Doctrinally, a precedent is a case of the same or higher court that furnishes an authoritative rule for the determination of the case at hand, either because the facts are alike, or, if the facts are different, because the principle that governed the first case is applicable to the different facts. In this article I try to free precedent form the dominant doctrinal view by offering a more intuitive conception: that to be precedent means to be treated as precedent. Put (...) differently, I attempt to see precedent not as descriptive of a previous decision or rule but as the aggregate effect of responses to one or a series of court decisions in the legal community. I illustrate this viewpoint by developing a version of a response-dependent concept that incorporates our intuitive grasp of how precedent works. In the pursuit of this task I rely on the basic philosophical premises of response-dependence theory and on one paradigmatic response-dependent concept—the quality of being funny. (shrink)

Jeder weiss, dass er sterben muss. Er weiss nur nicht wann. Wüsste er es, er könnte den Tod nicht mehr aus seinem Leben verdrängen. Dieses Buch geht von einer utopischen Situation aus: Durch eine gentechnische Analyse wird bei jedem Menschen gleich nach seiner Geburt festgestellt, wann sein "Endtag", also sein Todestag, sein wird. Frühere Todesfälle gibt es nur bei Unfall oder Mord, spätere nie. Das Wissen um den Endtag verändert das Leben jedes Einzelnen, die Familien, die Gesellschaft, Ausbildung, Beziehungen und (...) Lebensplanung, Laufbahnen im Beruf, das Rentensystem u.v.m. Was für die einen ein "Horrorszenario" sein kann, entpuppt sich für die anderen als ein Segen: Alle können ihren Lebensabend planen und zur rechten Zeit bewusst Abschied nehmen. Und an diesem Punkt wird das Szenario von Ivo W. Greiter zum Plädoyer: Versucht euch täglich bewusst zu sein und zu akzeptieren, dass Ihr nicht ewig leben werdet. Rechnet mit dem Tod, redet über das Sterben, räumt eure Sachen auf. Und: Der Tod kann seinen Schrecken verlieren, wenn er am Leben teilhaben darf. "Und immer wieder stellte ich mir die Frage: Wenn ich weiss, was ich ändern würde, wenn ich in vier Monaten sterben würde, warum ändere ich es dann nicht gleich?" DR. GREITER, geb. 1940, ist Rechtsanwalt in Innsbruck; er ist vielfach in Berufsverbänden und ehrenamtlich engagiert, so als österreichischer Vorsitzender der internationalen Juristenorganisation World Jurist Association, Washington, als Vizepräsident des Österreichischen Juristentages und des österreichischen Anwaltsvereins u. a.; von 1983 bis 1989 war Dr. Greiter Mitglied des Gemeinderates von Innsbruck und von 1993 bis 2010 französischer Honorarkonsul in Innsbruck. Er befasst sich unter anderem mit Rechtsfragen für Menschen über 66; zahlreiche sonstige fachbezogene Veröffentlichungen. (shrink)

In Transparent Intensional Logic we can recognize two distinct notions of computation that loosely correspond to term rewriting and term interpretation as known from lambda calculus. Our goal will be to further explore these two notions and examine some of their properties.

In this paper we examine two approaches to the formal treatment of the notion of problem in the paradigm of algorithmic semantics. Namely, we will explore an approach based on Martin-Löf’s Constructive Type Theory, which can be seen as a direct continuation of Kolmogorov’s original calculus of problems, and an approach utilizing Tichý’s Transparent Intensional Logic, which can be viewed as a non-constructive attempt of interpreting Kolmogorov’s logic of problems. In the last section we propose Kolmogorov and CTT-inspired modifications to (...) TIL-based approach. The focus will be on non-empirical problems only. (shrink)

This essay provides an introduction to the terminology, concepts, methods, and challenges of image‐based modeling in biology. Image‐based modeling and simulation aims at using systematic, quantitative image data to build predictive models of biological systems that can be simulated with a computer. This allows one to disentangle molecular mechanisms from effects of shape and geometry. Questions like “what is the functional role of shape” or “how are biological shapes generated and regulated” can be addressed in the framework of image‐based systems (...) biology. The combination of image quantification, model building, and computer simulation is illustrated here using the example of diffusion in the endoplasmic reticulum. (shrink)

This pioneering book presents a reconstitution of Charles Sanders Peirce philosophical system as a coherent architecture of concepts that form a unified theory of reality. Historically, the majority of Peircean scholars adopted a thematic approach to study isolated topics such as semiotics and pragmatism without taking into account the author’s broader philosophical framework, which led to a poor and fragmented understanding of Peirce’s work. In this volume, professor Ivo Assad Ibri, past president of The Charles Sanders Peirce Society and a (...) leading figure in the Brazilian community of Peircean scholars, adopts a systemic approach to Peirce’s thought and presents Peirce’s scientific metaphysics as a deep ontological architecture based on a semiotic logic and on pragmatism as criteria of meaning. Originally published in Portuguese, this book became a classic among Brazilian Peircean scholars by presenting a conceptual matrix capable of providing a clear reference system to ground the thematic studies into the broader Peircean system. Now translated to English, this reviewed, amplified and updated edition aims to make this contributions available to the international community of Peircean scholars and to serve as a tool to understand Peirce’s work in a more systemic way by integrating concepts such as experience, phenomenon, existence and reality, as well as theories such as Chance, Continuity, Objective Idealism, Cosmology and Pragmatism, in a coherent system that reveals Peirce’s complex metaphysical architecture. "As the philosophical reputation of Charles S. Peirce continues to rise to first-tier prominence in the history of American philosophy, Ivo Ibri’s Kósmos Noetós assumes a unique status in both a pioneering and a magisterial work of transcontinental Peirce scholarship. This original work of this internationally renowned scholar and editor, and Professor of Philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of San Paulo, penetrates to the heart of Peirce’s architectonic system of phenomenological, metaphysical, and semiotic categories which heuristically characterize our world as “a universe perfused with signs.” Ibri’s own synergistic commentary on the radiating registers of Peirce’s cosmogonically and pragmatistically conceived “one intelligible theory of the universe” also instructively contributes to the illumination of significant nodes of interface with a range of relevant theoretical trends in the contemporary academy; as well, it places Peirce in the company of such thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Kant, and Schelling who preceded Peirce in providing a legacy of first-tier reasoning on our intelligibly developing world. Kosmos Noetos impresses as Ibri’s pure, lucid, passionately thought-loving, philosophical articulation of his own and as the indispensable prolegomena to all future Peirce studies." David Dilworth, State University of New York at Stone Brook – USA "Ivo Ibri has offered us in this exquisite work a framing of the inner logic of Charles S. Peirce's core metaphysical vision and its existential implications. It is a deep and nuanced exploration of the internal dynamics of Peirce’s central metaphysical categories, developed through rigorous and detailed attention to the evolution of Peirce’s thought on the ‘vitally important topics’ of the appearing, the reality, and the intelligibility of the world. The two-leveled format of the book, an intricate weaving of Peirce’s texts and discursive elaboration and linkage by Ibri, gives it a distinctive feel and is the bedrock of its value. The book is a remarkable combination of presentation and analysis. It is informed by Ibri’s deep philosophical culture and is a gentle and convincing argument for the centrality of metaphysics in understanding Peirce’s thought. It offers in a new way indispensable suggestions for our own attempts to think about our places in an evolving universe with the aid of Peirce and offers threads of thought to be followed up by others." Robert E. Innis, University of Massachusetts Lowell – USA. (shrink)

In die Geschichte sind Franz Josef Graf von Thun (1734-1801) und seine Frau Wilhelmine (1744-1800) als Gonner des Geniemusikers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart eingegangen. Der "sonderbare Cavalier", wie er von Mozart genannt wurde, war seinen Zeitgenossen eher als Geisterbeschworer und Magnetiseur, denn als Musikliebhaber und Schriftsteller bekannt. Erst 2009 tauchte im Familienarchiv Thun-Hohenstein das Manuskript der umfangreichen esoterischen Enzyklopadie auf, in der Graf von Thun seine Ansichten uber den Menschen, uber das Weltall und uber die Franzosische Revolution darlegt. Ivo Cerman stellt (...) hier die Philosophie des Grafen vor dem Hintergrund des Illuminismus des 18. Jahrhunderts vor und ediert die wichtigsten Artikel seiner esoterischen Enzyklopadie. Auf der Grundlage dieser gerade entdeckten wichtigen Quelle kann die Frage nach dem Verhaltnis zwischen Aufklarung und Illuminismus neu beantwortet werden. (shrink)

The Kosovo conflict -- The Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- The conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In cooperation with the Philosophical Faculty of Sofia University, the Bulgarian Philosophical Society organized the conference "Phenomenologies: the legacies of Edmund Husserl," which took place on 6 and 7 November 2015, and became the founding event of BFO-Fenomenologia – the Phenomenological Association as a community of the Bulgarian Philosophical Society. The Association offers a new home for Bulgarian scholars and groups from different phenomenological currents.

The main objective of this paper is to sketch unifying conceptual and formal framework for inference that is able to explain various proof techniques without implicitly changing the underlying notion of inference rules. We base this framework upon the so-called two-dimensional, i.e., deduction to deduction, account of inference introduced by Tichý in his seminal work The Foundation’s of Frege’s Logic (1988). Consequently, it will be argued that sequent calculus provides suitable basis for such general concept of inference and therefore should (...) not be seen just as technical tool, but philosophically well-founded system that can rival natural deduction in terms of its “naturalness”. (shrink)

Electronic sports and other variants of ‘digital sports’ have increased in popularity all over the world and may even come to challenge hegemonic concepts of sport. More relevant than the apparent opposition between ‘physical’ and ‘non-physical’ is the question what kind of embodiment is manifested within virtual environments. In this paper, we argue that eSports do require the learning and performance of motor skills and that embodiment within a virtual environment may be considered playful or even athletic. The type of (...) skills that might be tested can even be considered fundamental movement skills. Under appropriate educational supervision, with knowledge of the game, eSports can be utilized for the development of specific elements of digital literacy. Although motor skills are a defining characteristic of eSports, we do not argue that eSports should be integrated within PE. These arguments have not so much to do with the status of physicality present, but with differences in t... (shrink)

Proofs from assumptions are amongst the most fundamental reasoning techniques. Yet the precise nature of assumptions is still an open topic. One of the most prominent conceptions is the placeholder view of assumptions generally associated with natural deduction for intuitionistic propositional logic. It views assumptions essentially as holes in proofs, either to be filled with closed proofs of the corresponding propositions via substitution or withdrawn as a side effect of some rule, thus in effect making them an auxiliary notion subservient (...) to proper propositions. The Curry–Howard correspondence is typically viewed as a formal counterpart of this conception. I will argue against this position and show that even though the Curry–Howard correspondence typically accommodates the placeholder view of assumptions, it is rather a matter of choice, not a necessity, and that another more assumption-friendly view can be adopted. (shrink)

We approach the topic of solution equivalence of propositional problems from the perspective of non-constructive procedural theory of problems based on Transparent Intensional Logic (TIL). The answer we put forward is that two solutions are equivalent if and only if they have equivalent solution concepts. Solution concepts can be understood as a generalization of the notion of proof objects from the Curry-Howard isomorphism.

The article discusses the reception of Grotius by Catholic lawyers at the university of Prague. It focuses on the Grotius commentary by Nicolaus Ignaz Königsmann, which was meant as a response to the discussion of Central European Catholic lawyers on questions of toleration and permissions in law. I argue that Königsmann agreed with Grotius because his conception could be combined with the Catholic belief in free will and dictamen sanae rationis. He grounded natural law in rational human nature and rejected (...) attempts to derive natural law from the highest principle. (shrink)

Quality of life is an important outcome measure in mental health care. Currently, QoL is mainly measured with paper and pencil questionnaires. To contribute to the evaluation of treatment, and to enhance substantiated policy decisions in the allocation of resources, a web-based, personalized, patient-friendly and easy to administer QoL instrument has been developed: the QoL-ME. While human values play a significant role in shaping future use practices of technologies, it is important to anticipate on them during the design of the (...) QoL-instrument. The value sensitive design approach offers a theory and method for addressing these values in a systematic and principled manner in the design of technologies. While the VSD approach has been applied in the field of somatic care, we extended the VSD approach to the field of mental healthcare with the aim to enable developers of the QoL-instrument to reflect on important human values and anticipate potential value conflicts in its design. We therefore explored how VSD can be used by investigating the human values that are relevant for the design of the QoL-ME. Our exploration reveals that the values autonomy, efficiency, empowerment, universal usability, privacy, redifinition of roles, of responsibilites, reliability, solidarity, surveillance and trust are at stake for the future users of the technology. However, we argue that theoretical reflections on the potential ethical impact of a technology in the design phase can only go so far. To be able to comprehensively evaluate the usability the VSD approach, a supplementary study of the use practices of the technology is needed. (shrink)

In this paper we revisit Pavel Tichý’s novel distinction between one-dimensional and two-dimensional conception of inference, which he presented in his book Foundations of Frege’s Logic (1988), and later in On Inference (1999), which was prepared from his manuscript by his co-author Jindra Tichý. We shall focus our inquiry not only on the motivation behind the introduction of this non-classical concept of inference, but also on further inspection of selected Tichý’s arguments, which we see as the most compelling or simply (...) most effective in providing support for his two-dimensional account of inference. Main attention will be given to exposing the failure of one-dimensional theory of inference in its explanation of indirect (reductio ad absurdum) proofs. Lastly, we discuss shortly the link between two-dimensional inference and deduction apparatus of Tichý’s Transparent Intensional Logic. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate the possibility of translating a fragment of natural deduction system (NDS) for natural language semantics into modern type theory (MTT), originally suggested by Luo (2014). Our main goal will be to examine and translate the basic rules of NDS (namely, meta-rules, structural rules, identity rules, noun rules and rules for intersective and subsective adjectives) to MTT. Additionally, we will also consider some of their general features.

Proof-Theoretic Semantics, by FrancezNissim. London: College Publications, 2015. Pp. xx + 415.

Before examining de Moivre's contributions to the science of mathematics, this article reviews the source materials, consisting of the printed works and the correspondence of de Moivre, and constructs his biography from them. The analytical part examines de Moivre's contributions and achievements in the study of equations, series, and the calculus of probability. De Moivre contributed to the continuing development from Viète to Abel and Galois of the theory of solving equations by means of constructing particular equations, the roots of (...) which can be written in the form $$\sqrt[n]{{a + \sqrt b }} + \sqrt[n]{{a - \sqrt b }}$$. He also discovered the reciprocal equations. In the course of this work de Moivre discovered an expression equivalent to (cos α+i sin α) n =cos n α+i sin n α and, following Cotes, he succeeded in expressing the nth roots of unity in trigonometric form. In the theory of series, de Moivre developed a polynomial theorem encom-passing Newton's binomial theorem and, in particular, a theorem of recurrent series useful in the calculus of probability. The demands of the calculus of probability led de Moivre to an approximation for the binomial coefficients $$\left( {_m^n } \right)$$ for large values of n. The interaction between de Moivre and James Stirling, particularly in regard to the asymptotic series for log (n!), is treated at length. This work supplied the foundation for de Moivre's limit theorem for the binomial distribution. The calculus of probability, which occupied him from 1708 onward, became in time ever more the center of de Moivre's inquiries. Proceeding from contemporary collections of gambling exercises, de Moivre, by introducing an explicit measure of probability for the so-called Laplace experiments, found the beginnings of a theory of probability. De Moivre expanded the classic application of probability calculus to games of chance by addressing himself to the problem of annuities and by adopting Halley's work with its conception of “Probability of life”. De Moivre was the first to publish a mathematically formulated law for the decrements of life derived from mortality tables. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the concept of consciousness in C. S. Peirce’s work, revealing how its ways of being are associated with the three Peircean phenomenological categories. In this article, I intend to reflect on the heuristic power of the mind, namely, its ability to bring about new ideas, which, within Peirce’s logic of inquiry, is called by the well-known term of abduction. The abductive logical step promotes a synthesis of signs that constitutes a logical structure capable of proposing a (...) new mediation or representation of a new phenomenon. I make use of a metaphorical passage from Peirce not only to give the title to this essay, but also to highlight the importance of the first category as a sort of synechistic envelopment of an unprecedented logical structure of signs that composes a new synthesis. Two continua intertwine themselves, namely, those of the first and third categories, to account for what appears as a fact of the world in the theater of secondness. The essay also seeks to bring to light the core realism of Peirce’s philosophy, the genetic aspect of this bottomless lake, through its cosmology, where the generalization of forms and the acquisition of habits of reality are the proper ground of his Objective Idealism. One of the heuristic aspect of the lake metaphor is a sort of invitation to extend the concept of synthesis from the realm of logical structures to that one of arts, which in this essay will remain as a suggestion for a further reflection. (shrink)

This paper argues that an analysis of the dissatisfactory outcomes of international negotiations concerning climate change must take into account procedures of political decision‐making in democracies. Although the normative ideal of republican democracy has means of dealing with such dissatisfactory results, political processes in republican democracies take too much time and risk becoming stuck in tragic or dilemmatic decision structures when facing challenges such as climate change. Consequently, this paper discusses possibilities for redesigning republican democratic institutions to counter‐act these negative (...) forces. However, all possibilities discussed either call into question the normative ideal of republican democracy itself or would take too much time to be realized. (shrink)

Initiatives advocating for nature-based solutions, such as increased urban biodiversity, aim to promote public health as a part of creating sustainable cities. These initiatives are supported by a plenitude of scientific literature demonstrating the link between human health and nature contact. Despite these findings, positive human-nature interactions are declining worldwide, negatively effecting human development and health. We support an embodied approach to mental health. Taking this approach seriously illuminates how cities can be enhanced by modifying environmental and social affordances and (...) the ways in which urban dwellers interact with urban natural greenspaces. We argue that urban nature experiences can be used to promote mental health, but that indicators of environmental injustice need to addressed. (shrink)