This paper problematizes contemporary cultural understandings of autism. We make use of the developmental psychology concepts of ‘Theory of Mind’ and ‘mindblindness’ to uncover the meaning of autism as expressed in these concepts. Our concern is that autism is depicted as a puzzle and that this depiction governs not only the way Western culture treats autism but also the way in which it governs everyday interactions with autistic people. Moreover, we show how the concepts of Theory of Mind and mindblindness (...) require autism to be a puzzle in the first place. Rather than treat autism as a puzzle that must be solved, we treat autism as a teacher and thus as having something valuable to contribute toward an understanding of the inherent partiality and uncertainty of human communication and collective life. (shrink)

Traces the development of recursive functions from their origins in the late nineteenth century to the mid-1930s, with particular emphasis on the work and influence of Kurt Gödel.

ZusammenfassungKants Anspruch, gestiitzt auf die «Iogisehe Bedeutung» von «Kausalität», die Annahme einer «Kausalität aus Freiheit» mit den Ergebnissen der Erfahrungstheorie in Einklang bringen zu können, wird in Frage gestellt. Darüber hinaus wird bezweifelt, dass jene Annahme dem Zusam‐menhang eines transzendentalphilosophischen Gedankengangs angehört, da sie weder im selben Sinne wie in der Erfahrungstheorie als Bedingung der Möglichkeit des Sittengesetzes noch als ob‐jektiv gültiges Prinzip aufgefasst werden kann. Sie sprengt daher den Rahmen der transzendentalphilosophischen Betrachtungsweise.

The usual treatment of a dinner table utterance of ‘Can you pass the salt?’ is that it involves an indirect request to pass the salt as well as a direct question about the hearer’s ability to do so: an indirect speech act. These are held to involve two illocutionary forces and two illocutionary acts. Rod Bertolet has raised doubts about whether consideration of such examples warrants the postulation of indirect speech acts and illocutionary forces other than the literal ones. In (...) a recent article, Mary Kate McGowan, Shan Shan Tam, and Margaret Hall claim to show that these doubts are unfounded. The purpose of this paper is to show that they have not established this. (shrink)

In their book, Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection, Depew and Weber argued for the need to address the relationship between self-organization and natural selection in evolutionary theory, and focused on seven “visions” for doing so. Recently, Batten et al. in a paper in this journal, entitled “Visions of evolution: self-organization proposes what natural selection disposes,” picked up the issue with the work of Depew and Weber as a starting point. While the efforts of both sets (...) of authors are to be commended, there are substantive errors in both the presentations of my work and of my work with colleagues that undermine theirs. My purpose here is to correct the errors in question, thereby removing the undermining effects and in so doing reassert the position my colleagues and I first advanced more than two decades ago, and that I still stand by and argue for today. The central points are as follows: Self-organization or spontaneous ordering is a process of selection; this selection process is governed by a “physical selection principle”; this principle is the law of maximum entropy production; and natural selection is a special case where the components are replicating. (shrink)

Construed broadly as interpretation theory, hermeneutics could be understood to encompass all modes of interpretation (textual or otherwise), including any kind of literary criticism, from Aristotle's poetics to the New Criticism of the 1950s, as well as the French tradition of structuralism and even perhaps Derridean poststructural thought. Although Gadamer and Ricoeur both recognize the poetic work or, at least, lyric poetry, as belonging to a special class of literature, they do display somewhat different attitudes toward it. For Gadamer, one (...) of the hallmarks of the eminent text is its un‐translatability. That is, all literary works resist translation to one degree or another, but lyric poetry defies it altogether. In Part I of Truth and Method, Gadamer lays out the history of aesthetics and takes issue with the kind of “aesthetic consciousness” that takes the work of art as an object of study. (shrink)

The first edition, published by Acumen in 2000, became a prescribed textbook on modal logic courses. The second edition has been fully revised in response to readers' suggestions, including two new chapters on conditional logic, which was not covered in the first edition. "Modal Logics and Philosophy" is a fully comprehensive introduction to modal logics and their application suitable for course use. Unlike most modal logic textbooks, which are both forbidding mathematically and short on philosophical discussion, "Modal Logics and Philosophy" (...) places its emphasis firmly on showing how useful modal logic can be as a tool for formal philosophical analysis. In part 1 of the book, the reader is introduced to some standard systems of modal logic and encouraged through a series of exercises to become proficient in manipulating these logics. The emphasis is on possible world semantics for modal logics and the semantic emphasis is carried into the formal method, Jeffrey-style truth-trees. Standard truth-trees are extended in a simple and transparent way to take possible worlds into account. Part 2 systematically explores the applications of modal logic to philosophical issues such as truth, time, processes, knowledge and belief, obligation and permission. (shrink)

An oracle A is low-for-speed if it is unable to speed up the computation of a set which is already computable: if a decidable language can be decided in time $t(n)$ using A as an oracle, then it can be decided without an oracle in time $p(t(n))$ for some polynomial p. The existence of a set which is low-for-speed was first shown by Bayer and Slaman who constructed a non-computable computably enumerable set which is low-for-speed. In this paper we answer (...) a question previously raised by Bienvenu and Downey, who asked whether there is a minimal degree which is low-for-speed. The standard method of constructing a set of minimal degree via forcing is incompatible with making the set low-for-speed; but we are able to use an interesting new combination of forcing and full approximation to construct a set which is both of minimal degree and low-for-speed. (shrink)

A real α is called a c. e. real if it is the halting probability of a prefix free Turing machine. Equivalently, α is c. e. if it is left computable in the sense that L = {q ∈ ℚ : q ≤ α} is a computably enumerable set. The natural field formed by the c. e. reals turns out to be the field formed by the collection of the d. c. e. reals, which are of the form α—β, where (...) α and β are c. e. reals. While c. e. reals can only be found in the c. e. degrees, Zheng has proven that there are Δ02 degrees that are not even n-c. e. for any n and yet contain d. c. e. reals, where a degree is n-c. e. if it contains an n-c. e. set. In this paper we will prove that every ω-c. e. degree contains a d. c. e. real, but there are ω + 1-c. e. degrees and, hence Δ02 degrees, containing no d. c. e. real. (shrink)

We prove a number of structural theorems about the honest polynomial m-degrees contingent on the assumption P = NP . In particular, we show that if P = NP , then the topped finite initial segments of Hm are exactly the topped finite distributive lattices, the topped initial segments of Hm are exactly the direct limits of ascending sequences of finite distributive lattices, and all recursively presentable distributive lattices are initial segments of Hm ∩ RE. Additionally, assuming ¦∑¦ = 1, (...) we show that the theory of the hpm-degrees is undecidable. We also show that index sets cannot be minimal. Lastly, we examine an alternative definition of honest m-reduction under which recursive minimal sets can be constructed. (shrink)

Current models for regulation of parent‐specific gene expression in plants have been based on a small number of imprinted genes in Arabidopsis. These present repression as the default state, with expression requiring targeted activation. In general, repression is associated with maintenance methylation of cytosines, while no role has been found in Arabidopsis imprinting for de novo methylation—unlike the case in mammals. A recent paper1 both reinforces and challenges the model drawn from Arabidopsis. Methylation patterns of two imprinted loci in maize (...) were tracked from gametes to offspring, enabling an exploration of the timing of imprinting. For one gene, fie1, the results were as expected: parent‐specific methylation patterns were inherited from the three types of gamete: egg, central cell and sperm. The behaviour of fie2, however, was a surprise: no alleles were methylated in the gametes, although paternally contributed fie2 is methylated and silent in the endosperm, indicating that, in some cases, plant imprinting requires de novo DNA methylation. This work significantly broadens our understanding of plant imprinting and points to a greater diversity in imprinting mechanisms than has previously been appreciated. BioEssays 28: 1167–1171, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In Plato on the Unity of the Virtues, Rod Jenks argues that while Plato makes several attempts to show how virtue is one, he deliberately fails to secure this because he thinks the way in which the virtues are both one and many is finally ineffable.

For a set A of non-negative integers, let D be the set of non-negative differences of elements of A. Clearly, if A is computable, then D is computably enumerable. We show that every simple set which contains 0 is the difference set of some computable set and that every computably enumerable set is computably isomorphic to the difference set of some computable set. Also, we prove that there is a computable set which is the difference set of the complement of (...) some computably enumerable set but not of any computably enumerable set. Finally, we show that every arithmetic set is in the Boolean algebra generated from the computable sets by the difference operator D and the Boolean operations. (shrink)

We solve a question of McLaughlin by showing that if A is a regressive co-simple isol, there is a co-simple regressive isol B such that the intersection type of A and B is trivial. The proof is a nonuniform 0 priority argument that can be viewed as the execution of a single strategy from a 0-argument. We establish some limit on the properties of such pairs by showing that if AxB has low degree, then the intersection type of A and (...) B cannot be trivial. (shrink)

In this commentary on Stokoe’s article, ‘Moving forward with membership categorization analysis’, I take up the challenge to apply her keys for MCA to an extract of conversation recorded in a restaurant. The strengths of conversation analysis have not included – and indeed have not attempted to achieve – successful engagement with beyond-the-immediate-talk aspects of culture and the commonsense workings of society. The aim of the article is to explore what MCA might add to an analysis of a stretch of (...) talk using conversation analytic tools. It was found that a systematic application of the keys did indeed provide a richer account of what was going on. Whereas categories alone did not appear to provide more insights than commonsense can tell us, when the broader array of MCA tools and keys were applied, an enhanced analysis of the passage of talk emerged. An exploration of whether this can be extended as a method for a rigorous investigation of culture and society while still being grounded in participants’ mutual, moment-by-moment orientations to categories seems at the very least worth the serious attention of scholars interested in interaction. (shrink)