This article is about relations of support and conflict within systems of fundamental legal rights—and the arguments for and against rights that those relations make possible. Justificatory linkage arguments defend controversial rights by claiming that they provide very useful support to the realisation of well-accepted rights. This article analyses such arguments in detail and discusses their structures, uses and pitfalls. It then shows that linkage arguments can be used not just to defend rights, but also to attack them. (...) When rights conflict—whether severely or weakly, logically or practically—negative linkage arguments attacking them can be based on the trouble they make for other rights. Many examples of conflicts of rights are provided. Negative linkage arguments provide reasons for rejecting, repealing or trimming the criticised right. Such arguments are already in regular use, but their c. (shrink)

Publication date: 30 November 2016 Source: Author: Remi Chukwudi Okeke, Adeline N. Idike This study raises some fundamental issues in the relationship between public debt and sustainable national development in Nigeria. The work is significant in highlighting the position of public debt in the subject area of public administration. The study finds a very weak linkage between public debt and sustainable national development in the Nigerian state. The theoretical framework of the investigation is the bureaucratic theory. The work (...) finds that the bureaucracy is as guilty as the politician in the country, in the transmutation of public debt into a brand of national bazaar. It is finally recommended in the paper that taxation-increases be adopted as alternative to public debt, in ensuring that the current generation of the country’s citizens, in meeting their immediate needs do not invariably endanger the capacity of future generations in the same regards. (shrink)

Many natural and biological phenomena can be depicted as networks. Theoretical and empirical analyses of networks have become prevalent. I discuss theoretical biases involved in the delineation of biological networks. The network perspective is shown to dissolve the distinction between regulatory architecture and regulatory state, consistent with the theoretical impossibility of distinguishing a priori between “program” and “data”. The evolutionary significance of the dynamics of trans-generational and inter-organism regulatory networks is explored and implications are presented for understanding the evolution of (...) the biological categories development-heredity; plasticity-evolvability; and epigenetic-genetic. (shrink)

Democratic Crisis and Global Constitutional Law explains the current weakness of democratic polities by examining antinomies in constitutional democracy and its theoretical foundations. This book argues that democracy is usually analysed in a theoretical lens that is not adequately sensitive to its historical origins. The author proposes a new sociological framework for understanding democracy and its constitutional preconditions, stressing the linkage between classical patterns of democratic citizenship and military processes and arguing that democratic stability at the national level relies (...) on the formation of robust normative systems at the international level. On this basis, he argues that democracy is frequently exposed to crisis because the normative terms in which it is promoted and justified tend to simplify its nature. These terms create a legitimising space in which anti-democratic movements, typically with a populist emphasis, can take shape and flourish. (shrink)

Theories of how religion shapes business tend to focus on dominant religious institutions. What happens in the case of minority religions, where the alignment of religion with other dominant institutions may be weak at best? To answer this question, I first develop an emergentist account of religion, explaining how macro-level conditioning shapes meso- and micro-level interactions in religious contexts, leading to either structural change or stasis in business contexts. I illustrate this account by examining how Roman Catholicism as a (...) minority religion shapes corporate capitalism in two cities: Bangalore, India, and Dubai, UAE. Drawing on in-depth interviews (N=200) and 12 months of participant observation, I show how countervailing mechanisms create both assets and liabilities for Catholic professionals’ success in workplaces, contributing to morphostasis rather than change. I argue that such processes cannot be adequately understood without specifying their “macrofoundations,” and identify corresponding macro-level influences at global and local levels. By specifying such macro-micro linkages, this article improves our understanding of how religion shapes business. (shrink)

Markets, law, and regulation are intimately intertwined. Thus, recent studies (by Morton Keller and Donald McCloskey et al.) of the intersection between public policy and the economy are both necessary and welcome. But the absence in these works of a nuanced conceptualization of the critical, constructive role of civil authority in the creation and maintenance of open, competitive markets, and the virtual absence of a concern for and understanding of the engines of real economic growth, results in scholarship that only (...) weakly articulates the profound linkage between civil authority, open markets, and economic growth. (shrink)

The 1950s were a frenetic moment in the European integration process during which the European Economic Community (EEC), the ultimately abortive Free Trade Area (FTA), and subsequently the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) were all negotiated. Trade unions showed keen interest in these schemes; moreover, their own highly institutionalised cooperation suggested they might come to play a key role in shaping them. And yet scholars have argued how divergent traditions and domestic pressures precluded the emergence of a coherent trade union (...) platform on European unity. While not rejecting the structural weaknesses of union internationalism in this regard, this article asks why union centres nevertheless continued to engage with one another on the integration question. Focusing on the British Trade Unions Congress (TUC) and deploying a transnational approach to best understand the interaction between the national and international levels, it shows that union linkages still offered the TUC and its counterparts a valuable chance to learn from and persuade others – and even their governments – of their views, objectives and affairs. Such trade union diplomacy was thus in and of itself valuable despite wider union spats and misgivings, and did at times impact the broader language and approach of the countries involved. (shrink)

The objective of the study is to re-examine the Verba, Nie, and Kim 's path-breaking analysis of political participation and political equality, under the inclusion of a social network model in Japan. In particular, the present research investigates how and why we find the extremely low correlations between one's socio-economic resource level and political participation in Japan, the evidence unsatisfactorily explained by the VNK analysis. Building on the social network model and employing the first wave of the Asian Barometer survey (...) conducted in 2003, this research presents a more comprehensive model of political participation. The study finds three major kinds of causes for the weak associations between SERLpsychological involvement linkage. From the viewpoint of the social network model, it is clear that the weak SERL–participation linkage is derived from the equalizing impact of group-based processes, yet uniquely Japanese style of network involvement. (shrink)

After centuries of relative neglect, the notion of the messianic is again in vogue in radical discourse. This paper explores the meaning and significance of this concept in the work of Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben. They have been chosen not only because of their biographical and theoretical linkages to the thinker most responsible for the current resurgence of the concept of the messianic – Walter Benjamin – but also because they offer two alternative readings of precisely this concept. After (...) exploring the meaning of this concept in Benjamin, Arendt and Agamben, the analysis turns to the related concepts of sovereignty and the “camps” in our principals in order to further elaborate the difference between them and to bring into focus the strengths and weaknesses of the theoretical/political deployment of messianism in contemporary leftist thought. (shrink)

This study explores the semiotics of humor and political disaffection in the online feedback discourse evaluating party performance in a post-election era in Nigeria’s democratic practice. It examines the incongruities in multimodal digital humor as semiotic resources of subversive play to criticize a political party for its perceived weak program-to-policy linkage. Data for the study comprise some purposively sampled political internet memes which were deployed to express political disaffection at the party All Progressives Congress in the first half (...) of its four-year tenure. The study applies Algirdas J. Greimas’ semiotic theory by drawing upon the notions of narrativity and modalities to read the selected political internet memes, which run profound social commentaries on the anxieties and frustrations of the ordinary citizens in a failing economy, thereby underpinning the thrust of the theory, which lies not only in the signification of texts but also in the signification of the living experience. The study reveals the power of signs evidenced in the deployment of objects, behaviors, practices, images, and symbols within the socio-economic sub/culture of the production of the internet memes to configure backlashes of democratic deficits relating largely to worsening poverty, hunger, struggle for survival, and political cynicism in an emerging democracy. (shrink)

Modern cities form city networks through complex social ties. City network research is widely applied to guide regional planning, infrastructure construction, and resource allocation. China put forward the Yellow River Basin Development Strategy in 2019, but no research has been conducted on regional social connections among cities. Based on the gravity model modified by two-way “time distance” between cities, this is the first study to empirically examine the intensity and structure of the entire city network in the Yellow River basin (...) using the social network analysis method and ArcGIS software. The connection rules of the cross-city transfer of city officials in the basin are also investigated to illustrate the official ties between cities. The results suggest that the intensity of two-way connections between cities is generally low in the Yellow River basin and there is a positive correlation between city network development level and regional economic development level. The development gap between cities on the north and south banks is larger than that between the east and west regions, and some cities in the middle and upper reaches of the river are marginalized in the network. The status of the central cities in the Yellow River basin is distinct, but their connecting and leading abilities are not strong, showing an inverted T-shaped spatial distribution. The subgroups of city networks have strong internal connections, while the connection among subgroups is weak and the development shows a partitioned and fragmented pattern, making it difficult to form linkages among the upper, middle, and lower reaches. The “beaded chain” spatial development strategy can be adopted in the river basin planning, giving priority to strengthening the links within subgroups of cities and among adjacent subgroups, building central city chains, and reinforcing the overall basin management. (shrink)

Although epistasis is at the center of the Fisher-Wright debate, biologists not involved in the controversy are often unaware that there are actually two different formal definitions of epistasis. We compare concepts of genetic independence in the two theoretical traditions of evolutionary genetics, population genetics and quantitative genetics, and show how independence of gene action (represented by the multiplicative model of population genetics) can be different from the absence of gene interaction (represented by the linear additive model of quantitative genetics). (...) The two formulations converge with weak selection but not with strong selection or, for multiple loci, when the aggregated interaction terms are not negligible. As a result of the different formulations of gene interaction, the presence or absence of linkage disequilibrium,/D/, does not necessarily indicate the presence or absence of fitness epistasis. Indeed, linkage disequilibrium is generated in ‘additive’ models in quantitative genetics whenever two (or more) loci experience simultaneous selection. As a research strategy, it is often practical, for theoretical or experimental reasons, to minimize gene interaction by assuming independence of gene action in regard to fitness, or by assuming linear additive effects of multiple loci on a phenotype. However, minimizing the role of epistasis in theoretical investigations hinders our understanding of the origins of diversity and the evolution of complex phenotypes. (shrink)

I present a case for a rapprochement between aspects of rationalism and scientific realism, by way of a general framework employing modal epistemology and elements of 2-dimensional semantics (2DS). My overall argument strategy is meta-inductive: The bulk of this paper establishes a “base case,” i.e., a concretely constructive example by which I demonstrate this linkage. The base case or constructive example acts as the exemplar for generating, in a constructively ‘bottom-up’ fashion, a more generally rigorous case for rationalism-realism qua (...) modal epistemology. The exemple I choose in D. Chalmers’ (2002) modal rationalism and R. Giere’s (1985, 1988) constructive realism. I show by way of a thorough analysis how Giere’s claims concerning modal scope are characterized as instances of Chalmers’ modal rationalism, both weak and strong. In essence, as I demonstrate via Chalmers’ notions, ceteris paribus the constructive realist ultimately opts for a comparatively wider gate, characterized by modal reasoning, to lead from the rooms of conceivability qua thought experiments and models, to the pastures of metaphysical possibility. Chalmers likewise tries to erect such a wider gate, in his general conceivability-possibility theses. Anti-realists, on the other hand, see a narrower passage and my contention herein is that they suffer from modal myopia, which hopefully the ‘corrective vision’ of Chalmers’ modal rationalism can restore. In the introduction and concluding sections I sketch out suggestions of constructing ‘inductive steps’ from my base case, to generate more extensively general claims regarding realism qua rationalism. -/- . (shrink)

We consider the concept of poverty from the asset-accumulation approach and propose an integrated framework, building upon existing theories, to describe how the interconnected factors of trust (or lack thereof) and social distance can reinforce poverty traps. Social distance is influenced by choice, while trust is the symptom that defines the strength of social ties on a group. We look at how an absence of trust influences how households make decisions about the use and accumulation of assets in ways that (...) could perpetuate poverty. Weak trust also affects how groups interact with each other in a society, creating “trust clusters” within homogeneous groups and antagonism across groups, which in turn affects aspirations and leads to an erosion of the basis of a social contract. For more effective and sustainable poverty reduction, we need to understand these linkages and address them systematically. (shrink)

My conclusion is that Mendel deliberately, though without any real falsification, tried to suggest to his audience and readers an unlikely and substantially wrong reconstruction of the first and most important phase of his research. In my book I offer many reasons for this strange and surprising behavior,53 but the main argument rests on the fact of linkage. Mendelian genetics cannot account for linkage because it was based on the idea of applying probability theory to the problem of (...) species evolution. Central to the theory is the law of probability according to which the chance occurrence of a combination of independent events is the product of their separate probabilities. This is the common basis of Mendel's first and second laws, but this is why Mendel's second law on independent assortment is enunciated in too general a way. From Morgan's work we now know that characters may not always be independent if their genes are located very close one to the other on the same chromosome. And this was also the basis of Mendel's personal drama: he surely observed the effects of linkage, but he had no theoretical tools with which to explain it. So he presented his results in a logical structure consistent with the central idea of his theory. Had he described the real course of his experiments he would have had to admit that his law worked for only a few of the hundreds of Pisum characters — and it would thus have been considered more of an exception than a rule. This is why he insisted on the necessity of testing the law on other plants, and this is why in his second letter to Carl Nägeli he admits that the publication of his data was untimely and dangerous.54.We can argue that already in 1866 Mendel was less confident that his so-called second law had the same general validity as the first — and that later he lost his confidence altogether. Contemporary testimony indicates that in the end he became as skeptical as all his contemporaries as to the scientific relevance of his theory.55 But he was wrong. His research is in no way the fruit of methodological mistakes or forgery, and it remains a landmark in the history of science. He was only the victim of a strange destiny in which the use of probability theory was responsible, at the same time, for the strength and for the weakness of his theory. We must still consider him the father and founder of genetics. (shrink)

Unlike other Post-Communist countries, Romania displays three clear individual-level trends related to political and religious institutions. The Romanians are the most supportive for the EU and Church, and the most critical towards national political institutions in the region. By conducting an empirical longitudinal study on the Romanian population, we aim to understand the linkages between these two trends and to identify what can explain the high level of trust vested by the Romanian citizens in the Orthodox Church in the post-Communist (...) period. In doing so, we test two alternative explanations and we employ bivariate and multivariate statistics. The results indicate that there is weak evidence for the relationship between trust in political and religious institutions, with a stronger emphasis on the EU aspect. Whenever the attitudes are linked, they are consistent: positive attitudes towards the national government and Parliament trigger positive attitudes towards the Church. (shrink)

The generator of electromagnetic gauge transformations in the Dirac equation has a unique geometric interpretation and a unique extension to the generators of the gauge group SU(2) × U(1) for the Weinberg-Salam theory of weak and electromagnetic interactions. It follows that internal symmetries of the weak interactions can be interpreted as space-time symmetries of spinor fields in the Dirac algebra. The possibilities for interpreting strong interaction symmetries in a similar way are highly restricted.

We prove that the Gödel incompleteness theorem holds for a weak arithmetic T = IΔ0 + Ω2 in the form where Cons H (T) is an arithmetic formula expressing the consistency of T with respect to the Herbrand notion of provability.

In light of many recent critiques of Western modernity and its conceptual foundations, the problem of adequately justifying our most basic moral and political values looms large. Without recourse to traditional ontological or metaphysical foundations, how can one affirm — or sustain — a commitment to fundamentals? The answer, according to Stephen White, lies in a turn to “weak” ontology, an approach that allows for ultimate commitments but at the same time acknowledges their historical, contestable character. This turn, White (...) suggests, is already underway. His book traces its emergence in a variety of quarters in political thought today and offers a clear and compelling account of what this might mean for our late modern self-understanding. (shrink)

In the present paper we examine very weak modal logics C1, D1, E1, S0.5◦, S0.5◦+(D), S0.5 and some of their versions which are closed under replacement of tautological equivalents (rte-versions). We give semantics for these logics, formulated by means of Kripke style models of the form , where w is a «distinguished» world, A is a set of worlds which are alternatives to w, and V is a valuation which for formulae and worlds assigns the truth-vales such that: (i) (...) for all formulae and all worlds, V preserves classical conditions for truth-value operators; (ii) for the world w and any formula ϕ, V(⬜ϕ,w) = 1 iff ∀x∈A V(ϕ,x) = 1; (iii) for other worlds formula ⬜ϕ has an arbitrary value. Moreover, for rte-versions of considered logics we must add the following condition: (iv) V(⬜χ,w) = V(⬜χ[ϕ/ψ],w), if ϕ and ψ are tautological equivalent. Finally, for C1, D1and E1 we must add queer models of the form in which: (i) holds and (ii') V(⬜ϕ,w) = 0, for any formula ϕ. We prove that considered logics are determined by some classes of above models. (shrink)

Hare proposes a view he calls prospectism for making choices in situations in which preferences have a common, but problematic structure. I show that prospectism permits the decision-maker to make a series of choices she knows in advance will lead to a sure loss. I also argue that a theory that permits the decision-maker to make choices she knows in advance will lead to a sure loss should be rejected.

Weak emergence has been offered as an explication of the ubiquitous notion of emergence used in complexity science (Bedau 1997). After outlining the problem of emergence and comparing weak emergence with the two other main objectivist approaches to emergence, this paper explains a version of weak emergence and illustrates it with cellular automata. Then it explains the sort of downward causation and explanatory autonomy involved in weak emergence.

Working within weak subsystems of second-order arithmetic Z2 we consider two versions of the Baire Category theorem which are not equivalent over the base system RCA0. We show that one version (B.C.T.I) is provable in RCA0 while the second version (B.C.T.II) requires a stronger system. We introduce two new subsystems of Z2, which we call RCA+ 0 and WKL+ 0, and show that RCA+ 0 suffices to prove B.C.T.II. Some model theory of WKL+ 0 and its importance in view (...) of Hilbert's program is discussed, as well as applications of our results to functional analysis. (shrink)

Proof-theoretic methods are developed for subsystems of Johansson’s logic obtained by extending the positive fragment of intuitionistic logic with weak negations. These methods are exploited to establish properties of the logical systems. In particular, cut-free complete sequent calculi are introduced and used to provide a proof of the fact that the systems satisfy the Craig interpolation property. Alternative versions of the calculi are later obtained by means of an appropriate loop-checking history mechanism. Termination of the new calculi is proved, (...) and used to conclude that the considered logical systems are PSPACE-complete. (shrink)

It is common in recent epistemology to distinguish different senses, or conceptions, of epistemic justification. The proposed oppositions include the objective/subjective, internalist/externalist, regulative/nonregulative, resource-relative/resource-independent, personal/verific, and deontological/evaluative conceptions of justification. In some of these cases, writers regard both members of the contrasting pair as legitimate; in other cases only one member. In this paper I want to propose another contrasting pair of conceptions of justification, and hold that both are defensible and legitimate. The contrast will then be used to construct (...) a modified version of reliabilism, one which handles certain problem cases more naturally than my previous versions of reliabilism. (shrink)

This paper introduces an interesting class of predicates that come in pairs, so-called total and partial predicates. It will be shown that such predicates contribute to an explanation for the weak and strong interpretations of donkey sentences. This paper proposes that the phenomenon of weak and strong interpretations is real, and that whether a sentence receives the weak or the strong interpretation depends on the predicate in the nuclear scope of the sentence. It also proposes that sum (...) individuals are calculated at some level before the nuclear scope of the sentence is processed. Once the sum individuals are calculated, it will be decided whether the nuclear scope is true of at least one element of the sum individual (weak interpretation) or true of all elements of the sum individual (strong interpretation). (shrink)

In the following paper we propose a model-theoretical way of comparing the “strength” of various truth theories which are conservative over $$PA$$. Let $${\mathfrak {Th}}$$ denote the class of models of $$PA$$ which admit an expansion to a model of theory $${ Th}$$. We show (combining some well known results and original ideas) that $$\begin{aligned} {{\mathfrak {PA}}}\supset {\mathfrak {TB}}\supset {{\mathfrak {RS}}}\supset {\mathfrak {UTB}}\supseteq \mathfrak {CT^-}, \end{aligned}$$ where $${\mathfrak {PA}}$$ denotes simply the class of all models of (...) $$PA$$ and $${\mathfrak {RS}}$$ denotes the class of recursively saturated models of $$PA$$. Our main original result is that every model of $$PA$$ which admits an expansion to a model of $$CT ^-$$, admits also an expansion to a model of $$UTB$$. Moreover, as a corollary to one of the results (brought to us by Carlo Nicolai) we conclude that $$UTB$$ is not relatively interpretable in $$TB$$, thus answering the question from Fujimoto (Bull Symb Log 16:305–344, 2010). (shrink)

In the literature, regress arguments often take one of two different forms: either they conclude that a given solution fails to solve any problem of a certain kind (the strong conclusion), or they conclude that a given solution fails to solve all problems of a certain kind (the weaker conclusion). This gives rise to a logical problem: do regresses entail the strong or the weaker conclusion, or none? In this paper I demonstrate that regress arguments can in fact take both (...) forms, and clearly set out the logical difference between them. Throughout the paper, I confine myself to metaphysical examples from the early Russell. Only now that we know they are valid can we start to discuss whether they are sound. (shrink)

In this paper we carry out an algebraic investigation of the weak nilpotent minimum logic and its t-norm based axiomatic extensions. We consider the algebraic counterpart of WNM, the variety of WNM-algebras and prove that it is locally finite, so all its subvarieties are generated by finite chains. We give criteria to compare varieties generated by finite families of WNM-chains, in particular varieties generated by standard WNM-chains, or equivalently t-norm based axiomatic extensions of WNM, and we study their standard (...) completeness properties. We also characterize the generic WNM-chains, i. e. those that generate the variety [MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL W]ℕ[MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL M], and we give finite axiomatizations for some t-norm based extensions of WNM. (shrink)

Academic skepticism is usually interpreted as a type of discourse without an assertion (a dialectical interpretation). I argue against this interpretation. One can interpret Carneades’ notion of approval as our notion of weak assertion and thereby ascribe to him his own views (a non-dialectical interpretation). In Academica Cicero reports the debate about the status of approval as a kind of assent among Carneades’ followers, especially the views of Clitomachus and Philo of Larissa. According to Clitomachus, approving impressions implies acting (...) on them without taking them as true, while according to Philo of Larissa, approval is taking something as true without certainty. In more modern terms, we can say that Philo refers to the notion of weak assertion, and Clitomachus to non-assertion. Thus Clitomachus’ reading correlates with a dialectical reading, and Philo’s reading correlates with a non-dialectical reading. Philo’s reading leads to the interpretation of Carneades as a quasi-fallibilist. It is difficult to establish the precise position of the historical Carneades because he was hesitant in his oral teaching. Still, there is some basis in Carneades’ theory for interpreting approval as weak assertion (comprising three degrees of persuasiveness involving rational consideration of what seems to be truth). My aim in this essay is thus to argue that a quasi-fallibilist and non-dialectical reading is applicable to the historical Carneades. (shrink)

This paper offers a new and very simple alternative to Bochvar's well known nonsense -- or meaninglessness -- interpretation of Weak Kleene logic. To help orient discussion I begin by reviewing the familiar Strong Kleene logic and its standard interpretation; I then review Weak Kleene logic and the standard interpretation. While I note a common worry about the Bochvar interpretation my aim is only to give an alternative -- and I think very elegant -- interpretation, not necessarily a (...) replacement. (shrink)

Attitude verbs like ‘believe’ and ‘want’ exhibit neg-raising: an ascription of the form a doesn’t believe that p tends to convey that a disbelieves—i.e., believes the negation of—p. In ‘Belief is Weak’, Hawthore et al. observe that neg-raising does not occur with verbs like ‘know’ or ‘need’. According to them, an ascription of the form a believes that p is true just in case a is in a belief state that makes p more likely than not, and so—excepting cases (...) of complete indifference—a will either believe p or disbelieve p. I expand and revise this explanation: so-called ‘weak’ attitude verbs are used in ascriptions of an opinion about some subject matter S—a kind of selection from among the elements of S—and these ascriptions are themselves responsive to conversational topics that presuppose that the subject of the ascription has an opinion about S. ‘Strong’ attitude verbs denote more direct relationships between subject and world. (shrink)