We investigate the computational complexity the class of Γ-categorical computable structures. We show that hyperarithmetic categoricity is Π11-complete, while computable categoricity is Π04-hard.

This paper utilises rhetorical analysis to explore how persuasive appeals in company social/environmental reports shape understandings about corporate responsibility.

Biological dysfunction is regarded, in many accounts, as necessary and perhaps sufficient for disease. But although disease is conceptualized as all-or-nothing, biological functions often differ by degree. A tension is created by attempting to use a continuous variable as the basis for a categorical definition, raising questions about how we are to pinpoint the boundary between health and disease. This is the line-drawing problem. In this paper, we show how the line-drawing problem arises within “dysfunction-requiring” accounts of disease, such as (...) those of Christopher Boorse and Jerome Wakefield. We then provide several detailed examples to establish that biological dysfunction cannot provide a boundary. We examine potential ways of resolving the line-drawing problem, either by dropping one of the claims that generates it, or by appealing to additional criteria. We argue that two of these options are plausible, and that each of these can be applied with regard to different diseases. (shrink)

Preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic disorders (PGT-P) has been commercially available since 2019. PGT-P makes use of polygenic risk scores for conditions which are multifactorial and are significantly influenced by environmental and lifestyle factors. If current predictions are accurate, then absolute risk reductions range from about 0.02% to 10.1%, meaning that between 10 and 5,000 in vitro fertilization patients would need to be tested with PGT-P to prevent one offspring from becoming affected in the future, depending on the condition and (...) the number of embryos available. Survey and interview data reveal that patients and the public have largely favorable views regarding the use of PGT-P for disease prevention; however, clinicians and professional organizations have many reservations. The use of PGT-P raises multiple social and ethical concerns including the need for adequate counseling, the setting of realistic expectations, the application of distributive justice, the impact of environmental and social determinants of health, and the potential exacerbation of health inequities. Clinicians expressed significant concerns relating to the cost of PGT-P, the potential time-consuming counseling for reproductive endocrinologists and genetic counselors, the intentional creation of supernumerary embryos, and patients’ unrealistic expectations regarding “healthiest disease-free” embryos. Furthermore, current evidence lacks long-term outcome data and generalizability. Prior to offering PGT-P to patients, additional clinical validation studies are needed. Also, ethical and social considerations raised by PGT-P should be carefully delineated. Systemic practices to increase equitable access to unbiased genetic counseling and reproductive services would be desirable prior to the ethical implementation of PGT-P. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate the informativeness of 4- to 6-year-old children’s questions using a combined qualitative and quantitative approach. Children were presented with a hierarchical version of the 20-questions game, in which they were given an array of objects that could be organized into three category levels based on shared features. We then tested whether it is possible to scaffold children’s question-asking abilities without extensive training. In particular, we supported children’s categorization performance by providing the object-related features needed to (...) ask effective constraint-seeking questions. We found that with both age and scaffolding children asked more effective questions, targeting higher category levels and therefore reaching the solution with fewer questions. We discuss the practical and theoretical implications of these results. (shrink)

Using mathematical tools from number theory and finite fields, Applied Algebra: Codes, Ciphers, and Discrete Algorithms, Second Edition presents practical methods for solving problems in data security and data integrity. It is designed for an applied algebra course for students who have had prior classes in abstract or linear algebra. While the content has been reworked and improved, this edition continues to cover many algorithms that arise in cryptography and error-control codes. New to the Second Edition A CD-ROM containing an (...) interactive version of the book that is powered by Scientific Notebook®, a mathematical word processor and easy-to-use computer algebra system New appendix that reviews prerequisite topics in algebra and number theory Double the number of exercises Instead of a general study on finite groups, the book considers finite groups of permutations and develops just enough of the theory of finite fields to facilitate construction of the fields used for error-control codes and the Advanced Encryption Standard. It also deals with integers and polynomials. Explaining the mathematics as needed, this text thoroughly explores how mathematical techniques can be used to solve practical problems. About the Authors Darel W. Hardy is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mathematics at Colorado State University. His research interests include applied algebra and semigroups. Fred Richman is a professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Florida Atlantic University. His research interests include Abelian group theory and constructive mathematics. Carol L. Walker is Associate Dean Emeritus in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at New Mexico State University. Her research interests include Abelian group theory, applications of homological algebra and category theory, and the mathematics of fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Machiavellian Rhetoric: From the Counter-Reformation to MiltonWilliam WalkerMachiavellian Rhetoric: From the Counter-Reformation to Milton, by Victoria Kahn; xv & 3l4 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, $29.95.The premise of this book is that the account of Machiavelli’s politics given by Quentin Skinner and J. G. A. Pocock is fundamentally inadequate. It is inadequate in that it fails to recognize that the Machiavelli of force and fraud—what Kahn calls (...) the “rhetorical Machiavel”—is inseparable from the republican, and that his politics “could be used not only pro and contra republicanism but pro and contra secular thought” (p. 12). This failure is answerable to a flawed methodology: reading Machiavelli’s texts for content, Skinner and Pocock neglect Machiavelli’s rhetorical techniques which “fragment, subvert, or otherwise qualify the literal sense” of his texts (p. 5). By paying attention to these rhetorical techniques, Kahn claims to correct Skinner and Pocock’s misunderstanding of Machiavelli as a virtuous, secular republican and “to provide a revised history of Renaissance Machiavellism, particularly in England” (p. 4).The main reason for the failure of this project is Kahn’s crude understanding of Skinner and Pocock. Rather than seeing Machiavelli assimilating virtù with classical virtue, Skinner observes that Machiavelli’s exclusion of justice from republican virtù is an epoch-making break with the classical republican analysis of the cardinal virtues as expounded in Cicero’s Of Duties. Pocock, too, clearly recognizes that Roman republican virtù as it is documented by Machiavelli includes what Kahn calls “the resources of the Machiavel” (p. 124). In addition, rather than equating Machiavellism with secular republicanism, Pocock observes that it was difficult for not just Machiavelli but everyone in the Renaissance to conceive the moment of recreating the republic without making recourse to the apocalyptic moment, the moment at which grace acted in history. And to think as Kahn does that Pocock needs to be told that Machiavellism could be “used for sectarian religious purposes” (p. 8) is simply to disregard Pocock’s own assertion of this fact and his tremendous meditation on how this actually occurred in the millennially oriented society of seventeenth-century England.The claims which Kahn makes on the basis of her perceptive close readings [End Page 370] of the rhetoric of Machiavelli’s The Prince and The Discourses, then, do not significantly revise Pocock and Skinner. Neither do her considerations of readings of Machiavelli by counter-Reformation thinkers such as Zuccolo, Caterino, and Botero, sixteenth-century Englishmen such as Starkey, Gardiner, Ralegh, Bacon, and Shakespeare, and the seventeenth-century Englishmen who were involved in civil war and Interregnum political debates. These considerations simply make the point that Machiavelli was read in very different ways and was used to support very different political agendas—an interesting point, and one which is entirely consistent with the views of Skinner and Pocock. Kahn’s revised history of English Machiavellism is further compromised by her construal, beginning in chapter five, of Machiavellism as “the Machiavellian topics of legitimacy and force, virtue and success, intention and effect, means and ends” (p. 156). Kahn seems to suppose that because Machiavelli writes about these topics, these topics are Machiavellian, and anyone who writes about them in English is therefore a subscriber to “English Machiavellism.” This move allows her to consider all kinds of texts which only seem remotely connected to Machiavelli—from sixteenth-century debates over things indifferent, to Coriolanus, to masques by Jonson and Carew, to Milton’s Areopagitica, Comus, and Paradise Lost—as cases of “English Machiavellism.” Kahn ends up defining Machiavellism so widely, that is, that she finds it everywhere. On the other hand, she ignores it where it is most conspicuous: she gives passing attention to Marchamont Nedham’s fully articulated republicanism and no attention whatsoever to the most comprehensive English reading of Machiavelli in the seventeenth century: James Harrington’s Oceana.A revised history of Renaissance Machiavellism, particularly in England? Hardly. Skinner and Pocock still rule.William WalkerUniversity of Canterbury, New ZealandCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political ChangeWilliam WalkerProfessional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change, by Stanley Fish; xi & 146 pp. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, $22.00 paper.Our greatest living Miltonist, Professor Fish, continues to address the most hotly contested issues of the profession of literary criticism in prose which, if perhaps not quite the best in Anglo-American literary studies as he once judged it to be, is certainly (...) distinguished by coherence, power, and wit. In this version of material he presented in a workshop at the Folger Library in 1990 and as the Clarendon Lectures at Oxford University in 1993, Fish analyzes the relationship between literary criticism and political change. By literary criticism, he means the activity of determining what a literary text means. According to Fish, while in the eighteenth century just about any kind of commentary on literature counted as literary criticism, the determination of the meaning of literature is the essential job of literary criticism in the twentieth century. By political change, Fish means changes in things such as the way governments spend money, treat their citizens and foreign governments, establish the civil law, and appoint people to office. The major claim of the book is that doing literary criticism in the United States today rarely causes political change. The counsel he offers to all those literary critics who want to bring about political change through their literary work is thus to find a new job: “if you want to send a message that will be heard beyond the academy, get out of it” (p. 2).But why can’t observing that Lycidas means that Milton is afraid of women help to overthrow patriarchy and the legal/cultural system which continues to perpetuate it? Because, Fish claims, “there are, at present, no well-established routes by which literary criticism is first brought to the attention of those who inhabit the centers of power and then presented to them in a way that ties it to their concerns” (p. 52). That is to say that it is because American society is structured in a particular way that literary interpretive acts are politically inconsequential. Though he does not provide much evidence for this big claim about the structure of American society and its relation to literary criticism, Fish does support it by asking us to see the absurdity of imagining otherwise: “think about it. You are about to open a new business or introduce a bill in Congress or initiate an advertising campaign, but you pause to ask yourself, ‘What would the readers of Diacritics say?’” (p. 91). This is not to say that the segregation of literary work from political work is a given of the human condition. Fish cites Renaissance England and contemporary Israel as cases of societies structured in such a way that literary acts have immediate and important political consequences (though literary acts and political acts in these societies are still clearly distinct because their purposes are still different). The point is just that, because American society is currently structured as it is, the activity of identifying the meaning of works of literature is rarely [End Page 544] relevant to political change. The point holds even when one shifts the center of literary work from determining the meaning of literature to (i) observing how literature and the act of professing it are deeply implicated in society-wide structures of power and legitimization, or (ii) observing and “transcending” the boundaries between literary criticism and other disciplines. That is to say that even if one were to transform literary criticism in the way new historicists and several proponents of cultural studies whom Fish cites propose, work in this discipline would still rarely cause significant political change. For the contingent fact is that, regardless of what academics do, think they do, and intend to do, “no one cares very much about literary criticism outside the confines of its professional practice” (p. 55).But if literary criticism cannot, at least for the moment in the U.S., do significant political work, and if, as Fish also claims, it cannot do significant moral, cultural work (making people better, preserving the best that is said... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of HobbesWilliam WalkerReason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, by Quentin Skinner; xvi & 477 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, $49.95.Having shown in his earlier work how the classical Roman texts on rhetoric governed to an important extent the formulation of republican ideas in Italian Renaissance and therefore modern political thought, Skinner now returns to these texts in order to (...) treat more comprehensively one of the major subjects of his research over the last thirty years—Thomas Hobbes. Determined to understand not so much what Hobbes’s writings mean as what Hobbes is doing, what “traditions he reacts against, what lines of argument he takes up, what changes he introduces into existing debates” (p. 8), Skinner devotes the entire first half of the book to “classical eloquence in Renaissance England” (p. 17). Citing mainly the Ad Herennium and the texts on rhetoric by Cicero and Quintilian, he provides a superb account of the classical Roman theory of persuasive speaking, as well as the ideal of citizenship which underlies it: for the Romans, the vir civilis, the good citizen, is the virtuous, wise, rational man [End Page 204] who exercises his mastery of the art of rhetoric to serve his community by pleading for just verdicts in the courts and beneficial policies in the assemblies. Citing the Tudor humanists who were instituting and teaching at the grammar schools, but also several sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English rhetoricians, poets, and prose writers, Skinner then observes how this classical theory of persuasion and its ideal of citizenship achieved “widespread currency” (p. 1) in England and served as the foundation for “the rhetorical culture of Renaissance humanism” (p. 250).It is in relation to this culture, Skinner insists in the second part of the book, that Hobbes must be understood. For although, as many have pointed out, Hobbes’s thinking was in part formed by the scientific developments of the century, “his intellectual formation was overwhelmingly indebted not to the culture of science but to the humanist literary culture” (p. 216). But this is not to say that Hobbes abides peacefully within this culture. After observing how his education, career, and publications up to 1640 are those of the “typical Renaissance humanist” (p. 217), Skinner argues that in his two major works of the early 1640s, Hobbes powerfully repudiates the entire classical theory of eloquence and its ideal of the vir civilis. For in The Elements of Law and De Cive, Hobbes claims to have made the study of moral and political theory into a scientific discipline. On the basis of this assertion, Skinner argues, Hobbes claims that reason unaided by eloquence is sufficient to persuade others of the truths of civil science, that eloquent men have not sustained but destroyed civil life, and that the most important duties of citizenship lie in the private sphere. In short, “Hobbes’s argument culminates in a view of citizenship and its obligations diametrically opposed to the image of the vir civilis” (p. 291). He does so, moreover, in prose which studiously avoids the invocation of commonplaces and authorities, the establishment of any ethos, the manipulation of definitions, the redescription of vices as virtues and virtues as vices (paradiastole), and the tropes and figures—Hobbes practices the repudiation of rhetoric he preaches.But then there is Leviathan (1651). Responding primarily out of his understanding of how Presbyterian and House of Commons demagogues incited civil war, Hobbes in his most celebrated work “reverts to the typically humanist assumption that, if we are to succeed in persuading others to accept our arguments, we shall have to supplement the findings of reason with the moving force of eloquence” (p. 426). Though he continues to understand himself transforming politics and morality into a scientific discipline, Hobbes ultimately reaffirms the premises of the rhetorical culture that produced him and that he repudiated in his first major political works. And though he continues to be critical of commonplaces, reliance on authorities, and tropes and figures, Hobbes in this work again practices what he preaches. In the final chapter of the book, Skinner meticulously documents how Hobbes uses the tropes and... (shrink)

The dynamics of populations of self-replicating, hierarchically structured individuals, exposedto accidents which destroy their sub-units, is analyzed mathematically, specifically with regardto the roles of redundancy and sexual repair. The following points emerge from this analysis:0 A population of individuals with redundant sub-structure has no intrinsic steady-statepoint; it tends to either zero or infinity depending on a critical accident rate α c . Increased redundancy renders populations less accident prone initially, but populationdecline is steeper if a is greater than a fixed (...) value α d . Periodic, sexual repair at system-specific intervals prevents continuous decline and stabilizesthe population insofar as it will now oscillate between two fixed population levels. The stabilizing sexual interval increases with increased complexity provided this is accom-panied by appropriate levels of redundancy. The model closely simulates the dynamics of heterosis effects. Repair fitness is a population fitness: the chance of an individual being repaired is a functionof the statistical make-up of the population as a whole at that particular period. Populationsliving at α > α c either engage in sexual repair at the appropriate time or they die out. The mathematical properties of the model illustrate mechanisms which possibly played arole in the evolution of a mortal soma in relation to sexual reproduction. (shrink)

Negative words or integrated negations: Nothingness, the completely Other, Nothing, the Infinite, the Unknowable, the Subconscious all have a certain poetic overtone. But we must be careful of linguistic sleight-of-hand taken for an idea.

The primitive conception is that the future already exists like a terra incognita which one can dimly make out with or without the help of the gods. This idea is at the basis of fatalism and of belief in prophets, oracles and astrologers. This ancient concept was replaced in the nineteenth century by the vocabulary of scientific determinism which said that actual beings can only function. If one knew in detail their structures and their movements, one could calculate the results (...) of their functioning with perfect precision. (shrink)

In this guest column, the medieval historian Caroline Walker Bynum uses her recent experiences as a hospital volunteer advocate for victims of sexual assault and domestic violence in New York City to meditate on the progressive politics of her younger days in the 1960s, on her current doubts about the efficacy of political action, and on the virtue of silent listening.

Female waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) has generally been an important general predictor of ratings of physical attractiveness and related characteristics. Individual differences in ratings do exist, however, and may be related to differences in the reproductive tactics of the male raters such as pursuit of short-term or long-term relationships and adjustments based on perceptions of one’s own quality as a mate. Forty males, categorized according to sociosexual orientation and physical qualities (WHR, Body Mass Index, and self-rated desirability), rated female models on (...) both attractiveness and likelihood they would approach them. Sociosexually restricted males were less likely to approach females rated as most attractive (with 0.68–0.72 WHR), as compared with unrestricted males. Males with lower scores in terms of physical qualities gave ratings indicating more favorable evaluations of female models with lower WHR. The results indicate that attractiveness and willingness to approach are overlapping but distinguishable constructs, both of which are influenced by variations in characteristics of the raters. (shrink)

In Why We Build Rowan Moore shows how buildings are driven by human emotions and desires – such as hope, power, money, sex, and the idea of home – and how buildings then shape our experiences.

Trans and gender-nonconforming people sometimes say that certain gender norms are authentic for them. For example, a trans man might say that abiding by norms of masculinity tracks who he really is. Authenticity is sometimes taken to appeal to an essential, pre-social “inner self.” It is also sometimes understood as a moral notion. Authenticity claims about gender norms therefore appear inimical to two key commitments in feminist philosophy: that all gender norms are socially constructed, and that many domains of gender (...) norms are both morally and prudentially bad. I argue that that this apparent tension is illusory. Concordant with existing trans narratives of authenticity, I articulate an existentialist view that understands authenticity as a socially embedded, constructive project undertaken in a non-ideal social world, rather than a reflective uncovering of a pre-given, essential self. I then show that authenticity and morality can come apart; what is authentic for someone need not be either morally good or good for them. I conclude that the authenticity of gender norms does not cut against the feminist commitments that I identify. This conclusion enables a theoretical space that is both respectful of trans experience and critical of dominant gender norms, an important liberatory goal. (shrink)

Suppose that it would be best if some set of people all did A, significantly worse if they all did B, and worst of all if some did A while some did B. Now suppose that they’re all going to do B, regardless of what the others do. It seems as though each of these people ought to pick B, given what the others are going to do. Yet it also seems as though something has gone wrong. This leads to (...) a puzzle: how can it be wrong for everyone to act as they ought? In this paper, I resolve this puzzle by arguing that there are joint ‘oughts’ which apply irreducibly to pluralities of agents, and which can pull in different directions to ‘oughts’ holding of given individuals; even if everyone individually ought to pick B, what they jointly ought to do is all pick A. (shrink)

_Parallax_ is an international, peer-reviewed journal that aims towards a critical engagement with the production of culture and knowledge. The journal explores a wide range of cultural practices, reconfiguring the production and understanding of culture as well as the relation between theory and practice itself. This text brings together scholars from a number of different theoretical backgrounds to consider the ethical and political processes involved in witnessing, and the possible limits of theory in some situations. Contributors include J.M. Bernstein, Kelly (...) Oliver, Griselda Pollock, Laurence Rickels, Avital Ronell and Hayden White. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Volume: 2013 Issue: 196 Pages: 431-441.

The ethical and social implications of data mining, algorithmic curation and automation in the context of social media have been of heightened concern for a range of researchers with interests in digital media in recent years, with particular concerns about privacy arising in the context of mobile and locative media. Despite their wide adoption and economic importance, mobile dating apps have received little scholarly attention from this perspective – but they are intense sites of data generation, algorithmic processing, and cross-platform (...) data-sharing; bound up with competing cultures of production, exploitation and use. In this paper, we describe the ways various forms of data are incorporated into, and emerge from, hook-up apps’ business logics, socio-technical arrangements, and cultures of use to produce multiple and intersecting data cultures. We propose a multi-layered research agenda for critical and empirical inquiry into this field, and suggest appropriate conceptual and methodological frameworks for exploring the social and political challenges of data cultures. (shrink)

Is it defensible to use the concept of a right? Can we justify this concept's central place in modern moral and legal thinking, or does it unjustifiably side-line those who do not qualify as right-holders? Rowan Cruft brings together a new account of the concept of a right. Moving beyond the traditional 'interest theory' and 'will theory', he defends a distinctive role for the concept: it is appropriate to our thinking about fundamental moral duties springing from the good of (...) the right-holder. This has important implications for the idea of 'natural' moral rights-that is, rights that exist independently of anyone's recognising that they do. Cruft argues that only rights that exist primarily for the sake of the right-holder can qualify as natural in this sense.In its relation to property, however, matters are far more complicated because much property is groundable only by common or collective goods beyond the right-holder's own good. For such property, Cruft argues that a non-rights property system-that resembles modern markets but is not conceived in terms of rights-would be preferable. The result of this study is a partial vindication of the rights concept that is more supportive of human rights than many of their critics might expect, and is surprisingly doubtful about property as an individual right. (shrink)

Oppressive ideology regularly misrepresents features of structural injustice as normal or appropriate. I argue that resisting such injustice therefore requires critical examination of the evaluative judgments encoded in shared concepts. I diagnose a mechanism of ideological misevaluation, which I call hermeneutical misfit. Hermeneutical misfit occurs when thick concepts, or concepts which both describe and evaluate, mobilise ideologically warped evaluative judgments which do not fit the facts (e.g. slutty). These ill-fitted thick concepts in turn are regularly deployed as if they merely (...) describe (hence ‘just the facts’). I argue that, via this descriptive masquerade, ill-fitted thick concepts smuggle in warped evaluative judgments alongside apparently value-neutral ‘mere facts’, a process which both reinforces those judgments and increases the difficulty of critique. I suggest that, to resist this process, we should develop collective consciousness and articulate ‘meta-hermeneutical resources,’ or thick concepts which encode critique of other, ill-fitted concepts (e.g. slut-shaming). (shrink)

Throughout his literary career Walker Percy read and studied the philosophical thought of Charles Sanders Peirce in an attempt to re-present in language the world as Percy knew it. Beginning in 1984 and ending in 1990, the year of his death, Percy corresponded with Kenneth Laine Ketner about the "semiotic" of Peirce. Their letters - honest, instructive, and often filled with down-home humor - record an epistolary friendship of two men both passionately interested in Peirce's theory of signs. This (...) volume of letters provides a rich philosophical perspective for better understanding the fiction and nonfiction of Walker Percy. (shrink)

This paper investigates whether responsibility could be borne vicariously. I distinguish between three different senses of responsibility: attributional responsibility, practices of holding people responsible, and substantive responsibility. I argue that it is doubtful both whether attributional responsibility could be borne vicariously, and whether it could be appropriate to hold someone vicariously responsible. However, I suggest that substantive responsibility can genuinely be borne vicariously. Getting clear on these conceptual issues has important implications for how we approach more concrete legal and political (...) questions. More specifically, I argue these abstract arguments can be used to inform views on the common-law doctrine of joint enterprise, and on reparations for historic injustice. (shrink)

Our think tank tasked by the Dutch Health Council, consisting of Radboud University Nijmegen Honours Academy students with various backgrounds, investigated the implications of Deep Brain Stimulation for psychiatric patients. During this investigation, a number of methodological, ethical and societal difficulties were identified. We consider these difficulties to be a reflection of a still fragmented field of research that can be overcome with improved organization and communication. To this effect, we suggest that it would be useful to found a centralized (...) DBS organization. Such an organization makes it possible to 1) set up and maintain a repository, 2) facilitate DBS studies with a larger sample size, 3) improve communication amongst researchers, clinicians and ethical committees, and 4) improve communication between DBS experts and the public at large. (shrink)

Volume 27, Issue 1, July 2024, Page 3-24.

"Proof" has been and remains one of the concepts which characterises mathematics. Covering basic propositional and predicate logic as well as discussing axiom systems and formal proofs, the book seeks to explain what mathematicians understand by proofs and how they are communicated. The authors explore the principle techniques of direct and indirect proof including induction, existence and uniqueness proofs, proof by contradiction, constructive and non-constructive proofs, etc. Many examples from analysis and modern algebra are included. The exceptionally clear style and (...) presentation ensures that the book will be useful and enjoyable to those studying and interested in the notion of mathematical "proof.". (shrink)

D. C. Stove's analysis of Popper's theory of scientific statements is vitiated by at least three errors, all of which stem from a crucial omission: that whilst Popper's theory of scientific statements is a theory of statements in science, Stove's restrictive analysis ignores the context of the statements and proceeds as though they were related to each other by nothing more than the logic of propositions, i.e. they appear in Stove's analysis as atomistic, as distinct from scientific statements.

A fresh look -- Implications -- The brave new world -- The use of multiplicity in therapy -- How to -- The new practice -- Groupwork and the dialogical self -- The transpersonal -- Some ways forward.

The dissertation provides a critical comparison of the theories of John Rawls and Alasdair MacIntyre with particular attention to the question of identity. The theme of true persuasion as situated by the concepts of eros and logos in Plato's Phaedrus is developed and applied to two contemporary understandings of the person. I suggest explanations for the paradoxical way in which Rawls and MacIntyre tend to read their understandings of identity in terms of the understandings of citizenship. An idiom of Will (...) elaborated in each theorist's view of politics and rationality results in a conflation of person and citizen and the reduction of true persuasion to public philosophy. (shrink)

We argue for three main claims. First, the sentence ‘A and B ought to φ and ψ’ can express what we a call a joint-ought claim: the claim that the plurality A and B ought to φ and ψ respectively. Second, the truth-value of this joint-ought claim can differ from the truth-value of the pair of claims ‘A ought to φ’ and ‘B ought to ψ.’ This is because what A and B jointly ought to do can diverge from what (...) they individually ought to do: it may be true that A and B jointly ought to φ and ψ respectively, yet false that A ought to φ and false that B ought to ψ; and vice-versa. Third, either of two prominent semantic analyses of ‘ought’ – Mark Schroeder’s relational semantics, and Angelika Kratzer’s modal semantics – can model joint-ought claims and this difference in truth-value. (shrink)

Mark Walker argues for Skeptical-Dogmatism-the view that we should disbelieve our cherished philosophical views, such as beliefs about what makes for a good life, religious beliefs, and political beliefs. To not disbelieve one's preferred views in these contested matters is hubristic.

If it works, I can use Putnam’s vat argument to show that I have not always been a brain-in-a-vat. It is widely thought that the vat argument is of no use against closure scepticism – that is, scepticism motivated by arguments that appeal to a closure principle. This is because, even if I can use the vat argument to show that I have not always been a BIV, I cannot use it to show that I was not recently envatted, and (...) it is thought that the claim that I am not justified in thinking that I was not recently envatted is all that the closure sceptic requires. In this paper I first argue that scenarios in which I have been recently envatted are inadequate for the sceptic’s purposes, and so the standard argument that the vat argument is of no use against closure scepticism fails. I then argue that it is not possible to revise the standard argument to meet my objection. I conclude that, if it works, I can use the vat argument as a defence against closure scepticism. (shrink)

Being a theist makes a difference, but not so much to what propositions we assent to, nor to an expanded ontology of spiritual entities. Rather, it is concerned with what commitments we enter into, and involves a participatory engagement with a broader reality then we might have supposed was possible. Embodied practices are a crucial part of the contemplative path, which draws on the wisdom of the body. This leads on to a “labor of culture.” Our present culture is not (...) obviously as secular as supposed to be, but what has now become sacred is a strong sense of the individual ego, around which many ethical and political commitments are built, and which sits uneasily with our widely accepted mechanistic view of life. The crucial challenge to artificial intelligence is whether it can find ways of enhancing the mutual recognition that is crucial to the ethical life. (shrink)