Logical Relativism Through Logical Contexts

We advance an approach to logical contexts that grounds the claim that logic is a local matter: distinct contexts require distinct logics. The approach results from a concern about context individuation, and holds that a logic may be constitutive of a context or domain of application. We add a naturalistic component: distinct domains are more than mere technical curiosities; as intuitionistic mathematics testifies, some of the distinct forms of inference in different domains are actively pursued as legitimate fields of research in current mathematics, so, unless one is willing to revise the current scientific practice, generalism must go. The approach is advanced by discussing some tenets of a similar argument advanced by Shapiro, in the context of logic as models approach. In order to make our view more appealing, we reformulate a version of logic as models approach following naturalistic lines, and bring logic closer to the use of models in science.

Concealed passives and the syntax and semantics of need/philyo in English and Korean

Despite similar argument structure, the syntax of English need and Korean philyo contrasts, illuminating differences in lexical derivation and insertion of argument-taking elements. Verbs need, require, deserve, want, and bear take gerundive complements that are "understood passively" (Jesperson 1927/1954:112[9.23]) and called concealed passive constructions (CPCs) (Huddleston and Pullum 2002:1429). In this paper, we argue that in English, the gerund CPC object of need is a lexically passivized V that takes a nominalizing derivational -ing affix, whereas in Korean, the CPC object of philyo is a verbal noun, directly inserted as a complement of the verb without derivation.

Carter W. R. Will I Be a Dead Person? / trans. from Engl. A. V. Nekhaev

Eric Olsen argues from the fact that we once existed as fetal individuals to the conclusion that the Standard View of personal identity is mistaken. I shall establish that a similar argument focusing upon dead people opposes Olson’s favored Biological View of personal identity

Women and Servants in Spinozist Democracy

Was Spinoza merely a victim of the prevailing prejudices of his time when he chose to exclude women and servants from his theory of democracy? In this essay, Matheron shows that this explanation is insufficient. On the contrary, a glaring translation error has led generations of translators and interpreters to claim that Spinoza’s theory of democracy excludes servants on the basis of their ‘servile’ occupations. Matheron conclusively shows that if servants, construed broadly, appear to be excluded from democracy, it is not therefore due to the moral standing of their occupation, but because such individuals would necessarily be constrained to hold the same views as their masters for otherwise, they risk losing their means of subsistence. As for women, a similar argument applies. There is nothing essential about women that requires they be excluded from democratic participation, but rather, their exclusion is everywhere the result of men subject to passions. Men whose minds are dominated by inadequate ideas will necessarily destroy a democracy that includes women since they will compete over the attention of the most beautiful women. For Spinoza then, such exclusions appeared necessary due to the irrationality of human beings, in particular, men, dominated by the passions.

Is mental time travel real time travel?

Episodic memory (memories of the personal past) and prospecting the future (anticipating events) are often described as mental time travel (MTT). While most use this description metaphorically, we argue that episodic memory may allow for MTT in at least some robust sense. While episodic memory experiences may not allow us to literally travel through time, they do afford genuine awareness of past-perceived events. This is in contrast to an alternative view on which episodic memory experiences present past-perceived events as mere intentional contents. Hence, episodic memory is a way of coming into experiential contact with, or being again aware of, what happened in the past. We argue that episodic memory experiences depend on a causal-informational link with the past events being remembered, and that, assuming direct realism about episodic memory experiences, this link suffices for genuine awareness. Since there is no such link in future prospection, a similar argument cannot be used to show that it also affords genuine awareness of future events. Constructivist views of memory might challenge the idea of memory as genuine awareness of remembered events. We explain how our view is consistent with both constructivist and anti-causalist conceptions of memory. There is still room for an interpretation of episodic memory as enabling genuine awareness of past events, even if it involves reconstruction.

Nothing According to Anselm and Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story

Anselm uniquely examined the concept of nothing in a number of his works. In his analyses, he appeared to argue that the intelligibility of concrete existence was evidence of God’s existence and that the possible ‘existence’ of nothing, or inexistence, was an absurd, unintelligible, impossible reality, as was a theoretical, unintelligible existence. A similar argument was uniquely presented in Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story. This article examines Anselm’s analysis of nothing in conjunction with Ende’s ‘The Nothing’ and illustrates how Ende’s presentation can assist in understanding Anselm’s explanations of nothing and how Anselm’s ideas can offer insights into elements of Ende’s novel.

How Should Chemistry Educators Respond to the Next Generation of Technology Change?

Chemical educators are facing a new generation of instructional technologies that impact classroom teaching. New technologies, like smartphones, cloud computing and artificial intelligence take learning beyond the classroom; 3D printing, virtual reality, and augmented reality provide new ways to teach the virtualization skills that are important for chemists. These technologies cause students to become more isolated, so students may not develop the social skills that they will need for today’s workplace. Individualized learning may be beneficial to many students, but it will create challenges for faculty. Although this article focuses on chemistry education, it should be apparent that a similar argument could be made for other sciences, like physics and biology.

Jesus at Fifty: Irenaeus on John 8:57 and the Age of Jesus

Irenaeus’s reading of John 8:57, especially his conclusion that Jesus was approximately 50 at the time of his crucifixion, is well known. While secondary scholarship typically explains Irenaeus’s exegesis of this text with reference to his possible sources or his doctrine of recapitulation, this study looks to his broader religious context. A similar argument from Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael suggests that Jesus’ age is relevant to ancient discussions of religious conversion. Just as Abraham’s circumcision at 99 made room for all proselytes under that age, so too the Irenaean Jesus has passed through every stage of life, enabling persons of any age to join Irenaeus’s church.

Curves on Segre threefolds

We study locally Cohen–Macaulay curves of low degree in the Segre threefold {\mathbb{P}^{1}\times\mathbb{P}^{1}\times\mathbb{P}^{1}} and investigate the irreducible and connected components, respectively, of the Hilbert scheme of them. We also apply the similar argument to the Segre threefold {\mathbb{P}^{2}\times\mathbb{P}^{1}}.

Logical Expressivism and Carroll's Regress

In this paper, I address a key argument in favour of logical expressivism, the view that knowing a logical principle such as Modus Ponens is not a cognitive state but a pro-attitude towards drawing certain types of conclusions from certain types of premises. The argument is that logical expressivism is the only view that can take us out of Lewis Carroll's Regress – which suggests that elementary deductive reasoning is impossible. I show that the argument does not hold scrutiny and that logical cognitivism can be vindicated. In the course of the discussion, I draw substantially on a comparison with a similar argument in meta-ethics, for moral expressivism.