Certified Abstract Cost Analysis

A program containing placeholders for unspecified statements or expressions is called an abstract (or schematic) program. Placeholder symbols occur naturally in program transformation rules, as used in refactoring, compilation, optimization, or parallelization. We present a generalization of automated cost analysis that can handle abstract programs and, hence, can analyze the impact on the cost of program transformations. This kind of relational property requires provably precise cost bounds which are not always produced by cost analysis. Therefore, we certify by deductive verification that the inferred abstract cost bounds are correct and sufficiently precise. It is the first approach solving this problem. Both, abstract cost analysis and certification, are based on quantitative abstract execution (QAE) which in turn is a variation of abstract execution, a recently developed symbolic execution technique for abstract programs. To realize QAE the new concept of a cost invariant is introduced. QAE is implemented and runs fully automatically on a benchmark set consisting of representative optimization rules.

COMO SER INTENCIONALISTA E DISPOSICIONALISTA

Intentionalists believe that intentionality, the relational property of being about something, is constitutive of mentality. Brentano’s thesis says: 1) the mental is intentional; 2) nothing physical exhibits that property. Dispositionalism, I believe, should be extended to include all mental properties, which are also dispositional and realized physically in the brain, like the solubility of sugar which is realized in its molecular structure. My aim is to show how we can be intentionalists (by accepting the first part of Brentano’s Thesis) and dispositionalists at the same time (by accepting that mental states, acts and events have a physical base of realization). In a nutshell: the intentional is the manifestation of mental dispositions. Dispositions in general, psychological dispositions in particular, are two-sided and presupposes, on the one hand, a physical realization, and a manifestation which is properly mental, on the other. Something has to be said about language in that context, because public representations instantiate semantic properties which also are intentional, and many of our mental states have their content specified by the use of a sentence belonging to a public language.

The Renewal of the Old: Lionel Murphy’s Progressive-Relational Conception of Property

As we approach Justice Lionel Murphy’s 100th birthday on 30 August 2022, this article explores and renews a significant aspect in the jurisprudence of this truly radical judge: the social relations or progressive view of property. Justice Murphy both identified and judicially expounded this view well before the American social relations or progressive schools. And rather than merely identifying it as some intellectual museum piece, the article also builds on it. The article contains five parts. Part I contextualises the jurisprudential debates surrounding property. Part II recounts Justice Murphy’s judicial radicalism. Part III explores the elements of Murphy’s progressive-relational view of property. Part IV applies the elements of Murphy’s progressive-relational property to the High Court’s recent native title decision in Northern Territory v Griffiths. Part V offers some concluding reflections on the bright future for property found in Murphy’s conception.

The Correspondence Theory of Truth

A classical formulation of the correspondence theory of truth tells us that truth is a general relational property, involving a characteristic relation to some portion of reality. The relation is said to be correspondence; the portion of reality is said to be a fact. Even so, the theory has a lengthy history, and many versions relied on objects rather than facts. This chapter reviews the various options for formulating a correspondence theory of truth, along with the relata they presuppose, and the nature of the correspondence relation they rely upon. It concentrates on fact-based theories, and the nature of the truth-bearers and facts they presuppose.

The Nature of Unpleasantness

In this chapter, Brady argues in favour of a desire view of unpleasantness, which is the central element of suffering. He considers, and rejects, distinctive feeling theories of unpleasantness, and then proposes a novel desire view, according to which unpleasantness is a relational property, constituted by having a sensation that we desire to cease. In the chapter he defends this view against the most important objections, he then goes on to show how this view is preferable to rival views, and he ends by explaining how this view of unpleasantness, and the view of suffering given in Chapter 1, are mutually supporting.

Memory, Imagination, and Narrative

Sometimes we experientially (or ‘recollectively’) remember, and sometimes we sensorily imagine things. Recollective memories (or ‘R-memories’) and sensory imaginations (or ‘S-imaginations’) characteristically correspond to our use of the distinct senses, and from the experiencing subject’s own point of view, S-imaginations and R-memories are phenomenologically rather similar. At the same time, however, R-memories and S-imaginations play very different roles in a subject’s mental life. How is this possible? How can subjects (rightly) treat those different kinds of mental episodes in relevantly different ways? This chapter is centred around the observation that R-memories (usually) have a characteristic relational property—they are ‘embedded’ in a context of relevant beliefs, on the basis of which a subject can tell a relevant story (or narrative)—which S-imaginations usually lack. With the help of this observation we can explain a subject’s ability to treat S-imaginations and R-memories in relevantly different ways.

Relational property between head and eye regions is the primary determinant of the efficiency in search for a deviant gaze

The human visual system is extremely sensitive to the directions of the gazes of others. However, the mechanism underlying gaze direction perception has yet to be clarified. The primary aim of the present study is to investigate whether the relational property between the local eye region and other facial regions serves as the primary visual system cue in detecting a direct gaze. Our results showed that search efficiency was determined primarily by the gaze direction indicated by the relational property regardless of the direction indicated by the local feature information of the eye region; this was true even when the gaze directions indicated by these two types of information were conflicting. These results bolster the hypothesis that the human visual system primarily accesses socially meaningful information in searching for a deviant gaze.