Inductive inference considers two types of queries: Queries to a teacher about the function to be learned and queries to a non-recursive oracle. This paper combines these two types — it considers three basic models of queries to a teacher (QEX[Succ], QEX[ The results for each of these three models of query-inference are the same: If an oracle is omniscient for query-inference then it is already omniscient for EX. There is an oracle of trivial EX-degree, which (...) allows nontrivial query-inference. Furthermore, queries to a teacher cannot overcome differences between oracles and the query-inference degrees are a proper refinement of the EX-degrees. In the case of finite learning, the query-inference degrees coincide with the Turing degrees. Furthermore oracles can not close the gap between the different types of queries to a teacher. (shrink)

In recent years large amounts of electronic texts have become available. While the first of these corpora had only a low level of annotation, the more recent ones are annotated with refined syntactic information. To make these rich annotations accessible for linguists, the development of query systems has become an important goal. One of the main difficulties in this task consists in the choice of the right query language, a language which at the same time should be powerful enough to (...) let users formulate the queries they want and which should be efficiently evaluable to keep query response times short. There is a widespread belief that such a query language does not exist. It is therefore the aim of this paper to show that there is indeed a powerful query language that can be efficiently evaluated. We propose the use of monadic second-order logic as a query language. We show that a query in this language can be evaluated in linear time in the size of a tree in the corpus. We also provide examples of complicated linguistic queries expressed in monadic second-order logic thereby demonstrating the high expressive power of the language. (shrink)

Although George Berkeley himself made no major scientific discoveries, nor formulated any novel theories, he was nonetheless actively concerned with the rapidly evolving science of the early eighteenth century. Berkeley's works display his keen interest in natural philosophy and mathematics from his earliest writings (Arithmetica, 1707) to his latest (Siris, 1744). Moreover, much of his philosophy is fundamentally shaped by his engagement with the science of his time. In Berkeley's best-known philosophical works, the Principles and Dialogues, he sets up his (...) idealistic system in opposition to the materialist mechanism he finds in Descartes and Locke. In De Motu, Berkeley refines and extends his philosophy of science in the context of a critique of the dynamic accounts of motion offered by Newton and Leibniz. And in Siris, Berkeley's flirtation with neo-Platonism draws inspiration from the fire theory of Boerhaave as well as Newton's aetherial speculations in the Queries of the Optics. In examining Berkeley's critical engagement with the natural philosophy of his time, we will thus improve our understanding of not just his philosophy of science, but of his philosophical corpus as a whole. (shrink)

We investigate the connection between interference and computational power within the operationally defined framework of generalised probabilistic theories. To compare the computational abilities of different theories within this framework we show that any theory satisfying four natural physical principles possess a well-defined oracle model. Indeed, we prove a subroutine theorem for oracles in such theories which is a necessary condition for the oracle model to be well-defined. The four principles are: causality, purification, strong symmetry, and informationally consistent composition. Sorkin has (...) defined a hierarchy of conceivable interference behaviours, where the order in the hierarchy corresponds to the number of paths that have an irreducible interaction in a multi-slit experiment. Given our oracle model, we show that if a classical computer requires at least n queries to solve a learning problem, because fewer queries provide no information about the solution, then the corresponding “no-information” lower bound in theories lying at the kth level of Sorkin’s hierarchy is \. This lower bound leaves open the possibility that quantum oracles are less powerful than general probabilistic oracles, although it is not known whether the lower bound is achievable in general. Hence searches for higher-order interference are not only foundationally motivated, but constitute a search for a computational resource that might have power beyond that offered by quantum computation. (shrink)

The appropriately chosen title of Volume 3 of Bradley’s Collected Works, Refinement and Revision, is a guide to its contents. A further guide as well as a useful outline is provided by Carol Keene’s carefully constructed table of contents. Here it is, slightly abbreviated, but with page numbers to indicate the amount of material.

The appropriately chosen title of Volume 3 of Bradley’s Collected Works, Refinement and Revision, is a guide to its contents. A further guide as well as a useful outline is provided by Carol Keene’s carefully constructed table of contents. Here it is, slightly abbreviated, but with page numbers to indicate the amount of material.

In the empirical logic approach to quantum mechanics, the physical system under consideration is given in terms of a manual of sample spaces. The resulting propositional structure has been shown to form an orthoalgebra, generalizing the structure of an orthomodular poset. An orthoalgebra satisfies the unique Mackey decomposition (UMD) property if, given two commuting propositions a and b, there is a unique jointly orthogonal triple (e, f, c) such that a=e⊕c and b=f⊕c. In a manual, E is refined by F (...) if E is logically equivalent to some partition of F, making results from F at least as informative as those from E. The main result is a characterization of the UMD property in terms of the refinement structure of an underlying manual, provided the manual is event saturated and orthogonally additive. (shrink)

Matthew Walker's model overcomes the unrefined classical concept of consolidation as a unitary process. Presently still confined in its scope to selective data mainly referring to procedural motor learning, the model nonetheless provides a valuable starting point for further refinements, which would be required for a more comprehensive account of different types and aspects of human memory consolidation.

In the postscript to The Varieties of Religious Experience William James distinguishes two types of belief in the supernatural, conceived as an essential component in religion, crass or piecemeal supernaturalism, on the one hand, and refined supernaturalism on the other.

In the postscript to The Varieties of Religious Experience William James distinguishes two types of belief in the supernatural, conceived as an essential component in religion, crass or piecemeal supernaturalism, on the one hand, and refined supernaturalism on the other.

Clear guidelines addressing the ethically appropriate use of anti-infectives in the setting of hospice care do not exist. There is lack of understanding about key treatment decisions related to infection treatment for patients who are eligible for hospice care. Ethical concerns about anti-infective use at the end of life include: (1) delaying transition to hospice, (2) prolonging a dying process, (3) prescribing regimens incongruent with a short life expectancy and goals of care, (4) increasing the reservoir of potential resistant pathogens, (...) (5) placing unreasonable costs on a capitated hospice system. Although anti-infectives are thought to be relatively safe, they can place a burden on patients and be inconsistent to particular care plans. The current complex, and at times fragmented, medical care often fails to address these issues in decision-making. In many ways, the ethics governing the end of life decisions related to dialysis, hydration/nutrition, and hypercalcemia parallel those of anti-infectives. In this article we articulate important elements in ethical decision-making in the application of anti-infectives for patients who are eligible for hospice care, and we point to the need for prospective studies to help refine particular guidelines in these cases. (shrink)

This paper concerns the paraconsistent logic LPQ⊃,F and an application of it in the area of relational database theory. The notions of a relational database, a query applicable to a relational database, and a consistent answer to a query with respect to a possibly inconsistent relational database are considered from the perspective of this logic. This perspective enables among other things the definition of a consistent answer to a query with respect to a possibly inconsistent database without resort to database (...) repairs. In an earlier paper, LPQ⊃,F is presented with a sequent-style natural deduction proof system. In this paper, a sequent calculus proof system is presented instead because such proof systems are generally considered more suitable as the basis of proof search procedures than natural deduction proof systems and proof search procedures can serve as the core of algorithms for computing consistent answers to queries. (shrink)

Concise replies to remarks and queries by Paolo Parrini, and by students andmembers of the audience regarding the topics indicated by the above mentioned keywords.

Building on past constructive criticism, the present study provides further methodological development focused on the elimination of bias that may occur during first-person observation. First, various sources of errors that may accompany introspection are distinguished based on previous critical literature. Four main errors are classified, namely attentional, attributional, conceptual, and expressional error. Furthermore, methodological recommendations for the possible elimination of these errors have been determined based on the analysis and focused excerpting of introspective scientific literature. The following groups of methodological (...) recommendations were determined: 1) a better focusing of the subject’s attention to their mental processes, 2) providing suitable stimuli, and 3) the sharing of introspective experience between subjects. Furthermore, the potential of adjustments in introspective research designs for eliminating attentional, attributional, conceptual, and expressional error is discussed. (shrink)

It is my intention in this brief study to extend the argument that Nestle begins with her seminal article,' Butch-Femme Relationships: Sexual Cour age in the 1950s', and that Henking and Comstock continue by including it in the critical anthology of writings on'being queer' and 'being religious', Querying Religion. I want to do this by making 'an overt claim' that the butch-femme community of the 1950s created its own spirituality—in the content of a corporeal theology between couples and individually, and (...) that these couples/individuals were also part of this larger 'bar community' that created a space for the community to refine this theology in terms of self-defining community. I want to argue that this self-defined community served to function for its members in many of the same ways any religious community functions that is held together by a common faith and/ or theology....I praise those hands, with scars she's proud of, on gender fuck forearms. They steady my pulse, settle down, settle down, curve on my cheek in the dark like a prayer....Her hands say yield and make it sound safe. They enter me like something holy. It takes time to interpret the tongue of her hands, the whispering of 'come here', or the bunch and knot of 'back off', as they churn cement, hoist bricks, sludge mortar into cracks, knife off the excess, until she's built Jericho and I have no trumpet......I am in the sweet, inquisitive poultice of her hands, proudly helpless, wanted, given. She makes loaves and fishes of me.2. (shrink)

Both the music and social bonding hypothesis and the music as a credible signal hypothesis emerge as solid views of how human music and human musicality might have evolved. Nonetheless, both views could be improved with the consideration of the way in which human language might have evolved under the effects of our self-domestication.

The last epigrammatist named by Meleager as contributing to his Garland is Phanias, who, with Meleager's customary irrelevance, is said to be represented there by cornflowers . No inferences can be drawn from his place in the catalogue, which is neither chronological nor topographical in arrangement, and with one possible exception the epigrams give no hint of his home or date. In A.P. 6. 299.

This articles gives an overview of the main themes and arguments of _Self-Expression_ (OUP,2007; paper, 2011), and responds to some recent publications in which that book is discussed. In the process of these responses, the article provides refinements and elaborations on some of the book's central claims.

McCarthy provided the audience with a concise summary of the basic approach and central theses of the common text. He then posed two substantial questions. The first concerned the possibility of extending the analysis of discourse and silence to deal with non-senseful "utterance." The second dealt with the relation between the concept of silence proposed by Dauenhauer and Ricoeur's concept of distantiation. What follows is an edited version of his paper.

The formal definition of species as explanatory hypotheses presented by Fitzhugh is emended. A species is an explanatory account of the occurrences of the same character among gonochoristic or cross-fertilizing hermaphroditic individuals by way of character origin and subsequent fixation during tokogeny. In addition to species, biological systematics also employs hypotheses that are ontogenetic, tokogenetic, intraspecific, and phylogenetic, each of which provides explanatory hypotheses for distinctly different classes of causal questions. It is suggested that species hypotheses can not be applied (...) to organisms with obligate asexual, parthenogenetic, and self-fertilizing modes of reproduction. Hypotheses explaining shared characters among such organisms are, instead, strictly phylogenetic. Several implications of this emended definition are examined, especially the relations between species, intraspecific, and phylogenetic hypotheses, as well as the limitations of species names to be applied to temporally different characters within populations. (shrink)

[opening paragraph]: Buddhist inquiry into the natural world proceeds from a radically different point of departure than western science, and its methods differ correspondingly. Early pioneers of the scientific revolution, including Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, expressed an initial interest in the nature of physical objects most far removed from human subjectivity: such issues as the relative motions of the sun and earth, the surface of the moon, and the revolutions of the planets. And a central principle of scientific naturalism is (...) the pure objectification of the natural world, free of any contamination of subjectivity. This principle of objectivism demands that science deals with empirical facts testable by empirical methods entailing testability by third-person means; and such facts must, therefore, be public rather than private, which is to say, they must be accessible to more than one observer. (shrink)

This article generates an affective hermeneutics of the political. The research question, What is feeling political? is, at first, refined through the oeuvre of political theorist Simone Weil, whose focus on experience, involvement and attention highlights the role of sentience in political life. The inescapable normativity of Weil’s texts calls for an alternative approach to the question at hand, one that acknowledges the inevitability of the phenomenon of feeling political. In order to produce such an approach, the realm in which (...) said phenomenon occurs is spatialized as an indefinite series of rhizomatic affective atmospheres in which the negotiation of one’s involvement, resistance, association, and isolation prompts a variety of orientations. The work of Lauren Berlant is subsequently considered as a means to stress the interplay between noise and ambience on one hand, and the notions of citizenship and community on the other. Ultimately, a reflection inspired by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari emphasizes the humanist undertone of this investigation, reposing the question of feeling political as an ontological query. (shrink)

Everyone loves a good story. But does everyone live a good story? It has frequently been asserted by philosophers, psychologists and others interested in understanding the distinctive nature of human existence that our lives do, or should, take a narrative form. Over the last few decades there has been a steady and growing focus on this narrative approach within philosophical discussions of personal identity, resulting in a wide range of narrative identity theories. While the narrative approach has shown great promise (...) as a tool for addressing longstanding and intractable problems of personal identity, it has also given rise to much suspicion. Opponents of this approach charge it with overstating or distorting the structure of actual lives. (shrink)

The editorial introduces issue 21.1 of Technoetic Arts via a critical reflection on the artificial intelligence hype (AI hype) that emerged in 2022. Tracing the history of the critique of Large Language Models, the editorial underscores that there are substantial ethical challenges related to bias in the training data, copyright issues, as well as ecological challeges which the technology industry has consistently downplayed over the years. -/- The editorial highlights the distinction between the current AI technology’s reliance on extensive pre-existing (...) human-generated data for pattern recognition and the performative process inherent in art practice. Patterns of creative output can be replicated without a thorough understanding of underlying concepts. In contrast, the performative process of art practice, as explored through the conceptual frameworks of creativity by Noam Chomsky, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Roger T. Ames and with reference to an earlier publication of the editorial’s author, creates concepts and continually ‘strives to extend itself towards the unknown.’ -/- Following this introductory section, the editorial provides an overview of the ten articles featured in this issue of Technoetic Arts. The first four texts engage with emerging technologies from various perspectives in art and design. The subsequent six articles, part of a special section titled 'Perspectives from Chandigarh,' reflect a quest for meaningful existence within colonial, patriarchal, and biopolitical structures that frame everyday practices of exclusion and oppression. (shrink)

The majority of commentators agree on one thing: Our network approach might be the prime candidate for offering a new perspective on the origins of mental disorders. In our response, we elaborate on refinements (e.g., cognitive and genetic levels) and extensions (e.g., to Axis II disorders) of the network model, as well as discuss ways to test its validity.

I am preparing an English translation of both the Tractatus longior and the Tractatus brevior of Walter Burley’s De puritate artis logicae for the “Yale Library of Medieval Philosophy.” My translation is based of course on the 1955 critical edition by Philotheus Boehner, the only reasonably reliable text available. Nevertheless, in preparing my translation, I have had several occasions to question or correct readings in Boehner’s edition. In some instances the corrections are merely obvious typographical errors, but in others there (...) was something more substantive at stake. The text of the Tractatus brevior is particularly problematic in places, since there are fewer extant manuscripts on which to base an edition. (shrink)

We argue that a conflict between two conceptions of “quantity of matter” employed in a corollary to proposition 6 of Book III of the Principia illustrates a deeper conflict between Newton’s view of the nature of extended bodies and the concept of mass appropriate for the theoretical framework of the Principia. We trace Newton’s failure to recognize the conflict to the fact that he allowed for the justification of natural philosophical claims by two types of a posteriori, empiricist methodologies. Newton's (...) thoughts on these methodologies demonstrate that his natural philosophy continued to develop after the publication of the first edition of Principia and that De Grav should be understood as an early, and not necessarily representative, text. (shrink)

Critics of persuasive advertising argue that it undermines the autonomy of consumers by manipulating their desires in morally problematic ways. My aim is this paper is to refine that argument by employing a conception of autonomy that is not at odds with certain forms of manipulation. I argue that the charge of manipulation is not sufficient for condemning persuasive advertising. On my view, manipulation of an agent’s desires through advertising is justifiable in cases where the agent accepts the process through (...) which the desires were developed. I show how the standard manipulation objection proves too much as it would also condemn cases of that kind. I argue that this distinction is especially important when we consider the implications of “new media.” In addition to increasing vulnerability to manipulation, new media have considerable impacts on well-being. By siding with the traditional autonomy argument, we would be compelled to take an implausible stand against all forms of manipulation through advertising, but I suggest that only a proper subset of those cases are morally problematic. This conclusion opens up a space for persuasive advertising that is permissible while nevertheless condemning cases that violate consumers’ autonomy. (shrink)

The prediction of protein–protein interactions based on independently obtained structural information for each interacting partner remains an important challenge in computational chemistry. Procedures where hypothetical interaction models (or decoys) are generated, then ranked using a biochemically relevant scoring function have been garnering interest as an avenue for addressing such challenges. The program PatchDock has been shown to produce reasonable decoys for modeling the association between pig alpha-amylase and the VH-domains of camelide antibody raised against it. We designed a biochemically relevant (...) method by which PatchDock decoys could be ranked in order to separate near-native structures from false positives. Several thousand steps of energy minimization were used to simulate induced fit within the otherwise rigid decoys and to rank them. We applied a partial free energy function to rank each of the binding modes, improving discrimination between near-native structures and false positives. Sorting decoys according to strain energy increased the proportion of near-native decoys near the bottom of the ranked list. Additionally, we propose a novel method which utilizes regression analysis for the selection of minimization convergence criteria and provides approximation of the partial free energy function as the number of algorithmic steps approaches infinity. (shrink)