This book seeks to provide an introductory outline of the history and theory of knowledge production, notwithstanding the vastness of the subject. It is a brief history of intellectual formation or history of ideas. One can see it as a textbook of historical epistemology, which in spatio-temporal terms historicises knowledge production and contextualises methodological development. It addresses the historical process of the social constitution of knowledge, that is, the social history of the making of knowledge.

Discipline based approach to knowledge and specialization goes back to the classical Graeco-Roman times. It was Isaac Newton’s Principia, which represented academic perfection of Renaissance inquiry, criticism, creativity and theorization. Principia set the epochal model of knowledge and led to the making of the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason. August Comte heralded an era of Positivism in academic research and prepared the ground for the making of disciplines. As new knowledge accrued over centuries, specialization got diversified at (...) the expense of holistic understanding. Academics of disciplinary specialization sought to resolve the problem through multidisciplinary research. Inherently discipline centric, it got further distanced from social reality. Interdisciplinary approach began as a movement through convergence research aiming to restore holistic comprehension and draw knowledge closer to social reality. It is production of knowledge beyond disciplines and across their interfaces enabling research output to be regenerative, non-conventional and resolution oriented. (shrink)

Due to the complexity and versatility of network security alarm data, a cloud-based network security data extraction method is proposed to address the inability to effectively understand the network security situation. The information properties of the situation are generated by creating a set of spatial characteristics classification of network security knowledge, which is then used to analyze and optimize the processing of hybrid network security situation information using cloud computing technology and co-filtering technology. Knowledge and information about the security situation (...) of a hybrid network has been analyzed using cloud computing strategy. The simulation results show that a cyber security crash occurs in window 20, after which the protection index drops to window 500. The increase in the security index of 500 windows is consistent with the effectiveness of the concept of this document method, indicating that this document method can sense changes in the network security situation. Starting from the first attacked window, the defense index began to decrease. In order to simulate the added network defense, the network security events in the 295th time window were reduced in the original data, and the defense index increased significantly in the corresponding time period, which is consistent with the method perception results, which further verifies the effectiveness and reliability of this method on the network security event perception. This method provides high-precision knowledge of network security situations and improves the security and stability of cloud-based networks. (shrink)

The _Platform Sutra_ records the teachings of Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch, who is revered as one of the two great figures in the founding of Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism. This translation is the definitive English version of the eighth-century Ch'an classic. Phillip B. Yampolsky has based his translation on the Tun-huang manuscript, the earliest extant version of the work. A critical edition of the Chinese text is given at the end of the volume. Dr. Yampolsky also furnishes a lengthy and detailed (...) historical introduction which contains much information hitherto unavailable even to scholars, and provides the context essential to an understanding of Hui-neng's work. He gives an account of the history and legends of Ch'an Buddhism, with particular attention to the traditions associated with Hui-neng, quoting or summarizing the most important narratives. He then discusses the various texts of the _Platform Sutra_, and analyzes its contents. (shrink)

Husserlian phenomenology, as the study of conscious experience, has often been accused of solipsism. Husserl’s method, it is argued, does not have the resources to provide an account of consciousness of other minds. This chapter will address this issue by providing a brief overview of the multiple angles from which Husserl approached the theme of intersubjectivity, with specific focus on the details of his account of the concrete interpersonal encounter – “empathy.” Husserl understood empathy as a direct, quasi-perceptual form of (...) intentionality through which the sense of the Other is constituted. Furthermore, his account of empathy is holistically integrated with his overall theory of intersubjectivity, including his discussions of the objectivity of nature, and the social, historical, and communal aspects of subjectivity. Husserl’s theory of empathy continues to cast a long shadow, influencing both the analytic and continental approaches to the problem of other minds, as well as contemporary account of social cognition in the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

This article draws on the antebellum political thought of Black abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany in critically assessing the efficacy of reasonableness in advancing the aims of emancipatory politics in political discourse. I argue, through a reading of Douglass and Delany, that comporting oneself reasonably in the face of oppressive ideology can be counterproductive, if one’s aim is to undermine such ideology and the institutions it supports. Douglass and Delany, I argue, also provide us with a framework for evaluating (...) alternative discursive strategies we might wish to employ in light of the limited value of reasonableness for emancipatory politics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Constitutive panpsychism is the doctrine that macro-level consciousness—that is, consciousness of the sort possessed by certain composite things such as humans—is built out of irreducibly mental features had by some or all of the basic physical constituents of reality. On constitutive panpsychism, changes in macro-level consciousness amount to changes in either the way that micro-conscious entities ‘bond’ or the way that micro-conscious qualities ‘blend’. I pose the ‘Selection Problem’ for constitutive panpsychism—the problem of explaining how high-level functional states of (...) the brain ‘select’ micro-conscious qualities for bonding or blending. I argue that there are no empirically plausible solutions to this problem. (shrink)

Bortolotti’s Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs defends the view that delusions are beliefs on a continuum with other beliefs. A different view is that delusions are more like illusions, that is, they arise from faulty perception. This view, which is not targeted by the book, makes it easier to explain why delusions are so alien and disabling but needs to appeal to forensic aspects of functioning.

Providing medical care and planning for a procedure such as amputation may have different cultural contexts, based on patients’ country, comfort, and contract with their physician. These contexts may create complexities for physicians as they interact with patients and caregiving relatives. Issues such as the personal choices of a caregiving relative may appear to unduly influence the decisions behind complex healthcare choices. We consider several possible scenarios in the background of the complex case presented in “Family Loyalty as a Cultural (...) Obstacle to Good Care: The Case of Mrs. Indira,” in this issue of JCE. (shrink)

Extensive empirical work has examined ethical perceptions of different occupational groups in marketing. Additionally, researchers have explored ethical apperceptions of industrial customers and retail consumers. Minimal effort, though, has been directed at investigating differences in ethical perceptions between buyers and sellers, notwithstanding considerable theoretical arguments for doing so. This paper reports the results of a study that focused on differences between retail customers’ and retail salespeople’s perceptions of questionable buying and selling behaviors. Findings indicate that the two groups differ in (...) some respect depending on which group is engaging in the questionable conduct. Managerial and future research implications are provided. (shrink)

The questions -- The purpose of morality and law -- The past and the future -- What is religion? -- What is the rule of law? -- The families of religion : western religions -- The families of religion : eastern religions -- The families of law -- A brief tour of secular law -- Money, banks and corporations -- Secularisation and religious decline -- Reasons for the decline of religiosity -- Secularisation of government -- The rise of the lawyers (...) -- Who rules the world : lawyers or economists? -- What is wrong with the law? -- Scientific progress and the law -- A way of living -- A billion years from now. (shrink)

For liberal contractarians, moral and political principles are justified if agreeable to persons as free and equals. But for critics of liberal contractarianism, this justification applies only to those capable of agreement. Understanding why contractarianism suffers from the problem of exclusion helps up understand the distinctive character of contractarianism and the importance of agreement in particular. I suggest contractarianism need not be objectionably exclusive. I first consider why agreement is important in contractarianism, and then introduce the main versions of contemporary (...) contractarianism and their different understandings of agreement. I discuss how agreement results in exclusion in each, and distinguish two kinds of response to the problem of exclusion: differential inclusion and permissive inclusion. Differential inclusion is unsuccessful because it offers those not fully capable of agreement unequal status. Permissive inclusion may either make the circumstances of agreement more open, or characterize the capacities required for inclusion more permissively. I advocate the latter as the most promising response to the problem of exclusion. I outline a more inclusive contractualism based on the capacity to share goals. (shrink)

BackgroundConventionally, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) aims to focalize the current reaching the target region-of-interest (ROI). The focality can be quantified by the dose-target-determination-index (DTDI). Despite having a uniform tDCS setup, some individuals receive focal stimulation (high DTDI) while others show reduced focality (“non-focal”). The volume of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), gray matter (GM), and white matter (WM) underlying each ROI govern the tDCS current distribution inside the brain, thereby regulating focality.AimTo determine the regional volume parameters that differentiate the focal and (...) non-focal groups.MethodsT1-weighted images of the brain from 300 age-sex matched adults were divided into three equal groups- (a) Young (20 ≤ × < 40 years), (b) Middle (40 ≤ × < 60 years), and (c) Older (60 ≤ × < 80 years). For each group, inter and intra-hemispheric montages with electrodes at (1) F3 and right supraorbital region (F3-RSO), and (2) CP5 and Cz (CP5-Cz) were simulated, targeting the left- Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC) and -Inferior Parietal Lobule (IPL), respectively. Both montages were simulated for two current doses (1 and 2 mA). For each individual head simulated for a tDCS configuration (montage and dose), the current density at each region-of-interest (ROI) and their DTDI were calculated. The individuals were categorized into two groups- (1) Focal (DTDI ≥ 0.75), and (2) Non-focal (DTDI < 0.75). The regional volume of CSF, GM, and WM of all the ROIs was determined. For each tDCS configuration and ROI, three 3-way analysis of variance was performed considering- (i) GM, (ii) WM, and (iii) CSF as the dependent variable (DV). The age group, sex, and focality group were the between-subject factors. For a given ROI, if any of the 3 DV’s showed a significant main effect or interaction involving the focality group, then that ROI was classified as a “focal ROI.”ResultsRegional CSF was the principal determinant of focality. For interhemispheric F3-RSO montage, interaction effect (p < 0.05) of age and focality was observed at Left Caudate Nucleus, with the focal group exhibiting higher CSF volume. The CSF volume of focal ROI correlated positively (r ∼ 0.16, p < 0.05) with the current density at the target ROI (DLPFC). For intrahemispheric CP5-Cz montage, a significant (p < 0.05) main effect was observed at the left pre- and post-central gyrus, with the focal group showing lower CSF volume. The CSF volume correlated negatively (r ∼ –0.16, p < 0.05) with current density at left IPL. The results were consistent for both current doses.ConclusionThe CSF channels the flow of tDCS current between electrodes with focal ROIs acting like reservoirs of current. The position of focal ROI in the channel determines the stimulation intensity at the target ROI. For focal stimulation in interhemispheric F3-RSO, the proximity of focal ROI reserves the current density at the target ROI (DLPFC). In contrast, for intrahemispheric montage (CP5-Cz), the far-end location of focal ROI reduces the current density at the target (IPL). (shrink)

It is intuitive that free action depends on consciousness in some way, since behavior that is unconsciously generated is widely regarded as un-free. But there is no clear consensus as to what such dependence comes to, in part because there is no clear consensus about either the cognitive role of consciousness or about the essential components of free action. I divide the space of possible views into four: the Constitution View (on which free actions metaphysically consist, at least in part, (...) in phenomenally conscious episodes of a special sort), the Causal-Dependence View (on which free actions are necessarily caused by conscious episodes), the Counterfactaul-Dependence View (on which free actions necessarily counterfactually dependent on conscious episodes of certain types), and the Independence View (on which there are no necessary dependence-relations that hold between free action and conscious episodes). After surveying recent empirical literature that purports to show that consciousness plays a smaller role in generating action than is usually supposed, I conclude that it is plausible that free action depends on consciousness in two ways. First, free action causally depends on consciousness control. Second, free action counterfactually depends on the agent's being responsive to certain reasons. (shrink)

I discuss three tiers of technological innovation: mild innovation, or the acceleration by technology of a human activity aimed at a good; moderate innovation, or the obviation by technology of an activity aimed at a good; and radical innovation, or the altering by technology of the human condition so as to change what counts as a good. I argue that it is impossible to morally assess proposed innovations within any of these three tiers unless we rehabilitate a natural-law ethical framework. (...) And I offer some moral starting points within such a framework, in connection with innovations of each of the three types. (shrink)

Breaking off the ordinary flow of experience, the passions create a state of exception. In their suddenness and intensity, they map a personal world, fix and qualify our attention, and impel our actions. Outraged anger drives us to write laws that will later be enforced by impersonal justice. Intense grief at the death of someone in our life discloses the contours of that life to us. Wonder spurs scientific inquiry. The strong current of Western thought that idealizes a dispassionate world (...) has ostracized the passions as quaint, even dangerous. Intense states have come to be seen as symptoms of pathology. A fondness for irony along with our civic ideal of tolerance lead us to prefer the diluted emotional life of feelings and moods. Demonstrating enormous intellectual originality and generosity, Philip Fisher meditates on whether this victory is permanent-and how it might diminish us. From Aristotle to Hume to contemporary biology, Fisher finds evidence that the passions have defined a core of human nature no less important than reason or desire. Traversing the Iliad, King Lear, Moby Dick, and other great works, he discerns the properties of the high-spirited states we call the passions. Are vehement states compatible with a culture that values private, selectively shared experiences? How do passions differ from emotions? Does anger have an opposite? Do the passions give scale, shape, and significance to our experience of time? Is a person incapable of anger more dangerous than someone who is irascible? In reintroducing us to our own vehemence, Fisher reminds us that it is only through our strongest passions that we feel the contours of injustice, mortality, loss, and knowledge. It is only through our personal worlds that we can know the world. (shrink)

In Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems, leading figures in the fields of virtue ethics and ethics come together to present the first ...

This is a collection of three studies of both retrospective and prospective significance for the author s preoccupation with the philosophical problems arising out of the transcendentalist orientation. The aim of the present work is to focus on the notion of the paradoxical alliance of unity and difference of the transcendentalist ego and the human subject. To think this notion through in terms of its implications and consequences and to rethink the nature and method of philosophy, its relation to language (...) and to the sciences, is what the author means by the humanization of transcendental philosophy.The first study addresses the genesis of the problematic of humanization in Husserl s phenomenology of the life-world; the second seeks to understand the presuppositions and consequences of Heidegger s transformation of phenomenology into fundamental ontology; and the third takes up the themes explored by Husserl and Heidegger as they enter into Merleau-Ponty s thought. In the Epilogue, the author seeks to balance the logocentrism of phenomenology with the biocentrism of a philosophy of life.The late R. Sundara Rajan was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Poona, Pune, Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, and Senior Fellow at the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, New Delhi, India. (shrink)

The core of the work is a lengthy hermeneutically-oriented discussion of political judgment, which projects the notion of political competence as a language mediated capacity of human subjects to recognize the common good by way of discourse. This discursive conception of the political which is mediated on the one hand by a relationship to the moral and on the other to the conception which can be contrasted with the modern paradigm of politics as the episteme of power relations. The earlier (...) chapters build up to this contrast of the classical and the contemporary paradigms and stake out a claim for the primacy of the political in the classical mould. The work is a return to the classical idea of the political by way of a long detour via the theory of judgment, the Kuhnian theory of paradigms, Ricoeur's theory of textual hermeneutics and rhetorical theory. Ranging from discussions of sociological and political theory to philosophy of language and philosophical logic, the work seeks to connect the Aristotelian-Kautilyan conception of the political to contemporary debates in the metatheory of the social sciences. (shrink)

This volume is dedicated to the drawing of the implications of the contemporary 'post-secular' social transformation for education. Contributions discuss such topics as the mystical tradition and its social and pedagogic implications; transformative and ecological education; and the relations between secular and religious education in different local contexts.

Examines rationality from Aristotle to Foucault, seeking to place reason in a historical context within the Western tradition.

The rapid advancement of algorithmic trading has demonstrated the success of AI automation, as well as gaps in our understanding of the implications of this technology proliferation. We explore ethical issues in the context of autonomous trading agents, both to address problems in this domain and as a case study for regulating autonomous agents more generally. We argue that increasingly competent trading agents will be capable of initiative at wider levels, necessitating clarification of ethical and legal boundaries, and corresponding development (...) of norms and enforcement capability. (shrink)

The relationship between brain and mind has been extensively explored through the developments within neuroscience over the last decade. However, the ontological status of mind has remained fairly problematic due to the inability to explain all features of the mind through the brain. This inability has been considered largely due to partial knowledge of the brain. It is claimed that once we gain complete knowledge of the brain, all features of the mind would be explained adequately. However, a challenge to (...) such a position is downward causation: How do we explain the causal power that mental states exert over brain activities? If we agree that downward causation occurs, then to what extent could a sole explanation of brain activities account for our behaviour? (For they would in themselves be conditioned by the mental states which are left unexplained). This dissertation is an attempt to understand relation between brain and mind through the concept of emergence, placed in the context of complex systems approach. This will create a space to account for the causal power of mental states. The complex systems approach says that as the complexity of a system increases, we witness the emergence of novel qualities and after a certain threshold (of complexity), the emergence of a novel structure. When the body (and correspondingly, brain) reaches a certain level of complexity, the mind emerges. The brain is a complex system from which the mind emerges. The brain, consisting of billions of neurons interacting with each other, regulates the body placed in the environment. The interaction of neurons (local interactions involving self-organization) result in dynamical brain signatures (global synergy). Such signatures are correlative to mental states. Mind is the process of a living organism embodying an intentional stance. This object could be the subject itself or another distinct from the subject. With the emergence of mind, the causal powers of brain are conditioned by the mind. Such a conditioning is evident through the causal efficacy of mental states. While the brain is minimal condition for the mind to emerge, the mind in itself is embedded (showcased/explicated/manifested) throughout the body. The mind is a process that belongs to body-as-a-whole with the novel quality of intentionality. A preliminary to understanding this relation is its metaphysical inclination. A large portion of the history of philosophy of mind has advocated a metaphysics of entities where the mind and body have been seen as two entities with distinct essences. However, such attribution of entity-ship does not take into account the processual nature of these existents (that they are essentially dependent on their environment for their existence and sustenance). Thus, the category of processual unity has been introduced which sought to account for existent as emergent wholes that move towards a stable equilibrium through self-organization. By considering existents to be processual unities, we can account for their identity as a whole-in-itself (what has been called organizational closure) and also for their processual nature. The brain is a component of the body which is a complex system and is representative of the body’s stance in the world. The brain, consisting of billions of neurons interacting with each other, regulates the body placed in the environment. The interaction of neurons (local interactions involving self-organization) result in dynamical brain signatures (global synergy). Such signatures are correlative to mental states. These mental states in turn condition the brain patterns, that allows the embodying of mental states. Thus, the three-way process of the representation of body in the world by the brain, the emergence of mental state through dynamic brain patterns and the reciprocal causal power on the brain patterns by the mental states marks embodiment. The relation between brain, body and mind can be outlined as follows: A. There are complex interactions in the brain. These interactions are representative of the body’s stance in the world and are present in form of dynamical brain signatures. B. The dynamical brain signatures lead to emergence of mind as a process. The mental state has causal power which conditions the brain. C. The brain conditioned by causal power of the mind carries out embodiment of the mind throughout the body. In the dissertation, an exposition on relation between brain and mind through complex system approach is followed by a brief on relation between body and mind. The radical embodiment approach adopts the nonlinear dynamic systems theory to understand relation of brain, body and mind. It states a shift from mapping of cognitive states onto Neural Correlates of Consciousness to their mapping through dynamic brain signatures. Every mental state is embedded throughout the body. The dissertation explores the three features of consciousness, intentionality and qualia. These have previously formed a challenge within a dualistic framework and the dissertation intends to show a direction in which they can be accounted for, within the complex systems approach and radical embodiment viewpoint. After a certain threshold of the rate of production of cell assemblies is bypassed, we become conscious of the representation itself. This leads to emergence of phenomenal states. Qualia is the qualitative character of such states, which belong to the body-as-a-whole and for this reason, cannot be reduced to properties of any of the components from which it emerges (the dynamic brain signatures) or in which it is embodied (the body and its individual parts) alone. Intentionality is the novel property of mind of moving towards a certain set of attractors where attractors refer to the states that the system prefers (which would positively contribute to its fitness). The scope of this dissertation is to delineate the relation of brain to the mind and unravel some persistent troubles of philosophy of mind within such delineation. The types of components and their relation within the mind preceded by a thorough study of how the mind is embodied is an area yet to be extensively explored in the coming works. (shrink)

Husserl introduces a phenomenological concept called “motivation” early in the First Investigation of his magnum opus, the Logical Investigations. The importance of this concept has been overlooked since Husserl passes over it rather quickly on his way to an analysis of the meaningful nature of expression. I argue, however, that motivation is essential to Husserl’s overall project, even if it is not essen- tial for defining expression in the First Investigation. For Husserl, motivation is a relation between mental acts whereby (...) the content of one act make some fur- ther meaningful content probable. I explicate the nature of this relation in terms of “evidentiary weight” and differentiate it from Husserl’s notion of Evidenz, often translated as “self-evidence”. I elucidate the importance of motivation in Husserl’s overall phenomenological project by focusing on his analyses of thing-perception and empathy. Through these examples, we can better understand the continuity between the Logical Investigations and Husserl’s later work. (shrink)

One of the hallmark themes of Karl Popper’s approach to the social sciences was the insistence that when social scientists are members of the society they study, then they are liable to affect that society. In particular, they are liable to affect it in such a way that the claims they make lose their validity. “The interaction between the scientist’s pronouncements and social life almost invariably creates situations in which we have not only to consider the truth of such pronouncements, (...) but also their actual influence on future developments. The social scientist may be striving to find the truth; but, at the same time, he must always be exerting a definite influence upon society. The very fact that his pronouncements do exert an influence destroys their objectivity.” (Popper 1963. (shrink)

Arendt Contra Sociology re-assesses the relationship between Hannah Arendt's work and the theoretical foundations of sociology, bringing her insights to bear on key themes within contemporary theoretical sociology. Departing from the view of Arendt as a political theorist who sought to rescue politics from society, and political theory from the social sciences, this book re-examines her distinctions between labour, fabrication and action as a theory of the fundamental ontology of human societies, revisiting her criticism of the tendency of many sociological (...) paradigms to conflate the activity of fabrication with that of action. (shrink)

In late March of 2020, a new hashtag, #FilmYourHospital, made its first appearance on social media. The hashtag encouraged people to visit local hospitals to take pictures and videos of empty hospitals to help “prove” that the COVID-19 pandemic is an elaborate hoax. Using techniques from Social Network Analysis, this case study examines how this conspiracy theory propagated on Twitter and whether the hashtag virality was aided by the use of automation or coordination among Twitter users. We found that while (...) much of the content came from users with limited reach, the oxygen that fueled this conspiracy in its early days came from a handful of prominent conservative politicians and far right political activists on Twitter. These power users used this hashtag to build awareness about the campaign and to encourage their followers to break quarantine and film what is happening at their local hospitals. After the initial boost by a few prominent accounts, the campaign was mostly sustained by pro-Trump accounts, followed by a secondary wave of propagation outside the U.S. The rise of the #FilmYourHospital conspiracy from a single tweet demonstrates the ongoing challenge of addressing false, viral information during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the spread of misinformation can be potentially mitigated by fact-checking and directing people to credible sources of information from public health agencies, false and misleading claims that are driven by politics and supported by strong convictions and not science are much harder to root out. (shrink)

From the legendary inventor Daedalus to Goethe's tragic Faust, from the automata-making magicians of E.T.A Hoffmann to Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein – ...

All theories of world creation, whether scientific, philosophical, or religious, can readily acknowledge the fact that humans have primarily evolved to engage with nature, the individual self, fellow human beings, society, and other naturalistic aspect of existence. Nevertheless, several novel challenges ascend when the human mind engages with technology, media, machines, and related concepts such as—ChatGPT, artificial intelligence, and to name a few. For that reason, we need philosophy and critical assessment of the uncovered essence of advanced technologies, media and (...) machines and our way of life concerning them. In other words, protectively assessing their impact requires a thorough examination of ethical and existential concerns, including technology’s implications for freedom, AI’s evolving role, the essence of human being, and the unexamined transformative societal changes that follow. Building upon the premise that these phenomena share a common thread despite their apparent disparities, our interdisciplinary pursuit draws inspiration from philosophical luminaries such as Luciano Floridi, Karamjit S. Gill, David Kaplan, Aldous Huxley, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and Gandhi. Through philosophical insights, we explore the essence of technology and its broad effects, with a focus on its impact on human freedom and essence in both public and private domains. (shrink)

The notion of risk plays a central role in economics, finance, health, psychology, law and elsewhere, and is prevalent in managing challenges and resources in day-to-day life. In recent work, Duncan Pritchard (2015, 2016) has argued against the orthodox probabilistic conception of risk on which the risk of a hypothetical scenario is determined by how probable it is, and in favour of a modal conception on which the risk of a hypothetical scenario is determined by how modally close it is. (...) In this article, we use Pritchard’s discussion as a springboard for a more wide-ranging discussion of the notion of risk. We introduce three different conceptions of risk: the standard probabilistic conception, Pritchard’s modal conception, and a normalcy conception that is new (though it has some precursors in the psychological literature on risk perception). Ultimately, we argue that the modal conception is ill-suited to the roles that a notion of risk is required to play and explore the prospects for a form of pluralism about risk, embracing both the probabilistic and the normalcy conceptions. (shrink)

The paper asks: are all tautologies true in a language with truth-value gaps? It answers that they are not. No tautology is false, of course, but not all are true. It also contends that not all contradictions are false in a language with truth-value gaps, though none are true.

Presents general information about meteorology, weather, and climate and includes more than thirty activities to help study these topics, including making a ...