations. AI democratization, in other words, needs to operate across multiple scales. Nature allows the (...) multiscale flourishing of biological systems through fractal distributions. In this paper, we show that key elements of the fractal scaling found in nature can be applied to the AI democratization process. We begin by looking at fractal trees in nature and applying similar analytics to tree representations of online conversations. We first examine this application in the context of OpenAI’s “Democratic Inputs” projects for globally acceptable policies. We then look at the advantages of independent AI ownership at local micro-levels, reporting on initial outcomes for experiments with AI and related technologies in community-based systems. Finally, we offer a synthesis of the two, micro and macro, in a multifractal model. Just as nature allows multifractal systems to maximize biodiverse flourishing, we propose a combination of community-owned AI at the micro-level, and globally democratized AI policies at the macro-level, for a more egalitarian and sustainable future. (shrink)

I argue that the solution to the Red Hat Problem, a puzzle derived from interactive epistemic logic, requires S5. Interactive epistemic logic is set out in formal terms, and an attempt to solve the red hat puzzle is made in K τσ, K ρτ, and K ρσ, each of which fails, showing that a stronger system, K τσρ is required.

Abstract: I argue that the solution to the Red Hat Problem, a puzzle derived from interactive epistemic logic, requires S5. Interactive epis- temic logic is set out in formal terms, and an attempt to solve the red hat puzzle is made in K, K, and K, each of which fails, showing that a stronger system, K is required.

Providing the most thorough coverage available in one volume, this comprehensive, broadly based collection offers a wide variety of selections in four major genres, and also includes a section on film. Each of the five sections contains a detailed critical introduction to each form, brief biographies of the authors, and a clear, concise editorial apparatus. Updated and revised throughout, the new Fourth Edition adds essays by Margaret Mead, Russell Baker, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, and Alice Walker; fiction by Nathaniel Hawthorne, (...) Ursula K. LeGuin, Anton Chekov, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Alice Walker, Louise Erdrich, Donald Barthelme, and James McPherson; poems by John Donne, Robert Browning, Walt Whitman, Edwin Arlington Robinson, e.e. cummings, Langston Hughes, W.H. Auden, Philip Levine, and Louise Gluck; and plays by August Wilson, Marsha Norman, Wendy Wasserstein, and Vaclav Havel. The chapter devoted to film examines the relation of film to literature and gives the complete screenplay for Citizen Kane plus close analysis of a scene from the film. With its innovative structure, comprehensive coverage, and insightful and stimulating presentation of all kinds of literature, this is an anthology readers will turn to again and again. (shrink)

Is faith that p compatible with disbelief that p? I argue that it is. After surveying some recent literature on the compatibility of propositional and non-propositional forms of faith with the lack of belief, I take the next step and offer several arguments for the thesis that both these forms of faith are also compatible, in certain cases, with outright disbelief. This is contrary to the views of some significant recent commentators on propositional faith, including Robert Audi and Daniel (...) Howard-Snyder. The primary argument revolves around the possibility of maintaining a single faith through drastic changes in cognitive attitude. I argue that once we allow that propositional faith is compatible with weaker cognitive attitudes than belief, such as acceptance or assent, there is prima facie reason to consider propositional faith as sometimes compatible with disbelief. I then consider objections and offer some final reflections on the significance of the thesis. (shrink)

Within medical ethics, there is widespread agreement that morally valid consent includes an understanding condition. Disagreement centers on what is meant by that understanding condition. Tom Dougherty proposed that this understanding condition should be divided into the two mutually exclusive categories of descriptive information and contextual information. Further, Dougherty argues that each type of information is necessary to satisfy the understanding condition. In contrast, I argue that when the deontic aspect of valid consent is in view, each type of information (...) can be sufficient to satisfy the understanding condition on its own. Moreover, by analyzing delegation, which is conceptually related to consent since both are morally transformative actions, I show that delegation often depends not on descriptive or contextual information but on trust. So, I argue that trustworthiness can also be a type of information that does the same work as descriptive and contextual information in satisfying the understanding condition for valid consent. (shrink)

A major question for the relevant logics has been, “Under what conditions is Ackermann's ruleγ from -A ∨B andA to inferB, admissible for one of these logics?” For a large number of logics and theories, the question has led to an affirmative answer to theγ problem itself, so that such an answer has almost come to be expected for relevant logics worth taking seriously. We exhibit here, however, another large and interesting class of logics-roughly, the Boolean extensions of theW — (...) free relevant logics (and, precisely, the well-behaved subsystems of the 4-valued logicBN4) — for which γ fails. (shrink)

Morality and religion: intimately wed, violently opposed, or something else? Discussion of this issue appears in pop culture, the academy, and the media―often generating radically opposed views. At one end of the spectrum are those who think that unless God exists, ethics is unfounded and the moral life is unmotivated. At the other end are those who think that religious belief is unnecessary for―and even a threat to―ethical knowledge and the moral life. -/- This volume provides an accessible, charitable discussion (...) that represents a range of views along this spectrum. The book begins with a lively debate between Paul Kurtz and William Lane Craig on the question, Is goodness without God good enough? Kurtz defends the affirmative position and Craig the negative. Following the debate are new essays by prominent scholars. These essays comment on the debate and advance the broader discussion of religion and morality. The book closes with final responses from Kurtz and Craig. (shrink)

I aim to synthesize two issues within theistic metaphysics. The first concerns the metaphysics of creaturely properties and, more specifically, the nature of unshareable properties, or tropes. The second concerns the metaphysics of providence and, more specifically, the way in which God sustains creatures, or sustenance. I propose that creaturely properties, understood as what I call modifier tropes, are identical with divine acts of sustenance, understood as acts of property-conferral. I argue that this *theistic conferralism* is attractive because it integrates (...) trope theory and the doctrine of sustenance in a mutually enhancing way. Taking modifier tropes to be divine acts mitigates certain weaknesses of trope theory and safeguards divine sustenance from the threat of both deism and occasionalism. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Narrowing the Scope Culture Learning Styles Confronting Racism Philosophical and Conceptual Issues.

In this paper, we shall confine ourselves to the study of sentential constants in the system R of relevant implication.In dealing with the behaviour of the sentential constants in R, we shall think of R itself as presented in three stages, depending on the level of truth-functional involvement.

The Description for this book, The Analysis of Knowing: A Decade of Research, will be forthcoming.

What do well-known theories look like if formulated with a relevant rather than a standard classical or intuitionist logic? Do familiar reconstructions of these theories go through, or do we change the reconstruction when we change the logic? I show in this paper that a new class of fallacies arises when we take the familiar Peano postulates as the foundation for a relevant theory of the natural numbers N. For these postulates fail in the relevant context to establish the relevant (...) cancellation theorem. Put otherwise, there are fallacies of division in arithmetic formulated relevantly! (shrink)

Modus ponens provides the central theme. There are laws, of the form A→C. A logic L collects such laws. Any datum A provides input to the laws of L. The central ternary relation R relates theories L,T and U, where U consists of all of the outputs C got by applying modus ponens to major premises from L and minor premises from T. Underlying this relation is a modus ponens product operation on theories L and T, whence RLTU iff LTU. (...) These ideas have been expressed, especially with Routley, as worlds semantics for relevant and other substructural logics.Worlds are best demythologized as theories, subject to truth-functional and other constraints. The chief constraint is that theories are taken as closed under logical entailment, which clearly begs the question if we are using the semantics to determine which theory L is Logic itself. Instead we draw the modal logicians’ conclusion—there are many substructural logics, each with its appropriate ternary relational postulates.Each logic L gives rise to a Calculus of L-theories, on which particular candidate logical axioms have the combinatorial properties expected from the well-known Curry–Howard isomorphism . We apply their bubbling lemma, updating the Fools Model of Combinatory Logic at the pure → level for the system BT. We make fusion an explicit connective, proving a combinator correspondence theorem. Having taken relevant → as a left residual for , we explore its right residual mate →r. Finally we concentrate on and prove a finite model property for the classical minimal relevant logic CB, a conservative extension of the minimal positive relevant logic B+. (shrink)

Trope theory is an increasingly prominent contender in contemporary debates about the existence and nature of properties. But it suffers from ambiguity concerning the nature of a trope. Disambiguation reveals two fundamentally different concepts of a trope: modifier tropes and module tropes. These types of tropes are unequally suited for metaphysical work. Modifier tropes have advantages concerning powers, relations, and fundamental determinables, whereas module tropes have advantages concerning perception, causation, character-grounding, and the ontology of substance. Thus, the choice between modifier (...) tropes and module tropes is significant and divides the advantages of trope theory simpliciter. In addition, each resulting trope theory is unstable: modifier trope theory threatens to collapse into realism and module trope theory threatens to collapse into austere nominalism. This invites reflection on the stability of trope theory in general. (shrink)