Online research in philosophy

Polarized unification grammar (PUG) is a linguistic formalism which uses polarities to better control the way grammar fragments interact. The grammar combination operation of PUG was conjectured to be associative. We show that PUG grammar combination is not associative, and even attaching polarities to objects does not make it order-independent. Moreover, we prove that no non-trivial polarity system exists for which grammar combination is associative. We then redefine the grammar combination operator, moving to the powerset domain, in a way that guarantees associativity. The method we propose is general and is applicable to a variety of tree-based grammar formalisms.

Is P¯an.ini’s grammar prescriptive or descriptive, or perhaps both at the same time? The answer determines, among many other things, how we should render v¯a and vibh¯as.¯a in his optional rules. If the grammar is prescriptive, these terms can mean “preferably” and “marginally”. If it is purely..

The question, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?', has a strong claim to be philosophy's central, and most perplexing, question; it has a capacity to set the head spinning which few other philosophical problems can rival. Bede Rundle challenges the stalemate between theistic and naturalistic explanations with a rigorous, properly philosophical approach, and presents some startlingly novel conclusions.

Introduction -- Building blocks -- The old way of thinking -- The new way -- The grammar of philosophy -- The grammar of mathematics -- The grammar of experience -- The grammar of psychology -- Part II -- What does it all mean?

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Time, Space, and Metaphysics engages with major philosophical questions concerning time and space, a framework for the investigation being provided by the ...