In this paper we define the polyadic Pavelka algebras as algebraic structures for Rational Pavelka predicate calculus . We prove two representation theorems which are the algebraic counterpart of the completness theorem for RPL∀.

In this paper we prove polyadic counterparts of the Hájek, Paris and Shepherdson's conservative extension theorems of Łukasiewicz predicate logic to rational Pavelka predicate logic. We also discuss the algebraic correspondents of the provability and truth degree for polyadic MV-algebras and prove a representation theorem similar to the one for polyadic Pavelka algebras.

Since the late 1960s, Roger Penrose has had the ambition to develop a new theory that rethinks the foundations of quantum mechanics. His twistor theory aims to carry out this difficult task. Although today the theory is still in development, it is no less true that it is finding more and more followers and its results are beginning to seem not as far-fetched as initially believed. The goal is still far away, but his impetus for wanting to change things is (...) still valid. (shrink)

There is much evidence that the relationship between religiosity/spirituality and mental health is linear and positive, but relatively few studies have included samples of non-religious participants in their analyses. Some findings suggest that, compared to people who have intermediate levels of R/S, those with higher levels and those with insignificant levels are mentally healthier. However, this curvilinear model does not appear to have been tested through a measure of spiritual beliefs and the comparison of different religious/spiritual groups. In view of (...) this, 1788 Brazilians were assessed in terms of their spiritual beliefs, their religious/spiritual experiences, and their positive and negative mental health components. We found curvilinear relationships between R/SE and all components of mental health, but the level of spiritual belief predicted only the variance in the meaning in life. With the exception of comparisons involving happiness, at least one of the groups that had intermediate levels of R/SE had worse mental health than the groups that had the highest and lowest levels. Although religious people and atheists had similar levels of symptoms of anxiety and depression, the former presented more happiness and meaning in life. Together, these findings corroborate the curvilinear model, but suggest that R/SE is related in different ways to the positive and negative components of mental health. (shrink)

La obra de Nicolás Gómez Dávila ha sido leída presuponiendo su desconexión frente a la producción filosófica local del pasado. Esa presuposición ha pasado por alto la existencia de posibles vínculos entre las tesis de la filosofía del derecho en De iure y la reflexión sobre el lenguaje y la tradición presente en el ensayo de Miguel Antonio Caro titulado “Del uso en sus relaciones con el lenguaje”. Este artículo explora los posibles vínculos entre ambos ensayos, a partir de (i) (...) la similitud entre la concepción horaciana del lenguaje presente en la obra de Caro y las tesis de De iure, (ii) las correspondencias entre los esquemas metodológicos y valorativos, derivados de aquella concepción, presentes en ambas obras, y (iii) las similitudes y diferencias de su conservatismo político. (shrink)

La flexibilidad y la mercantilización de lo espiritual ¿son aspectos característicos de la cultura contemporánea? Centrado en los casos de Alemania, Inglaterra y Francia, el artículo detalla cómo el romanticismo literario se articula como un movimiento pionero de la espiritualidad flexible, proceso que se entrelaza con su rol seminal en la formación del campo literario moderno. El crecimiento económico y demográfico sostenidos en Europa desde el s. XV, así como la alfabetización impulsada por el protestantismo, construyen un moderno público lector (...) que da pie —durante el s. XVIII— a la revolución y diversificación de la lectura, lo que promueve la difusión de incipientes tendencias modernas (ciencia, Ilustración, prensa). Oponiéndose parcialmente a estas tendencias y extendiendo la diversificación de lo impreso, surge la tendencia romántica. Sus autores flexibilizan la espiritualidad más allá de las convenciones religiosas de la época —y aportan a la formación del campo literario— (1) caracterizando el desencanto y otras formas de malestar moderno; (2) multiplicando el lenguaje imaginario-trascendente; (3) brindando connotaciones metafísicas al genio artístico; (4) promoviendo la autonomía y libertad expresiva del arte. La evidencia indica que el mercado fue una condición histórica básica para la EF. Se sugiere que esta flexibilidad se muestra como una adaptación de la espiritualidad a las circunstancias empíricas de la modernidad, la cual conlleva nuevas necesidades de sentido y una mayor capacidad para divergir de los relatos religiosos tradicionales. (shrink)

Sometimes it is possible in quantum theory for a system to interact with another system in such a way that the information contained in the wave function becomes very scrambled and apparently incoherent. We produce an example which is exactly calculable, in which a macroscopic change is induced in the environment, and all phase information for the system is apparently lost, so that a measurement has seemingly been made. But actually, although the wave function has been badly scrambled, all the (...) original information is still present. We call this situation one of “latent order.”Subsequently, the system interacts again with the environment, wiping out the macroscopic change, and the wave function once again becomes manifestly coherent. Thus the apparent measurement has been undone, and leaves no aftereffect. Thus, our “measurement” has disappeared without a trace. We call such a measurement a “haunted measurement,” and we believe that until the measurement process is rigorously understood, the concept of measurement is ambiguous. It is just not good enough to say that an amplification stage occurs “somewhere” in the process.We also point out the connection between the haunted measurement and delayed-choice experiments and discuss a haunted version of the “Schrödinger's Cat” experiment and of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment. (shrink)

According to the traditional view of Empedocles' cosmic cycle, there are two creations of plants and animals, one under the dominion of increasing Strife and one under the dominion of increasing Love. At the point at which Strife holds complete sway the four elements are completely separated and all life is destroyed; at the point at which Love is completely dominant there is also a destruction of the biological world, this time because the elements are blended into a perfectly homogeneous (...) mixture. This interpretation of the cosmic cycle, which has prevailed almost since it was developed by Friedrich Panzerbieter and seconded by authority of Eduard Zeller was challenged by Paul Tannery and then by H. von Arnim . Long after these essentially programmatic critiques, three independent studies published in 1965 by Jean Bollack, Uvo Hölscher and Friedrich Solmsen mounted a vigorous challenge to the received view. However, in a detailed monograph devoted to Empedocles' cosmic cycle, Denis O'Brien brought to bear an impressive array of scholarly evidence and critical acumen in support of the traditional view . Several challenges to the traditional view have appeared since O'Brien's book, of which the most significant is that of A. A. Long, who, while criticizing attempts of some opponents of the traditional view, produced some novel and interesting arguments against it. Although the traditional view continues to enjoy the support of authorities such as Jonathan Barnes and M. R. Wright, there is a decided shift in favour of revisionary views. Nevertheless recent advocates of a revisionary interpretation do not provide detailed refutations of the traditional view; Long's arguments remain the strongest objections to the traditional view, and they have never been refuted. Will they stand up to scrutiny? (shrink)

This issue contains a book symposium on Anneli Jefferson’s book, Are mental disorders brain disorders?. It is a delight that the symposium brings together a variety of perspectives from philosopher...

Many philosophers hold that a general norm of truth governs the attitude of believing. In a recent and influential discussion, Krister Bykvist and Anandi Hattiangadi raise a number of serious objections to this view. In this paper, I concede that Bykvist and Hattiangadi's criticisms might be effective against the formulation of the norm of truth that they consider, but suggest that an alternative is available. After outlining that alternative, I argue that it is not vulnerable to objections parallel to those (...) Bykvist and Hattiangadi advance, although it might initially appear to be. In closing, I consider what bearing the preceding discussion has on important questions concerning the natures of believing and of truth. (shrink)

Explaining the Cosmos is a major reinterpretation of Greek scientific thought before Socrates. Focusing on the scientific tradition of philosophy, Daniel Graham argues that Presocratic philosophy is not a mere patchwork of different schools and styles of thought. Rather, there is a discernible and unified Ionian tradition that dominates Presocratic debates. Graham rejects the common interpretation of the early Ionians as "material monists" and also the view of the later Ionians as desperately trying to save scientific philosophy from Parmenides' (...) criticisms. In Graham's view, Parmenides plays a constructive role in shaping the scientific debates of the fifth century BC. Accordingly, the history of Presocratic philosophy can be seen not as a series of dialectical failures, but rather as a series of theoretical advances that led to empirical discoveries. Indeed, the Ionian tradition can be seen as the origin of the scientific conception of the world that we still hold today. (shrink)

Daniel Halliday examines the morality of the right to bequeath or transfer wealth, and argues that inheritance is unjust to the extent that it enhances the intergenerational replication of inequality, concentrating opportunities in certain groups. He presents an egalitarian case for imposition of a significant inheritance tax.

Participants watched themselves in a mirror while another person behind them, hidden from view, extended hands forward on each side where participants’ hands would normally appear. The hands performed a series of movements. When participants could hear instructions previewing each movement, they reported an enhanced feeling of controlling the hands. Hearing instructions for the movements also enhanced skin conductance responses when a rubber band was snapped on the other’s wrist after the movements. Such vicarious agency was not felt when the (...) instructions followed the movements, and participants’ own covert movement mimicry was not essential to the influence of previews on reported control. (shrink)

This study examines firms that have experienced an industrial and/or environ-mental crisis and proposes that top management team (TMT) characteristics will affect a firm's ability to minimize the severity of these crisis events. Specifically, heterogeneity in the TMT will exhibit a curvilinear (U-shaped) relationship with the severity of firm crises. Our results suggest that a moderate level of age and tenure heterogeneity are positively related to a firm's ability to successfully minimize the severity of crises. Variance in educational backgrounds was (...) unrelated to crisis severity. Functional background heterogeneity exhibited a curvilinear relationship with crisis severity but was not U-shaped as hypothesized. (shrink)

In Science before Socrates, Daniel W. Graham argues against the belief that the Presocratic philosophers did not produce any empirical science and that the first major Greek science, astronomy, did not develop until at least the time of Plato. Instead, Graham proposes that the advances made by Presocratic philosophers in the study of astronomy deserve to be considered as scientific contributions.

In Lukács: Praxis and the Absolute, Daniel Andrés López reassembles Lukács’s philosophy of praxis on a Hegelian basis, as a conceptual-historical totality, both defending him and proposing an unprecedented, immanent critique that raises problems for Marxian philosophy as a whole.

This article develops a hermeneutic study of Heidegger’s text The Word of Nietzsche: “God is Dead”. We attempt to read Heidegger’s remarks in the context of the “period of transition” that, according to Nietzsche, is occurring in the history of western thought and culture. This essay unfolds in the following manner: beginning with Heidegger’s contention that Nietzsche’s philosophy is the “fulfilment” of Platonism, we go over the problem of nihilism in relation to the metaphysics of the will to power, which (...) for Heidegger requires revising Cartesian subjectivity in search of a new ontology. Heidegger’s critique of modernity encompasses a narrative that goes from “Plato” to “Nietzsche”, leading to a reconsideration of the notions of art and truth. Finally, we attempt to interpret the meaning of the “madman’s lament” voicing the passing of God. (shrink)

En el contexto de ofrecer lógicas alternativas que lidien no trivialmente con paradojas semánticas y superen a la vez la objeción de incoherencia que se alza habitualmente contra ellas, el BA-Plan propone una definición de lógica en el sentido de secuencia infinita de nociones de consecuencia que especifica estándares de validez para el nivel inferencial y para los metainferenciales. El presente trabajo argumenta que si se admite la conveniencia de esta definición de lógica es posible desacoplar la noción de coherencia (...) entre estándares de validez de la noción de uniformidad entre estándares de validez. (shrink)

Daniel Russell develops a fresh and original view of pleasure and its pivotal role in Plato's treatment of value, happiness, and human psychology. This is the first full-length discussion of the topic for fifty years, and Russell shows its relevance to contemporary debates in moral philosophy and philosophical psychology. Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life will make fascinating reading for ancient specialists and for a wide range of philosophers.

This paper presents corpus and experimental data that problematize the traditional analysis of must as a strong necessity modal, as recently revived and defended by von Fintel and Gillies :351–383, 2010). I provide naturalistic examples showing that must p can be used alongside an explicit denial of knowledge of p or certainty in p, and that it can be conjoined with an expression indicating that p is not certain or that not-p is possible. I also report the results of an (...) experiment involving lotteries, where most participants endorsed a sentence of the form must not-p despite being instructed that p is a possibility. Crucially, endorsement was much higher for must in this context than for matched sentences with knowledge or certainty expressions. These results indicate that the requirements for felicitous use of must are weaker than for know and certain rather than being at least as strong, as the epistemic necessity theory would predict. However, it is possible to account for these data while retaining the key insights of von Fintel and Gillies’ analysis of the evidential component of must. I discuss several existing accounts that could be construed in this way and explain why none is completely satisfactory. I then propose a new model that embeds an existing scalar theory into a probabilistic model of informational dynamics structured around questions and answers. (shrink)

We derive a probabilistic account of the vagueness and context-sensitivity of scalar adjectives from a Bayesian approach to communication and interpretation. We describe an iterated-reasoning architecture for pragmatic interpretation and illustrate it with a simple scalar implicature example. We then show how to enrich the apparatus to handle pragmatic reasoning about the values of free variables, explore its predictions about the interpretation of scalar adjectives, and show how this model implements Edgington’s Vagueness: a reader, 1997) account of the sorites paradox, (...) with variations. The Bayesian approach has a number of explanatory virtues: in particular, it does not require any special-purpose machinery for handling vagueness, and it is integrated with a promising new approach to pragmatics and other areas of cognitive science. (shrink)

Simon May has argued that the notion of a principled compromise is incoherent. Reasons to compromise are always in his view strategic: though we think that the position we defend is still the right one, we compromise on this view in order to avoid the undesirable consequences that might flow from not compromising. I argue against May that there are indeed often principled reasons to compromise, and that these reasons are in fact multiple. First, compromises evince respect for persons that (...) we have reason to think of as our epistemic peers, and acknowledgement of our own finitudes as moral reasoners. Second, compromises are often made morally necessary by the shortfalls that unavoidably separate democratic institutions from democratic ideals. Third, compromises express a desirable form of democratic community. And fourth, compromises are often justified from a consequentialist point of view, in that they allow for the realization of values that would not be realized as well by the failure to compromise. (shrink)

HIV-related state laws are being created transnationally though the use of omnibus model laws. In 2004, the US Agency for International Development funded the creation of one such guidance text known as the USAID/Action for West Africa Region Model Law, or N'Djamena Model Law, which led to the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS laws, including the criminalisation of HIV transmission, across much of West and Central Africa . In this article, I explicate how an epidemic of highly problematic legislation spread across (...) the region as a result of a text-mediated work process enabled through model laws. I theorise the textual genre of model laws arguing that these texts are best understood as ‘preoperative documents’ which, when activated, can lead to swift legislative reform in and beyond the field of HIV/AIDS governance. The legislative process being investigated was made visible through participant observation, archival research, textual analysis and informant interviews with national and international stakeholders . This involved ethnographic research in Canada, the USA, Switzerland, Austria, South Africa and Senegal . The untold policy processes and narratives explored in this article make evident how the work of contesting problematic HIV/AIDS model laws and newly drafted state laws involves both creating new texts and contesting the legitimacy and efficacy of others. (shrink)