The project, entertained by Leibniz and others, of creating an ideal language to facilitate ratiocination, is investigated in detail. Six possible relations between the ideal language (IL) and the natural language (NL) it replaces are studied. (1) IL says exactly what NL says, but says it much more clearly. (2) IL says exactly what NL says, but does so more economically. (3) IL says exactly what NL says, but does so more succinctly. (4) IL says part of what NL says, (...) and says it more perspicuously. (5) IL says part of what NL says, and says it more perspicuously; moreover, there is an effective procedure for going from NL to IL. (6) IL says everything that NL says, plus some things that NL cannot say. (shrink)

Having remarked that "competing and mutually contradictory philosophies may be formulated in different languages," Landesman concludes that "the generalization that the speaking of a given language by a given philosopher is either a necessary or sufficient condition for the formulation of his explicit philosophy would seem to be false." I do not believe that the conclusion follows. Elsewhere, I have tried to show that what I call the "strong interpretation" of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis can be assimilated to the notion of (...) "untranslatability" in such a way that it becomes equivalent to the denial of the position held by Roman Jakobson that "All cognitive experience and its classification is conveyable in any existing language." To deny Jakobson's thesis is equivalent to the assertion that there is at least one language for which there is at least one other language such that the first cannot translate the second. Letting "Txy" stand for "x translates y," and "Lx" for "x is a language," Jakobson's thesis goes over in symbols as. (shrink)

Reanimated for the contemporary literature in the writings of Quine, [16]) and Kuhn [7], the conventionalism of Duhem [2] and Poincaré [12] has emerged in the last few years as one of the genuinely interesting topics in the philosophy of science. The theory in question—let us follow Grünbaum [3] in calling it the D-thesis, after its founder, Pierre Duhem—claims three things: a single scientific hypothesis H is never disconfirmable in isolation from its fellow; every single hypothesis H of science presupposes, (...) explicitly or implicitly, the support of a conjunction A = A, • A2 • … • Am of auxiliary assumptions or hypotheses; the failure of an observational consequence of H in face of contradictory evidence disconfirms only the conjunction of H and A, not H alone—i.e. establishes only ∼. The logical picture is as follows. (shrink)

Coastal ecosystems are increasingly dominated by humans. Consequently, the human dimensions of sustainability science have become an integral part of emerging coastal governance and management practices. But if we are to avoid the harsh lessons of land management, coastal decision makers must recognize that humans are one of the more coastally dependent species in the biosphere. Management responses must therefore confront both the temporal urgency and the very real compromises and sacrifices that will be necessary to achieve a sustainable coastal (...) ecosystem, one that is economically feasible, socially just, and ecologically sound. (shrink)

Recently a growing number of biologists have begun to consider the causal role that processes of embryonic development may play in evolution. This constitutes a reunion of these phenomena which had been linked in the nineteenth century through Haeckel's biogenetic law. This reunion may result in a new subdiscipline of biology, if there is a set of unique concepts and methods which tie the various research approaches together. Such concepts as bauplan, canalization, and developmental constraint, may serve in such a (...) capacity. The methods employed must combine comparative and experimental analyses, with special attention paid to the range of variation in developmental events within each taxon. These concepts and methods are also applicable to the problem of how development evolved, thus the evolution of development may also be considered part of the reunion. The reunion is discussed in terms of the potential participation of various schools of thought found in the current literature. (shrink)