In the predicate calculus, variables provide a flexible indexing service which selects the actual arguments to a predicate letter from among possible arguments that precede the predicate letter (in the parse of the formula). In the process of selection, the possible arguments can be permuted, repeated (used more than once), and skipped. If this service is withheld, so that arguments must be the immediately preceding ones, taken in the order in which they occur, the formula is said to be fluted. (...) Quine showed that if a fluted formula contains only homogeneous conjunction (conjoins only subformulas of equal arity), then the satisfiability of the formula is decidable. It remained an open question whether the satisfiability of a fluted formula without this restriction is decidable. This paper answers that question. (shrink)

Fluted Logic is essentially first-order predicate logic deprived of variables. The lack of variables results in reduced expressiveness. Nevertheless, many logical problems that can be stated in natural language, such as the famous Schubert's Steamroller, can be rendered in fluted logic. Further evidence of the expressiveness of fluted logic is its close relation to description logics. Already it has been shown that fluted logic is decidable and has the finite-model property. This paper shows that fluted logic has the exponential-model property (...) and that deciding satisfiability is NEXPTIME-complete. It is shown further that fluted logic is 'nice, that is, it shares with first-order predicate logic the interpolation property and model preservation properties. (shrink)

Fluted Logic is essentially first-order predicate logic deprived of variables. The lack of variables results in reduced expressiveness. Nevertheless, many logical problems that can be stated in natural language, such as the famous Schubert's Steamroller, can be rendered in fluted logic. Further evidence of the expressiveness of fluted logic is its close relation to description logics. Already it has been shown that fluted logic is decidable and has the finite-model property. This paper shows that fluted logic has the exponential-model property (...) and that deciding satisfiability is NEXPTIME-complete. It is shown further that fluted logic is 'nice’, that is, it shares with first-order predicate logic the interpolation property and model preservation properties. (shrink)

Fluted logic is the restriction of pure predicate logic to formulas in which variables play no essential role. Although fluted logic is significantly weaker than pure predicate logic, it is of interest because it seems closely to parallel natural logic, the logic that is conducted in natural language. It has been known since 1969 that if conjunction in fluted formulas is restricted to subformulas of equal arity, satisfiability is decidable. However, the decidability of sublogics lying between this restricted (homogeneous) fluted (...) logic and full predicate logic remained unknown. In 1994 it was shown that the satisfiability of fluted formulas without restriction is decidable, thus reducing the unknown region significantly. This paper further reduces the unknown region. It shows that fluted logic with the logical identity is decidable. Since the reflection functor can be defined in fluted logic with identity, it follows that fluted logic with the reflection functor also lies within the region of decidability. Relevance to natural logic is increased since the identity permits definition of singular predicates, which can represent anaphoric pronouns. (shrink)

In a 1969 paper, Quine coined the term 'limits of decision'. This term evidently refers to limits on the logical vocabulary of a logic, beyond which satisfiability is no longer decidable. In the same paper. Quine showed that not only monadic formulas, but homogeneous k-adic formulas for arbitrary k lie on the decidable side of the limits of decision. But the precise location of the limits of decision has remained an open question. The present paper answers that question. It addresses (...) the question of decidability of those sublogics of first-order logic that are defined in terms of their logical vocabularies. A complete answer is obtained, thus locating exactly Quine's limits of decision. (shrink)

Exploring what a scientific metaphysics grounded in biological practices could look like and how it might impact the way we investigate the world around us, the contributors to From Biological Practice to Scientific Metaphysics review and discuss long-held objections to metaphysics by natural scientists. They illuminate how, in order to learn about the world as it truly is, we must look not only at what scientists say but also what they do.

In 2006, Bill Crain was a psychology professor and his wife, Ellen, a pediatrician. They purchased a run-down farm in upstate New York, and two years later opened Safe Haven Farm Sanctuary. It is now home to over 170 animals rescued from slaughter. In Animal Stories, Bill writes about how he and Ellen decided to start the sanctuary and tells the stories of 25 animals and their many surprising behaviors. Read about Katie, a hen who cared for a little partridge; (...) Cesar, a little goat who constantly gets into trouble; Reggie, a rooster who instilled fear in all the staff; Milo, a goat who suddenly charged the dominant Duncan to defend his mother; four rambunctious young turkeys who quietly listened to a reverent Girl Scout ceremony; Ducky, a turkey who, despite severe arthritis, walked from her barn to greet a Buddhist monk; Ethel, an elderly cow who assumes the responsibility of a matriarch; and many others. In addition to enjoying the stories, readers will learn a great deal about nonhuman animals. (shrink)

This book provides a Thomistic account of growing in virtue. That account requires a precise explanation of what habits are, why they are needed, and what they supply once possessed. The book begins with a technical analysis of habit based on the thought of Thomas Aquinas. That analysis supplies a foundation for the two central parts of the book. The author first offers an account on the attainment of and growth in acquired virtue, in dialogue with contemporary moral philosophy and (...) addressing recent debates in moral theology. He then offers an account of the attainment of and growth in infused virtue, in a manner attentive to the continuities and discontinuities between natural and supernatural virtues. In conclusion, the book has two appendices, written in the genre of the Scholastic "disputed question," on the relationship between the acquired and infused virtues. (shrink)

arguments concerning whether such changes are creative. [2] Less frequently addressed are questions about how to assess the perceptual implications of these linguistic innovations. [3] Using insights of Ricoeur and, to a lesser extent, M. Merleau Ponty and V. N. Volosinov, I will provide a model for evaluating a certain class of linguistic innovations, namely, new uses of language which rely upon distortion of typical perceptual associations. (Excluded from such new linguistic uses are, for example, analogical innovations, as presented by (...) Saussure.) As my title suggests, I will relate two superficially dissimilar products of language, i.e., metaphor and ideology. I will argue that metaphor and ideology need to be considered jointly (comparatively) to understand linguistic creativity, because -despite their differences -they mutually rely (at their inception) on atypical, even excessive, distortion of the way words shape perception of and reflection on ‘reality.’ My basic thesis is that, in language, the processes of creativity and distortion are interrelated. However, the conclusion I will reach is one which proposes a distinction between and criterion for ‘positive’ changes (which I term ‘creative distortions’) and ‘negative’ changes (which I term ‘distortive creations’). Nevertheless, I do not associate ‘creative distortions’ exclusively with metaphors and ‘distortive creations’ exclusively with ideologies. For metaphor and ideology, I relate ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ to how practical activity is facilitated, using a criterion of expansion or enrichment versus contraction or impoverishment of the semiotic perceptual field. Hence, throughout, even when I make distinctions, I will stress how metaphor and ideology are similar, not how they are different. Textually, the model I will present results from my effort to relate Ricoeur’s views on.. (shrink)

Does language do violence, and, if so, can linguistic violence be overcome? Language can do violence if violence does not require the exercise of physical force, and linguistic violence can be overcome if its use can be avoided. Some forms of violence do not use physical force, and various means are available for avoiding linguistic violence. Hence, although linguistic violence can and does occur, it also can be overcome. Much of my recent work has focused on how language, which does (...) not rely on physical force, nonetheless often does violence. Linguistic violence occurs when we are hurt psychologically by words and when we are harmed socially by words. While most people are conscious of the pain that words can cause, many social groups are often unconscious of injustices that language helps to create and sustain. Exposing both of these forms of linguistic violence is the first step. (shrink)

In this volume twenty-three major scholars comment on and critically evaluate In Search of a Universal Ethic, the 2009 document written by the International Theological Commission (ITC) of the Catholic Church. That historic document represents an official Church contribution both to a more adequate understanding of a universal ethic and to Catholicism s own tradition of reflection on natural law. The essays in this book reflect the ITC document s complementary emphases of dialogue across traditions (universal ethic) and reflection on (...) broadly applicable ethical guidance within the Christian tradition (natural law). Among other things, the document situates the natural law ethical tradition within the larger search for a universal ethic. Along with its insightful essays, Searching for a Universal Ethic offers — for the first time in published form — the Vatican s official English translation of In Search of a Universal Ethic. Contributors: John Berkman Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P. David Burrell, C.S.C. Lisa Sowle Cahill Joseph E. Capizzi David Cloutier Anver M. Emon Robert P. George Sherif Girgis Jennifer A. Herdt Russell Hittinger M. Cathleen Kaveny Anthony J. Kelly, C.Ss.R. Fergus Kerr, O.P. Steven A. Long William C. Mattison III Gilbert Meilaender Livio Melina Michael S. Northcott David Novak Jean Porter Martin Rhonheimer Tracey Rowland. (shrink)

William C. Olsen, Walter E. A. van Beek, and the contributors to this volume seek to understand how Africans have confronted evil around them. Grouped around notions of evil as a cognitive or experiential problem, evil as malevolent process, and evil as an inversion of justice, these essays investigate what can be accepted and what must be condemned in order to evaluate being and morality in African cultural and social contexts. These studies of evil entanglements take local and national (...) histories and identities into account, including state politics and civil war, religious practices, Islam, gender, and modernity. (shrink)

The human condition -- Encountering the divine -- Neighborliness -- Toward maturity -- Institutions and structures -- Some barriers to belief -- Toward a workable philosophy of life -- Appendixes: A letter from a young scholar in winter ; A letter from an old scholar in summer -- Some marks of a well-educated student -- Some marks of a good teacher.

The use of multiple means of determination to “triangulate” on the existence and character of a common phenomenon, object, or result has had a long tradition in science but has seldom been a matter of primary focus. As with many traditions, it is traceable to Aristotle, who valued having multiple explanations of a phenomenon, and it may also be involved in his distinction between special objects of sense and common sensibles. It is implicit though not emphasized in the distinction between (...) primary and secondary qualities from Galileo onward. It is arguably one of several conceptions involved in Whewell’s method of the “consilience of inductions” (Laudan 1971) and is to be found in several places in Peirce. (From M. Brewer and B. Collins, eds., (1981); Scientific Inquiry in the Social Sciences (a festschrift for Donald T. Campbell), San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp. 123–162.). (shrink)

Resource added for the Nursing-Associate Degree 105431, Practical Nursing 315431, and Nursing Assistant 305431 programs.

Thinking about justice -- The possibility of a justice convention -- The justice convention continued: Deliberating about the proper scope of public protection -- The justice convention continued: Deliberating about the appropriate response to wrongdoing -- The justice convention continued: Deliberating about criminal procedure -- The justice convention concluded: Deliberating about equality -- From natural law to human rights -- Nuremberg and beyond: the creation oa a system of international criminal justice -- Transitional justice: New democracies grapple with their past (...) -- The right to be let alone: determining the scope of personal freedom -- Justice in a lifeboat: Thinking about life-life tradeoffs -- Restorative justice: A challenge to the currrent system of criminal justice -- Sentencing offenders in noncapital cases -- Sentencing offenders in capital cases: The death penalty -- Justice and mercy. (shrink)

Islamic Thought and the Art of Translation honors two of the most beloved and productive scholars in the field of Islamic Studies, Professors William Chittick and Sachiko Murata. For the past five decades, and in over 40 books (monographs, editions, translations, edited volumes) and more than 300 articles, Professors Chittick and Murata have presented us with philologically astute and analytically sound expositions of the pre-modern Islamic intellectual tradition, particularly in the areas of Sufism and philosophy. They have done so (...) primarily by zeroing in on the technical vocabularies of these disciplines (in Arabic, Persian, and Chinese), demonstrating just how important the functions of philology and cross-cultural translation are when studying pre-modern cultures and civilizations. (shrink)

This book offers a philosophy for error-prone humans trying to understand messy systems in the real world.

Ethical guidelines for multinational corporations are included in several international accords adopted during the past four decades. These guidelines attempt to influence the practices of multinational enterprises in such areas as employment relations, consumer protection, environmental pollution, political participation, and basic human rights. Their moral authority rests upon the competing principles of national sovereignty, social equity, market integrity, and human rights. Both deontological principles and experience-based value systems undergird and justify the primacy of human rights as the fundamental moral authority (...) of these transnational and transcultural compacts. Although difficulties and obstacles abound in gaining operational acceptance of such codes of conduct, it is possible to argue that their guidelines betoken the emergence of a transcultural corporate ethic. (shrink)

Although campaigns for universal human rights have been intellectually and emotionally compelling for many anthropologists, they have tended to embroil them in fruitless polemics about cultural relativism with non-Western thinkers and policy-makers. Often “universalist” discourses about “rights” depend on values and distinctions that are far from universal and that stem, in fact, from Christian, secular, or “modernist” notions about punishment, suffering, and redemption. To make some practical contribution to the struggle for human dignity in the Middle East, it may be (...) preferable to aim for a more limited goal: the abolition of torture in the region. Consensus about the illegitimacy of torture is more easily reached, since none of the Middle East's religious or philosophical traditions condone it. What is more, empirical data demonstrate that torture has increased in frequency in the region and is widely perceived, both by insiders and outsiders, as a growing problem. Ethnographers could play a role in documenting incidents of torture and in building coalitions of Middle Eastern and outsider activists who, working together, could expose torture and bring pressure to bear on those who inflict it. (shrink)

The study of Social Issues in Management (SIM) has exhausted its primary analytic framework based on corporate social performance (social science), business ethics (philosophy), and stakeholder theory (organizational science), and needs to move to a new paradigmatic level based on the natural sciences. Doing so would expand research horizons to include cosmological perspectives (astrophysics), evolutionary theory (biology, genetics, ecology), and non-sectarian spirituality concepts (theological naturalism, cognitive neuroscience). Absent this shift, SIM studies risk increasing irrelevance for scholars and business practitioners.

Though the phrase 'x is true of x' is well formed grammatically, it does not express any predicate in the logical sense, because it does not satisfy the principle of reduction for statements containing 'x is true of'. recognition of this allows for solution of russell's paradox without his restrictive theory of types.

With the rejection of group selectionist derivations of ecological phenomena so incisively given by George Williams in 1966,43 Nicholson's long-ignored messages met with acceptance. Species benefit became, explicitly, incidental. But the reorientation was not just about a point of ecological theory. It was more fundamentally about theoretical style, the element shared by Wynne-Edwards' work and the newer, evolutionary ecology. That current approach is well expressed in an already classic paper by the British plant ecologist John Harper: Ultimately all the discoveries (...) of descriptive, production or population ecology must find their meaning in evolutionary phenomena... Evolutionary thinking concentrates attention on the behaviour of the individual and his descendants. If nothing in biology has meaning except in the light of evolution and if evolution is about individuals and their descendants — i.e. fitness — we should not expect to reach any depth of understanding from studies that are based at the level of the superindividual... What we see as the organised behaviour of systems is the result of the fate of individuals.44The emphasis in this passage is on style of thinking more than on study matter. What is so different from earlier ecologists is the rejection of the superorganism and its associated baggage of selfimposed constraints in an end-oriented process, such as balance of nature or species-level adaptation.The hallmark of post-1959 evolutionary ecology is the recognition, the making explicit of the question that the selective, genetical process of fitness (fates of genes) has to be separated from the observations of different levels of adaptiveness. An easy conflation of cause and result is no longer satisfying; now attempts to disentangle the complex strands tying population phenomena to the different levels of selection are providing the excitement of a new research program. In this program evolutionary theory is used to define the appropriate questions, as exemplified by the organization of the textbook Evolutionary Ecology.45 Our discussion of the invention of a new approach, with a characteristic style and set of interests, must also be about how the practitioners of ecology have perceived themselves. The early attempts of Poulton and Nicholson were not taken up by the vigorously growing science of ecology, which developed first - and intentionally — along a narrower, hierarchically restrained set of questions about population. The depth of Poulton's and Nicholson's submergence is indicated by the fact that even Wynne-Edwards did not argue in the manner of one rescuing a minor tradition. Rather, he thought he had a new approach, that of placing evolution in the foundations of ecology. Although this approach was not exactly original, we should be cautious in grouping all evolutionary concerns within ecology in one intellectual tradition. The particular style of selectionist deduction invigorated by Wynne-Edwards was successful only in the volatile situation of a rapidly growing discipline, full of self-critical examination and new rigor. Whereas in 1930 evolutionary concerns did not provide that rigor, by 1960 they could - and did. (shrink)

“The object of this book,” writes William C. Dowling in his preface, “is to make the key concepts of Paul Ricoeur’s _Time and Narrative_ available to readers who might have felt bewildered by the twists and turns of its argument.” The sources of puzzlement are, he notes, many. For some, it is Ricoeur’s famously indirect style of presentation, in which the polarities of argument and exegesis seem so often and so suddenly to have reversed themselves. For others, it is (...) the extraordinary intellectual range of Ricoeur’s argument, drawing on traditions as distant from each other as Heideggerian existentialism, French structuralism, and Anglo-American analytic philosophy. Yet beneath the labyrinthian surface of Ricoeur’s _Temps et récit_, Dowling reveals a single extended argument that, though developed unsystematically, is meant to be understood in systematic terms. __Ricoeur on Time and Narrative_ _presents that argument in clear and concise terms, in a way that will be enlightening both to readers new to Ricoeur and those who may have felt themselves adrift in the complexities of _Temps et récit,_ Ricoeur’s last major philosophical work. Dowling divides his discussion into six chapters, all closely involved with specific arguments in _Temps et récit_: on mimesis, time, narrativity, semantics of action, poetics of history, and poetics of fiction. Additionally, Dowling provides a preface that lays out the French intellectual context of Ricoeur's philosophical method. An appendix presents his English translation of a personal interview in which Ricoeur, having completed _Time and Narrative, _looks back over his long career as an internationally renowned philosopher. __Ricoeur on Time and Narrative___ _communicates to readers the intellectual excitement of following Ricoeur’s dismantling of established theories and arguments—Aristotle and Augustine and Husserl on time, Frye and Greimas on narrative structure, Arthur Danto and Louis O. Mink on the nature of historical explanation—while coming to see how, under the pressure of Ricoeur’s analysis, these ideas are reconstituted and revealed in a new set of relations to one another. "The scholarship in William C. Dowling's __Ricoeur on Time and Narrative____ __is impeccable; Dowling knows Ricoeur inside out. He highlights Ricoeur's most important arguments, presents them in a limpid, concise language, and links them to the relevant nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophical developments. Dowling's book provides us with a lucid, intelligible version of Ricoeur's major work, one that will be of considerable significance to philosophers, historians, and literary theorists." —_Thomas Pavel, Gordon J. Laing Distinguished Service Professor of French Literature, and the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago_ "William C. Dowling's __Ricoeur on Time and Narrative___ _is a subtle and remarkably well-sustained piece of work. It provides a detailed introduction to a major work of philosophy and narrative theory—already a considerable achievement, given the difficulty of Ricoeur's text. However, Dowling also shows us, sometimes explicitly, sometimes simply through the way he conducts his argument, why we should bother with Ricoeur—what we have to gain from knowing him better than we do, however well we may think we know him." —_Michael Wood, Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923 Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Princeton University _. (shrink)

Two strategies for using a model as “null” are distinguished. Null modeling evaluates whether a process is causally responsible for a pattern by testing it against a null model. Baseline modeling measures the relative significance of various processes responsible for a pattern by detecting deviations from a baseline model. When these strategies are conflated, models are illegitimately privileged as accepted until rejected. I illustrate this using the neutral theory of ecology and draw general lessons from this case. First, scientists cannot (...) draw certain conclusions using null modeling. Second, these conclusions follow using baseline modeling, but doing so requires more evidence. (shrink)

This paper attempts to provide a conceptual underpinning for codes of ethics in business and the professions. Rule-utilitarianism is a theory of ethics which I believe can successfully do this. Business persons and professionals, hopefully, will be able to develop codes of ethics in a manner consistent with a well-formulated general ethical theory. This will help enable codes of ethics to be a bridge between general ethical theory and specific ethical decisions made in business and the professions.

The corporation's social role is usually presented as a cultural phenomenon in which the corporation learns socially acceptable behaviors through voluntary social responsibility, government regulations/public policies, and/or acceptance of ethics principles. This article presents an alternative view of corporationcommunity relations as a natural phenomenon based on complexity-chaos theory and a biological-physical conception of corporate values. Corporation and community are depicted as interacting nonlinear adaptive systems having unpredictable futures, the corporate social role is depicted as largely indeterminate, and competing values are (...) depicted as key factors driving change in corporationcommunity linkages. Normative duties of corporate and community leaders are described. (shrink)

Rhetorical Structure Theory has enjoyed continuous attention since its origins in the 1980s. It has been applied, compared to other approaches, and also criticized in a number of areas in discourse analysis, theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics. In this article, we review some of the discussions about the theory itself, especially addressing issues of the reliability of analyses and psychological validity, together with a discussion of the nature of text relations. We also propose areas for further research. A follow-up (...) article will discuss applications of the theory in various fields. (shrink)