Originally published in 1990. Each of the 12 chapters in this book build upon an approach to the analysis of spoken and written texts that is centred upon the recipient rather than the producer, for the abilities of listeners and readers deserve much attention. This book should be of interest to students and lecturers of linguistics, literary studies, English, education, communication studies and psychology.

Causality plays an important role in medieval philosophical writing: even before the rediscovery of Aristotle's major works, the created universe was seen as a rational manifestation of God's action. In the later Middle Ages, the dominant genre of medieval academic writing was the commentary on an authoritative work: Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics were frequently commented on, and both contain a great deal of material on causation. So the nature of the philosophical and theological themes which were popular in the Middle (...) Ages led to an emphasis on causality. Writers studied the interrelationship of divine grace and natural processes, the role of the will in ethics, free will and determinism: all of these problems have an important causal component. (shrink)

We consider the symbol grounding problem, and apply to it philosophical arguments against Cartesianism developed by Sellars and McDowell: the problematic issue is the dichotomy between inside and outside which the definition of a physical symbol system presupposes. Surprisingly, one can question this dichotomy and still do symbolic computation: a detailed examination of the hardware and software of serial ports shows this.

We compare the medieval projects of commentaries and disputations with the modern projects of formal ontology and of mathematics.

We start with the ambition -- dating back to the early days of the semantic web -- of assembling a significant portion human knowledge into a contradiction-free form using semantic web technology. We argue that this would not be desirable, because there are concepts, known as essentially contested concepts, whose definitions are contentious due to deep-seated ethical disagreements. Further, we argue that the ninetenth century hermeneutical tradition has a great deal to say, both about the ambition, and about why it (...) fails. We conclude with some remarks about statistics. (shrink)

We examine a series of disputations which Luther participated in towards the end of his career: we argue that these disputations show that Luther was very familiar with the tools of medieval formal logic, and continued to make positive theological use of them until the end of his life.

We show that, given standard assumptions about classical dynamical systems, Lewis' conception of possible worlds is incompatible with classical physics in that it would imply that all dynamical systems were integrable.

The prelims comprise: Introduction: Two Semantic Projects History The Uses of Semantics Conclusions.

This paper describes an application of linear logic programming to the frame problem. This treatment has both practical and conceptual advantages over standard treatments: it is computationally efficient, and this efficiency arises because linear logic respects the identity, or otherwise, of situations.

We compare the role of Cartesian assumptions in the symbol grounding problem and in the Myth of the Given: We argue that the Sellars–McDowell critique of the Myth of the Given and, in particular, its use of the concept of normativity can provide useful resources for responding to the symbol grounding problem. We also describe the concepts of normativity at work in computer science and cognitive science: We argue that normative concepts are pervasive in the sciences and that, in particular, (...) McDowell’s dichotomy between the normative space of reasons and the realm of nature is somewhat problematic. (shrink)

We start with Fodor's critique of cognitive science in "The mind doesn't work that way: The scope and limits of computational psychology": he argues that much mental activity cannot be handled by the current methods of cognitive science because it is nonmonotonic and, therefore, is global in nature, is not context-free, and is thus not capable of being formalized by a Turing-like mental architecture. We look at the use of nonmonotonic logic in the artificial intelligence community, particularly with the discussion (...) of the so-called frame problem. The mainstream approach to the frame problem is, we argue, probably susceptible to Fodor's critique; however, there is an alternative approach, due to McCain and Turner, which is, when suitably reformulated, not susceptible. In the course of our argument, we give a proof theory for the McCain-Turner system and show that it satisfies cut elimination. We have two substantive conclusions: first, that Fodor's argument depends on assumptions about logical form which not all nonmonotonic theories satisfy and, second, that metatheory plays an important role in the context of evolutionary accounts of rationality. (shrink)

We start with a example of assembler programming, and show how even at this low level the structure of the programming language does not directly mirror the structure of the hardware, but that it is also decisively influenced by the human practices surrounding computer use, and that assembly language gives a view of the hardware which is accommodated to human interests and capabilities. We give several historical examples and illustrate the changing pattern of mutual accommodation between human practices and computer (...) technology, and argue for a more explicitly dialectical and critical approach to the history and philosophy of programming. (shrink)

David Lewis' account of counterfactuals is based on a relation of comparative similarity between possible worlds. We investigate what this relation might amount to in the case where the possible worlds are trajectories of dynamic systems: for most dynamic systems, there are unexpected difficulties in defining the sort of relation that Lewis requires. The difficulties are related to a pervasive, but counter-intuitive, feature of dynamic systems called non-integrability.

We analyse Luther's commentary on the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, and describe the rather elaborate theory of causality and power which he uses.

We compare Fresco’s analysis of the Turing machine-based notion of computation with that of others, in particular with functional programming and with the reversible computing paradigm of Toffoli and others. We conclude that, although much useful philosophical work can be done by the sort of analysis that Fresco proposes, there is, nevertheless, always likely to be a number of individually viable but different accounts of computation.

Background: People with traumatic brain injury face a range of mental health challenges during the adjustment process post-injury, but access to treatment can be difficult, particularly for those who live in regional and remote regions. eHealth provides the potential to improve access to evidence-based psychological therapy for people with a severe TBI. The aim of the current study is to assess the efficacy of a psychological intervention delivered via video consulting to reduce psychological distress in people with TBI.Methods: This paper (...) outlines the protocol for a multi-center, three-arm, parallel, non-inferiority randomized controlled trial of an evidence-based manualized psychological intervention, ACT-Adjust. ACT-Adjust provides nine sessions for adults with a moderate to severe TBI experiencing clinical levels of psychological distress. Fifty-six participants referred from Brain Injury Rehabilitation Units across New South Wales and the NSW icare scheme will be randomly allocated to three conditions; video consulting, face-to-face and, a waitlist control.Discussion: This is the first RCT to evaluate the efficacy of a psychological therapy delivered via video consulting for individuals with a moderate to severe TBI.Trial Registration:www.anzctr.org.au, Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ANZCTRN2619001602112. (shrink)

This paper is concerned. with the contrast between simulation- and deduction-based approaches to reasoning about physical objects. We show that linear logic can give a unified account of both simulation and deduction concerning physical objects; it also allows us to draw a principled distinction between simulation and deduction, since simulations correspond to cut-free proofs, whereas deductions correspond to proofs in general.