Weakly acyclic games form a natural generalization of the class of games that have the finite improvement property. In such games one stipulates that from any initial joint strategy some finite improvement path exists. We classify weakly acyclic games using the concept of a scheduler introduced in Simon and Apt. We also show that finite games that can be solved by the iterated elimination of never best response strategies are weakly acyclic. Finally, we explain how the schedulers allow us to (...) improve the bounds on finding a Nash equilibrium in a weakly acyclic game. (shrink)

We show that various paradoxes can arise in a natural class of social networks. They demonstrate that more services or products may have adverse consequences for all members of the network and conversely that restricting the number of choices may be beneficial for every member of the network. These phenomena have been confirmed by a number of empirical studies. In our analysis we use a simple threshold model of social networks introduced in Apt and Markakis, and more fully in Apt (...) and Markakis. In this model the agents, influenced by their neighbours, can adopt one out of several alternatives. We identify and analyze here four types of paradoxes that can arise in these networks. These paradoxes shed light on possible inefficiencies arising when one modifies the sets of products available to the agents forming a social network or the network structure. One of the paradoxes corresponds to the well-known Braess paradox in congestion games and shows that by adding more choices to a node, the network may end up in a situation that is worse for everybody. We exhibit a dual version of this, according to which removing a product available to an agent can eventually make everybody better off. The other paradoxes that we identify show that by adding or removing a product from the choice set of an agent may lead to permanent instability. Finally, we also identify conditions under which some of these paradoxes cannot arise. (shrink)

Provides a systematic introduction to the theory of logic programming and shows how this theory can be applied to reason about pure Prolog programs. The text includes an introduction to programming in Prolog and deals with such programming issues as determination, occur-check freedom and absence of errors. It covers both the natural interpretations of logic programming, as declarative specification and as procedure for computer execution.

This collection of current research on logic programming languages presents results from a three-year, ESPRIT-funded effort to explore the integration of the foundational issues of functional, logic, and object-oriented programming. It offers valuable insights into the fast-developing extensions of logic programming with functions, constraints, concurrency, and objects. Chapters are grouped according to the unifying themes of functional programming, constraint, logic programming, and object-oriented programming.

The Joint International Conference on Logic Programming, sponsored by the Association for Logic Programming, is a major forum for presentations of research, applications, and implementations in this important area of computer science. Logic programming is one of the most promising steps toward declarative programming and forms the theoretical basis of the programming language Prolog and its various extensions. Logic programming is also fundamental to work in artificial intelligence, where it has been used for nonmonotonic and commonsense reasoning, expert systems implementation, (...) deductive databases, and applications such as computer-aided manufacturing. Krzysztof R. Apt is project leader at the Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam and part-time Professor in Computer Science at the University of Amsterdam. Topics covered: Theory Foundations. Programming Languages. Implementation. Programming Methodologies and Tools. Applications. Deductive Databases. Artificial Intelligence. Parallelism. (shrink)

Investigating meta-programming within the logic programming paradigm, Meta-Logics and Logic Programming presents original research on an important extension of logic programming that makes it more amenable for knowledge representation and programming in general. The 12 contributions, many written especially for this book, explore the foundations, language design issues, and applications of meta-programming in logic programming. Meta-programming—the process of writing computer programs that can manipulate representations of other programs—has been key both in the foundations of computer science and in its practical (...) developments. Examples of meta-programs include compilers, interpreters, program analyzers, and partial evaluators. The choice of logic programming as a basis for meta-programming offers several practical and theoretical advantages: among them, the possibility of tackling critical foundational problems of meta-programming within a strong theoretical framework, and the surprising ease of programming. The usual framework of logic programming (and more generally first-order logic), however, has to be modified and extended to formally deal with meta-programs, extensions the editors call "meta-logics." Along with an exploration of meta-programming in logic programming, the definitions, formal properties, and use of these extensions constitute one of the book's main themes. The first part of the book, Foundations, focuses on the representation problem—how object programs are represented within meta-programs. The second part, Language Support for Meta-Logics, is concerned with language extensions that make meta-programming easier and more elegant. The third part, Meta-Logics for Knowledge Management, deals with the use of meta-logic for advanced knowledge representation purposes. Logic Programming series. (shrink)

Lipid droplets (LDs) are ubiquitous, neutral lipid storage organelles that act as hubs of metabolic processes. LDs are structurally unique with a hydrophobic core that mainly consists of neutral lipids, sterol esters, and triglycerides, enclosed within a phospholipid monolayer. Nascent LD formation begins with the accumulation of neutral lipids in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) bilayer. The ER membrane proteins such as seipin, LDAF1, FIT, and MCTPs are reported to play an important role in the formation of nascent LDs. As the (...) LDs grow, they unmix from the highly charged ER membrane to form mature LDs. LD biogenesis is an exciting, emerging research area, and herein, we discuss the recent progress in our understanding of the formation of eukaryotic nascent LDs. We focus on the role of ER membrane shaping proteins such as reticulons and reticulon‐like proteins, membrane lipids, and cytoskeleton proteins such as septin in the formation of nascent LDs. (shrink)

In Het regeren van precairen analyseert Isabell Lorey hoe het mogelijk is dat een aanzienlijk deel van de bevolking van neoliberale samenlevingen met onzekerheid leeft zonder zich te verzetten. Zij concludeert dat de logica van het liberalisme precariteit tegenover veiligstelling plaatst, waardoor individuen zichzelf middels zelfregeringstechnieken proberen af te schermen en zich niet verzetten tegen precariteit.

This volume is a collection of papers presented at the colloquium, and it testifies to the growing importance of game theory as a tool that can capture concepts ...

Primary research on HIV/AIDS in India has predominantly focused on known risk groups such as sex workers, STI clinic attendees and long-distance truck drivers, and has largely been undertaken in urban areas. There is evidence of HIV spreading to rural areas but very little is known about the context of the infection or about issues relating to health and social impact on people living with HIV/AIDS. In-depth interviews with nineteen men and women infected with HIV who live in rural areas (...) were used to collect experiences of testing and treatment, the social impacts of living with HIV and differential impacts on women and men. Eight focus group discussions with groups drawn from the general population in the four villages were used to provide an analysis of community level views about HIV/AIDS. While men reported contracting HIV from sex workers in the cities, women considered their husbands to be the source of their infection. Correct knowledge about HIV transmission co-existed with misconceptions. Men and women tested for HIV reported inadequate counselling and sought treatment from traditional healers as well as professionals. Owing to the general pattern of husbands being the first to contract HIV women faced a substantial burden, with few resources remaining for their own or their children’s care after meeting the needs of sick husbands. Stigma and social isolation following widowhood were common, with an enforced return to the natal home. Implications for potential educational and service interventions are discussed within the context of gender and social relations. (shrink)

Semantics of Detachment A Review of Burkhard Hasebrink, Susanne Bernhardt, and Imke Früh, eds., Semantik der Gelassenheit: Generierung, Etablierung, Transformation [Semantics of detachment: Formation, establishment, transformation] Silke Schwandt Beyond the Untranslatability of Concepts A Review of Martin J. Burke and Melvin Richter, eds., Why Concepts Matter: Translating Social and Political Thought László Kontler Emotional Modernities A Review of Ute Frevert, Monique Scheer, Anne Schmidt, Pascal Eitler, Bettina Hitzer, Nina Verheyen, Benno Gammerl, Christian Bailey, and Margrit Pernau, Gefühlswissen: Eine lexikalische Spurensuche (...) in der Moderne [Emotional knowledge: In search of lexical clues in modernity] Anu Korhonen Beyond Peace as a Process A Review of Julia Harfensteller, The United Nations and Peace: The Evolution of an Organizational Concept Marie-Christine Boilard Human Rights as Conceptual History A Review of Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, ed., Human Rights in the Twentieth Century Johan Strang. (shrink)

Constraint programming is the fruit of several decades of research carried out in mathematical logic, automated deduction, operations research and arti?cial intelligence. The tools and programming languages arising from this research?eldhaveenjoyedrealsuccessintheindustrialworldastheycontributetosolving hard combinatorial problems in diverse domains such as production planning, communication networks, robotics and bioinformatics. This volume contains the extended and reviewed versions of a selection of papers presented at the Joint ERCIM/CoLogNET International Workshop on Constraint Solving and Constraint Logic Programming, which was held from June 30 to July (...) 2, 2003. The venue chosen for the seventh edition of this annual workshop was the Computer and Automation Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest, Hungary. This institute is one of the 20 members of the Working Group on Constraints of the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics. For many participants this workshop provided the?rst opportunity to visit their ERCIM partner in Budapest. CoLogNET is the European-funded network of excellence dedicated to s- porting and enhancing cooperation and research on all areas of computational logic, and continues the work done previously by the Compulog Net. In part- ular, the aim of the logic and constraint logic programming area of CoLogNET is to foster and support all research activities related to logic programming and constraint logic programming. The editors would like to take the opportunity and thank all the authors who submitted papers to this volume, as well as the reviewers for their helpful work. (shrink)

Aphoristic work on Vedanta philosophy; Sanskrit text with French translation.

I argue that the criteria governing the aptness of emotions directed towards fictional entities, such as characters and events in fiction, are structurally identical to the criteria governing the aptness of emotions directed towards real entities in the following sense: in both cases, aptness is characterized in terms of fittingness, justification, and being salience-tracking, and each of these notions is understood in an analogous way across reality- and fiction-directed emotions. The only differences are that, in the case of fiction-directed emotions, (...) fictional truth rather than truth is relevant to fittingness, and salience in the context of engaging with the fiction replaces salience in the real context. Other asymmetries between the aptness criteria of fiction- and reality-directed emotions that seem to conflict with this claim are reducible to these two differences or stem from the failure to distinguish between emotions directed towards the content of a fiction and the fiction itself. (shrink)

How do our engagements with fictions and other products of the imagination compare to our experiences of the real world? Are the feelings we have about a novel's characters modelled on our thoughts about actual people? If it is wrong to feel pleasure over certain situations in real life, can it nonetheless be right to take pleasure in analogous scenarios represented in a fantasy or film? Should the desires we have for what goes on in a make-believe story cohere with (...) what we want to happen in the actual world? In Apt Imaginings, Jonathan Gilmore develops a new framework to pursue these questions, marshalling a wide range of research in aesthetics, the science of the emotions, moral philosophy, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and film and literary theory. Gilmore argues that, while there is a substantial empirical continuity in our feelings across art and life, the norms that govern the appropriateness of those responses across the divide are discontinuous. In this view, the evaluative criteria that determine the fit, correctness, or rationality of our emotions and desires for what is internal to a fiction can be contrary to those that govern our affective attitudes toward analogous things in the real world. In short, it can be right to embrace within a story what one would condemn in real life. The theory Gilmore defends in this volume helps to explain our complex and sometimes conflicted attitudes toward works of the imagination; challenges the popular view that fictions serve to refine our moral sensibilities; and exposes a kind of autonomy of the imagination that can render our responses to art immune to standard real-world epistemic, practical, and affective kinds of criticism. (shrink)

Conventionality and aptness are two dimensions of metaphorical sentences thought to play an important role in determining how quick and easy it is to process a metaphor. Conventionality reflects the familiarity of a metaphor whereas aptness reflects the degree to which a metaphor vehicle captures important features of a metaphor topic. In recent years it has become clear that operationalizing these two constructs is not as simple as asking naïve raters for subjective judgments. It has been found that ratings of (...) aptness and conventionality are highly correlated, which has led some researchers to pursue alternative methods for measuring the constructs. Here, in four experiments, we explore the underlying reasons for the high correlation in ratings of aptness and conventionality, and question the construct validity of various methods for measuring the two dimensions. We find that manipulating the processing fluency of a metaphorical sentence by means of familiarization to similar senses of the metaphor (“in vivo conventionalization”) influences ratings of the sentence's aptness. This misattribution may help explain why subjective ratings of aptness and conventionality are highly correlated. In addition, we find other reasons to question the construct validity of conventionality and aptness measures: for instance, we find that conventionality is context dependent and thus not attributable to a metaphor vehicle alone, and we find that ratings of aptness take more into account than they should. (shrink)

This paper applies the account developed by Susanna Siegel in The Rationality of Perception to aesthetic cases and explores the implications of such an account for aesthetic engagement as well as curatorial and exhibitionary practices. It argues that one’s prior outlook – expertise, beliefs, desires, fears, preferences, attitudes – can have both aesthetically good and bad influences on perceptual experiences, just as it can have both epistemically good and bad influences. Analysing these bad influences in cases of ‘hijacked’ aesthetic perception (...) will reveal that, unless we recognize that our perception of high-level and low-level aesthetically relevant properties is norm-governed, we will be at a loss to explain what goes wrong in these cases. Just as perception can be rational or irrational, so too can it be apt or inapt. (shrink)

Many philosophical accounts of the emotions conceive of them as susceptible to assessments of rationality, fittingness, or some other notion of aptness. Analogous assumptions apply in cases of emotions directed at what are taken to be only fictional or only imagined. My question is whether the criteria governing the aptness of emotions we have toward what we take to be real things apply invariantly to those emotions we have toward what we take to be only fictional or imagined. I argue (...) that what counts as a reason justifying an emotion can differ across real, fictional, and imagined domains. (shrink)

In A Virtue Epistemology, Ernest Sosa defines the notions of safety and aptness of beliefs and uses them to characterize two kinds of knowledge, animal and reflective. This paper tries to bring out what I take as an incoherence in Sosa's views concerning how safety and aptness relate to knowledge and to each other. I discuss an apparent counterexample Sosa gives to his final view that aptness suffices for animal knowledge and argue that in fact the principle on which Sosa (...) responds to the counterexample does not permit the response he offers. The principle in question is problematic for Sosa's epistemology in a deeper way: it doesn't seem to cohere with Sosa's view that only aptness, not safety, is required for animal knowledge. En A Virtue Epistemology, Ernesto Sosa define las nociones de seguridad y aptitud de las creencias y las usa para caracterizar dos clases de conocimiento, el animal y el reflexivo. En este artículo discuto lo que parece una incoherencia en las tesis de Sosa acerca de cómo se relacionan la seguridad y la aptitud con el conocimiento y entre sí. Examino un aparente contraejemplo que Sosa plantea a su tesis final de que la aptitud es suficiente para el conocimiento animal, y argumento que el principio que él usa para responder al contraejemplo de hecho no permite dar esa respuesta. El principio en cuestión es problemático para la epistemología de Sosa de una manera más profunda: no parece ser coherente con su tesis central de que sólo la aptitud, no la seguridad, es necesaria para el conocimiento animal. (shrink)

Experimental studies have suggested that variables such as aptness or conventionality are predictors of people’s preference for expressing a particular topic–vehicle pair as either a metaphor or a simile. In the present study, we investigated if such variables would also be predictive within a more naturalistic context, where other variables, such as the intention to include an explanation, may also influence people’s decision. Specifically, we investigated the production of metaphor and simile expressions on the Internet via the Google search engine (...) and checked for accompanying explanations, as well as the properties they expressed, to examine whether ratings such as aptness, conventionality, as well as participants’ own stated preference or the intention to produce an explanation, would predict which topic–vehicle pairs appeared more often as metaphor. We found that participants’ stated preference predicted metaphor dominance on the Internet, and that apt topic–vehicles occurred more often as metaphors. The explanations collected, however, occurred 82% of the time after similes, and familiar expressions were the most explained. Finally, comparing the properties expressed in these explanations to normed property lists, we found that simile explanations typically expressed a novel conception of the topic–vehicle relationship. Therefore, we found that Internet posters use metaphors to convey an apt relationship, as found in previous laboratory studies, but prefer using a simile frame when they want to express a relationship that readers will find novel. (shrink)

That contempt and dishonor are closely related has been shown not only in recent discussions of the subject, but also in Aristotle's investigation of emotions in the judiciary. In this paper, I will discuss the ways in which the ancient Greeks—and, in particular, the polis of Athens—institutionalized what Bell calls “apt contempt” (i.e., contempt as a response to actual and serious faults of character which stems from the contemnor's concern for the values at stake) through the legal penalty of atimia (...) (“dishonor”). Not only does Athenian evidence prove Bell's point that contempt can be “apt”—it also represents an early case study of a community that formalized such “apt” contempt in law and in the formal enactment of collectively approved social norms. And yet, the Greeks were also aware of the potential ambivalence of notions such as “contempt” and “dishonor.” This ambivalence is likely to have been one of the factors that catalyzed a differentiation, within the semantic field of atimia, between “dishonoring” ( atiman/ atimoun) and “disrespecting” ( atimazein)—between “apt” and “inapt” contempt. (shrink)

I argue for the view that there are important similarities between knowledge and acting for a normative reason. I interpret acting for a normative reason in terms of Sosa’s notion of an apt performance. Actions that are done for a normative reason are normatively apt actions. They are in accordance with a normative reason because of a competence to act in accordance with normative reasons. I argue that, if Sosa’s account of knowledge as apt belief is correct, this means that (...) acting for a normative reason is in many respects similar to knowledge. In order to strengthen Sosa’s account of knowledge, I propose to supplement it with an appeal to sub-competences. This clarifies how this account can deal with certain Gettier cases, and it helps to understand how exactly acting for a normative reason is similar to apt belief. (shrink)

This paper discusses Ernest Sosa's account of knowledge and epistemic normativity. The paper has two main parts. The first part identifies places where Sosa's account requires supplementation if it is going to capture important epistemic phenomena. In particular, additional theoretical resources are needed to explain the way in which epistemic aims are genuinely good aims, and the way in which some forms of reasoning can be epistemically better than others even when they are equally conducive to attaining the truth. The (...) second part focuses on Sosa's claim that there is a kind of belief – judgmental belief – that doesn't merely aim at truth but also aims at aptness, and that this kind of belief is central to our mental lives. The paper raises several concerns about this part of Sosa's account, including the concern that aiming at aptness is overly self-directed, and so is more closely tied to vice than epistemic virtue. (shrink)

Why should we be means-end rational? Why care whether someone’s mental states exhibit certain formal patterns, like the ones formalized in causal decision theory? This paper establishes a dominance argument for these constraints in a finite setting. If you violate the norms of causal decision theory, then your desires will be aptness dominated. That is, there will be some alternative set of desires that you could have had, which would be more apt (closer to the actual values fixed by your (...) sensibility/ what you intrinsically care about) no matter which world is actual. If we care about having apt desires, then, we should never let ourselves violate these norms of means-end rationality. This argument shares a form with now-standard accuracy arguments for probabilism, opening up a new terrain for that discussion. I show that the foundational assumptions about the shape of accuracy and of aptness required to run the arguments for means-end rationality and for probabilism run closely parallel. I show the argument is robust under different theories of subjective actual value, including nonclassical treatments of indeterminacy in actual value; I show the argument may (but need not!) be generalized to objective theories of value. The upshot is that aptness-domination arguments for decision theories should be added to the philosophical playbook. (shrink)

Choices can be wise or foolish, and feelings can be apt or off the mark. So we judge, and it would be good to know what content these normative judgements carry. Gibbard offers an answer, and elaborates it. His theory explores what is at issue in narrowly moral questions, and in questions of rational thought and conduct in general.

Many scholars claimed that, according to Immanuel Kant, some judgements lack a truth-value: analytic judgements, judgements about items of which humans cannot have experience, judgements of perception, and non-assertoric judgements. However, no one has undertaken an extensive examination of the textual evidence for those claims. Based on an analysis of Kant's texts, I argue that: (1) according to Kant, only judgements of perception are not truth-apt. All other judgements are truth-apt, including analytic judgements and judgements about items of which humans (...) cannot have experience. (2) Kant sometimes states that truth-apt judgements are actual bearers of truth or falsity only when they are taken to state what is actually the case. Kant calls these judgements assertoric. Other texts ascribe truth and falsity to judgements, regardless of whether they are assertoric. Kant's views on truth-aptness raise challenges for correspondentist and coherentist interpretations of Kant's theory of truth; they rule out the identification of Kant's crucial notion of objective validity with truth-aptness; and they imply that Kant was not a verificationist about truth or meaning. (shrink)

I raise several objections to Sosa’s account of knowledge as aptness. I argue that aptness is neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge. I also raise some objection to Sosa’s treatment of dreaming skepticism.

Ernest Sosa presents a new approach to the problems of knowledge and scepticism. He argues for two levels of knowledge, the animal and the reflective, each viewed as a distinctive human accomplishment. Sosa's virtue epistemology illuminates different varieties of scepticism, the nature and status of intuitions, and epistemic normativity.

One of the contentious philosophical issues surrounding the cognitive science of religion (CSR) is whether well-confirmed CSR theories would debunk religious beliefs. These debates have been contentious in part because of criticisms of epistemic principles used in debunking arguments. In this paper I use Ernest Sosa’s respected theory of knowledge as fully apt belief—which avoids objections that have been leveled against sensitivity and safety principles often used in debunking arguments—to construct a plausible debunking argument for religious belief on the assumption (...) that religious belief is formed simply through processes theorized by CSR. But, in fact, most believers also rely on arguments of various sorts, and their beliefs are not debunked. (shrink)

This chapter discusses expressivism as a form of moral skepticism that denies the truth-aptness of moral beliefs and judgments. It focuses on whether expressivists can solve the problem of embedding by allowing that some moral beliefs have a minimal kind of truth, and whether expressivists can account for the apparent objectivity of moral beliefs. It concludes that if expressivists succeed in mimicking all apparently realistic moral language, then expressivism does not really matter to moral epistemology.

According to the Fittingness Defense, even if the consequences of anger are overall bad, it does not follow that we should aim to avoid it. This is because fitting anger involves an accurate appraisal of wrongdoing and is essential for appreciating injustice and signaling our disapproval. My aim in this paper is to show that the Fittingness Defense fails. While accurate appraisals are prima facie rational and justified on epistemic grounds, I argue that this type of fittingness does not vindicate (...) anger because there are alternative modes of recognizing and appreciating wrongdoing that can generate the benefits of anger without the harmful effects. Moreover, anger involves more than its appraisal of wrongdoing—it also consists of attitudes and motivations that are arguably of intrinsic disvalue. (shrink)