A Theory of Background Conditions

2018 ◽  
pp. 23-87
Author(s):  
Bradford Skow
Keyword(s):  
Alternative View ◽  
Background Condition ◽  
Common View ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Difference

The common view about background conditions is that the difference between causes and background conditions is pragmatic, drawn in language not the world. This chapter defends an alternative view, on which the difference is metaphysical, drawn in the world not in language. This alternative says that something is a background condition to C’s causing E iff it is a state (rather than an event) that is a reason why C caused E. This theory is used to answer the question of what it is to manifest a disposition; briefly, something manifests a disposition to M in C if its having that disposition is a background condition to the Cing causing the Ming.

Between High Culture and Low Culture; and also The Difference Between Popular Culture and Folk Culture

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Kunal Debnath
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Folk Culture ◽  
Common People ◽  
High Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Low Culture

High culture is a collection of ideologies, beliefs, thoughts, trends, practices and works-- intellectual or creative-- that is intended for refined, cultured and educated elite people. Low culture is the culture of the common people and the mass. Popular culture is something that is always, most importantly, related to everyday average people and their experiences of the world; it is urban, changing and consumeristic in nature. Folk culture is the culture of preindustrial (premarket, precommodity) communities.

scholarly journals The Concept of Feasibility: A Multivocal Account

Res Publica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Guillery
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Common View ◽  
The World ◽  
Common Objection ◽  
The Common

AbstractA common objection to a proposal or theory in political philosophy is that it is not feasible to realise what it calls for. This is commonly taken to be sufficient to reject a proposal or theory: feasibility, on this common view, operates as a straightforward constraint on moral and political theory, whatever is not feasible is simply ruled out. This paper seeks to understand what we mean when we say that some proposal or outcome is or is not feasible. It will argue that no single binary definition can be given. Rather, there is a whole range of possible specifications of the term ‘feasible’, each of which selects a range of facts of the world to hold fixed. No single one of these possible specifications, though, is obviously privileged as giving the appropriate understanding of ‘feasibility’ tout court. The upshot of my account of feasibility, then, will be that the common view of feasibility as a straightforward constraint cannot be maintained: in order to reject a moral theory, it will not be sufficient simply to say that it is not feasible.

scholarly journals Fast Comparison of High-Precision Time Scales Using GNSS Receivers

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Vojtech Vigner ◽  
Jaroslav Roztocil
Keyword(s):  
Time Scales ◽  
Time Scale ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Data Format ◽  
Common View ◽  
Log Files ◽  
Gnss Receivers ◽  
Precision Time ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Difference

Comparison of high-performance time scales generated by atomic clocks in laboratories of time and frequency metrology is usually performed by means of the Common View method. Laboratories are equipped with specialized GNSS receivers which measure the difference between a local time scale and a time scale of the selected satellite. Every receiver generates log files in CGGTTS data format to record measured differences. In order to calculate time differences recorded by two receivers, it is necessary to obtain these logs from both receivers and process them. This paper deals with automation and speeding up of these processes.

Imperatives of visual versus auditory perception as pragmatic markers in English and Dutch

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniël Van Olmen
Keyword(s):  
Frequency Distribution ◽  
Auditory Perception ◽  
The Other ◽  
Common View ◽  
Pragmatic Markers ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One

This article examines the English and Dutch imperatives of intentional visual and auditory perception and in particular their use as pragmatic markers. Look, listen, kijk ‘look’ and luister ‘listen’ are compared with respect to frequency, distribution and usage. The difference between look and kijk, on the one hand, and listen and luister, on the other, is argued to be indicative of a more general cross-linguistic tendency. This tendency is explained in terms of the imperatives’ effectiveness in and likely recruitment for what has traditionally been called attention-getting and in terms of the common view of the nature of visual and auditory perception.

The Difference between Lying and Misleading

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Stokke
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
What Is Said ◽  
Conversational Implicatures ◽  
The World ◽  
Question Under Discussion ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Prosodic Focus

The notions of what is said and assertion, as relative to questions under discussion, are used to provide an account of the lying-misleading distinction. The chapter argues that utterances are sometimes interpreted relative to the so-called Big Question, roughly paraphrased by “What is the world like?” This observation is shown to account for the fact that, when conveying standard conversational implicatures, what is asserted is likewise proposed for the common ground. The chapter applies the resulting account of the lying-misleading distinction to ways of lying and misleading with incomplete predicates, possessives, presuppositions, pronouns, and prosodic focus. A formal notion of contextual questionentailment is defined which shows when it is possible to mislead with respect to a question under discussion while avoiding outright lying.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN (MODERATE) EGALITARIANISM AND PRIORITARIANISM?

2003 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
KARSTEN KLINT JENSEN
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Definition ◽  
Common View ◽  
Standard Definition ◽  
Common Definition ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Inequality Ordering ◽  
Priority View ◽  
Levelling Down Objection

It is common to define egalitarianism in terms of an inequality ordering, which is supposed to have some weight in overall evaluations of outcomes. Egalitarianism, thus defined, implies that levelling down makes the outcome better in respect of reducing inequality; however, the levelling down objection claims there can be nothing good about levelling down. The priority view, on the other hand, does not have this implication. This paper challenges the common view. The standard definition of egalitarianism implicitly assumes a context. Once this context is made clear, it is easily seen that egalitarianism could be defined alternatively in terms of valuing a benefit to a person inversely to how well off he is relative to others. The levelling down objection does not follow from this definition. Moreover, the common definition does not separate egalitarian orderings from prioritarian ones. It is useful to do this by requiring that on egalitarianism, additively separable orderings should be excluded. But this requirement is stated as a condition on the alternative definition of egalitarianism, from which the levelling down objection does not follow.

scholarly journals The new millenarianism: on the end of the world and of capitalism as we know them

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 539
Author(s):  
Alessandro Pinzani
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Common View ◽  
Machine Age ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
End Of The World

In recent years the destruction of the environment and the repeated crises of capitalism have been discussed by a wide range of books. More specifically, great attention has been paid to the concepts of Anthropocene and of the second machine age. The link between these two strands consists not only in the common view that we are facing massive changes to our way of life for ecological and for economic reasons, but also in the idea that these two phenomena are interconnected. Accordingly, the destruction of the environment is a consequence of capitalism, and, at the same time, capitalism is nearing its material, natural limits. In this paper I shall briefly evaluate these diagnoses and some of the proposed remedies. Furthermore, I shall point out some philosophically relevant consequences of said debate, particularly concerning the concepts of freedom and political action. ***  O novo milenarismo Sobre o fim do mundo e do capitalismo como os conhecemos ***Nos últimos anos, a destruição do meio ambiente e as repetidas crises do capitalismo foram discutidas por uma ampla gama de livros. Mais especificamente, grande atenção tem sido dada aos conceitos de antropoceno e de segunda era da máquina. A ligação entre essas duas vertentes consiste não apenas na visão comum de que estamos enfrentando mudanças massivas em nosso modo de vida por razões ecológicas e econômicas, mas também na ideia de que esses dois fenômenos estão interconectados. Portanto, a destruição do meio ambiente é uma consequência do capitalismo e, ao mesmo tempo, o capitalismo está se aproximando de seus limites materiais e naturais. Neste artigo, vou avaliar brevemente esses diagnósticos e alguns dos remédios propostos. Além disso, apontarei algumas consequências filosoficamente relevantes do referido debate, particularmente em relação aos conceitos de liberdade e ação política.Palavras-chave: Destruição ambiental; Antropoceno; Capitalismo; Fim do trabalho; Segunda idade da máquina.

scholarly journals Host–pathogen coevolution in human tuberculosis

2012 ◽  
Vol 367 (1590) ◽  
pp. 850-859 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastien Gagneux
Keyword(s):  
Epidemiological Data ◽  
Population Increase ◽  
Animal Origin ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Common View ◽  
The World ◽  
Inflammatory Phenotype ◽  
The Common ◽  
Out Of Africa ◽  
Phylogenetic Lineages

Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease of antiquity. Yet TB today still causes more adult deaths than any other single infectious disease. Recent studies show that contrary to the common view postulating an animal origin for TB, Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC), the causative agent of TB, emerged as a human pathogen in Africa and colonized the world accompanying the Out-of-Africa migrations of modern humans. More recently, evolutionarily ‘modern’ lineages of MTBC expanded as a consequence of the global human population increase, and spread throughout the world following waves of exploration, trade and conquest. While epidemiological data suggest that the different phylogenetic lineages of MTBC might have adapted to different human populations, overall, the phylogenetically ‘modern’ MTBC lineages are more successful in terms of their geographical spread compared with the ‘ancient’ lineages. Interestingly, the global success of ‘modern’ MTBC correlates with a hypo-inflammatory phenotype in macrophages, possibly reflecting higher virulence, and a shorter latency in humans. Finally, various human genetic variants have been associated with different MTBC lineages, suggesting an interaction between human genetic diversity and MTBC variation. In summary, the biology and the epidemiology of human TB have been shaped by the long-standing association between MTBC and its human host.

The Nature of Chemical Substances

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaap Van Brakel
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Physical Property ◽  
Common View ◽  
Sense Data ◽  
Scientific Image ◽  
The World ◽  
The Difference ◽  
To Come ◽  
Manifest Image

Professor Hare, delivering the presidential address to the Aristotelian Society in Oxford in 1984, said: “It is commonly said that the property of being water supervenes on the chemical (or ultimately on the physical) property of being H2O. As it stands this view seems to me to be obviously false.” In terminology, that will become clearer as we proceed, Hare defended the manifest image—in this case, ordinary liquid water against elimination by the scientific image (which reduces “being water” to “being H2O”). Hare used the verb to supervene instead of to be reducible, but the difference between the two is slight (as we shall see in a later section). A more common view among philosophers and scientists is expressed in the following citation from Kim (1990, p. 14): “Chemical kinds and their microphysical compositions (at least, at one level of description) seem to strongly covary with each other, and yet it is true, presumably, that natural kinds are asymmetrically dependent on microphysical structures.” Kim takes the view that manifest objects are “appearances” of a reality constituted by systems of imperceptible particles. Such a view takes for granted that the macroscopic, manifest world is dependent on the microstructure of the world in such a way that it is underlying things that are more real and determine appearances. In crude jargon: science uncovers the Dinge-an-sich that explain the phenomena we see. I chose the quotations of Hare and Kim because both point to, though fail to address, the philosophical issue I discuss in this chapter, viz. the tension between manifest and scientific image, focusing on chemistry. “Manifest” versus “scientific” imagery talk stems from Sellars. The manifest image refers to things like water, milk-lapping cats, injustice-angry people, as well as sophisticated interpretations of “people in the world.” The scientific image is concerned with things like neurons, DNA, quarks, and the Schrödinger equation, again including sophisticated reflection and a promise of more to come. I use “manifest image” with a different inflection from Sellars, avoiding associations with sense data (which was an important part of his concern), associating it rather with forms of life.

scholarly journals Linguistic Data Model for Natural Languages and Artificial Intelligence. Part 4. Language

Discourse ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-114
Author(s):  
O. M. Polyakov
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Linguistic Model ◽  
The World ◽  
Human World ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Given

Introduction. The paper continues a series of publications on linguistics of relations (hereinafter R–linguistics) and is devoted to questions of the formation of a language from a linguistic model of the world. Moreover, the language is considered in its most general form, without taking into account the grammatical component. This allows you to focus on the general problems of language formation. Namely, this allows us to show why language adequately reflects the model of the world and what are the features of the transition from model to language. This new approach to language is relevant in connection with the formation of an understanding of the common core in all natural languages, as well as in connection with the needs for the formation of artificial intelligence subsystems of interaction with humans.Methodology and sources. Research methods consist in the formulation and proof of theorems about language spaces and their properties. The materials of the paper and the given proofs are based on the previously stated ideas about linguistic spaces and their decompositions into signs.Results and discussion. The paper shows how, in the most general form, the formation of language structures takes place. Namely, why does language adequately reflect the linguistic model, and what is the difference between linguistic and language spaces? The concepts of an open and closed form of the language are formulated, as well as the law of form. Examples of open and closed forms of the language are shown. It is shown that the formation of the language allows you to compensate for the lack of real signs in the surrounding world while maintaining the prognostic properties of the model.Conclusion. Any natural language is a reflection of the human world model. Moreover, all natural languages are similar in terms of the principles of forming the core of the language (language space). Language spaces standardize the models of the world by equalizing real and fictional signs of categories. In addition, the transition to language simplifies some of the problems of pattern recognition and opens the way to the logic of natural language.

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