We introduce here evoText, a new tool for automated analysis of the literature in the biological sciences. evoText contains a database of hundreds of thousands of journal articles and an array of analysis tools for generating quantitative data on the nature and history of life science, especially ecology and evolutionary biology. This article describes the features of evoText, presents a variety of examples of the kinds of analyses that evoText can run, and offers a brief tutorial describing how to use (...) it. (shrink)

There are three related criteria that a concept of fitness should be able to meet: it should render the principle of natural selection non-tautologous and it should be explanatory and predictive. I argue that for fitness to be able to fulfill these criteria, it cannot be a property that changes over the course of an individual's life. Rather, I introduce a fitness concept--Block Fitness--and argue that an individual's genes and environment fix its fitness in such a way that each individual's (...) fitness has a fixed value over its lifetime. (shrink)

Haack, S. Is truth flat or bumpy?--Chihara, C. S. Ramsey 's theory of types.--Loar, B. Ramsey 's theory of belief and truth.--Skorupski, J. Ramsey on Belief.--Hookway, C. Inference, partial belief, and psychological laws.--Skyrms, B. Higher order degrees of belief.--Mellor, D. H. Consciousness and degrees of belief.--Blackburn, S. Opinions and chances.--Grandy, R. E. Ramsey, reliability, and knowledge.--Cohen, L. J. The problem of natural laws.--Giedymin, J. Hamilton's method in geometrical optics and Ramsey 's view of theories.

There is clearly a plurality of forms of altruism. Classically, biological altruism is distinguished from psychological altruism. Recent discussions of altruism have attempted to distinguish even more forms of altruism. I will focus on three altruism concepts, biological altruism, psychological altruism, and helping altruism. The questions I am concerned with here are, first, how should we understand these concepts? and second, what relationship do these concepts bear to one another? In particular, is there an essence to altruism that unifies these (...) concepts? I suggest that while there is no essence to altruism, this does not mean that the array of altruism concepts is completely disunified. Instead, I propose we place all the concepts into a common framework-an altruism space-that could lead to new questions about how this space can be filled. (shrink)

There is clearly a plurality of forms of altruism. Classically, biological altruism is distinguished from psychological altruism. Recent discussions of altruism have attempted to distinguish even more forms of altruism. I will focus on three altruism concepts, biological altruism, psychological altruism, and helping altruism. The questions I am concerned with here are, first, how should we understand these concepts? and second, what relationship do these concepts bear to one another? In particular, is there an essence to altruism that unifies these (...) concepts? I suggest that while there is no essence to altruism, this does not mean that the array of altruism concepts is completely disunified. Instead, I propose we place all the concepts into a common framework--an altruism space--that could lead to new questions about how this space can be filled. (shrink)

This note adduces three passages in Seneca the Elder to reinforce a demonstration in CQ 69, 793–8001 that the text of Plin. HN 7.117 has suffered corruption in one of its clauses and requires emendation to restore Pliny's intent. This additional evidence concerns a trope employed by declaimers which could have predisposed a scribe to alter Pliny's text to state that Cicero proscribed Mark Antony. Such a statement has no place in a list of achievements that otherwise all belong to (...) Cicero's consulship twenty years earlier in 63 b.c. (shrink)

Pliny's celebration of Cicero's consular achievements contains a striking anomaly, namely the assertion that Cicero proscribed Marcus Antonius(HN7.117). That statement turns Cicero, the victim of Antonius’ murderous vendetta, into the one who wielded the executioner's axe, and it abruptly shifts the focus of the passage from 63 to 43b.c.Two slight corrections to the Latin text can eliminate the intrusion of the proscriptions by substituting a reference to the control Cicero exercised in 63 over Gaius Antonius, his consular colleague and an (...) old ally of Catiline. In hisIn Pisonem(§5), Cicero takes credit for combatting the threat posed by his colleague, and it is highly probable thatHN7.117 mentioned Gaius (not Marcus) Antonius as well, since Pliny's summary of Cicero's consular deeds and honours is nearly identical to the one found inPis. 4–6. The beauty of the emended text is that it restores both historical fact and a logical progression to the overall structure of Pliny's encomium. (shrink)

We give a survey of the study of nonstandard models in recursion theory and reverse mathematics. We discuss the key notions and techniques in effective computability in nonstandard models, and their applications to problems concerning combinatorial principles in subsystems of second order arithmetic. Particular attention is given to principles related to Ramsey’s Theorem for Pairs.

We give a survey of the study of nonstandard models in recursion theory and reverse mathematics. We discuss the key notions and techniques in effective computability in nonstandard models. and their applications to problems concerning combinatorial principles in subsystems of second order arithmetic. Particular attention is given to principles related to Ramsey's Theorem for Pairs.

Does a non-ecumenical journal on Christian bioethics make sense? Taking issue with Stanley Hauerwas' critique of Ramsey, the author argues (l) interdenominational exchange should not be construed as contest, and (2) the attempt on the part of Christians to address secular issues in secular terms should not be mistrusted or viewed as a contamination hazard. Instead (I) an awareness of human limits should render adherents of different traditions willing to learn from each other and (2) one should see in (...) the love-of-neighbor principle an obligation to serve the world. Addressing the communication problem, the author recommends different language levels for intra-group and ever more encompassing inter-group exchanges. (shrink)

This book examines the moral philosophy of Paul Ramsey--one of the 20th century's most influential ethicists--from a theological perspective illustrating that religion can still play a substantial role in our ongoing moral inquiries. Ramsey wrote prodigiously on ethical issues including politics, medical research, the Vietnam war, and nuclear proliferation. His ethical theory, which concentrates on divine love, or `agape, ' as well as justice and order, provides a middle ground between fundamentalism and secularism. Therefore, Ramsey's ethics will (...) appeal to the 21st-century social conscience. McKenzie grounds his theological exploration in a comprehensive history of the theological and philosophical influences on Ramsey's thought, including Jonathan Edwards' theory of natural morality. He also explores a multidisciplinary selection of Ramsey's writings. In conclusion, McKenzie argues that Ramsey's natural law theory will continue to have significant and increasing relevance for morality in the postmodern world. This is the most thorough study of Paul Ramsey's work as well as a significant contribution to philosophy and theology. (shrink)

I do not for a moment question the fact that many people have experiences of a special type which may be termed “religious”, The extent to which religious experience may be regarded as a reasonably common phenomenon in present-day Britain is shown clearly by David Hay in his Exploring Inner Space, Harmondsworth 1982. that such experiences often involve reference to something which appears to display a radical unlikeness to all else and that they are therefore in some sense inexpressible. Doubtless (...) the ideas I have put forward about the possible source of such unlikeness and ineffability might suggest models of God which would not find much theological approval, at least within any mainstream theistic tradition, since some sort of pantheism seems inevitably to be implied. But however this might be, the concept of radical unlikeness as it has been analyzed here can, I think, help us towards understanding certain problematic areas in religion quite apart from the issue of intelligibility, which has been the focus of this discussion. To begin with, radical unlikeness suggests a way in which the historical continuity of concepts of the transcendent might be upheld against the discontinuity suggested by the diversity of interpretations through which they have moved. Ancient and modern outlooks on, say, God differ enormously, as indeed do the range of co-temporal accounts at many particular moments. But, by and large, theologians firmly maintain that it is a single and unchanging phenomenon which is being dealt with. Unless we can point to some common element which is both specific enough to create a binding sense of common tradition, yet never completely expressed by any attempt at understanding it within that tradition (thus persistently demanding new attempts to apprehend it), then given the widely differing views of God within, for example, the Christian community, it is difficult to see how we could assume that in fact they all stemmed from the same source and were talking about the same thing. The idea of radical unlikeness could provide an element with just these required characteristics: it could be seen as what all the accounts attempt to net, with varying degrees of adequacy, within their offered interpretations. It could be seen as what remains constant, constantly elusive yet constantly generative of fresh attempts to apprehend it, throughout a history of intra-religious diversity. This sort of explanation could, presumably, be applied to the intra-religious diversity of the non-Christian traditions too.Secondly, radical unlikeness might suggest a possible way of understanding inter-religious diversity in a way which allows that whilst such diversity exists, whilst the differences between religions are real, they are grounded in a similar root-experience. It may, at first sight, seem difficult to continue thinking of the various religious traditions as truly separate phenomena if they are taken as being grounded on experiences whose ineffability stems from the unlikeness of experiencing things as a whole. Here we must stress again that if they are to be considered intelligible, radically unlike experiences cannot be considered completely so - or putting this another way, we cannot more than approach experience of totality. Sense can be given to religious claims of ineffability by suggesting experience of near totality, where we reach the last point on the scale of inclusiveness which complies with the logical criteria demanded of something for it to be possible for us to be aware of it. We might thus attempt an explanation of inter-religious diversity based on the view that Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam etc. acquire their differences from the different elements included in their experience of near totality. Taking totality to be represented by the scale of one to ten, Hinduism might be seen as grounded on experience of 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-9-10, Buddhism on experience of 1-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 and so on. The resulting dissimilarities are thus centred not on different types of experience, but on different areas of inclusiveness. This is, of course, to suppose that the various religious traditions are all based on the same degree (as opposed to the same elements) of inclusiveness, but it is by no means clear that such a supposition is justified. Continuing with our decimal analogy, might it not be suggested that whilst Christianity stemmed from experience of 2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10, Jainism was founded on a less extensive encounter with the divine (say 4-5-6-7-8-9-10)? It is, however, uncertain how we can compare and evaluate different religious traditions in such a way as to be able to comment on such claims. A definite danger of comparative religion is that by concentrating on establishing and exploring inter-religious likenesses, it may obscure the radical unlikeness of religious phenomena. It should be borne firmly in mind that such likenesses as may be established within comparative studies may not win religious phenomena a place within our understanding comparable to objects of more everyday concern. Statements found in the Old Testament, the Qur'an and the Vedas, for example, may, on occasion, be alike, but at the end of the day such things are often alike only, or chiefly, in so far as they display the same radical unlikeness in relation to the non-religious elements in our outlook.The analysis of radical unlikeness and ineffability which has been advanced might also suggest a way in which certain passages in religious writings could be understood, passages which at first sight can be seriously perplexing. If, for example, to return to the quotation given in the introductory section of this paper, we continue to think of accounts of the nature of Shiva as being attempts to describe some discrete, objective entity, then it is inevitable that either we will share the Puranic writer's puzzlement or that much of what we read about Shiva will appear as the muddled and extravagant thinking thrown up by an uncritical and over-fertile mythological imagination, consisting of little more than a hotch-potch of contradictory elements. But if we see such accounts as attempting to say something about everything, as symbols of near totality stemming from experiences which verge on the holistic, then what we read - with all its ambiguities - may become somewhat more meaningful. Thus W.D. O'Flaherty comments that Shiva “embodies all of life in all its detail at every minute” (Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Shiva, London 1973, p. 315). Similarly Alain Dani41ou sees Shiva, ultimately, in terms of his being "the supreme state of reality" beyond whom there is only "non-existence" (Hindu Polytheism, London 1964, p. 190).This analysis of ineffability and intelligibility seeks to introduce for debate a possible way of understanding the radical unlikeness which accounts of religious experience apparently attempt to speak about. It does not, however, claim to present an exhaustive treatment of the issues raised, on the contrary, I am conscious of many shortcomings and omissions. For instance, it remains to be seen under precisely what conditions something counts as being an elucidating likeness (presumably all experiences are, for example, temporal, yet temporality alone would not seem to offer a particularly elucidating comparison). Moreover, the degree to which appeal to likeness is allowed operation in actual accounts of religious experience needs to be explored. In addition, the notion of categorizing experiences according to the extent to which they approach a point of total inclusion requires careful clarification. To begin with, according to what criteria could we establish that one experience was more inclusive than another? However, such issues can only be mentioned here, any adequate consideration of them would require a separate paper.In conclusion, I would suggest that to use radical unlikeness and/or ineffability simply as devices by which to halt any process of investigation, proclaiming that the thing in question is not like anything and so is beyond all words, risks making unintelligible and placing beyond all further inquiry an important and extensive area of human experience. As William Alston put it, to label something ineffable in an unqualified way is to shirk the job of making explicit the ways in which it can be talked about. William P. Alston, “ineffability”, Philosophical Review 65 (1956), 522. It is surely more accurate to take ineffability as a “qualifier”I.T. Ramsey, Models and Mystery (Oxford 1964), p. 60. which “multiplies models without end”Ibid. than as an absolute which prevents the construction of any elucidating models. (shrink)

This powerful study of freedom is the first volume of a new edition of Edwards' work under the general editorship of Perry Miller. The editors intend to publish the manuscript material as well as the printed works. This volume is handsome and well printed; Ramsey contributes a solid introduction outlining Edwards' argument and the relation of his thought to Locke, Berkeley, and Leibniz.--A. C. P.

Chad A Witt, Ramsey R Hachem Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine, Saint Louis, MO, USA: The role of donor-specific antibodies to human leukocyte antigens and the burden of antibody-mediated rejection in lung transplantation remain enigmatic. Over the past several years, evidence has been emerging that humoral immunity plays an important role in the development of both acute and chronic lung allograft dysfunction. Multiple case reports and case series have (...) identified lung allograft recipients with clinical findings consistent with acute AMR. However, there is currently no widely accepted definition for AMR in lung transplantation, and this has been a significant barrier to furthering our understanding of this form of rejection. Nonetheless, the development of DSA after transplantation has consistently been identified as an independent risk factor for persistent and high-grade acute cellular rejection and CLAD. This has raised the possibility that chronic AMR may be a distinct phenotype of CLAD although evidence supporting this paradigm is still lacking. Additionally, antibodies to lung-restricted self-antigens have been associated with primary graft dysfunction early and the development of CLAD late after transplantation, and emerging evidence underscores significant interactions between autoimmunity and alloimmunity after transplantation. There is currently an active International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation working group that is developing an operational definition for AMR in lung transplantation. This will be critical to improve our understanding of this form of rejection and conduct clinical trials to identify optimal treatment strategies. This review will summarize the literature on DSA and AMR in lung transplantation and discuss the impact of antibodies to self-antigens on lung allograft dysfunction. Keywords: antibody-mediated rejection, donor-specific antibodies, lung transplantation. (shrink)

Dr Ian Ramsey has made considerable use of the word ‘disclosure’ in what he has to say about religion and in his attempts to give an account of the meaning of religious language. He sometimes speaks of ‘discernment’ or ‘insight’ but ‘disclosure’ is the word he normally favours. In what follows I shall ask: what a disclosure is, to what extent Dr Ramsey's use of the notion leads to confusions, and what questions have to be faced in order (...) to resolve these confusions. (shrink)

Comparativism—the view that mass ratios are not grounded in absolute masses—faces a challenge by Baker which suggests that absolute masses are empirically meaningful. Regularity comparativism uses a liberalized version of the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis Best Systems Account to have both the laws of Newtonian gravity and the absolute mass scale supervene on a comparativist Humean mosaic as a package deal. I discuss three objections to this view and conclude that it is untenable. The most severe problem is that once we have (...) reduced away the absolute masses, there is nothing that stops us from also reducing the mass ratios. (shrink)

From time to time medical ethicists bemoan the loss of a religious perspective in medical ethics. The discipline had its origins in the thinking of explicitly religious thinkers such as Paul Ramsey and Joseph Fletcher. Furthermore, many of those who contributed to the early development of the discipline had training in theology. One thinks of Daniel Callahan, Richard McCormick, Albert Jonsen, Sam. Banks. As the discipline becomes more and more self-reflective, with attention being paid to methodological and conditional concerns, (...) it is only natural that the roots are due for a reexamination. The time has therefore come for some reassessment. The first steps here are taken in the form of a dialogue between the coauthors to clarify authentic contributions and weed out unauthentic ones. (shrink)

This book is a collection of important writings on deflationism, with a detailed introduction and an exhaustive annotated bibliography. Among philosophers concerned with the theory of truth, deflationist positions have quickly gained ground and have become the most popular. Yet heretofore there has been no single book to which the readers can go for a detailed, overall view of the entire phenomenon of deflationism. This is the only available map of the whole terrain of deflationism. -/- Deflationism is a comparatively (...) new approach, though it has its roots in the thinking of some philosophers in the early twentieth century. Deflationism rejects all the traditional theories of truth: the correspondence theory (truth corresponds with facts), the coherence theory (truth is membership of a coherent set of beliefs), the pragmatist theory is provability or verifiability). This book gives complete coverage to all the different varieties of deflationism, and to earlier philosophers who anticipated deflationism. The articles and exerpts include classic works by Frege, Ayer, Ramsey, Tarsk, and Quine, and recent works by the leading deflationist authors of today: Paul Horwich, Hartry Field, Stephen Schiffer, Robert Brandom, and Stephen Leeds. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive critical survey of issues of historical interpretation and evaluation in Bertrand Russell's 1918 logical atomism lectures and logical atomism itself. These lectures record the culmination of Russell's thought in response to discussions with Wittgenstein on the nature of judgement and philosophy of logic and with Moore and other philosophical realists about epistemology and ontological atomism, and to Whitehead and Russell’s novel extension of revolutionary nineteenth-century work in mathematics and logic. Russell's logical atomism lectures have had (...) a lasting impact on analytic philosophy and on Russell's contemporaries including Carnap, Ramsey, Stebbing, and Wittgenstein. Comprised of 14 original essays, this book will demonstrate how the direct and indirect influence of these lectures thus runs deep and wide. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is one of the most important philosophical works of the Twentieth Century, yet it is brief and offers little orientation for the reader. This causes two problems: The first-time reader is left wondering what it could be about, and often leaves off reading in frustration after a few pages. The scholar is left with little guidance for interpretation. This paper recounts selected material from my book Tractatus in Context. While the book includes familiar material from Wittgenstein’s notebooks and (...) letters, it also includes lesser-known material such as untranslated correspondence and notebook entries, later lectures and dictations, notes from Ramsey, and previously unknown reviews. Some of the topics to be examined are: simple objects, atomic facts and elementary propositions, limits and boundaries, superstition, the shape of the visual field, and the role of the will. Given the occasion, I’ll also focus on some ways in which conversations with the Vienna Circle help illuminate obscure passages in the Tractatus. (shrink)

Early commentaries on the Tractatus, such as Russell's introduction and Ramsey's review in Mind already noted and commented on Wittgenstein's peculiar views concerning nonsense and elucidation. Ramsey also complains that 'sentences apparently asserting such properties of objects are held by Mr Wittgenstein to be nonsense, but to stand in some obscure relation to something inexpressible'. However, there would not be 'the orthodox reading' of the Tractatus exemplified by these remarks, were it not for the emergence of the 'resolute (...) reading', the 'New Wittgensteinian', the 'therapeutic reading', or the 'post‐modernist interpretation', which challenge it. Resolute readings can be divided into 'strong' and 'weak' readings or, more or less equivalently, 'Jacobin' and 'Girondin' readings. The resolute reading proposes a new way of reading the Tractatus, and tries to give prominence to its distinctness and correctness by attacking the orthodox reading. It should then be seen as an unorthodox reading. (shrink)

Classically, truth and falsehood are opposite, and so are logical truth and logical falsehood. In this paper we imagine a situation in which the opposition is so pervasive in the language we use as to threaten the very possibility of telling truth from falsehood. The example exploits a suggestion of Ramsey’s to the effect that negation can be expressed simply by writing the negated sentence upside down. The difference between ‘p’ and ‘~~p’ disappears, the principle of double negation becomes (...) trivial, and the truth/falsehood opposition is up for grabs. Our moral is that this indeterminacy undermines the idea of inferential role semantics. (shrink)

THE MOST SACRED FREEDOM includes eight essays that were first presented at the 2014 A.V. Elliott Conference on Great Books and Ideas, the seventh annual conference sponsored by Mercer Universitys Thomas C. and Ramona E. McDonald Center for Americas Founding Principles. Together, these essays explore the great principle of religious liberty by charting its development in the Western tradition and reconsidering its place at Americas founding. The book begins with a comparison between the flood accounts in Genesis and the Mesopotamian (...) Atra-Has's and advances all the way to the 2014 Supreme Court case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. The intervening chapters examine the contributions of figures such as Emperor Julian, Roger Williams, Cecilius Calvert, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the American Founders. Contributors to the volume are Steven Grosby, Jeremiah H. Russell, Maura Jane Farrelly, Daniel Cullen, John Witte, Jr., Scott Yenor, David Ramsey, and Michael Novak. (shrink)

Fred Dretske, David M. Armstrong, and Michael Tooley have all proposed that the truths about the laws of nature are metaphysically fundamental, consisting in a primitive, unanalyzable relation of 'necessitation' holding between two or more properties or universals. According to Strong Nomism, the laws of nature determine which counterfactual conditionals are true, and they also determine which powers and tendencies particular things have. This chapter treats Nomism as committed to the Dretske‐Armstrong‐Tooley (DAT) theory. Nomism provides a metaphysical explanation of the (...) difference between lawful and accidental generalization. The chapter focuses on the Neo‐Humeist or Ramsey/Lewis Theory of the laws of nature. The Neo‐Humeist program proceeds in the following way. First, give a reductionist account of the laws of nature, and then use the laws to ground the truths of attributions of power and of counterfactual conditionals. (shrink)

According to philosophical folklore Ramsey maintained three propositions in his famous 1925 paper “Universals”: (i) there is no subject-predicate distinction; (ii) there is no particular-universal distinction; (iii) there is no particular-universal distinction because there is no subject-predicate distinction. The ‘first generation’ of Ramsey commentators dismissed “Universals” because they held that whereas predicates may be negated, names may not and so there is a subject-predicate distinction after all. The ‘second generation’ of commentators dismissed “Universals because they held that the (...) absence of a merely linguistic distinction between subject and predicate does not provide any kind of reason for doubting that a truly ontological (i.e. non-linguistic) distinction obtains between particulars and universals. But both first and second-generation criticisms miss their marks because Ramsey did not maintain the three identified propositions. The failure of commentators to appreciate the point and purpose of the position Ramsey actually advanced in “Universals” results from (a) failing to consider the range of different arguments advanced there, (b) looking at “Universals” in isolation from Ramsey’s other papers and (c) failing to consider Ramsey’s writings in the context of the views that Russell and Wittgenstein held during the early 1920s. Seen from this wider perspective Ramsey arguments in “Universals” take on an altogether different significance. They not only anticipate important contemporary developments⎯the resurgence of Humeanism and the doctrine that the existence of universals can only be established a posteriori⎯but also point beyond them. (shrink)

Ramsey’s theorem asserts that every k-coloring of $[\omega ]^n$ admits an infinite monochromatic set. Whenever $n \geq 3$, there exists a computable k-coloring of $[\omega ]^n$ whose solutions compute the halting set. On the other hand, for every computable k-coloring of $[\omega ]^2$ and every noncomputable set C, there is an infinite monochromatic set H such that $C \not \leq _T H$. The latter property is known as cone avoidance.In this article, we design a natural class of Ramsey-like (...) theorems encompassing many statements studied in reverse mathematics. We prove that this class admits a maximal statement satisfying cone avoidance and use it as a criterion to re-obtain many existing proofs of cone avoidance. This maximal statement asserts the existence, for every k-coloring of $[\omega ]^n$, of an infinite subdomain $H \subseteq \omega $ over which the coloring depends only on the sparsity of its elements. This confirms the intuition that Ramsey-like theorems compute Turing degrees only through the sparsity of its solutions. (shrink)

It is widely held, to the point of being the received interpretation, that Frank Ramsey was the first to defend the so-called Redundancy Theory of Truth in his landmark article ‘Facts and Propositions’ (hereafter ‘FP’) of 1927.1 For instance, A.J. Ayer2 cited this article in the context of arguing that saying that p is true is simply a way of asserting p and that truth is not a real quality or relation. Other holders of the received interpretation, such as (...) George Pitcher,3 J.L. Mackie, 4 Susan Haack,5 A.C. Grayling,6 Nils-Eric Sahlin,7 Richard Kirkham,8 Donald Davidson9 and Michael Lynch10 credit Ramsey with having originated what they call ‘the Redundancy Theory.’ Even an authoritative source such as The Encyclopedia of Philosophy11 attributes this theory to him. What is more, Grover et al.,12 in defending their Prosentential Theory of Truth, claim that their theory is an improvement and development of the Redundancy Theory, which they too attribute to Ramsey.13.. (shrink)

In Lowe (1995), instead of endorsing a Stalnaker/Lewis-style account of counterfactuals, E. J. Lowe claims that a variation of C. I. Lewis’s strict implication alone captures the essence of everyday conditionals and avoids the paradoxes of strict implication. However, Lowe’s approach fails to account for the validity of simple and straightforward arguments such as ‘if 2=3 then 2+1=3+1’, and Heylen & Horsten (2006) even claims that no variation of strict implication can successfully describe the logical behavior of natural language conditionals. (...) By incorporating the German logician O. Becker’s modal intuition with the insight of Ramsey’s Test, we show that there does exist a unified, strict-conditional based account of everyday conditionals, which withstands all attacks previously raised against truth-conditional accounts of conditionals. Furthermore, a subtle distinction between autistic and realistic readings of the indexical ‘I’ involved in a conditional helps us resolve a recent debate concerning the Thomason conditionals. (shrink)

For C.S. Peirce, who had a well‐known influence on many aspects of Ramsey's thought, pragmatism was viewed as inseparable from realism. The aim of this paper is to challenge the view according to which Ramsey's reflexions on universals are of a mere linguistic and logical nature. Not only is this view controversial, but it may be argued that some elements in Ramsey's analyses suggest a possibly realist answer to the problem of universals. By drawing comparisons with Peirce's (...) own position, it is suggested that Ramsey's views might not be inconsistent with many aspects of Peirce's scholastic and even Scotistic version of realism. (shrink)