Names and Pseudonyms

Philosophy ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 70 (274) ◽  
pp. 487-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lloyd Humberstone
Keyword(s):  
Negative Answer ◽  
Affirmative Answer ◽  
Lewis Carroll ◽  
Charles Dodgson ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
Literary Output

Was there such a person as Lewis Carroll? An affirmative answer is suggested by the thought that Lewis Carroll was Charles Dodgson, and since there was certainly such a person as Charles Dodgson, there was such a person as Lewis Carroll. A negative answer is suggested by the thought that in arguing thus, the two names ‘Lewis Carroll’ and ‘Charles Dodgson’ are being inappropriately treated as though they were completely on a par: a pseudonym is, after all, a false or fictitious name. Perhaps we should say instead that there was really no such person as Lewis Carroll, but that when Charles Dodgson published under that name, he was pretending that there was, and further, pretending that the works in question formed part of the literary output of this pretendedly real individual. Whether or not this is correct for the case of ‘Lewis Carroll’, I will be suggesting that an account of this second style–a fictionalist account, for short–is appropriate for at least a good many pseudonyms. We shall get to reasons why it might nonetheless not be especially appropriate in the present case in due course: one advantage of the ‘Lewis Carroll’/‘Charles Dodgson’ example, such qualms notwithstanding, is that everyone (likely to be reading this) is familiar not only with both names but with which of them is the pseudonym. Another is that, as we shall have occasion to observe below, Dodgson himself had some interesting views on this particular case of pseudonym(it)y.

Institution-Induced Stability

2019 ◽  
pp. 84-102
Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Shepsle
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Lewis Carroll ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Simple Majority Rule ◽  
Technical Literature ◽  
Marquis De Condorcet ◽  
Charles Dodgson

Simple majority rule is badly behaved. This is one of the earliest lessons learned by political scientists in the positive political theory tradition. Discovered and rediscovered by theorists over the centuries (including, famously, the Majorcan Franciscan monk Raymon Llull in the thirteenth century, the Marquis de Condorcet in the eighteenth, the Reverend Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) in the eighteenth, and Duncan Black in the twentieth), the method of majority rule cannot be counted on to produce a rational collective choice. In many circumstances (made precise in the technical literature), it is very likely (a claim also made precise) that whatever choice is produced will suffer the property of not being “best” in the preferences of all majorities: for any candidate alternative, there will always exist another alternative that some majority prefers to it. This chapter suggests that while a collection of preferences often cannot provide a collectively “best” choice, institutional arrangements, which restrict comparisons of alternatives, may allow majority rule to function more smoothly. That is, where equilibrium induced by preferences alone may fail to exist, institutional structure may induce stability.

Discrepancy to Variability

2019 ◽  
pp. 245-264
Author(s):  
Steven J. Osterlind
Keyword(s):  
Hypothesis Testing ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Latin Squares ◽  
Lewis Carroll ◽  
Statistical Hypothesis ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Statistical Hypothesis Testing ◽  
Research Designs ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Charles Dodgson

This chapter describes quantification during the late nineteenth century. Then, most ordinary people were gaining an overt awareness, and probability notions were seeping into everyday conversation and decision-making. However, new forms of abstract mathematics were being developed, albeit with some opposition from Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), who wanted to preserve traditionalist views of Euclidian geometry. The chapter introduces William Gossett, who worked in the laboratory of the Guinness brewery and developed “t-distribution,” which was published as “Student’s t-test.” It also describes his friendship with Sir Ronald Fisher, who developed many statistical hypothesis testing methods, published in The Design of Experiments, such as the ANOVA procedure, and the F ratio. Fisher also developed many research designs for hypothesis testing, both simple and complex, including the Latin squares design, as well as providing a classic description of inferential testing in the thought experiment called “the lady tasting tea.”

Alice's Journey to the End of Night

PMLA ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 81 (5) ◽  
pp. 313-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Rackin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Lewis Carroll ◽  
Symbolic Logic ◽  
Adult Readers ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Lay Reader ◽  
Charles Dodgson ◽  
Looking Glass

In the century now passed since the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, scores of critical studies have attempted to account for the fascination the book holds for adult readers. Although some of these investigations offer provocative insights, most of them treat Carroll in specialized modes inaccessible to the majority of readers, and they fail to view Alice as a complete and organic work of art. Hardly a single important critique has been written of Alice as a self-contained fiction, distinct from Through the Looking-Glass and all other imaginative pieces by Carroll. Critics also tend to confuse Charles Dodgson the man with Lewis Carroll the author; this leads to distorted readings of Alice that depend too heavily on the fact, say, that Dodgson was an Oxford don, or a mathematician, or a highly eccentric Victorian gentleman with curious pathological tendencies. The results are often analyses which fail to explain the total work's undeniable impact on the modern lay reader unschooled in Victorian political and social history, theoretical mathematics, symbolic logic, or Freudian psychology. It seems time, then, that Alice be treated for what it most certainly is—a book of major and permanent importance in the tradition of English fiction, a work that still pertains directly to the experience of the unspecialized reader, and one that exemplifies the profound questioning of reality which characterizes the mainstream of nineteenth-century English literature.

ANNIHILATOR-STABILITY AND TWO QUESTIONS OF NICHOLSON

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
GUOLI XIA ◽  
YIQIANG ZHOU
Keyword(s):  
Matrix Ring ◽  
Triangular Matrix ◽  
Negative Answer ◽  
Affirmative Answer ◽  
Matrix Rings ◽  
Closed Set ◽  
Ring Form ◽  
Triangular Matrix Ring ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient ◽  
Left Annihilator

Abstract An element a in a ring R is left annihilator-stable (or left AS) if, whenever $Ra+{\rm l}(b)=R$ with $b\in R$ , $a-u\in {\rm l}(b)$ for a unit u in R, and the ring R is a left AS ring if each of its elements is left AS. In this paper, we show that the left AS elements in a ring form a multiplicatively closed set, giving an affirmative answer to a question of Nicholson [J. Pure Appl. Alg.221 (2017), 2557–2572.]. This result is used to obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for a formal triangular matrix ring to be left AS. As an application, we provide examples of left AS rings R over which the triangular matrix rings ${\mathbb T}_n(R)$ are not left AS for all $n\ge 2$ . These examples give a negative answer to another question of Nicholson [J. Pure Appl. Alg.221 (2017), 2557–2572.] whether R/J(R) being left AS implies that R is left AS.

scholarly journals Can Pragmatism Furnish a Philosophical Basis for Theology?

1910 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas C. Macintosh
Keyword(s):  
Religious Faith ◽  
Negative Answer ◽  
Affirmative Answer ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religion And Theology ◽  
Philosophical Basis ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

In order to establish a negative answer to this question, one would simply have to show either that pragmatism itself is not tenable, or else that it can afford theology no adequate support. To establish the affirmative, however, it would be necessary to show in the first place that pragmatism is in itself tenable, and in the second place that it is compatible with and gives some real support to theology. But for the would-be theological pragmatist himself neither of these positions can be readily accepted as established without the other. On the one hand he cannot say that pragmatism supports theology unless it is itself tenable, for, if untenable, so far from being the philosophical basis of theology, it cannot be a real basis for anything. On the other hand the person who finds religion essential cannot, on pragmatic principles, accept pragmatism, if it is not at least compatible with the fundamentals of religion and theology—unless, indeed, he needs pragmatism more than he needs religion. While beginning, then, by inquiring whether pragmatism is tenable or not, it must be recognized that a final affirmative answer cannot be given until we have considered the question of the bearing of pragmatism upon the essential affirmations of religious faith.

Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge (Lewis Carroll) (1832–98)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Heath
Keyword(s):  
Lewis Carroll ◽  
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland ◽  
Literary Output ◽  
Alice’S Adventures In Wonderland ◽  
Looking Glass

Dodgson, an Oxford teacher of mathematics, is best known under his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll. Although not an exceptional mathematician, his standing has risen somewhat in the light of recent research. He is also of note as a symbolic logician in the tradition of Boole and De Morgan, as a pioneer in the theory of voting, and as a gifted amateur photographer. His literary output, ranging from satirical pamphleteering, light verse and puzzle-making to an immense correspondence, is again largely amateur in nature, and would hardly have survived without the worldwide success of his three master-works, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Through the Looking-Glass (1871) and The Hunting of the Snark (1876). Together with portions of his two-volume fairy-novel Sylvie and Bruno (1889/93) they are the only writings, ostensibly for children, to have attracted or deserved the notice of philosophers.

scholarly journals The Neurology of Alice in Wonderland

1982 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.J. Murray
Keyword(s):  
Lewis Carroll ◽  
Visual Symptoms ◽  
Young Girls ◽  
Alice In Wonderland ◽  
Charles Dodgson

SUMMARY:Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, author of the famous Alice stories, developed migraine and associated visual symptoms late in life. There has been considerable speculation that the bizarre phenomena and weird visual imaginery in Alice stories was directly related to the author’s migraine.This paper reviews several aspects of the character and health of Lewis Carroll including his shy, introspective personality, his stuttering and his attraction to young girls. It is concluded that there is no connection between the visual symptoms of migraine and the phenomena described in the Alice stories which were written over 25 years before the author developed migraine in his mid-fifties.

A guide to “Coding the universe” by Beller, Jensen, Welch

1985 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1002-1019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sy D. Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Set Theory ◽  
Negative Answer ◽  
Large Cardinals ◽  
Affirmative Answer ◽  
Partial Ordering ◽  
Proper Class ◽  
Covering Lemma ◽  
Singular Cardinals ◽  
The Universe

In the wake of Silver's breakthrough on the Singular Cardinals Problem (Silver [74]) followed one of the landmark results in set theory, Jensen's Covering Lemma (Devlin-Jensen [74]): If 0# does not exist then for every uncountable x ⊆ ORD there exists a constructible Y ⊇ X, card(Y) = card(X). Thus it is fair to say that in the absence of large cardinals, V is “close to L”.It is natural to ask, as did Solovay, if we can fairly interpret the phrase “close to L” to mean “generic over L”. For example, if V = L[a], a ⊆ ω and if 0# does not exist then is V-generic over L for some partial ordering ∈ L? Notice that an affirmative answer implies that in the absence of 0#, no real can “code” a proper class of information.Jensen's Coding Theorem provides a negative answer to Solovay's question, in a striking way: Any class can be “coded” by a real without introducing 0#. More precisely, if A ⊆ ORD then there is a forcing definable over 〈L[A], A〉 such that ⊩ V = L[a], a ⊆ ω, A is definable from a. Moreover if 0# ∉ L[A] then ⊩ 0# does not exist. Now as any M ⊨ ZFC can be generically extended to a model of the form L[A] (without introducing 0#) we obtain: For any 〈M, A〉 ⊨ ZFC (that is, M ⊨ ZFC and M obeys Replacement for formulas mentioning A as a predicate) there is an 〈M, A〉-definable forcing such that ⊩ V = L[a], a ⊆ ω, 〈M, A〉 is definable from a. Moreover if 0# ∉ M then ⊩ 0# does not exist.

scholarly journals The Johnson Noise in Biological Matter

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Scalia ◽  
Massimo Sperini ◽  
Fabrizio Guidi
Keyword(s):  
Approximate Expression ◽  
Negative Answer ◽  
Affirmative Answer ◽  
Power Lines ◽  
Masking Effect ◽  
Johnson Noise ◽  
Cell Level ◽  
Scientific Debate ◽  
Low Intensity ◽  
Biological Matter

Can a very low intensity signal overcome a disturbance, the power density of which is much higher than the signal one, and yield some observable effects? The Johnson noise seems to be a disturbance so high as to cause a negative answer to that question, when one studies the effects on the cell level due to the external ELF fields generated by electric power lines (Adair, 1990, 1991). About this subject, we show that the masking effect due to the Johnson noise, known as “Adair’s constraint” and still present in the scientific debate, can be significantly weakened. The values provided by the Johnson noise formula, that is an approximate expression, can be affected by a significant deviation with respect to the correct ones, depending on the frequency and the kind of the cells, human or not human, that one is dealing with. We will give some examples. Eventually, we remark that the so-called Zhadin effect, although born and studied in a different context, could be viewed as an experimental test that gives an affirmative answer to the initial question, when the signal is an extremely weak electromagnetic field and the disturbance is a Johnson noise.

Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke on Extended Thinking Beings

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Garrett
Keyword(s):  
Negative Answer ◽  
Affirmative Answer ◽  
The Other ◽  
Spatially Extended

Can we know that nothing is in itself both thinking and spatially extended? Descartes’s two arguments for mind-body dualism in his Meditations—one drawn from the conceived separability of thought and extension, the other drawn from the indivisibility of mind and the divisibility of body—each entail an affirmative answer to this question. Yet although Spinoza and Locke both studied Descartes carefully, each gives a negative answer to the question, implying that each thought he could diagnose an error in each of Descartes’s two arguments. This chapter explains in detail the very different diagnoses that Spinoza and Locke, respectively, would have made of Descartes’s errors in each of the two arguments. It then compares and evaluates their respective strategies for resisting those arguments.

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