Most linguists have defined African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) as a regular and systematic form of vernacular language which contains distinctive grammatical and phonological features. AAVE is considered a social dialect or a non-standard variety of American English, which is spoken by the majority of African Americans. This article explores variability of the selected AAVE features in the interviews with ten African-American public figures, ranging from Hip Hop artists and blues musicians (Redman, Chuck D, Prodigy, MC Lyte, B.B. King) to talk (...) show hosts (Oprah Winfrey), from Hollywood actresses (Queen Latifah,Whoopi Goldberg) to former government officials (Colin Powell) and residents of the White House (Michelle Obama). The selected features of AAVE treated in this study include the absence of copula, the third person singular –s absence, the possessive –s absence, the plural –s absence, and the generalization of is and was to plural and second person pronouns.We consider the influence of social parameters (i.e., gender, age, social status, ethnicity, and affiliation with Hip Hop culture) on the degree of speech formality within a frame of interspeaker variation by examining the correlation between the frequencies of AAVE features and social factors of individual interviewees. The frequencies of individual AAVE variants are calculated into percentages which represent the levels of vernacular usage of each interviewee. Our results are then compared with the outcomes of previous sociolinguistic findings on external factors that have been reported to affect the degree of linguistic formality in a spoken discourse. (shrink)

M. Gams et al. (Eds.) IOS Press, "Strong AI": an Adolescent Disorder Donald Michie Professor Emeritus, University of Edinburgh, UK Associate ...

Es wird gezeigt, daß in der Skizze zum Beweis des 2. Satzes von Gödel dieser eine stillschweigende Voraussetzung macht, die im Widerspruch zu den üblichen Forderungen nach Eindeutigkeit der benutzten Terme steht: Eine und dieselbe Gödelzahl g repräsentiert nämlich einmal den Ausdruck g1: "ein im System k unentscheidbarer Satz" und das andere Mal den Ausdruck g2: "g1 ist in k nicht beweisbar". Beachtet man aber diesen Unterschied, so ist der Widerspruch nicht herleitbar, auf dem der Gödelsche Beweis basiert.

In his ontology, Badiou operates with historical situations that are identified as situations whose representation regime is prone to change. Similarly, his Greater Logic operates with changes and modifications of the transcendental related to a change in a particular world determined by its transcendental. In both ontology and logic, Badiou often loosely relates the occurrence of change to temporality, but the operative concept of temporality remains unclear. The paper aims to provide a concept of temporality, borrowed from physics, and which (...) seems consistent with Badiou’s system of thought and helps in comprehending it. We use this concept of time, which explicitly links disorder and temporality in an attempt to elucidate certain parts of Badiou’s ontology and logic. (shrink)

Can mind be modeled as a Turing machine? If you find such questions irrelevant, e.g. because the subject is already exhausted, then you need not read the book Mind versus Computer (Gams et al., 1991). If, on the other hand, you do find such questions relevant, then perhaps you need not read Dunlop's review of the book (Dunlop, 2000). (...).

Isaac Newton affirms on several occasions that human understanding cannot reach the essence of bodies. The article seeks to answer the question of why we cannot reach their essence either through our reflection or our senses, which confines our cognition to their appearances. I argue that the answer to this problem lies in Newton’s theological voluntarism, which he fully developed for the first time and explicitly in relation to the problem of the nature of bodies in his manuscript De gravitatione. (...) Newton’s God could create beings similar to bodies, which display all their actions and exhibit all their phenomena, and yet they would not be bodies in their essential and metaphysical constitution. Newton’s theological voluntarism has other important epistemological consequences, such as God’s ability to freely change the laws of nature according to his will. (shrink)

What is real? Less than you might think. We advocate austere metaphysical realism---a form of metaphysical realism claiming that a correct ontological theory will repudiate numerous putative entities and properties that are posited in everyday thought and discourse, and also will even repudiate numerous putative objects and properties that are posited by well confirmed scientific theories. We have lately defended a specific version of austere metaphysical realism which asserts that there is really only one concrete particular, viz., the entire cosmos (...) (see Horgan and Potr (2000, 2002), Potr (2003)). But there are various potential versions of the generic position we are here calling austere metaphysical realism; and it is the generic view that constitutes the ontological part of the overall approach to realism and truth that we will describe here. What is true? More than you might think, given our austere metaphysical realism. We maintain that truth is semantically correct affirmability, under contextually operative semantic standards. We also maintain that most of the time, the contextually operative semantic standards work in such a way that semantic correctness (i.e., truth) is a matter of indirect correspondence rather than direct correspondence between thought or language on the one hand, and the world on the other.1 When correspondence is indirect rather than direct, a given statement (or thought) can be true even if the correct ontology does not include items answering to all the referential commitments (as we will here call them) of the statement. 2 This means that even if a putative object is repudiated by a correct ontological theory, ordinary statements that are putatively about that object may still be true. For instance, the statement “The University of St. Andrews is in Scotland” can be semantically correct (i.e., true) even if the right ontology does not include any entity answering to the referring term ‘The University of St. Andrews’, or any entity... (shrink)

The article focuses on Galileo's Letter to Castelli, 21 December 1613. The author analyzes Galileo's hermeneutical principles established in the first part of the letter and his literal interpretation of the passage from the Book of Joshua 10, 12-13, in Copernican terms, in the second part of the letter. Galileo appears to use the Bible as a scientific authority, supporting his Copernican views, and thus he seems to contradict his own hermeneutical principles. The author argues that Galileo's position is consistent, (...) especially if one takes into account the historical context of its genesis, that is, in the context of the constant, theologically-inspired attacks on Copernicus and Galileo and his commitment to the heliocentric world system and in the context of his newly-made telescopic observations and discoveries. (shrink)

A provocative ontological-cum-semantic position asserting that the right ontology is austere in its exclusion of numerous common-sense and scientific posits and that many statements employing such posits are nonetheless true. The authors of Austere Realism describe and defend a provocative ontological-cum-semantic position, asserting that the right ontology is minimal or austere, in that it excludes numerous common-sense posits, and that statements employing such posits are nonetheless true, when truth is understood to be semantic correctness under contextually operative semantic standards. Terence (...) Horgan and Matjaz Potrc argue that austere realism emerges naturally from consideration of the deep problems within the naive common-sense approach to truth and ontology. They offer an account of truth that confronts these deep internal problems and is independently plausible: contextual semantics, which asserts that truth is semantically correct affirmability. Under contextual semantics, much ordinary and scientific thought and discourse is true because its truth is indirect correspondence to the world. After offering further arguments for austere realism and addressing objections to it, Horgan and Potrc consider various alternative austere ontologies. They advance a specific version they call "blobjectivism"--the view that the right ontology includes only one concrete particular, the entire cosmos, which, although it has enormous local spatiotemporal variability, does not have any proper parts. The arguments in Austere Realism are powerfully made and concisely and lucidly set out. The authors' contentions and their methodological approach--products of a decade-long collaboration--will generate lively debate among scholars in metaphysics, ontology, and philosophy. (shrink)

The author argues that Newton’s distinction between absolute and relative motion, i.e. the refusal to define motion in relation to sensible things, in “Scholium on time, space, place and motion” from _Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy_, stems in great part from his critical stance towards Descartes’s philosophy of nature. This is apparent from the comparison of “Scholium”, in which Descartes is not mentioned at all, with Newton’s criticism of him in his manuscript _De gravitatione_. The positive results of Newton’s encounter (...) with Descartes’s theory of motion is almost completely identical to those of the “Scholium”: the definition of motion must concern the whole body and not just its surface; instead of “mutual translation”, it must include the force that is the cause of the physical motion; the motion of the bodies is uniform and straightforward, which can only be achieved within absolute space. As far as the theory of motion is concerned, Newton’s philosophical challenge was always Descartes. (shrink)

Copernicus’ work was for long considered a turning point in astronomy; some historians even consider it a turning point in science in general. But numerous recent studies have turned this image upside-down. It was revealed that Copernicus’ work was firmly rooted in the traditional conceptual apparatus. The aim of the article is to show that Copernicus’ work, in spite of everything, does indeed represent a radical epistemological shift regarding a certain point, which can be appropriately illuminated by the analysis of (...) the Copernicus’ introduction of the concept of Earth’s motion in astronomy. Copernicus, in contrast to the pre-Copernican tradition, finds mathematical-astronomical reasons that transcend the field of sensory perceptions to be decisive, and rejects the physical or cosmological reasons given by the traditional natural sciences, which are eventually all based on direct or indirect “evidence immediate”. (shrink)

In the formation of epistemically justified beliefs, what is the role of attention, and what is the role (if any) of non-attentional aspects of cognition? We will here argue that there is an essential role for certain nonattentional aspects. These involve epistemically relevant background information that is implicit in the standing structure of an epistemic agent’s cognitive architecture and that does not get explicitly represented during belief-forming cognitive processing. Since such “morphological content” (as we call it) does not become explicit (...) during belief formation, it cannot be information that is within the scope of attention. Nevertheless,it does exert a subtle influence on the character of conscious experience, rather than operating in a purely unconscious way. (shrink)

The thought and the findings of moral particularism are extended to contextualism. Moral particularism asserts that reasons for moral actions are not governed by general principles, but by a mixture of situation bound deliberation and values. Particularism was established in the area of moral philosophy and its main results include delimitation with various forms of moral generalism. Many insights were accumulated along the way. The book claims that a serious contextualist approach needs to embrace particularist normativity. Thesis is then applied (...) to the traditional areas of philosophy such as semantics, epistemology and ontology. This makes it possible to ask questions about the positive and not just negative story and about the wider impact of particularism. The book is an attempt of such a positive story. Foundations are laid for an exciting new field of research in the main systematic branches of philosophy, urging you to rethink the normative basis of semantics, epistemology and metaphysics, in their interweaving with moral thought. The importance of narration and of phenomenology is stressed for these areas. (shrink)

Ontology is the name of the philosophical discipline that provides answers about what there is. The view laid out in the paper, i.e. austere realism, is realistic in that it defends the existence of a thought and language independent world. It is also inclined towards austerity in that it does not take this world to be as richly ontologically populated with entities as common sense initially presupposes. Yet it is a view that results from common sense taking a reflexive attitude (...) about its ontological commitments. Despite its austere consequences, according to this view, many thoughts and sentences expressed by common sense are true, provided that truth is not considered as direct correspondence, i.e. not as the ultimate ontological correspondence to the world. This is enabled by the construal of truth as indirect correspondence that merges the world and contextually operative semantic standards. Such a combined ontological cum semantic view seems a plausible and a well defendable position. (shrink)

The general drive in epistemology is to deliver necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge with the use of exceptionless general epistemic principles. There is another way, however, to approach the phenomenon of knowledge – by particularistic beautiful patterns. David Lewis in his paper „Elusive Knowledge” provides a nice contextual epistemology. We also think that contextualism is the right way to go and that the epistemic context plays an important role in our endeavors to gain knowledge. But, we disagree with Lewis (...) on two points of his account, namely that we can talk of knowledge without justification and that a set of exceptionless rules determines relevant alternatives. We retain the overall notion of knowledge as justified true belief and try to work out a contextualist account of knowledge within this notion, at the same time pointing to an alternative, particularistic view on relevance and relevant alternatives. We briefly sketch our proposal building upon the distinction between the local and global justification and we put forward some suggestions how this approach tackles skeptical scenarios, the lottery problem and Gettier cases. (shrink)