Wansing’s extended intuitionistic linear logic with strong negation, called WILL, is regarded as a resource-conscious refinment of Nelson’s constructive logics with strong negation. In this paper, (1) the completeness theorem with respect to phase semantics is proved for WILL using a method that simultaneously derives the cut-elimination theorem, (2) a simple correspondence between the class of Petri nets with inhibitor arcs and a fragment of WILL is obtained using a Kripke semantics, (3) a cut-free sequent calculus for WILL, called (...) twist calculus, is presented, (4) a strongly normalizable typed λ-calculus is obtained for a fragment of WILL, and (5) new applications of WILL in medical diagnosis and electric circuit theory are proposed. Strong negation in WILL is found to be expressible as a resource-conscious refutability, and is shown to correspond to inhibitor arcs in Petri net theory. (shrink)
Data from experiments on Erica × darleyensis and from related observations (Viémont and Beaujard, 1983) are taken for a critical analysis of the proposed model of morphogenetic phenomena. The criteria for judging the coherence of the constructions proposed in plant morphology are based on mathematical constructions deduced from Petri nets, especially elementary nets.
Comparisons of rival explanations or theories often involve vague appeals to explanatory power. In this paper, we dissect this metaphor by distinguishing between different dimensions of the goodness of an explanation: non-sensitivity, cognitive salience, precision, factual accuracy and degree of integration. These dimensions are partially independent and often come into conflict. Our main contribution is to go beyond simple stipulation or description by explicating why these factors are taken to be explanatory virtues. We accomplish this by using the contrastive-counterfactual approach (...) to explanation and the view of understanding as an inferential ability. By combining these perspectives, we show how the explanatory power of an explanation in a given dimension can be assessed by showing the range of answers it provides to what-if-things-had-been-different questions and the theoretical and pragmatic importance of these questions. Our account also explains intuitions linking explanation to unification or to exhibition of a mechanism. (shrink)
This paper is a reply to Jonathan Riley’s criticism of my reading of Mill (both published in the Philosophical Quarterly 2003). I show that Riley’s interpretation has no textual support in Mill’s writing by putting the supposedly supporting quotations in their proper context. Secondly it is demonstrated how my reading is not incompatible with hedonism. Mill’s use of the concepts of ‘quality’, ‘quantity’, and ‘pleasure’ are explained and illustrated. I conclude by considering whether the possible redundancy of Mill’s quality/quantity discussion (...) would be problematic. (shrink)
During the past decade, social mechanisms and mechanism-based ex- planations have received considerable attention in the social sciences as well as in the philosophy of science. This article critically reviews the most important philosophical and social science contributions to the mechanism approach. The first part discusses the idea of mechanism- based explanation from the point of view of philosophy of science and relates it to causation and to the covering-law account of explanation. The second part focuses on how the idea (...) of mechanisms has been used in the social sciences. The final part discusses recent developments in analytical sociology, covering the nature of sociological explananda, the role of theory of action in mechanism-based explanations, Merton’s idea of middle-range theory, and the role of agent-based simulations in the development of mechanism-based explanations. (shrink)
In an article published in Prolegomena 2006, Christoph Schmidt-Petri has defended his interpretation and attacked mine of Mill’s idea that higher kinds of pleasure are superior in quality to lower kinds, regardless of quantity. Millian qualitative superiorities as I understand them are infinite superiorities. In this paper, I clarify my interpretation and show how Schmidt-Petri has misrepresented it and ignored the obvious textual support for it. As a result, he fails to understand how genuine Millian qualitative superiorities determine (...) the novel structure of Mill’s pluralistic utilitarianism, in which a social code of justice that distributes equal rights and duties takes absolute priority over competing considerations. Schmidt-Petri’s own interpretation is a non-starter, because it does noteven recognize that Mill is talking about different kinds of pleasant feelings, such that the higher kinds are intrinsically more valuable than the lower. I conclude by outlining why my interpretation is free of any metaphysical commitment to the “essence” of pleasure. (shrink)
Various theories try to give accounts of how measures of this confidence do or ought to behave, both as far as the internal mental consistency of the agent as ...
Against Schmidt-Petri's claim, I argue that John Stuart Mill is committed to the view that one pleasure is higher in quality than another if and only if at least a majority of those people who are competently acquainted with both always prefer the one no matter how much of the other is offered. I support my reading with solid textual evidence; none such is provided by Schmidt-Petri in support of his contrary interpretation that qualitative superiority exists whenever the (...) experienced prefer less of one pleasure to more of another. The decisive objection to this is its incompatibility with the hedonistic requirement that more pleasure ought to be preferred to less, a requirement so fundamental that it would be uncharitable to suppose that Mill lost sight of it in his doctrine of higher pleasures. (shrink)
A well known paragraph in Mill’s ‘Utilitarianism’ has standardly been misread. Mill does not claim that if some pleasure is of ‘higher quality’, then it will be (or ought to be) chosen over the pleasure of lower quality regardless of their respective quantities. Instead he says that if some pleasure will be chosen over another available in larger quantity, then we are justified in saying that the pleasure so chosen is of higher quality than the other. This assertion is unproblematic.
Realism in Action is a selection of essays written by leading representatives in the fields of action theory and philosophy of mind, philosophy of the social sciences and especially the nature of social action, and of epistemology and philosophy of science. Practical reason, reasons and causes in action theory, intending and trying, and folk-psychological explanation are some of the topics discussed by these leading participants. A particular emphasis is laid on trust, commitments and social institutions, on the possibility of grounding (...) social notions in individual social attitudes, on the nature of social groups, institutions and collective intentionality, and on common belief and common knowledge. Applications to the social sciences include, e.g., a look at the Erklären-Verstehen controversy in economics, and at constructivist and realist views on archeological reconstructions of the past. (shrink)
I present a game-theoretic way to understand the situation describing Newcomb’s Problem (NP) which helps to explain the intuition of both one-boxers and two-boxers. David Lewis has shown that the NP may be modelled as a Prisoners Dilemma game (PD) in which ‘cooperating’ corresponds to ‘taking one box’. Adopting relevant results from game theory, this means that one should take just one box if the NP is repeated an indefinite number of times, but both boxes if it is a one-shot (...) game. Causal decision theorists thus give the right answer for the one-shot situation, whereas the one-boxers’ solution applies to the indefinitely iterated case. Because Nozick’s set-up of the NP is ambiguous between a one-shot and a repeated game, both of these solutions may appear plausible – depending on whether one conceives of the situation as one-off or repeated. If the players’ aim is to maximize their payoffs, the symmetric structure of the PD implies that the two players will behave alike both when the game is one-shot and when it is played repeatedly. Therefore neither the observed outcome of both players selecting the same strategy (in the PD) nor, correspondingly, the predictor’s accurate prediction of this outcome (in the NP) is at all surprising. There is no need for a supernatural predictor to explain the NP phenomena. (shrink)
As we move into a new millennium fraught with terror and danger, a global postmodern cosmopolis is unfolding in the midst of rapid evolutionary and social changes co-constructed by science, technology, and the restructuring of global capital. We are quickly morphing into a new biological and social existence that is ever-more mediated and shaped by computers, mass media, and biotechnology, all driven by the logic of capital and a powerful emergent technoscience. In this global context, science is no longer merely (...) an interpretation of the natural and social worlds, rather it has become an active force in changing them and the very nature of life. In an era where life can be created and redesigned in a petri dish, and genetic codes can be edited like a digital text, the distinction between “natural” and “artificial” has become greatly complexified. The new techniques of manipulation call into question existing definitions of life and death, demand a rethinking of fundamental notions of ethics and moral value, and pose unique challenges for democracy. (shrink)
This paper considers philosophical approaches that are relevant to the intertwinement of logic, metaphysics, and psychology proposed by the Aquinas commentator Tommaso de Vio Cardinal Cajetan, the humanist Petrus Ramus, the pure Aristotelian Cornelius Martini, the Semi-Ramist Bartholomaeus Keckermann, and the lexicographer Rudolf Goclenius. Mostly, however, it is about Ramus and his followers, the Ramists, because of the role they played in exacerbating a discussion on the constitution of objectivity during the Renaissance that was to have an impact on Cartesian (...) andpost-Cartesian theories of subjectivity. Finally, keeping in mind that Kant was familiar with the secunda Petri, i.e., with the second part of Ramus's logic, namely the theory of judgment, some common ground is recognizable between Ramus and Kant as well. (shrink)
This paper is an attempt to further our understanding of mechanisms conceived of as ontologically separable from laws. What opportunities are there for a mechanistic perspective to be independent of, or even more fundamental than, a law perspective? Advocates of the mechanistic view often play with the possibility of internal and external reliability, or with the paralleling possibilities of enforcing, counteracting, redirecting, etc., the mechanisms’ power to produce To further this discussion I adopt a trope ontology. It is independent of (...) the notion of law, and can easily be adapted to account for such characteristics of mechanisms. The idea of tropes as mechanisms is worked out in some detail. According to the resulting picture, there is still an opportunity to link mechanisms and laws. But while the predominant law view conceives of mechanistic approaches as special kinds of law accounts, this study indicates that the converse may be true. Law accounts are special cases of mechanistic accounts, and they work only in those worlds where the mechanisms are of the right kind. (shrink)
This paper examines the relation between Cartwright's concept of 'capacities' and Mill's concept of 'tendencies' and argues that they are not equivalent. Cartwright's concept of 'capacities' and her motivation to adopt it as a central notion in her philosophy of science are described. It is argued that the Millian concept of 'tendencies' is distinct because Mill restricts its use to a set of special cases. These are the cases in which causes combine 'mechanically'. Hence for Mill 'tendencies' do not merely (...) describe the operation of causes, but also and perhaps even primarily how they combine. This does not hold of Cartwrightian capacities which are meant to have unlimited applicability. Mill also explicitly denies the realism of 'capacities' in a sense which overlaps with Cartwright's. Her attempt to derive empirist credentials for her notion of capacity from Mill is therefore unsuccessful. (shrink)
This paper provides a conceptual analysis of the notion of interests as it is used in the social studies of science. After describing the theoretical background behind the Strong Program's adoption of the concept of interest, the paper outlines a reconstruction of the everyday notion of interest and argues that this same notion is used also by the sociologists of scientific knowledge. However, there are a couple of important differences between the everyday use of this notion and the way in (...) which it used by the sociologists. The sociologists do not use the term in evaluative context and they do not regard interests as purely non-epistemic factors. Finally, it is argued that most of the usual critiques of interest explanations, by both philosophers and fellow sociologists, are misguided. (shrink)
This paper discusses (in German) an idea enshrined in the recent (2012) revision of the German transplantation law. The law allows family members to make claims about what the deceased would have wanted to happen to his/her organs/tissue even though he/she never has voiced any relevant opinions. I argue that this is illegitimate.
Many of the arguments for neuroeconomics rely on mistaken assumptions about criteria of explanatory relevance across disciplinary boundaries and fail to distinguish between evidential and explanatory relevance. Building on recent philosophical work on mechanistic research programmes and the contrastive counterfactual theory of explanation, we argue that explaining an explanatory presupposition or providing a lower-level explanation does not necessarily constitute explanatory improvement. Neuroscientific findings have explanatory relevance only when they inform a causal and explanatory account of the psychology of human decision-making.
This paper challenges the first Gettier counterexample to the tripartite account of knowledge. Noting that 'the man who will get the job' is a description and invoking Donnellan's distinction between their 'referential' and 'attributive' uses, I argue that Smith does not actually believe that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Smith's ignorance about who will get the job shows that the belief cannot be understood referentially, his ignorance of the coins in his pocket (...) shows that it cannot be understood attributively. An explanation for why Smith appeared to have justified true belief is given by distinguishing between 'belief' and 'belief in truth'. Smith believes the sentence 'the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket' to be true (he mistakenly believes that Jones will get the job, of whom he knows that he has ten coins in his pocket) (hence his 'belief'), the sentence is true (hence 'truth'), and he has sufficient reason to assent to it (hence his 'justification'). But he does not believe the proposition expressed. Hence he does not know it either. (shrink)
Modern software is infested with flaws having information security aspects. Pervasive computing has made us and our society vulnerable. However, software developers do not fully comprehend what is at stake when faulty software is produced and flaws causing security vulnerabilites are discovered. To address this problem, the main actors involved with software vulnerability processes and the relevant roles inside these groups are identified. This categorisation is illustrated through a fictional case study, which is scrutinised in the light of ethical codes (...) of professional software engineers and common principles of responsibility attribution. The focus of our analysis is on the acute handling of discovered vulnerabilities in software, including reporting, correcting and disclosing these vulnerabilities. We recognise a need for guidelines and mechanisms to facilitate further improvement in resolving processes leading to and in handling software vulnerabilities. In the spirit of disclosive ethics we call for further studies of the complex issues involved. (shrink)
Modeling is a relatively new topic in biblical and related subjects—it was first introduced in the 1970s—and it is controversial because the application of social-scientific models raises the difficult question of the cultural gap between the present societies, where the models are usually developed, and the ancient cultural context to which the models are applied.Because biblical and related studies may not belong to the most familiar scholarly fields of the readers of this journal, I first sketch an overall picture of (...) the development of the discipline and its main methods (Section 2). The subsequent sections summarize the arguments presented for and against modeling in biblical studies (Section 3), and discuss .. (shrink)
The starting point of the present study is the interpretation of intuitionistic linear logic in Petri nets proposed by U. Engberg and G. Winskel. We show that several categories of order algebras provide equivalent interpretations of this logic, and identify the category of the so called strongly coherent quantales arising in these interpretations. The equivalence of the interpretations is intimately related to the categorical facts that the aforementioned categories are connected with each other via adjunctions, and the compositions of (...) the connecting functors with co-domain the category of strongly coherent quantales are dense. In particular, each quantale canonically induces a Petri net, and this association gives rise to an adjunction between the category of quantales and a category whose objects are all Petri nets. (shrink)
Word recognition is the Petri dish of the cognitive sciences. The processes hypothesized to govern naming, identifying and evaluating words have shaped this field since its origin in the 1970s. Techniques to measure lexical processing are not just the back-bone of the typical experimental psychology laboratory, but are now routinely used by cognitive neuroscientists to study brain processing and increasingly by social and clinical psychologists (Eder, Hommel, and De Houwer 2007). Models developed to explain lexical processing have also aspired (...) to be statements about the nature of human cognition (e.g., connectionist models, Plaut, McClelland, Seidenberg, and Patterson 1996). Words were convenient objects to study for cognitive psychologists because they are welldefined and their nature as alphabetic strings was a good fit to analysis with the computer programming languages of the 1970s and 1980s which excelled at string manipulation. But are words actually the privileged unit of mental representation and processing that all of this scientific attention makes them out to be? Like a growing number of other language researchers, our answer is no (see, e.g., (Bybee and Hopper 2001; Wray 2002). We propose that the mental representations for lexical structures form a continuum, from word combinations which have fossilized into single units (nightclub) to those that both exist as independent units and yet have bonds, varying in tightness, with the words with which they frequently co-occur (Harris 1998). The first line of support for this view is the simple observation that fluent speakers easily recognize the familiarity and cohesive quality of word combinations in their language. Examples in English include common noun compounds (last year, brand new), verb phrases (cut down, get a hold of, faced with) and other multi-word expressions such as common sayings and references to cultural concepts (saved by the bell, speed of light; Jackendoff 1995).. (shrink)
invasion, “the petri dish in which this experiment in pre-emptive policy grew.â€1 And the campaign opened for the midterm congressional elections, which would determine whether the administration would be able to carry forward its radical international and domestic agenda.
The architecture of brain, consciousness, and behavioral processes is shown to be formally similar in that all three may be conceived and depicted as Petri net patterned processes structured by a series of elements occurring or becoming active in stochastic succession, in parallel, with different rhythms of temporal iteration, and with a distinct qualitative manifestation in the spatiotemporal domain. A patterned process theory is derived from the isomorphic features of the models and contrasted with connectionist, dynamic system notions. This (...) empirically derived formulation is considered to be optimally compatible with the dual aspect theory in that the foundation of the diverse aspects would be a highly structured and dynamic process, the psychophysical neutral “ground” of mind and matter posed (but not properly determined) by dual aspect and neutral monist theories. It is methodologically sound to approach each one of these processes with specific tools and to establish concurrences in real time between them at the organismic level of analysis. Such intra-level and inter-perspective correlations could eventually constitute psychophysical bridge-laws. A mature psychology of consciousness is necessary to situate and verify the bridges required by a genuine mind-body science. (shrink)
This paper challenges (in a shorter version than the also listed 2002 LSE discussion paper) the first Gettier counterexample to the tripartite account of knowledge. Noting that 'the man who will get the job' is a description and invoking Donnellan's distinction between their 'referential' and 'attributive' uses, I argue that Smith does not actually believe that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Smith's ignorance about who will get the job shows that the belief (...) cannot be understood referentially, his ignorance of the coins in his pocket shows that it cannot be understood attributively. An explanation for why Smith appeared to have justified true belief is given by distinguishing between 'belief' and 'belief in truth'. Smith believes the sentence 'the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket' to be true (he mistakenly believes that Jones will get the job, of whom he knows that he has ten coins in his pocket) (hence his 'belief'), the sentence is true (hence 'truth'), and he has sufficient reason to assent to it (hence his 'justification'). But he does not believe the proposition expressed. Hence he does not know it either. (shrink)
In this paper, we give a step by step introduction to the theory of well quasi-ordered transition systems. The framework combines two concepts, namely (i) transition systems which are monotonic wrt. a well-quasi ordering ; and (ii) a scheme for symbolic backward reachability analysis. We describe several models with infinite-state spaces, which can be analyzed within the framework, e.g., Petri nets, lossy channel systems, timed automata, timed Petri nets, and multiset rewriting systems. We will also present better quasi-ordered (...) transition systems which allow the design of efficient symbolic representations of infinite sets of states. (shrink)
Abstract The architecture of brain, consciousness, and behavioral processes is shown to be formally similar in that all three may be conceived and depicted as Petri net patterned processes structured by a series of elements occurring or becoming active in stochastic succession, in parallel, with different rhythms of temporal iteration, and with a distinct qualitative manifestation in the spatiotemporal domain. A patterned process theory is derived from the isomorphic features of the models and contrasted with connectionist, dynamic system notions. (...) This empirically derived formulation is considered to be optimally compatible with the dual aspect theory in that the foundation of the diverse aspects would be a highly structured and dynamic process, the psychophysical neutral ?ground? of mind and matter posed (but not properly determined) by dual aspect and neutral monist theories. It is methodologically sound to approach each one of these processes with specific tools and to establish concurrences in real time between them at the organismic level of analysis. Such intra?level and inter?perspective correlations could eventually constitute psychophysical bridge?laws. A mature psychology of consciousness is necessary to situate and verify the bridges required by a genuine mind?body science. (shrink)
The Advanced Methods series is intented for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and established research scientists. Titles in the series are designed to cover current important areas of research in life sciences, and include both theoretical background and detailed protocols. The aim is to give researchers sufficient theory, supported by references, to take the given protocols and adapt them to their particular experimental systems. Unbiased Stereology , Second Edition expands the comprehensive practical first edition guide to 3-D measurements in microscopy using stereological (...) methods by adding a section on 2-D stereology, or "Petri-metrics". There is also an additional chapter on single-object stereology, which permits the measurement of total volume, surface and feature length of single arbitrary objects. The book is intended to lead the reader logically through a self-teaching course, with illustrative exercises at each stage. The techniques described have become benchmark methods in toxicology and neuroscience; the use of inferior methods often leading to missed or spurious results. (shrink)
This paper discusses Stephen Turner’s recent critique of theories of social practices. It shows that his arguments are valid against common explanatory uses of these concepts, but not against practices in general. There are plenty of legitimate non-explanatory uses for practice concepts. The paper also suggests that Turner’s main arguments derive from two principles that have much wider application than practice theories. Consequently, they should be considered as general constraints on every social theory.
Nonprofit organizations play a crucial role in society. Unfortunately, many such organizations are chronically underfunded and struggle to meet their objectives. These facts have significant implications for corporate philanthropy and Kant’s notion of imperfect duties. Under the concept of imperfect duties, businesses would have wide discretion regarding which charities receive donations, how much money to give, and when such donations take place. A perceived problem with imperfect duties is that they can lead to moral laxity; that is, a failure on (...) the part of businesses to fulfill their financial obligations to nonprofit organizations. This article argues the problem of moral laxity rests on a misinterpretation of Kantian ethics and, therefore, is really not a problem at all. As such, we argue corporate philanthropy while an imperfect duty should be interpreted more akin to perfect duties and, as a consequence, moral laxity does not arise for those corporations committed to acting on the basis of the moral law. More specifically, firms have duty-based obligations on the basis of benevolence, and as good corporate citizens, to help fund non-profit organizations. (shrink)
In this paper I attempt to elucidate the nature of that sense of 'methodology' which is concerned with the strategies, techniques, and procedures of scientific experimentation. It is claimed that methodology in this sense is at bottom a set of logical relations between sentences expressing pervasive facts of the subject matter and sentences describing experimental behavior. In particular a successful methodology is one in which the set of these sentences is logically consistent. I then turn to the problems involved in (...) teaching and learning an explicit methodology. Finally, I argue that this analysis throws fresh light on the distinction between knowing a fact and possessing a skill or competence. (shrink)
People differ in the extent to which they discount the values of future rewards. Behavioural economists measure these differences in terms of functions that describe rates of reduced valuation in the future – temporal discounting – as these vary with time. They measure differences in preference for risk – differing rates of probability discounting – in terms of similar functions that describe reduced valuation of rewards as the probability of their delivery falls. So-called ‘impulsive’ people, including people disposed to addiction, (...) tend to choose rewards in patterns that are described by unusually steeply sloped discount functions. The empirical literature is ambivalent as to whether this applies to pathological gamblers (PGs) who manifest most other behavioural patterns associated with addiction, with different, equally careful studies suggesting opposite conclusions (Petry & Casarella 1999; Holt, Green & Myerson 2003). This puzzle may arise from the fact that most previous experiments on discounting behaviour were not designed so as to allow effects of high temporal discounting to be distinguished from effects of low probability discounting. (Addiction has sometimes been associated with the latter because it seems to involve, at least in the starting addict, under appreciation of risk.) Our research project investigates both forms of discounting behaviour and their relationship to severity of risk of PG in a community sample of South African gamblers. (shrink)
