In this paper we study proof procedures for some variants of first-order modal logics, where domains may be either cumulative or freely varying and terms may be either rigid or non-rigid, local or non-local. We define both ground and free variable tableau methods, parametric with respect to the variants of the considered logics. The treatment of each variant is equally simple and is based on the annotation of functional symbols by natural numbers, conveying some semantical information on the worlds where (...) they are meant to be interpreted.This paper is an extended version of a previous work where full proofs were not included. Proofs are in some points rather tricky and may help in understanding the reasons for some details in basic definitions. (shrink)

This paper presents an approach to artificial intelligence planning based on linear temporal logic (LTL). A simple and easy-to-use planning language is described, Planning Domain Description Language with control Knowledge (PDDL-K), which allows one to specify a planning problem together with heuristic information that can be of help for both pruning the search space and finding better quality plans. The semantics of the language is given in terms of a translation into a set of LTL formulae. Planning is then reduced (...) to “executing” the LTL encoding, i.e. to model search in LTL. The feasibility of the approach has been successfully tested by means of the system Pdk, an implementation of the proposed method. (shrink)

1. A. Heyting (1930) introduced an intermediate logic whose semantics is based on a pair of states (‘here’ and ‘there’). This logic was axiomatized by Hosoi (1966), using the sequence of intermedia...

Basic hybrid logic extends modal logic with the possibility of naming worlds by means of a distinguished class of atoms (called nominals) and the so-called satisfaction operator, that allows one to state that a given formula holds at the world named a, for some nominal a. Hence, in particular, hybrid formulae include “equality” assertions, stating that two nominals are distinct names for the same world. The treatment of such nominal equalities in proof systems for hybrid logics may induce many redundancies. (...) This paper introduces an internalized tableau system for basic hybrid logic, significantly reducing such redundancies. The calculus enjoys a strong termination property: tableau construction terminates without relying on any specific rule application strategy, and no loop-checking is needed. The treatment of nominal equalities specific of the proposed calculus is briefly compared to other approaches. Its practical advantages are demonstrated by empirical results obtained by use of implemented systems. Finally, it is briefly shown how to extend the calculus to include the global and converse modalities. (shrink)

The interactions among the components of a biological system can be given a logical representation that is useful for reasoning about them. One of the relevant problems that may be raised in this context is finding what would explain a given behaviour of some component; in other terms, generating hypotheses that, when added to the logical theory modelling the system, imply that behaviour. Temporal aspects have to be taken into account, in order to model the causality relationship that may link (...) the behaviour of a given component to that of another one. This paper presents a hypothesis generation method for linear temporal logic theories whose formulae have a restricted syntactic form, which is however sufficient to model cellular and molecular interactions, as they are often represented by biologists. The method exploits the duality between hypothesis generation and consequence finding, and can therefore be also used to infer the consequences of a given fact. It is based on a resolution system proposed by Cavalli and Fariñas del Cerro in 1984. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper we state and prove Herbrand's properties for two modal systems, namely T and S4, thus adapting a previous result obtained for the system D [CIA 86a] to such theories. These properties allow the first order extension?along the lines of [CIA 91]?of the resolution method defined in [ENJ 86] for the corresponding propositional modal systems. In fact, the Herbrand-style procedures proposed here treat quantifiers in a uniform way, that suggests the definition of a restricted notion of unification (...) for quantifier free modal formulae obtained by means of a Skolem-like procedure. The differences among the three systems considered, D, T and S4, are taken into account by preliminary propositional transformations of the formulae, in such a way that the problem of quantifier elimination can be treated within the same pattern in the different systems. The methods employed to prove the fundamental theorems are purely proof-theoretical and make use of the formalization of the considered modal theories in terms of sequent calculi, where the cut elimination theorem holds. (shrink)

In a series of three behavioral experiments, we found a systematic distortion of probability judgments concerning elementary visual stimuli. Participants were briefly shown a set of figures that had two features (e.g., a geometric shape and a color) with two possible values each (e.g., triangle or circle and black or white). A figure was then drawn, and participants were informed about the value of one of its features (e.g., that the figure was a “circle”) and had to predict the value (...) of the other feature (e.g., whether the figure was “black” or “white”). We repeated this procedure for various sets of figures and, by varying the statistical association between features in the sets, we manipulated the probability of a feature given the evidence of another (e.g., the posterior probability of hypothesis “black” given the evidence “circle”) as well as the support provided by a feature to another (e.g., the impact, or confirmation, of evidence “circle” on the hypothesis “black”). Results indicated that participants’ judgments were deeply affected by impact, although they only should have depended on the probability distributions over the features, and that the dissociation between evidential impact and posterior probability increased the number of errors. The implications of these findings for lower and higher level cognitive models are discussed. (shrink)

A countable, atomically stable structure U in a finite, relational language has fewer than 2 ω non-isomorphic substructures if and only if U is cellular. An example shows that the finiteness of the language is necessary.

As founder of modern political economics and prominent theorist of the commercial society, Adam Smith’s importance is universally recognized. Little, however, has been done so far to develop Adam Smith’s virtue ethics in the context of modern business, characterized by digitalization. This article aims to rediscover Adam Smith’s virtue of prudence and its relevance for the “e-commercial society”: It presents a framework that considers the central place of prudence in the relationship between a prosperous e-commercial system and societal flourishing. In (...) Smith’s view of the commercial society, prudence enables people to develop habits of character related to industriousness, genuineness, spirit of sacrifice, and self-command, which help in the conduct of a prosperous business activity. This article translates Smith’s virtue of prudence into a language typical of consumers in the current e-commerce scenario, considering their development as persons and the contribution of their activities to the good of society. (shrink)

What did Lenin mean when he claimed to be thinking dialectically about questions of political practice? Renewed interest has been expressed in this subject, but the tendency of most studies is to treat Lenin's dialectic as a metaphysical doctrine consisting of universal laws such as transformation into opposite, and so forth. Emphasizing Lenin's Hegel Notebooks, commentators have argued that his tactical innovations after 1914 were simply applications of these dialectical laws. Examination of Lenin's conception of the dialectic as set forth (...) in his tactical writings after the turn of the century shows, however, that the Leninist practice of dialectical thinking was in fact the very antithesis of metaphysical reason, because it repudiated the universality of abstract rules in the formulation of tactics. Several examples of this practice are examined, including the case of national self-determination and the problem of party dictatorship over the working class. (shrink)

There is widespread interest in the possibility that music training enhances nonmusical abilities. This possibility has been examined primarily for speech perception and domain-general abilities su...

Banking firms are becoming increasingly aware that their clients’ management of environmental and social risks may in term threaten their own business as lenders and investors. In addition, stakeholders are requiring banks to improve their social performance. As a result, some banks are developing corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies and management systems to reduce potential risks and improve their performance. In the Spanish financial system, half of the banking firms are savings banks, most of which have always used some Corporate (...) Social Responsibility (CSR) criteria in their management. Private Banks have only recently started to integrate social aspects in their performance. However, no formal analysis has been carried out on the impact of CSR strategies. Various initiatives have been launched nationally and internationally to include the social dimension in management systems. The purpose of this research is to analyse the social performance of the main Spanish financial companies through public data such as social or sustainability reports and media sources. In order to do this, we need to determine which CSR criteria most greatly affect banking firms and to choose the most accurate quantitative and qualitative indicators to measure social performance. (shrink)

Banking firms are becoming increasingly aware that their clients’ management of environmental and social risks may in term threaten their own business as lenders and investors. In addition, stakeholders are requiring banks to improve their social performance. As a result, some banks are developing corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies and management systems to reduce potential risks and improve their performance. In the Spanish financial system, half of the banking firms are savings banks, most of which have always used some Corporate (...) Social Responsibility (CSR) criteria in their management. Private Banks have only recently started to integrate social aspects in their performance. However, no formal analysis has been carried out on the impact of CSR strategies. Various initiatives have been launched nationally and internationally to include the social dimension in management systems. The purpose of this research is to analyse the social performance of the main Spanish financial companies through public data such as social or sustainability reports and media sources. In order to do this, we need to determine which CSR criteria most greatly affect banking firms and to choose the most accurate quantitative and qualitative indicators to measure social performance. (shrink)

The mental simulation of past and future scenarios allows individuals to understand the past, make predictions about the future, plan and regulate their behavior. A great deal of research has focus...

This article identifies a disciplinary disconnection between secular and religious feminisms. While areas of study such as women’s, gender and feminist studies, and disciplines like feminist studies in religion, spirituality and theology advance understanding of gender relations, they are forms of analysis that rarely keep company. As we argue, there is a disconnection grounded in a sacred/secular divide evident through the different stages of the women’s movement and feminist history. Not only is this disciplinary disconnection mutually unhelpful, but it has (...) implications for the ways gendered religious and secular discourses operate in the public square and therefore, has implications for the future of feminist theology. This article first identifies the lack of relationship between secular and religious feminisms illustrated in three interrelated ways: secular feminisms’ neglect of women’s religious experiences; feminist religious studies’ reservedness; and the sacred/secular binary operating in the academy. We then suggest this disconnection extends to the most recent expressions of feminism – the third wave. This article then discusses what both disciplines lose from a lack of dialogue and what might be gained by a closer relationship; particularly when contemporary events in the public sphere highlight the importance of paying attention to the way women’s experiences, and secular and religious discourses interact. (shrink)

This is a study of the effects of a number of background variables on ethical perceptions of Mexican and U.S. marketers. This research investigates how a marketer’s personal religiousness, relativism, and the ethical values influence in perceptions of the degree of ethical problems in hypothetical marketing scenarios. It also examines differences between Mexican and U.S. marketers on these variables. The results show significant differences in perception between the countries, and we discuss the implications of these differences for cross-cultural business activities.

The critical discourse analysis is the tool used in this article, to study how audiovisual media have constructed mental representation about the historical facts occurred in Spain between the final stage of the Spanish Civil War and the late 1980s: the theft of newborn babies. The State has failed in an attempt to establish policies that support truth, justice and reparation as it has been recalled by United Nations experts to the Government of Spain, and the reports and documentaries have (...) become vehicles to capture and recover memories. Our objective is to analyze how this collective awareness has been realized and the contribution of reports and documentaries. Our results show that the Spanish television channels silence the Francoist context to depict the thefts as the product of economical mobs focused on child trafficking. The international channels, however, put the origin of the dictatorship at the center of the discourse. (shrink)

This article examines the production of consecrated femininity in contemporary Polish convents. Drawing on qualitative data from 35 interviews in five religious communities the article explores the type of female agency which transforms the dominant model of Polish femininity instead of resisting it. Following Lois McNay’s concept of narrative identity, the article argues that female agency does not necessarily emerge out of subversion of the male-dominated Polish Catholic Church. Rather than simply being placed within discursive structures, Catholic nuns reflexively alter (...) them by using a mixture of gender ideology and spiritually driven gender work in order to produce coherent and socially meaningful narratives of consecrated femininity. (shrink)

“Levinas’ standpoint in the hermeneutic turn: language as ethics”. This paper develops Emmanuel Levinas’ conceptions about language and its placein the linguistic-hermeneutic turn of contemporary philosophy. It examines the relations with the authors associated to this turn (Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeurand Derrida) due to the importance given to language and, at the same time, it sets him apart from them for his original ethical transmutation of language. This paper also considers the main philosophical notions by which Levinas treats the topic of (...) language: desire, diachrony, the said and the saying, trace, absence, no-indifference, otherness. (shrink)

Leibniz defende que há formas de necessidade compatíveis com a moralidade e outras que o não são. Para dar razão desta afirmação analisam-se diversas classificações da necessidade apresentadas por Leibniz, procurando salientar a sua irredutibilidade. Este facto permite pensar que a doutrina da necessidade de Leibniz não pode ser reduzida a um único plano de análise, seja ele lógico ou metafísico, mas deve ter em conta simultaneamente diversos planos de análise. The senses of necessity in LeibnizLeibniz considers that there are (...) forms of necessity that are compatible with morality and forms that are not compatible with morality. In order to understand this thesis we analyze different classifications of necessity proposed by Leibniz, seeking to explore their irreducibility. This irreducibility allows us to propose that Leibniz’ doctrine of necessity is incomprehensible from a unique logical or metaphysical point of view, and it must consider simultaneously different irreducible perspectives. (shrink)

In [9] it is proved the categorical isomorphism of two varieties: bounded commutative BCK-algebras and MV -algebras. The class of MV -algebras is the algebraic counterpart of the infinite valued propositional calculus L of Lukasiewicz . The main objective of the present paper is to study that isomorphism from the perspective of logic. The B-C-K logic is algebraizable and the quasivariety of BCKalgebras is the equivalent algebraic semantics for that logic . We call commutative B-C-K logic, briefly cBCK, to the (...) extension of B-C-K logic associated to the variety of commutative BCK–algebras. Moreover, we present the extension Boc of cBCK obtained by adding the axiom of “boundness”. We prove that the deductive system Boc is equivalent to L. We observe that cBCK admits two interesting extensions: the logic Boc, treated in this paper, which is equivalent to the system L of Lukasiewicz, and the logic Co that is naturally associated to the system Balo of `-groups . This constructions establish a link between L and Balo , that would be a logical approach to the categorical relationship between MV–algebras and `-groups. (shrink)

Language change can be conceptualized as a cyclical process of continuous renewal of the involved elements which somehow change their nature, with respect to phonological or lexico-grammatical features. A crucial aspect of such diachronic evolution is that cyclical change takes place systematically and follows regular and unidirectional patterns of development. Once the change is complete, the same developmental path will be undertaken by new linguistic items in the same cyclical fashion. In this paper, we illustrate the concept of cyclical change (...) by discussing two examples of linguistic cycles. A first instance of cyclical development is displayed at the phonological level by the diachronic changes in the obstruent consonant system taking place from Indo-European to German through the First and the Second Sound Shift: the cycle is completed in the Cimbrian dialects. A second instance is provided by the diachronic process known as Jespersen’s cycle ([1917] 1966): sentential negation, initially expressed through a single negative marker, is later reinforced by an additional one; eventually, this second element becomes the only negative marker available in the sentence while the original marker is deleted. The discussion of the negative cycle takes also into consideration the results of an empirical research conducted on two varieties of an Italo-Romance dialect spoken in northern Italy. (shrink)

In this essay, I aim to examine Hölderlin’s theory of composition according to the thesis on the compatibility of poetic and philosophical practices. I interpret Hölderlin’s poetological fragments as a response to the epistolary exchange he had held with his master Schiller a few years earlier, concerning the dialectic between philosophy and poetry, enthusiasm and sobriety. I argue that Hölderlin’s fragments prompt us to consider poetry and philosophy as poiesis-based practices. Identifying creativity as their common destination allows one to postulate (...) the interaction between the two disciplines. I finally argue that aesthetics could be the place for this interaction. Hölderlin outlines a productive, namely aesthetic, theory of creation, in which boundaries between philosophy and poetry seem to interact rather than exclude. (shrink)

Las normas del Derecho Internacional Humanitario establecen límites al uso de los medios y métodos de combate en el desarrollo de las hostilidades. Si bien en su origen el DIH no fue elaborado teniendo en cuenta los desafíos planteados por el desarrollo de la inteligencia artificial en ese contexto, es una realidad que en la actualidad la evolución de esta inteligencia, los algoritmos y su aplicación militar emergente constituyen un desafío a la luz de las normas humanitarias. Ese desafío comprende (...) tres ámbitos fundamentales: el técnico, el legal y el ético. Si bien se puede decir que la IA, en la etapa actual de desarrollo, permite que un programa computerizado basado en algoritmos realice ciertas tareas en un entorno complejo e incierto, a menudo con mayor precisión que los seres humanos, también debemos destacar que no hay tecnología que haga que una máquina se comporte como un ser humano, quien puede determinar si una acción es lícita o ilícita y decidir no continuar con lo programado, teniendo como objetivo primordial la protección de las víctimas. Los Estados deben adoptar regímenes de verificación, prueba y monitoreo como parte del proceso para determinar e imponer limitaciones o prohibiciones de acuerdo a los principios esenciales de distinción y proporcionalidad que el DIH establece en la utilización de armas durante los conflictos armados internacionales o no internacionales. Tanto desde una perspectiva legal como ética el ser humano está en el centro de esta problemática, ya que la responsabilidad por el uso de la fuerza no puede transferirse a sistemas de armas o algoritmos, y sigue siendo una responsabilidad humana. (shrink)

El artículo rastrea brevemente las propiedades del sumo sacerdote en el AT y resume el modo en que esta figura se presenta en la obra de Filón. El sumo sacerdote se presenta en los textos filónicos con tres características: 1.- como mediador (Fug. 108-115); 2.- exento de pecado por completo (Fug. 117-118; Spec. 1. 80-81); 3.- investido por los cuatro elementos (Mos. 2. 117-130; Spec. 1. 84-96). La teología de Clemente Alejandrino va a proyectar a Jesucristo, poco más de un (...) siglo después, las características simbólicas del sumo sacerdote que Filón había adjudicado a Moisés. The paper traces briefly the properties of the high priest in the OT and summarizes how this figure is presented in the works by Philo. The high priest is presented in the Philonic texts with three characteristics: 1.- as a mediator (Fug. 108-115); 2.- completely sinless (Fug. 117-118; Spec. 1. 80-81); 3.- invested by the four elements (Mos. 2. 117-130; Spec. 1. 84-96). Clement of Alexandria will project to Jesus Christ, a century and a half later, the symbolic features of the high priest of Israel that Philo had awarded to Moses. (shrink)

In the current debate on how ordinary objects persist through time, more than one philosopher has endorsed the following two theses: stage theory and diachronic universalism. In this paper, I would like to offer a so-lution to the problem (related to lingering properties) that Balashov poses to the joint acceptance of these theses. I will also offer a number of rea-sons why, even if it is not necessary to undermine Balashov�s counterex-amples, stage theorists can, without making their theory less appealing, (...) reject Balashov�s understanding of sorts, which plays a crucial role in his criticisms of stage universalism. (shrink)