Alexandre Dikovsky is born in Leningrad, Russia on August 9, 1945. He died in Nantes, France in the beginning of 2014. He is well known for his significant contributions to the fields of Mathematics, Linguistics, and Informatics. In the course of his career, he published over 100 research papers, 12 book chapters, and participated in numerous national and international projects.

This paper investigates the learnability by positive examples in the sense of Gold of Pregroup Grammars. In a first part, Pregroup Grammars are presented and a new parsing strategy is proposed. Then, theoretical learnability and non-learnability results for subclasses of Pregroup Grammars are proved. In the last two parts, we focus on learning Pregroup Grammars from a special kind of input called feature-tagged examples. A learning algorithm based on the parsing strategy presented in the first part is given. Its validity (...) is proved and its properties are examplified. (shrink)

The paper presents a way to transform pregroup grammars into contextfree grammars using functional composition. The same technique can also be used for the proof-nets of multiplicative cyclic linear logic and for Lambek calculus allowing empty premises.

The proposition that the existence of God is demonstrable by rational argument is doubted by nearly all philosophical opinion today and is thought by most Christian theologians to be incompatible with Christian faith. This book argues that, on the contrary, there are reasons of faith why in principle the existence of God should be thought rationally demonstrable and that it is worthwhile revisiting the theology of Thomas Aquinas to see why this is so. The book further suggests that philosophical objections (...) to proofs of God's existence rely upon an attenuated and impoverished conception of reason which theologians of all monotheistic traditions might wish to reject. Denys Turner proposes that on a broader and deeper conception of it, human rationality is open to the 'sacramental shape' of creation as such and in its exercise of rational proof of God it in some way participates in that sacramentality of all things. (shrink)

Human suicide presents a fundamental problem for the scientific analysis of behavior. This problem has been neither appreciated nor confronted by research and theory. Almost all other behavior exhibited by humans and nonhumans can be viewed as supporting the behaving organism's biological fitness and advancing the welfare of its genes. Yet suicide acts against these ends, and does so more directly and unequivocally than any other form of maladaptive behavior. Four heuristic models are presented here to account for suicide in (...) an evolutionary and sociobiological framework. The first model attributes suicide to the extraordinary development of learning and cultural evolution in the human species. Learning may make human behavior so independent of biological constraints that it can occasionally assume a form entirely contrary to the principles of biological evolution. The second model attributes suicide to a breakdown of adaptive mechanisms in extremely stressful novel environments. The third model involves kin and group selection, arguing that in limited circumstances suicide may occur because of beneficial effects it has on other, surviving individuals who share the suicidal individual's genes. The last model suggests that suicide should be tolerated by evolution when it has no effect on the gene pool. This model holds particular promise in accounting for aspects of suicide not attributable to culture. The evidence indicates that suicide is most common in individuals who are unlikely to reproduce and unable to engage in productive activity; such individuals are least capable of promoting their genes. A complete explanation of suicide may derive only from an analysis of its biological significance. (shrink)

Central to Kierkegaard’s account of religious existence is his critique of speculative reason. This critique begins with the distinction between subjective and objective reflection. Its most radical aspects appear in Kierkegaard’s discussions of the paradox. In spite of Kierkegaard’s frequent comments on this notion, it is not readily understood. I want to argue against a common reading of this notion and propose an alternative reading. This alternative reading allows for a conceptually quite plausible account of the manner in which the (...) paradox presents reason with a boundary, in virtue of its relation to objective reflection and to subjective reflection as well. Because of this boundary, reason points beyond its own achievements to a domain of contemplation and appropriation. This is a domain that reason itself identifies in connection with the paradox. It both surpasses rational achievements and integrates them into itself. (shrink)

Progress in psychiatry depends on accurate definitions of disorders. As long as there are no known biologic markers available that are highly specific for a particular psychiatric disorder, clinical practice as well as scientific research is forced to appeal to clinical symptoms. Currently, the nosology of obsessive-compulsive disorder is being reconsidered in view of the publication of DSM-V. Since our diagnostic entities are often simplifications of the complicated clinical profile of patients, definitions of psychiatric disorders are imprecise and always indeterminate. (...) This urges researchers and clinicians to constantly think and rethink well-established definitions that in psychiatry are at risk of being fossilised. In this paper, we offer an alternative view to the current definition of obsessive-compulsive disorder from a phenomenological perspective.TranslationThis article is translated from Dutch, originally published in [Handbook Obsessive-compulsive disorders, Damiaan Denys, Femke de Geus (Eds.), (2007). De Tijdstroom uitgeverij BV, Utrecht. ISBN13: 9789058980878.]. (shrink)

In recent years "British" Idealism has been subject to sweeping re-evaluation and rehabilitation. The essays collected here by Will Sweet compare Bernard Bosanquet's ideas and arguments with those of Idealists and non-Idealists alike, and establish that Bosanquet was far more clear-headed and insightful than denunciations of the "Idealist school" by Moore, Russell, C. D. Broad, Harold Prichard, and A. J. Ayer suggest. Sweet observes in his introduction that Bosanquet has long remained in the shadows of T. H. Green and F. (...) H. Bradley, that Bosanquet was a prolific writer who shaped philosophical debates across the English-speaking world for decades, and that estimations of his social theory and political philosophy, and to a lesser extent his metaphysics, have diverted attention from his contributions to logic and aesthetics.Essays by Sandra M. den Otter, Peter Nicholson, and Kevin Sullivan deal directly with Bosanquet's social philosophy. Bosanquet was engaged from the 1880s in work with the Charity Organisation Society, an association that set the tone of late Victorian and Edwardian debates over British poverty. He and his wife served on the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws , against whose majority statement—cautioning against such direct assistance to the poor as. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Ohio HegeliansDenys P. LeightonSelected and introduced by James A. Good. The Ohio Hegelians. Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Continuum, 2005. Volume I: Peter Kaufmann, The Temple of Truth (1858). Volume II: Moncure D. Conway, The Earthward Pilgrimage (1870). Volume III: J. B. Stallo, The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (2nd ed., 1884).This collection of facsimile reprints prepared by James A. Good is one of the newest contributions to (...) the series 'History of American Thought' published by Thoemmes Continuum. Good has already made significant contributions to study of the history of American philosophy and 'thought' by editing for the same series a reprint edition of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 1867–1893 (22 volumes, 2002) and co-editing, with Michael DeArmey, a selection of writings by the St. Louis Hegelians (3 volumes, 2001). The latter constitutes very nearly a subset of the former. The acknowledged leader of the 'St. Louis Movement' from 1858 until the late 1870s was William Torrey Harris (1835–1909), who edited the Journal of Speculative Philosophy during the entire period of its publication. JSP predated Mind in England by nearly ten years and was the first specialized venue in the [End Page 445] Anglo-American world for serial publication of scholarly writing on philosophical issues. It also featured original writing on arts and literature, education, and theology, as well as some of the first translations into English of works by J. G. Fichte, F. Froebel, F. A. Trendelenburg and K. Rosenkranz. In addition to publishing work by North American and European thinkers who have by now—perhaps predictably—fallen from scholarly view, JSP featured writing by G. Stanley Hall, William James, C. S. Peirce, Josiah Royce, John Watson and John Dewey.There is a general historical rationale for Good's compilation of ostensibly significant writings by men collectively dubbed by Loyd Easton—with genuflection to the better-known St. Louis Idealists—'the Ohio Hegelians'.1 Yet, as I shall elaborate, the criteria of selection of documents for this collection are somewhat puzzling. Easton grouped under the label 'Ohio Hegelians' Peter Kaufmann (1800–1869), August Willich (1810–1878), John Bernhard Stallo (1823–1900) and Moncure Daniel Conway (1832–1907), while nevertheless denying that they formed a distinctive school of Hegelian philosophy. The most obviously Hegelian among them was Willich, a radical democratic journalist and agitator who features prominently in the complex history of 'Left Hegelianism' and early Marxism. However, Good has decided not to include Willich's writings in this collection, reasoning that his journalistic writings and ephemera 'do not lend themselves... readily to a collection of philosophical works' ('Introduction', p. v). Neither were all the items Good selected for the aforementioned collections of a strictly philosophical nature (whatever that might mean), so one wonders why Willich's Hegelian writings were left out here. It is somewhat curious that Good should include here The Earthward Pilgrimage (1870) by Conway, a Virginian by birth, who, after alienating his Unitarian congregation in Washington, DC by his strongly abolitionist sentiments, was appointed in 1856 to a pastorate at the First Congregational Church in Cincinnati. This 'Ohioan' left the state and the country by 1863 and was thereafter more directly associated with English intellectual life. For most of the period 1864–1897 Conway presided over the undenominational South Place Chapel in London (subsequently, the South Place Ethical Society), which literally served as a pulpit for many guest speakers expressing forms of religious and political radicalism (e.g., agnosticism, 'secularism', republicanism, producer and consumer co-operation). There are few direct references in Conway's The Earthward Pilgrimage to his American experiences. Easton's reason for including Conway among these Ohioans was that Conway had interacted closely in Cincinnati with Willich and Stallo after 1856, when all were enthusiastic supporters of the Republican, 'free-soil' candidate for President, John C. Fremont.Of Peter Kaufmann, author of The Temple of Truth (1858), something will be said in due course, but Stallo became the most un-Hegelian of the Ohio Hegelians. In his Preface to the first edition of The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (1881)—the second edition is the one included in Good's [End Page 446] compilation... (shrink)

The concept of digital culture defines a set of values, practices, and expectations regarding the format of human interaction in today’s online society. Predictions of digital culture describe the specifics of the online environment and the general context of social life. The range of interpretations of digital culture varies between two poles: from the recognition of digital technologies as a way of presenting libraries, museums, historical monuments, etc., to the concepts of digital culture as a new socio-anthropological reality, the content (...) of which is not limited to ICT. Culture as a phenomenon means the semantic unity of human activity, the desire to format social life following ideas and values, the movement from existing to obligatory, from actual to potential, and digital culture is an adequate response to the demands and challenges. People worldwide change their placement of everyday activity, and we could admit such huge transformation in the Chinese People’s Republic exactly obvious. (shrink)

In the paper is analyzing the process of the institutionalization of Islamic Studies in Ukraine on the period of independence (1991–2013). The centers of Islamic Studies, its histories, particularities of the activity and publications are studied. The author argues about the existence of three centers of Islamic Studies in Ukraine: 1) as the substructure of the Institutes of Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; 2) as the substructure inside the universities; 3) inside the non-government organizations. Three main spheres of the activity (...) of Islamic Studies centers are specified: research, organizational and educational. The main problems, which appear in the process of institutionalization of Islamic Studies in Ukraine are formulated. (shrink)

Aims and hypothesesIn an environment of absolute silence, researchers have found many of their participants to perceive phantom sounds. With this between-subject experiment, we aimed to elaborate on these research findings, and specifically investigated whether–in line with the fear-avoidance model of tinnitus perception and reactivity–fear or level of perceived threat influences the incidence and perceptual qualities of phantom sound percepts in an anechoic room. We investigated the potential role of individual differences in anxiety, negative affect, noise sensitivity and subclinical hearing (...) loss. We hypothesized that participants who experience a higher level of threat would direct their attention more to the auditory system, leading to the perception of tinnitus-like sounds, which would otherwise be subaudible, and that under conditions of increased threat, narrowing of attention would lead to perceptual distortions.MethodsIn total, N = 78 normal-hearing volunteers participated in this study. In general, the study sample consisted of young, mostly female, university students. Their hearing was evaluated using gold-standard pure tone audiometry and a speech-in-noise self-test, which is a sensitive screening test to identify subclinical hearing loss. Prior to a four-minute stay in an anechoic room, we randomized participants block design-wise in a threat and no-threat condition. Participants in the threat condition were deceived about their hearing and were led to believe that staying in the room would potentially harm their hearing temporarily. Participants were asked whether they perceived sounds during their stay in the room and rated the perceptual qualities of sound percepts. They were also asked to fill-out standardized questionnaires measuring anxiety, affect and noise sensitivity. The internal consistency of the questionnaires used was verified in our study sample and ranged between α = 0.61 and α = 0.90.ResultsIn line with incidence rates reported in the literature, 74% of our participants reported having heard tinnitus-like sounds in the anechoic room. Speech-in-noise identification ability was comparable for both groups of participants. The experimental manipulation of threat was proven to be effective, as indicated by significantly higher scores on a Threat Manipulation Checklist among participants in the threat condition as compared to those in the no-threat condition. Nevertheless, participants in the threat condition were as likely to report tinnitus percepts as participants in the no-threat condition, and tinnitus percepts were not rated as being louder or more unpleasant as a function of level of threat. For participants who did experience tinnitus percepts, a higher level of threat was associated with a higher degree of experienced unpleasantness. These associations were absent in those who did not experience tinnitus. Higher negative affect was only slightly associated with higher ratings of tinnitus unpleasantness.ConclusionWhereas our threat manipulation was successful in elevating the level of fear, it did not contribute to a higher percentage of participants perceiving tinnitus-like sounds in the threat condition. However, higher levels of perceived threat were related to a higher degree of perceived tinnitus unpleasantness. The findings of our study are drawn from a rather homogenous participant pool in terms of age, gender, and educational background, challenging conclusions that are applicable for the general population. Participants generally obtained normophoric scores on independent variables of interest: they were low anxious, low noise-sensitive, and there was little evidence for the presence of subclinical hearing loss. Possibly, there was insufficient variation in scores to find effects. (shrink)

The meeting, hosted by McGill University, was held in Montréal, from Friday, October 12, to Sunday, October 14, 1990. Approximately 125 members and friends of the Society attended. The topic of discussion was “Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion.”.

У роботі досліджується взаємозв'язок систем науки і освіти, роль наднаціональних, державних, приватних науково-освітніх інституцій у стратегіях соціально-економічного розвитку КНР у контексті глобалізації економіки знань. На основі ідентифікації національних планів та програм розвитку визначено три етапи розвитку систем освіти, науки та технологій. Ураховано значення системи захисту прав інтелектуальної власності в реалізації науково-освітніх стратегій Китаю.

The irregular division of vv. 35 sqq. between two semi-choruses seems to bo widely accepted and approved.2 I wish first to discuss the obvious objection that such an irregular division is unparalleled in a strophic chorus,3 and secondly to show that the reasons advanced for the division are themselves insufficient.

In the animal literature, the concept of dominance usually links status in intermale encounters with differential reproductive success. Mazur & Booth effectively review the human literature correlating testosterone with intermale competition, but more profound questions relating this to male–female dynamics have yet to be addressed in research with humans.

In British constitutional law, the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty maintains that Parliament has unlimited legislative authority. Critics have recently challenged this doctrine, on historical and philosophical grounds. This book describes its historical origins and development.

Negative theology or apophasis - the idea that God is best identified in terms of 'absence', 'otherness', 'difference' - has been influential in modern Christian thought, resonating as it does with secular notions of negation developed in continental philosophy. Apophasis also has a strong intellectual history dating back to the early Church Fathers. Silence and the Word both studies the history of apophasis and examines its relationship with contemporary secular philosophy. Leading Christian thinkers explore in their own way the extent (...) to which the concept of the apophatic illumines some of the deepest doctrinal structures of Christian faith, and of Christian self-understanding both in terms of its historical and contemporary situatedness, showing how a dimension of negativity has characterised not only traditional mysticism but most forms of Christian thought over the years. (shrink)

La foi des philhellènes dans la légitimité du combat des Grecs contre l’Empire ottoman pour obtenir leur indépendance les a conduits à propager des images très contrastées des femmes grecques. D’un côté, les violences extrêmes (liées en particulier à la mise en esclavage) qui étaient réservées aux grecques suscitaient la compassion et nourrissaient l’indignation contre les Turcs. De l’autre, leurs participations aux combats – décrites comme héroïques – forçaient l’admiration et contribuaient à raviver l’enthousiasme philhellène. Mais ils ont été choqués (...) par le spectacle plus inattendu de la soumission et de l’ignorance dans laquelle ils voyaient les femmes grecques vivre au quotidien. (shrink)

This article takes up the processual account of drive and its derivations in relation to desire and emotion with an aim to explore the continuity of feeling from internal drive to value in the world. A mental state or act of cognition begins with an impulse and the category of instinctual drive. Drive partitions to desire, which is shaped by value. The combined concept/feeling can remain internal as emotion or distribute into action in vocalization or display. The transition in the (...) mental state from drive through desire is constrained by intrinsic value, which accompanies the object outward as extrinsic value. The partly intrapersonal nature of action prevents feeling from externalizing. Feeling drives concepts to completion. Concepts propelled by feeling undergo specification to images and/or objects. The feeling in the action gives intensity to emotion; the concept in the perception gives the quality of emotion. Feeling empowers concepts to finality, as emotions, ideas, or act/objects. In the animal mind, feeling empowers drive categories. In the human mind, feeling distributes as emotion into a diversity of ideas. Feeling unfelt in lower organisms is felt in a human mind according to the degree of individuation. (shrink)

The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty has long been regarded as the most fundamental element of the British Constitution. It holds that Parliament has unlimited legislative authority, and that the courts have no authority to judge statutes invalid. This doctrine has now been criticized on historical and philosophical grounds and critics claim that it is a relatively recent invention of academic lawyers that superseded an earlier tradition in which Parliament's authority was limited to common law. The critics also argue that it (...) is based on a misunderstanding of the relationship between statutory and common law, and is morally indefensible. The Sovereignty of Parliament: History and Philosophy responds to these criticisms. It first defines and clarifies the concept of legislative sovereignty and then describes the historical origins and the development of the doctrine from the thirteenth to the end of the nineteenth century. Professor Goldsworthy goes on to identify many different reasons why persuaded statesmen, lawyers, and political theorists have endorsed the doctrine. He discusses the ideas of a large number of legal and political thinkers, including Fortescue, St German, Hooker, Coke, Bacon, Parker, Milton, Hobbes, Hale, Locke, Bolingbroke, Blackstone, and Burke. He shows that judges in Great Britain have never had authority to invalidate statutes, and that the doctrine is much older than is generally realized. The book concludes by dealing with philosophical criticisms of the doctrine. Combining the insights of earlier thinkers with those of contemporary legal philosophers, it demonstrates that these criticisms are based on a defective understanding of the nature and foundations of law, and of the relationship between legislative authority and the common law. It argues that the doctrine is morally defensible, and refutes the thesis that the judges have authority to modify or reject it. (shrink)

This is a rich, impressive, and important work in philosophical anthropology. It is rich and impressive in view of the wide range of literature upon which the author draws, and the interdisciplinary competencies which he exhibits. It is important because of the central issue which the work focuses on and analyzes from its interdisciplinary perspective.

This is a rich, impressive, and important work in philosophical anthropology. It is rich and impressive in view of the wide range of literature upon which the author draws, and the interdisciplinary competencies which he exhibits. It is important because of the central issue which the work focuses on and analyzes from its interdisciplinary perspective.

What should and what should not to be counted as a human right? What does it mean to identify a right as a human right? And what are the most effective and legitimate means of promoting human rights? This book addresses these questions and the complex relationship between the answers to them.