Our ultimate purpose is to give an axiomatic treatment of recursion theory sufficient to develop the priority method. The direct or abstract approach is to keep in mind as clearly as possible the methods actually used in recursion theory, and then to formulate them explicitly. The indirect or experimental approach is to look first for other mathematical theories which seem similar to recursion theory, to formulate the analogies precisely, and then to search for an axiomatic treatment which covers not only (...) recursion theory but also the analogous theories as particular cases.The first approach is more general because it does not depend on the existence of analogues. A concrete mathematical theory, it seems, need have no such analogues and still be important, as e.g. classical number theory. In such a case, an axiomatic treatment may still be useful for exhibiting the mathematical structure of the theory considered and the assumptions on which it rests. However, it will lack one of the most heavily advertised advantages of the axiomatic method, namely, the “economy of thought” which results from an uniform theory for several different and interesting cases: we cannot hope for this if, by hypothesis, we know of only one particular case. In contrast, the second approach, if successful at all, is bound to achieve such “economy” because we start out with several interesting particular cases. Another possible virtue of the second approach is that of field work over insight: the abstract pattern that we are looking for and hoping to formalize in axioms, may not be evident in any one mathematical theory, but may spring to the eye if one happens to look simultaneously at several theories which happen to realize the pattern. (shrink)

Is socialism desirable? Is it even possible? In this concise book, one of the world's leading political philosophers presents with clarity and wit a compelling moral case for socialism and argues that the obstacles in its way are exaggerated. There are times, G. A. Cohen notes, when we all behave like socialists. On a camping trip, for example, campers wouldn't dream of charging each other to use a soccer ball or for fish that they happened to catch. Campers do not (...) give merely to get, but relate to each other in a spirit of equality and community. Would such socialist norms be desirable across society as a whole? Why not? Whole societies may differ from camping trips, but it is still attractive when people treat each other with the equal regard that such trips exhibit. But, however desirable it may be, many claim that socialism is impossible. Cohen writes that the biggest obstacle to socialism isn't, as often argued, intractable human selfishness--it's rather the lack of obvious means to harness the human generosity that is there. Lacking those means, we rely on the market. But there are many ways of confining the sway of the market: there are desirable changes that can move us toward a socialist society in which, to quote Albert Einstein, humanity has "overcome and advanced beyond the predatory stage of human development.". (shrink)

Drug Safety Communications are used by the Food and Drug Administration to inform health care providers, patients, caregivers, and the general public about safety issues related to FDA-approved drugs. To assess patient knowledge of the messaging contained in DSCs related to the sleep aids zolpidem and eszopiclone, we conducted a large, cross-sectional patient survey of 1,982 commercially insured patients selected by stratified random sampling from the Optum Research Database who had filled at least two prescriptions for either zolpidem or eszopiclone (...) between July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013. Among the 594 respondents, two-thirds reported hearing generally about drug safety information prior to starting a new drug, with the remaining one-third “rarely” or “never” hearing such information. Providers and pharmacists were primary sources of drug safety information. Two-thirds of zolpidem users and half of eszopiclone users reported having heard about the related DSC messages, ability to accurately identify the major factual messages was limited. Respondents reacted to new drug safety information about their sleep aids by reporting that they would want to learn about alternative ways to help them sleep and seek out more information about the safety of their specific sleeping pill. Opportunities may exist for the FDA to work with providers and pharmacies to help ensure the DSC information is more widely received and is more fully understood by those taking the affected medications. (shrink)

Whereas Peirce’s logic drove him to postulate a primitive sentiency of physical matter, this essay argues that life exhibits behavior that is radically discontinuous from its preconditions; e.g., life manufactures chance by semiotic means. A sign being something that stands for another thing to a mind, signs are brought into existence only by acts of ‘reading.’ Peirce argued that this action is an element of physics, and thus the entire universe ‘lives.’ This essay postulates a degenerate form of Firstness that (...) is contingent upon ‘caused’ forms of apparent but not actual chance, and which consists of possibility sans sentiency. This argument limits the range of Peirce’s semiotics to biology; chance remains radical, though its roots now lie in the coextension of semiotics and life. As living things live only by incorporating extant phenomena, continuation depends on the ability to enter into successful semiotic relationships. This results in the ‘minding’ behavior that is both biological sentiency and genuine Firstness, and which expresses radically discontinuous behavior. Thus chance becomes something akin to truth: neither exists ‘metaphysically’ , both are quite distinct from being, and both happen only as a consequence of interpretation as it is generated by and re-generates sign-wielding beings as they seek what they need to go on living. While quite distinct from Peirce, this notion of chance may well result in a more productive use of his semiotics. (shrink)

There is currently debate between deflationists and anti-deflationists about the ontology of persisting objects. Some deflationists think that disputes between, for example, four-dimensionalists (e.g. Ted Sider and David Lewis) and quasi-nihilists (e.g. Peter Van Inwagen and Trenton Merricks) are merely verbal disputes. Anti-deflationists deny this. Eli Hirsch is a deflationist who maintains that many ontological disputes are merely verbal. Theodore Sider maintains that the disputes are not merely verbal. Hirsch and Sider are thus engaged in a metaontological dispute. In this (...) paper, I argue that Hirsch's metaontological dispute with Sider is, by Hirsch's own lights, itself merely verbal. I conclude that the mere verbalness of his metaontological dispute with Sider suggests that Hirsch's account of what makes a dispute merely verbal may be problematic. (shrink)

According to Saul Smilansky's ‘Paradox of Beneficial Retirement’, many serving members of professions may have decisive integrity-based reasons for retiring immediately. The Paradox of Beneficial Retirement holds that a below-par performance in one's job does not require any outright incompetence, but may take a purely relational form, in which a good performance is not good enough if it would be improved upon by someone else who would be appointed instead. It is argued, in response, that jobs in the sectors Smilansky (...) mentions are not merely positions to optimize the goals of the profession, but are professional careers in which there is the possibility of security and personal fulfilment. The article also explores connections between Smilansky's argument and G. A. Cohen's anti-incentives argument against Rawls. It is suggested that both thinkers underappreciate the relationship between personal reasons and institutional reasons. (shrink)

Subject: Volume dedicated to the question of how dance, both in its historical and in its contemporary manifestations, is intricately linked to conceptualisations of the political. Whereas in this context the term "policy" means the reproduction of hegemonic power relations within already existing institutional structures, politics refers to those practices which question the space of policy as such by inscribing that into its surface which has had no place before. The art of choreography consists in distributing bodies and their relations (...) in space. It is a distribution of parts that within the field of the visible and the sayable allocates positions to specific bodies. Yet in the confrontation between bodies and their relations, a deframing and dislocating of positions may take place. The essays included in this book are aimed at the multiple connections between politics, community, dance, and globalisation from the perspective of e.g. Dance and Theatre Studies, History, Philosophy, and Sociology. (shrink)

A survey was conducted of the perceived correlates of illegal abuses in the electronics industry. Human resource directors of thirty-one firms responded to a questionnaire which assessed their perceptions of the degree to which illegal behavior was caused by (1) deficiencies in the moral character of employees (2) the clarity of expectations and standards describing illegal behavior and (3) the presence of reinforcements and punishments contingent on these behaviors. All three variables were related to the frequency of abuses in three (...) areas of organizational crime (e.g. administrative, labor, environment) and three areas of personal crime (theft, falsifying records kickbacks) as reported by the directors and/or indicated by archival records. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of how organizations may reduce illegal activity. (shrink)

Corporations have not sufficiently yielded to social pressures for humanitarian reforms. To make such reforms requires that management give up some control. Giving up control contradicts traditional managerial philosophy. The bureaucratic structure of corporations gives management the power to virtually eliminate most social influences. An alternative to the bureaucratic corporation is a shared ownership corporation where investors, management, and low ranking employees all own the corporation. This alternative balances the power by giving all participants in the corporation power to influence (...) policy. Without this redistribution of power, or something like it, any hope for significant humanitarian reforms is vain. (shrink)

The bibliography of any contemporary philosopher is destined to be incomplete before it is ever published and the following is no exception. One guiding principle has been used throughout in the preparation of this bibliography: to provide readers with a guide which, though not exhaustive, does provide a good starting point for the serious study of the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel. Those works which contain comprehensive bibliographies to a certain date are listed as such. Roger Troisfontaines' De l'existence à l'être, (...) for example, contains an exhaustive bibliography of Marcel's works to the date of its publication and this fact is noted in the entry below. It is always best to read a philosopher in his original language. For the convenience of the English‐speaking reader however, the more important works of Gabriel Marcel are listed in the translation whenever possible. The books and articles written about Gabriel Marcel must obviously be listed in the language in which they appear in print. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Thomas G. Pavel INCOMPLETE WORLDS, RITUAL EMOTIONS' IN recent years, the notion of "fictional world" has enjoyed a considerable rise in fortune. The expression, however, is not entirely new. To refer to the world of a literary work, of a novel or of a play, has always been a favorite way of speaking for literary critics and aestheticians. In most cases, these were informal worlds. A discussion of the (...) world of Balzac, Dostoyevsky, HenryJames, or Proust often amounts to a description of each author's preferences in die selection and rearrangement of his material. Such discussion primarily fits authors who purposefully attempt to build comprehensive representational artifacts. One speaks quite naturally about l'univers balzacien, or about the universe of Musil. But is one entitled to refer with equal ease to the world ofBenjamin Constant, meagerly perceptible in his Adolphe, a short novel built in the spirit of economy, displaying just a few characters and a minimum of worldly information? Perhaps density and comprehensiveness are not indispensable characteristics of literary worlds. Aestheticians and narratologists using the "fictional worlds" terminology seem to believe mat any kind of artistic text projects a world, be it rich or poor. Such worlds are imagined in the fashion of modern philosophy of logic as states of affairs, more or less comprehensive. Some writers believe that the states of affairs comprised in fictional worlds must be fairly sizable, since diey should include "not only what the author indicates, but also whatever is required (entailed) by that which he indicates." 1 The laws of nature which are not specifically contradicted by the text would belong to its world. Thus, a few notorious cases aside, there is no reason to doubt that every child born in fiction has been engendered by a human fadier as long as the text does not report an exception. And if it does? Then, assuming that the laws of logic still govern if not fiction itself at least our understanding of it, we may appeal to what "possible world" philosophers have called "small miracles." * Editor's note: This article, as well as the contributions by Gerald Prince, Peter van Inwagen, and Kendall Walton which follow it, grew out ofa symposium on "Styles ofFictionality," organized by Professor Pavel and held at Harvard University in 1981. The Fall, 1983 issue of PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE will contain additional papers presented at the symposium. 48 Thomas G. Pavel49 Imagine, for instance, the world in which Notre Dame de Paris would be covered with blue paint. While everything else would preserve the properties it possesses in the actual world, with the laws of nature and the caused chains maintained, a small local change, somewhat miraculous, would modify only the color of the venerable building. Similarly, the world of Balzac may be understood as the world of early and mid-nineteenth-century France, slightly modified by the addition of a few hundred imagined characters. That diese conform surprisingly well to the general laws of French society of the time is so much the goal of Balzac's successful project, that for the sociologically-minded reader die' actual nonexistence of Rastignac, Rubempré, Vautrin, or Birotteau may appear a mere accident. These characters, one may surmise, display every trait that actual counterparts of theirs would possess, except existence. Hence, why would Rastignac's or Vautrin's emergence in a world omerwise identical to nineteenth-century France amount to anydiing more than a "small miracle"? On the other hand, Balzac's world being blessed wim hundreds of such miracles, the very magnitude of the project vindicates the attribute of "visionary," ascribed to Balzac by Béguin, or, if metaphorically undercut, mat of"God the Father" given him by Thibaudet. For, would not such magnitude entail more than just local changes in an otherwise faithful representation of the "actual" nineteenthcentury France? Similarly, would we interpret a fictional world in which a child has been engendered not by a human father, but by a divinity, as identical in all respects to the actual world, except for the limited modification attributed to a small miracle? 2 If we grant for a moment the improbable assumption that nineteenth-century France was a given and that Balzac... (shrink)