We present a new method for characterizing the interpretive possibilities generated by elliptical constructions in natural language. Unlike previous analyses, which postulate ambiguity of interpretation or derivation in the full clause source of the ellipsis, our analysis requires no such hidden ambiguity. Further, the analysis follows relatively directly from an abstract statement of the ellipsis interpretation problem. It predicts correctly a wide range of interactions between ellipsis and other semantic phenomena such as quantifier scope and bound anaphora. Finally, although the (...) analysis itself is stated nonprocedurally, it admits of a direct computational method for generating interpretations. (shrink)

The relationship between Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) functional structures (f-structures) for sentences and their semanticinterpretations can be formalized in linear logic in a way thatcorrectly explains the observed interactions between quantifier scopeambiguity, bound anaphora and intensionality.Our linear-logic formalization of the compositional properties ofquantifying expressions in natural language obviates the need forspecial mechanisms, such as Cooper storage, in representing thescoping possibilities of quantifying expressions. Instead, thesemantic contribution of a quantifier is recorded as a linear-logicformula whose use in a proof will establish the (...) scope of thequantifier. Different proofs can lead to different scopes. In eachcomplete proof, the properties of linear logic ensure thatquantifiers are properly scoped. (shrink)

Systematic semantic ambiguities result from the interaction of the two operations that are involved in resolving ellipsis in the presence of scoping elements such as quantifiers and intensional operators: scope determination for the scoping elements and resolution of the elided relation. A variety of problematic examples previously noted - by Sag, Hirschbüihler, Gawron and Peters, Harper, and others - all have to do with such interactions. In previous work, we showed how ellipsis resolution can be stated and solved in equational (...) terms. Furthermore, this equational analysis of ellipsis provides a uniform framework in which interactions between ellipsis resolution and scope determination can be captured. As a consequence, an account of the problematic examples follows directly from the equational method. The goal of this paper is merely to point out this pleasant aspect of the equational analysis, through its application to these cases. No new analytical methods or associated formalism are presented, with the exception of a straightforward extension of the equational method to intensional logic. (shrink)

Sample quotes from emails sent by visitors to Mary Klages's successful literary theory web pages on which this book is based: 'Finding your course was a godsend ...

It is argued that dispositional explanations are radically incomplete causal explanations that are employed when (1) a description of the stimuli is insufficient to account for the object's response and (2) not enough is known about the object to specify what its specific causal contribution is. ryle's failure to refer to the causal contribution of the organism in his account of dispositions is regarded as a serious weakness.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:77 KEMP SMITH, HUME AND THE PARALLELISM BETWEEN REASON AND MORALITY In a letter to a physician written in 1734 Hume expressed a dissatisfaction with the current state of philosophy and criticism, a dissatisfaction which he said had led him to strike out on his own and "seek out some new Medium, by which Truth might be establisht." He then went on to claim success: "After much Study, & (...) Reflection on this, at last, when I was about 18 Years of Age, there seem'd to be open'd up to me a new Scene of Thought, which transported me beyond Measure, & made me, with an Ardor natural to young men, throw up every other Pleasure or Business to apply entirely to it..." The wording suggests that the new Scene of Thought was a clear revelation, but nowhere does Hume tell us what the revelation was. (A clue, perhaps, is to be found in the "Abstract," where Hume says that if anything entitles him to the name of an inventor, "it is the use he makes of 2 the principle of the association of ideas.") Kemp Smith is convinced, however, that he knows what the new Scene of Thought was. According to Kemp Smith, Hume had already discovered that morality rests on feeling alone and depends in no way on insight or evidence, and the new discovery was simply the sudden realization that belief is equally independent of these considerations. I will argue in this paper that the great difficulty in this interpretation is that in those sections of the Treatise and the second Enquiry in which Hume expounds what could be called his moral epistemology he is concerned with pointing out what he considers to be important differences between reason and taste and between understanding and morality. I am not, however, questioning the validity of Kemp Smith's naturalistic interpretation, if it is broadly construed. 78 A curiosity of Kemp Smith's exposition is his citing of passages from Hume, which at first glance anyway seem to weaken, rather than strengthen, his case for the parallelism of moral and factual judgments. I will give two examples, the first being a quotation from the Green and Grose edition of the Enquiry. That Faculty, by which we discern Truth and Falsehood, and that by which we perceive Vice and Virtue had long been confounded with each other, and all Morality was suppos'd to be built on eternal and immutable Relations, which, to every intelligent Mind, were equally invariable as any Proposition concerning Quantity or Number. But a late Philosopher [Mr. Hutcheson, added as a note] has taught us, by the most convincing Arguments, that Morality is nothing in the abstract Nature of Things, but is entirely relative to the Sentiment or mental Taste of each particular [i.e. species] of Being; in the same Manner as the distinctions of sweet and bitter, hot and cold, arise from the particular feeling of each Sense or Organ. Moral Perceptions, therefore, ought not to be class 'd with the Operations of the Understanding, but with the Tastes or Sentiments. On the next page of this book Kemp Smith refers to this passage as part of the evidence for his claim that "the view here taken of our moral judgments of approval and disapproval can be extended to our beliefs regarding matters of fact and existence, and that 'logic', morals and 'criticism' may thus be brought 4 within the scope of the same general principles." The reference to "external and immutable Relations" may have led Kemp Smith to believe that Hume's thesis in this paragraph is the contrast between demonstrative and other kinds of judgment, but the last sentence is a decisive refutation of that interpretation. Hume frequently uses the term "understanding" to refer to causal reasoning, though in this sentence he seems to be using the term in 79 the more inclusive sense that would include demonstration and relations of ideas as well. But I know of no instances in which "understanding" is restricted to what Hume calls science, i.e., demonstration. Kemp Smith also quotes from the last section of Appendix I to the second Enquiry. This passage, appearing in the Selby-Bigge... (shrink)

People crossing the border into the United States or Canada may find their electronic devices subject to search. Border agents can require travelers to unlock their devices, and then browse through...

In the Philippines, all transplant centers are mandated by the Department of Health (DOH) to have a Hospital Transplant Ethics Committee (HTEC) to ensure that donations are altruistic, voluntary and free of coercion/commercial transactions. This study was undertaken primarily to describe the organizational and functional profile of existing HTECs and identify areas for improvement. This is a descriptive cross‐sectional study. There was variation in their logistical arrangements (support from hospital, filing systems, office spaces), operations (length and frequency of meetings, number (...) of referrals) and membership (composition, qualifications, occupation, training). The approval rate for donor‐recipient pairs is high with the majority of cases made by living non‐related donors. Appropriate reasons were cited for rejection. The perception of HTECs is that they are competent and confident in their decision‐making. However, there is a need to standardize HTEC composition, provide operating procedures and additional training which can be done by the DOH. (shrink)

En quoi consiste, ou devrait consister, l'éthique professionnelle en enseignement? Comment se manifeste-t- elle dans les gestes pédagogiques? Selon quels critères peut-on la juger? Comment développer l'éthique professionnelle dans le cadre des formations initiale et continue en enseignement? En tenant compte du contexte social et culturel du Québec, des principes éthiques déjà énoncés par le ministère de l'Education ainsi que des lois, codes et conventions ayant des incidences sur la pratique enseignante, les auteures présentent des éléments à considérer pour la (...) réflexion éthique sur l'agir professionnel. Elles proposent des clarifications conceptuelles et un certain nombre de repères et de balises afin de guider les enseignants et de stimuler la discussion sur l'éthique professionnelle, non seulement dans la classe, mais aussi dans l'école et dans la société. (shrink)

There is little question that neuroethics can be enriched by closer engagement with Buddhism. One key concern is how to minimize risks of moral imperialism and appropriation while doing so. This co...

Blumenthal-Barby et al. (2022) list several areas of philosophy that may contribute to bioethics. Missing from their list and explicit discussion is the philosophy of disability. Whereas mainstream...

Three questions arising from Aggleton & Brown's target article are addressed. (1) Is there any benefit to considering the effects of partial lesions of the anterior thalamic nuclei (AT)? (2) Do the AT have a separate role in the proposed extended hippocampal system? (3) Should perirhinal cortex function be restricted to familiarity judgements?

How is hope to be found amid the ethical and political dilemmas of modern life? Writer and philosopher Mary Zournazi brought her questions to some of the most thoughtful intellectuals at work today. She discusses "joyful revolt" with Julia Kristeva, the idea of "the rest of the world" with Gayatri Spivak, the "art of living" with Michel Serres, the "carnival of the senses" with Michael Taussig, the relation of hope to passion and to politics with Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto (...) Laclau. A dozen stimulating minds weigh in with their visions of a better social and political order. The result is a collaboration - of writing, of thinking, and of politics - that demonstrates more clearly than any single-authored project could how ideas encountering one another can produce the vision needed for social change. (shrink)

Health is on of those subjects that seems easy to define and then, the closer one gets, is more and more difficult to understand. Does the health of a schizophrenic really improve by being sedated and kept in an asylum? Is a course of Prozac or psychotherapy aimed to make someone happy really a medicine? These incompatible views are most visible in the NHS which has over the decades become the focus of all these projections of health. At the expense (...) of the taxpayer many are being cured while there is no money for some of those who have physical ailments in a real sense. In this book, Theodore Dalrymple sets out to tear into the myths that he believes our politicians have created, with anecdotes from his own experience as a doctor. (shrink)

"Charming, interesting, thought-provoking and a great read." Rosalind Hursthouse The daughter of a pacifist rector who answered "No!" when his congregation asked him "Is everything in the bible true?", perhaps Mary Midgley was destined to become a philosopher. Yet few would have thought this inquisitive, untidy, nature-loving child would become "one of the sharpest critical pens in the west." This is her remarkable story. Probably the only philosopher to have been in Vienna on the eve of its invasion by (...) Nazi Germany in 1938 and dance in Trafalgar Square on VE day seven year later, she studied philosophy at Oxford in the same year as Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot, all of whom became close friends. Midgley tells us in vivid and humorous fashion how they cut a swathe through the arid landscape of 1950s British philosophy, writing and arguing - often with each other - about the grand themes of character, beauty and the meaning of rudeness while the spectral figure of Ludwig Wittgenstein hovered in the background. She also charts the highs and lows of philosophy and academia in Britain. On joining the Reading philosophy department on £400 a year in 1949, she doubled its staff complement. But her many years at Newcastle University - where Mike Brearley, who later captained England at cricket, also used to teach - were rewarded with the closure of the philosophy department in the 1980s. The mother of three children, her journey is also one of a woman who in the 1950s and 1960s was fighting to combine a professional career with raising a family. In startling contrast to many of the academic stars of her generation, we learn that Midgley nearly became a novelist and started writing philosophy only when in her fifties, suggesting that Minerva's owl really does fly at dusk. Plainly told like her philosophy, this is an elegiac and moving account of friendships found and lost, bitter philosophical battles and of a profound love of teaching all too rarely acknowledged today. (shrink)

Plato famously promised to complement the Sophist and the Statesman with another work on a third sort of expert, the philosopher--but we do not have this final dialogue. Mary Louise Gill argues that Plato promised the Philosopher, but did not write it, in order to stimulate his audience and encourage his readers to work out, for themselves, the portrait it would have contained. The Sophist and Statesman are themselves members of a larger series starting with the Theaetetus, Plato's investigation (...) of knowledge, and the whole series relies on the Parmenides, the second part of which presents a philosophical exercise, introduced as the first step in a larger philosophical program. Gill contends that the dialogues leading up to the missing Philosopher, though they reach some substantive conclusions, are philosophical exercises of various sorts designed to train students in dialectic, the philosopher's method; and that a second version of the Parmenides exercise, closely patterned on it, spans parts of the Theaetetus and Sophist and brings the philosopher into view. This is the exercise about being, the subject-matter studied by Plato's philosopher. Plato hides the pieces of the puzzle and its solution in plain sight, forcing his students (and modern readers) to dig out the pieces and reconstruct the project. Gill reveals how, in finding the philosopher through the exercise, the student becomes a philosopher by mastering his methods. She shows that the target of Plato's exercise is internally related to its pedagogical purpose. (shrink)

In 1963 Duchamp described his vertical installation of three Readymades at the Pasadena Art Museum as “readymade talk of what goes on in the Large Glass.” Elsewhere, he spoke of the Readymades as “vehicles for unloading ideas,” and during the years 1912-15 his mind was filled with ideas as he invented the “playful physics” for his techno-scientific allegory of quest, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even [The Large Glass]. This essay argues that the “ideas” being unloaded in the (...) Readymades were rooted in his extensive study of contemporary science and technology as well as the biographical experience of his stay at Herne Bay on the English seacoast during August 1913. Readymades addressed include the Bicycle Wheel, With Hidden Noise, Paris Air, and Fresh Widow. Central themes include string or thread, traced from his preoccupation with tennis during his holiday, and the impact of the electrical spectacle of the illuminated Pier Pavilion at Herne Bay. (shrink)

This issue of Science in Context presents a sampling of current work by art historians examining modern artists' engagement with science as well as the relationship of photography to both science and art. The essays' topics span the mid-to-later nineteenth century to the 1960s and, thus, in a series of case studies provide an introduction to aspects of artistic modernism. Indeed, it is impossible to understand fully many of the radical innovations of modern art without some knowledge of an artist's (...) cultural context, and developments in science have often played a critical role in defining that milieu. Collected together, these essays also represent methodological models of historical work on art and science that serve as useful examples in this developing field. (shrink)

A leader in the modern commentary on ethics and philosophy, Mary Warnock casts a critical eye over her life and times.

This paper criticizes Langton's speech act account of MacKinnon's claim about (the subordinating force of) pornography and offers a different account of how speech might enact harmful norms and thus constitute harm.

Explores the teaching and learning of issues relating to the impact of science in society. This title offers practical guidance in devising learning goals and suitable learning and assessment strategies. It helps teachers to provide students with the skills and understanding needed to address these multi-faceted issues.

Introduction: Wonder and the births of philosophy -- Socrates' small difficulty -- The wound of wonder -- The death and resurrection of Thaumazein -- The Thales dilemma -- Repetition : Martin Heidegger -- Metaphysics small difficulty -- Wonder and the first beginning -- Wonder and the other beginning -- Theaetetus redux : the ghost of the Pseudes Doxa -- Once again to the cave -- Rethinking Thaumazein -- Openness : Emmanuel Levinas -- Passivity and responsibility -- The ethics of the (...) cave -- Infinity and astonishment -- Opening out : from existent to existence -- Closing down : from existence to existent -- Locking up : totality and infinity -- The phantom of the autrement -- Awakening -- Relation : Jean-Luc Nancy -- The problem of Mitsein -- Mitsein as essential inessentiality -- The myth of essentialism -- Unworking -- Interruption -- Repetition -- Decision : Jacques Derrida -- Thaumazein, the irresponsible, and the undecidable -- Hospitality -- Undecidability revisited -- Much madness is divinest sense (or, who comes after the decision?) -- How to avoid the subject (or, that's not my hedgehog!) -- Undecidability, take three : think here of Kierkegaard -- Mysterium tremendum -- Postlude: Possibility. (shrink)

Hans Jonas bénéficie de la reconnaissance de ses pairs comme de la notoriété auprès d'un large public. L'auteur du " Principe responsabilité " est aussi un spécialiste de la religion gnostique, un philosophe de la vie analysant la dynamique de l'organisme et de l'esprit. La notion de liberté est un fil conducteur herméneutique pour exposer une pensée éclectique mais unitaire et originale.