Theories of truth and vagueness are closely connected; in this article, I draw another connection between these areas of research. Gupta and Belnap’s Revision Theory of Truth is converted into an approach to vagueness. I show how revision sequences from a general theory of definitions can be used to understand the nature of vague predicates. The revision sequences show how the meaning of vague predicates are interconnected with each other. The approach is contrasted with the similar supervaluationist approach.

Background If trials of therapeutic interventions are to serve society's interests, they must be of high methodological quality and must satisfy moral commitments to human subjects. The authors set out to develop a clinical - trials compendium in which standards for the ethical treatment of human subjects are integrated with standards for research methods. Methods The authors rank-ordered the world's nations and chose the 31 with >700 active trials as of 24 July 2008. Governmental and other authoritative entities of the (...) 31 countries were searched, and 1004 English-language documents containing ethical and/or methodological standards for clinical trials were identified. The authors extracted standards from 144 of those: 50 designated as ‘core’, 39 addressing trials of invasive procedures and a 5% sample of the remainder. As the integrating framework for the standards we developed a coherent taxonomy encompassing all elements of a trial's stages. Findings Review of the 144 documents yielded nearly 15 000 discrete standards. After duplicates were removed, 5903 substantive standards remained, distributed in the taxonomy as follows: initiation, 1401 standards, 8 divisions; design, 1869 standards, 16 divisions; conduct, 1473 standards, 8 divisions; analysing and reporting results, 997 standards, four divisions; and post-trial standards, 168 standards, 5 divisions. Conclusions The overwhelming number of source documents and standards uncovered in this study was not anticipated beforehand and confirms the extraordinary complexity of the clinical trials enterprise. This taxonomy of multinational ethical and methodological standards may help trialists and overseers improve the quality of clinical trials, particularly given the globalisation of clinical research. (shrink)

In this paper I present a range of substructural logics for a conditional connective ↦. This connective was original introduced semantically via restriction on the ternary accessibility relation R for a relevant conditional. I give sound and complete proof systems for a number of variations of this semantic definition. The completeness result in this paper proceeds by step-by-step improvements of models, rather than by the one-step canonical model method. This gradual technique allows for the additional control, lacking in the canonical (...) model method, that is required. (shrink)

Since the BBS article in which Premack and Woodruff (1978) asked “Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?,” it has been repeatedly claimed that there is observational and experimental evidence that apes have mental state concepts, such as “want” and “know.” Unlike research on the development of theory of mind in childhood, however, no substantial progress has been made through this work with nonhuman primates. A survey of empirical studies of imitation, self-recognition, social relationships, deception, role-taking, and perspective-taking suggests (...) that in every case where nonhuman primate behavior has been interpreted as a sign of theory of mind, it could instead have occurred by chance or as a product of nonmentalistic processes such as associative learning or inferences based on nonmental categories. Arguments to the effect that, in spite of this, the theory of mind hypothesis should be accepted because it is more parsimonious than alternatives or because it is supported by convergent evidence are not compelling. Such arguments are based on unsupportable assumptions about the role of parsimony in science and either ignore the requirement that convergent evidence proceed from independent assumptions, or fail to show that it supports the theory of mind hypothesis over nonmentalist alternatives. Progress in research on theory of mind requires experimental procedures that can distinguish the theory of mind hypothesis from nonmentalist alternatives. A procedure that may have this potential is proposed. It uses conditional discrimination training and transfer tests to determine whether chimpanzees have the concept “see.” Commentators are invited to identify flaws in the procedure and to suggest alternatives. Key Words: apes; associative learning; concepts; convergence; deception; evolution of intelligence; folk psychology; imitation; mental state attribution; monkeys; parsimony; perspective-taking; primates; role-taking; self-recognition; social cognition; social intelligence; theory of mind. (shrink)

Sleep onset is associated with marked changes in behavioral, physiological, and subjective phenomena. In daily life though subjective experience is the main criterion in terms of which we identify it. But very few studies have focused on these experiences. This study seeks to identify the subjective variables that reflect sleep onset. Twenty young subjects took an afternoon nap in the laboratory while polysomnographic recordings were made. They were awakened four times in order to assess subjective experiences that correlate with the (...) (1) appearance of slow eye movement, (2) initiation of stage 1 sleep, (3) initiation of stage 2 sleep, and (4) 5 min after the start of stage 2 sleep. A logistic regression identified control over and logic of thought as the two variables that predict the perception of having fallen asleep. For sleep perception, these two variables accurately classified 91.7% of the cases; for the waking state, 84.1%. (shrink)

Among the scanty remains of poetry attributed to Eumelus of Corinth two lines 2 stand out as different from the rest, first because they are concerned not with the legendary past but with an actual, present occasion, and secondly because they are composed not for Corinthians but for Messenians. Our evidence comes from Pausanias and may be set out at the start.

Features include a comprehensive review of existing material, combined with new perspectives to equip students for the challenges in the work environment; chapter overviews and student learning objectives offer a solid and useful framework in which to organise study; diagrams and charts present overviews and contexts for the subject to act as useful revision aids; effective pedagogy including a review of the arguments considered, a menu of seminar topics, and questions in every chapter, serving as an ideal basis for seminar (...) study; and additional open-ended simulations to allow students to work through unfolding scenarios. (shrink)

The elegiac poem of eight lines discovered in the Ceramicus and published by by W. Peek is of considerable interest for the historian. Peek is surely right in maintaining that it was composed for the Athenians who fell under Tolmides at Coronea in 447 B.C., and his general exposition of the poem's meaning is convincing. The aim of this paper is to make some comments and supplements to his interpretation and then to consider some peculiarities in the thought and technique (...) of the poem. We may first set out a text and a translation:λμονες ℎοῖον γṑνα μχες ελσανες λπ[ο]φσχς δαιμονṐς ṑλσα' μ πολμοισὐν κακι χσετλελεσσε βροοῖσι δ πσι λοιπνφρζεσθαι λογṐν πιοσν ἔθκε λος. (shrink)

Vergil's plagiarism has been a theme for critics ever since Perellius Faustus made an anthology of his ‘furta’ and Quintus Octavius Avitus com-piled eight volumes of Оμоιóτησ, giving both the original passages and Vergil's adaptations of them . Much of this literature has survived in the commentary of Servius and in Book VI. of the Saturnalia of Macrobius. The study of his imitations and plagiarisms throws much light on Vergil's methods and aims of composition, and has frequently been attempted in (...) editions of his works. But one class of his plagiarisms differs considerably from the rest. Often in the Aenèid he incorporates phrases, either intact or slightly altered, from the Annales of Ennius. These differ from where he imitates Homer, because in them he does not have to translate from Greek into Latin and so remake the original into something new, and they differ, too, from his adaptations of some other earlier Latin poets, because Ennius was his only important forerunner who had written on the same heroic themes of war and the growth of Rome. (shrink)

Oxidative damage to DNA has been associated with neurodegenerative diseases. Developmental exposure to lead has been shown to elevate the Alzheimer's disease related beta-amyloid peptide , which is known to generate reactive oxygen species in the aging brain. This study measures the lifetime cerebral 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine levels and the activity of the DNA repair enzyme 8-oxoguanine DNA glycosylase in rats developmentally exposed to Pb. Oxo8dG was transiently modulated early in life , but was later elevated 20 months after exposure to Pb (...) had ceased, while Ogg1 activity was not altered. Furthermore, an age-dependent loss in the inverse correlation between Ogg1 activity and oxo8dG accumulation was observed. The effect of Pb on oxo8dG levels did not occur if animals were exposed to Pb in old age. These increases in DNA damage occurred in the absence of any Pb-induced changes in copper/zinc-superoxide dismutase , manganese-SOD , and reduced-form glutathion . These data suggest that oxidative damage and neurodegeneration in the aging brain could be impacted by the developmental disturbances. (shrink)

Fractal time fluctuations of the spectral “1/f” form are universal in natural self-organizing systems. Neurobiology is uniquely infused with fractal fluctuations in the form of statistically self-similar clusters or bursts on all levels of description from molecular events such as protein chain fluctuations, ion channel currents and synaptic processes to the behaviors of neural ensembles or the collective behavior of Internet users. It is the thesis of this essay that the brain self-organizes via a vertical collation of these spontaneous events (...) in order to perceive the world and generate adaptive behaviors. REM sleep, which coalesces from self-similar clusters of burst-within-burst behavior during ontogeny, is essential to cognitive-emotional function, and has recurrent fractal organization. Empirical fMRI observations further support the association of fractal fluctuations in the temporal lobes, brainstem and cerebellum during the expression of emotional memory, spontaneous fluctuations of thought and meditative practice. Cognitive-emotional integration arises as amygdaloid-brainstem-cerebellar systems harmonize the vertical “1/f” symphony of coupled isochronous cortical oscillations in the pursuit of mindfulness. (shrink)

The revival of interest in Greek metre cannot be without an influence on the text of Pindar. In some ways this influence may have been for the good, but in one respect a theory based on insufficient evidence seems in danger of corrupting the text. The theory is briefly that in his dactylo-epitrite poems Pindar occasionally equated a choriamb — — with an epitrite — — — or — — —. This theory has been stated explicitly by two leading Pindaric (...) scholars, Otto Schröder and U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf. In the Prolegomena to his Editio Maior, p. 13, Schröder briefly states his case for what he calls ‘metathesis metrica.’ Moved by the fact that in iambic and Ionic metres a short syllable may be substituted for a long, and vice versa, he is convinced that the same applies to the metres of Pindar. (shrink)

In his Works of Pindar, Vol. II, p. xxiii, Dr. L. R. Farnell discusses the admission of metrical licences into Pindar's text, and pronounces that ‘the “Responsion-law” should not be pressed with over-strained severity.’ In general he agrees with Wilamowitz and Schroeder and disagrees with the stricter school of P. Maas. But none of these scholars have formulated the principles by which long syllables may be equated with short in Pindar's text, or even those by which two short syllables may (...) take the place of one long and vice versa. Such attempts were made by great scholars of the past, notably by Erasmus Schmid, Hermann and Boeckh, but recent developments in metric and textual criticism have created a new attitude towards metrical problems and provided a new vocabulary. It is time that Pindar's practice was re-examined. Only from it can we deduce what his rules of composition were and find out what licences he allowed and what not. The question is important both for the textual critic and for the student of Greek metric. If we can discover the principles on which Pindar used such metrical licences, we shall be more qualified to consider emendations which involve them and to understand the rules which he set before himself when composing an ode. (shrink)