scholarly journals Dennett and Taylor’s alleged refutation of the Consequence Argument

Analysis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 426-433
Author(s):  
Johan E Gustafsson

Abstract Daniel C. Dennett has long maintained that the Consequence Argument for incompatibilism is confused. In a joint work with Christopher Taylor, he claims to have shown that the argument is based on a failure to understand Logic 101. Given a fairly plausible account of having the power to cause something, they claim that the argument relies on an invalid inference rule. In this paper, I show that Dennett and Taylor’s refutation does not work against a better, more standard version of the Consequence Argument. Therefore, Dennett and Taylor’s alleged refutation fails.

2021 ◽  
pp. 131-141
Author(s):  
Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen

‘The Fitting-Attitude Analysis Revised’ is devoted to a challenge to the fitting-attitude analysis (FA analysis) that arises from the logical consequence argument (outlined in Chap. 7). This argument shows that the version of FA analysis defended in this work has the unwelcome consequence that whatever is good for someone is also, necessarily, non-relationally good. However, as the discussion evinces, an advocate of FA analysis can meet this challenge. In effect, what is needed is a modification of the standard way of formulating the FA analysis of final impersonal value. Combining this revised FA version of final impersonal value with a novel way of understanding final non-relational value provides a plausible way to handle the logical consequence argument. The chapter also discusses three related issues. (i) It outlines a reductio of the standard version of final goodness; (ii) it explains why combining a normative and an attitudinal approach does not, in the end, serve the needs of the FA advocate. Finally, it (iii) introduces a kind of case in which we would intuitively agree that something is good for person a, but which, intuitively, is such that few or no one would think they had a reason to favour what was considered good for a (except a). Such examples allegedly showcase why the book’s proposed analysis is incorrect. Eventually, it is explained why this kind of case does not have this implication.


1981 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-43
Author(s):  
Kandace A. Penner ◽  
Betsy Partin Vinson

It has been our experience in using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test that an inordinate number of verbs are missed by mentally retarded individuals. This study attempts to determine whether verb errors were due to a lack of word comprehension or a failure to understand what was being requested by the morphological-syntactic form of the stimulus. Twenty-eight subjects residing in a state facility for the mentally retarded were given a standard version and a modified version of the PPVT. On the modified version of the test, the stimulus "verbing" was altered to incorporate a syntactic helper, forming the stimulus "somebody verbing." As a result, there was a mean reduction of verb error by almost 50%.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devendra K. Dhaked ◽  
Wolf Ihlenfeldt ◽  
Hitesh Patel ◽  
Marc Nicklaus

<p>We have collected 86 different transforms of tautomeric interconversions. Out of those, 54 are for prototropic (non-ring-chain) tautomerism; 21 for ring-chain tautomerism; and 11 for valence tautomerism. The majority of these rules have been extracted from experimental literature. Twenty rules – covering the most well-known types of tautomerism such as keto-enol tautomerism – were taken from the default handling of tautomerism by the chemoinformatics toolkit CACTVS. The rules were analyzed against nine differerent databases totaling over 400 million (non-unique) structures as to their occurrence rates, mutual overlap in coverage, and recapitulation of the rules’ enumerated tautomer sets by InChI V.1.05, both in InChI’s Standard and a Non-Standard version with the increased tautomer-handling options 15T and KET turned on. These results and the background of this study are discussed in the context of the IUPAC InChI Project tasked with the redesign of handling of tautomerism for an InChI version 2. Applying the rules presented in this paper would approximately triple the number of compounds in typical small-molecule databases that would be affected by tautomeric interconversion by InChI V2. A web tool has been created to test these rules at https://cactus.nci.nih.gov/tautomerizer.</p>


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zichen Wang ◽  
Huaxun Fan ◽  
Xiao Hu ◽  
John Khamo ◽  
Jiajie Diao ◽  
...  

<p>The receptor tyrosine kinase family transmits signals into cell via a single transmembrane helix and a flexible juxtamembrane domain (JMD). Membrane dynamics makes it challenging to study the structural mechanism of receptor activation experimentally. In this study, we employ all-atom molecular dynamics with Highly Mobile Membrane-Mimetic to capture membrane interactions with the JMD of tropomyosin receptor kinase A (TrkA). We find that PIP<sub>2 </sub>lipids engage in lasting binding to multiple basic residues and compete with salt bridge within the peptide. We discover three residues insertion into the membrane, and perturb it through computationally designed point mutations. Single-molecule experiments indicate the contribution from hydrophobic insertion is comparable to electrostatic binding, and in-cell experiments show that enhanced TrkA-JMD insertion promotes receptor ubiquitination. Our joint work points to a scenario where basic and hydrophobic residues on disordered domains interact with lipid headgroups and tails, respectively, to restrain flexibility and potentially modulate protein function.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 84 (12) ◽  
pp. 61-67
Author(s):  
V. A. Eryshev

The mechanical properties of a complex composite material formed by steel and hardened concrete, are studied. A technique of operative quality control of new credible concrete and reinforcement, both in laboratory and field conditions is developed for determination of the strength and strain characteristics of materials, as well as cohesion forces determining their joint operation under load. The design of the mobile unit is presented. The unit provides a possibility of changing the direction of loading and testing the reinforced element of the given shape both for tension and compression. Moreover, the nomenclature of testing equipment and the number of molds for manufacturing concrete samples substantially decrease. Using the values of forcing resulting in concrete cracking when the joint work of concrete and reinforcement is disrupted the values of the inherent stresses and strains attributed to the concrete shrinkage are determined. An analytical relationship between the forces and deformations of the reinforced concrete sample with central reinforcement is derived for axial tension and compression, with allowance for strains and stresses in the reinforcement and concrete resulted from concrete shrinkage. The results of experimental studies are presented, including tension diagrams and diagrams of developing axial deformations with an increase in the load under the central loading of the reinforced elements. A methodology of accounting for stresses and deformations resulted from concrete shrinkage is developed. The applicability of the derived analytical relationships between stresses and deformations on the material diagrams to calculations of the reinforced concrete structures in the framework of the deformation model is estimated.


Author(s):  
Elena A. Kosovan ◽  

The paper provides a review on the joint Russian-Belarusian tutorial “History of the Great Patriotic War. Essays on the Shared History” published for the 75th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War. The tutorial was prepared within the project “Belarus and Russia. Essays on the Shared History”, implemented since 2018 and aimed at publishing a series of tutorials, which authors are major Russian and Belarusian historians, archivists, teachers, and other specialists in human sciences. From the author’s point of view, the joint work of specialists from the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus in such a format not only contributes to the deepening of humanitarian integration within the Union state, but also to the formation of a common educational system on the scale of the Commonwealth of Independent States or the Eurasian integration project (Eurasian Economic Union – EEU). The author emphasises the high research and educational significance of the publication reviewed when noting that the teaching of history in general and the history of the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War in particular in post-Soviet schools and institutes of higher education is complicated by many different issues and challenges (including external ones, which can be regarded as information aggression by various extra-regional actors).


Author(s):  
Е. N. Sedov ◽  
T. V. Yanchuk ◽  
S. А. Korneeva ◽  
L. I. Dutova ◽  
Е. V. Ulianovskaya

The experience in cooperation of breeders of different institutions in creating cultivars is shown. It is not always when the breeding institution has the necessary initial forms for selection. In this regard, there is a need to conduct separate stages of selection in different breeding institutions. For this purpose, a provision on authorship and continuity in the integrated work of several institutions in fruit breeding has been developed (Program and methods of fruit, berry and nut crop breeding. Annex. – Orel, 1995. – pp. 492-498). Breeding work of the Russian Research Institute of Fruit Crop Breeding (VNIISPK) and North Caucasian Federal Scientific Center of Horticulture, Viticulture, Winemaking can serve as a positive experience of creating new apple cultivars by two institutions. As a result of the joint work of these two institutions, 22 apple cultivars have been created, of which 9 have already been included in the state register of breeding achievements approved for use (zoned), including three cultivars for the conditions of the Middle zone of Russia – Aleksandr Boiko, Maslovskoye and Yablochny Spas and six cultivars for the conditions of the North Caucasus – Vasilisa, Karmen, Margo, Orfey, Soyuz and Talisman. Brief economical and biological characteristics of these cultivars are given in this paper. The obtained practical results indicate that in some cases, when creating modern cultivars that meet the requirements of production, it is necessary to use the knowledge of breeders, the source material and equipment of different breeding institutions, and carry out separate stages of the selection process in different institutions.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matheus Pereira Lobo

All nine axioms and a single inference rule of logic (Modus Ponens) within the Hilbert axiomatic system are presented using capital letters (ABC) in order to familiarize the beginner student in hers/his first contact with the topic.


Author(s):  
Timothy Williamson

This chapter develops and refines the analogy between knowledge and action in Knowledge and its Limits. The general schema is: knowledge is to belief as action is to intention. The analogy reverses direction of fit between mind and world. The knowledge/belief side corresponds to the inputs to practical reasoning, the action/intention side to its outputs. Since desires are inputs to practical reasoning, the desire-as-belief thesis is considered sympathetically. When all goes well with practical reasoning, one acts on what one knows. Belief plays the same local role as knowledge, and intention as action, in practical reasoning. This is the appropriate setting to understand knowledge norms for belief and practical reasoning. Marginalizing knowledge in epistemology is as perverse as marginalizing action in the philosophy of action. Opponents of knowledge-first epistemology are challenged to produce an equally systematic and plausible account of the relation between the cognitive and the practical.


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