Truthmaking and the world-time parallel

<p>There is a close structural parallel between the way we talk about time and the way we talk about modality (i.e. matters of possibility, necessity, actuality etc.). A consequence of this is that whenever we construct a metaphysical argument within one of these domains, there is a parallel argument to be made in the other. On the face of it, this parallel between possible worlds and moments in time seems to commit us to holding corresponding attitudes to the ontological status of non-present and non-actual entities. In this thesis I assess a claim made by Sider (2001: 41-42) that truthmaking – the idea that truth is grounded in existence – provides a way to avoid the commitment to ontological symmetry that this world-time parallel seems to foist upon us. Truthmaking challenges presentists, who deny the existence of past entities and actualists, who deny the existence of merely possible entities, to come up with a way of grounding truths that are ostensively about the events and entities that they deny exist. Sider’s claim can be broken down into three propositions: 1. Truthmaking provides reason to reject presentism. 2. Truthmaking does not provide reason to reject actualism. 3. Truthmaking breaks the ontological symmetry between time and modality. In this thesis I argue that while 1 is false, 3 remains true. While I am not a presentist myself I do not think that truthmaking provides a sound basis for rejecting the position. Much of this thesis is dedicated to defending presentism against the challenge truthmaking poses. I also don’t believe that truthmaking undermines actualism, but do not commit myself to any particular actualist response to the truthmaking challenge in this thesis. My central aim is to show that the presentist has a viable response to the truthmaking challenge and that this response does not have a viable parallel in the modal case. So while I think that both presentists and actualists can provide adequate responses to the challenge truthmaking poses, truthmaking still breaks the symmetry because the arguments made in defence of each position are very different. So one might rationally accept one argument but not the other.</p>

Truthmaking and the world-time parallel

<p>There is a close structural parallel between the way we talk about time and the way we talk about modality (i.e. matters of possibility, necessity, actuality etc.). A consequence of this is that whenever we construct a metaphysical argument within one of these domains, there is a parallel argument to be made in the other. On the face of it, this parallel between possible worlds and moments in time seems to commit us to holding corresponding attitudes to the ontological status of non-present and non-actual entities. In this thesis I assess a claim made by Sider (2001: 41-42) that truthmaking – the idea that truth is grounded in existence – provides a way to avoid the commitment to ontological symmetry that this world-time parallel seems to foist upon us. Truthmaking challenges presentists, who deny the existence of past entities and actualists, who deny the existence of merely possible entities, to come up with a way of grounding truths that are ostensively about the events and entities that they deny exist. Sider’s claim can be broken down into three propositions: 1. Truthmaking provides reason to reject presentism. 2. Truthmaking does not provide reason to reject actualism. 3. Truthmaking breaks the ontological symmetry between time and modality. In this thesis I argue that while 1 is false, 3 remains true. While I am not a presentist myself I do not think that truthmaking provides a sound basis for rejecting the position. Much of this thesis is dedicated to defending presentism against the challenge truthmaking poses. I also don’t believe that truthmaking undermines actualism, but do not commit myself to any particular actualist response to the truthmaking challenge in this thesis. My central aim is to show that the presentist has a viable response to the truthmaking challenge and that this response does not have a viable parallel in the modal case. So while I think that both presentists and actualists can provide adequate responses to the challenge truthmaking poses, truthmaking still breaks the symmetry because the arguments made in defence of each position are very different. So one might rationally accept one argument but not the other.</p>

Abhinavagupta’s Literary Theory

Building on the background laid out in Chapter 2, this chapter gives an analysis of Abhinavagupta’s literary theory, which is framed as a defense of Ānandavardhana’s theory of poetic manifestation, but which changes that theory in important ways. The chapter explores Abhinavagupta’s relationship to the earlier theorist Bhaṭṭanāyaka and shows that Abhinavagupta’s literary theory is laid out along a broad structural parallel between, on the one hand, Śiva, the world, and the yogin who attains enlightenment, and on the other, poet, poem, and connoisseur. The chapter shows that many key elements of Abhinavagupta’s theory, such as the specifically pleasurable nature of literary experience, his account of poetic creativity, and his insistence that literary emotions cannot be encountered as objects, are only fully intelligible when seen against the background of his broader ideas about the nature of God and the universe.

MONOLITH IN A HOLLOW: PALEOFUTURISM AND EARTH ART IN STANLEY KUBRICK’S 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

This article analyses 2001 in terms of what I term paleofuturism. Fusing deep future and deep past, this cyclical figure reconciles rational machinic intelligence with diverse repressed temporal layers: archaic cultures, the embryonic state of individuals, and bygone biological and geological eras. In 2001, paleofuturism is nourished by Nietzsche’s Übermensch of the future, reborn as a child, and by Jungian ideas of individuation, the reconciliation with the shadow of the collective unconscious that leads to the black cosmos itself. Further paleofuturist contexts for 2001 are explored in the so-called “ancient astronaut thesis” of science fiction, speculative science, and pseudo-science. Finally, in minimalism and earth art of the late 1960s we meet a structural parallel to 2001’s bypassing of the organic human body, one that bridges the inorganic entropic realities of deep future and deep past.

Roman and Jewish Law: Looking for Interaction in all the Right Places

Malka presents convincing evidence in support of the claim that the rabbinic list is not indigenous but borrowed from the Roman legal institution of infamia, which was also attached to certain professions and also deprived persons of their eligibility for testimony. More important, she shows that this structural parallel is bolstered by a deeper conceptual parallel, for underlying both the rabbinic and the Roman disqualification is a wider Greco-Roman discourse on self-control (with Plutarch providing a four-fold list parallel to the tannaitic list in substance).

Point-Plane SLAM Using Supposed Planes for Indoor Environments

Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is a fundamental problem for various applications. For indoor environments, planes are predominant features that are less affected by measurement noise. In this paper, we propose a novel point-plane SLAM system using RGB-D cameras. First, we extract feature points from RGB images and planes from depth images. Then plane correspondences in the global map can be found using their contours. Considering the limited size of real planes, we exploit constraints of plane edges. In general, a plane edge is an intersecting line of two perpendicular planes. Therefore, instead of line-based constraints, we calculate and generate supposed perpendicular planes from edge lines, resulting in more plane observations and constraints to reduce estimation errors. To exploit the orthogonal structure in indoor environments, we also add structural (parallel or perpendicular) constraints of planes. Finally, we construct a factor graph using all of these features. The cost functions are minimized to estimate camera poses and global map. We test our proposed system on public RGB-D benchmarks, demonstrating its robust and accurate pose estimation results, compared with other state-of-the-art SLAM systems.

Nonsense on the Margins

The paper charts certain nuances of the diction of two minor characters in Dickens’s early fiction, Sam Weller from The Pickwick Papers and Mrs Nickleby from Nicholas Nickleby. The paper focuses on what David Ellis calls Sam’s “extended comic comparisons” and Mrs Nickleby’s typical speech acts, called here, by analogy, extended comic recollections. After examining the role both characters’ verbal comedy plays in the novels, the paper invites Jean-Jacques Lecercle’s critical insight into a Victorian genre contemporary to Dickens: nonsense literature. I approach the underlying structural parallel between Sam’s and MrsNickleby’s comic verbal instances with the aid of the definitive trait of nonsense as established by Lecercle, the paradox of excess and lack on different levels of language. Though not arguing for the novels’ inclusion in a nonsense literary canon, I show that Lecercle’s conceptualisation of nonsense linguistics proves useful in making sense of the two characters’ monologues. Their role in each novel may thus be grasped as functional nonsense.

Moral Destiny and Culture

There is a structural parallel between Kant and Deleuze on the relationship between culture and critique, a parallel which could be worrying given the widespread criticism that Kant’s moral system smuggled in Kant’s own racist, misogynist, and elitist “subjective presuppositions.” In contrast to Kant, however, Deleuze’s determination of culture does not presuppose empirical knowledge or pre-determined moral interests. Deleuze’s immanent critique does not presuppose any particular goal Deleuze may have wanted to impute to it beyond his definition of philosophy as “breaking with doxa” (DR 134). If culture is determined through immanent critique’s examination of the faculties’ intrinsic power, without either hierarchizing the faculties or imposing on them a certain ideal organization based on so-called “rational” constraints, Deleuze is not making an implicit appraisal in which certain cultures are more valuable than others. Rather, the critical ethos expressing Deleuze’s ontology is built on the constantly renewed evaluation of all presuppositions. As such, it does not limit possibilities of life but arouses life to expand to the very limits of its power.

Grammaire fonctionnelle (de discours) : Évaluation et perspectives

This article is, first, concerned with the presentation and evaluation of the most representative contributions of the development of the current, sentence-oriented Functional Grammar (FG) model into a more discourse-oriented one (Connolly et al. 1997, Hannay/Bolkestein 1998, Mackenzie/Gómez-González 2004, etc.). The two particularly emphasized approaches to extend the model are upward layering approach (e.g. Dik 1997a,b, Hengeveld 1997, Moutaouakil 1998, Jadir 1998) and modular approach (Kroon 1997, Vet 1998, Bolkestein 1998). Then, starting from “structural parallel” proposals (Rijkhoff 1990, 1992; Moutaouakil 1999, 2000), I will argue that the “increasing parallel” hypothesis requires the integration of the ‘expanding’ and the modular approaches. Finally, I will survey the recent researches carried out within FG framework (Mackenzie 2000, 2004; Hengeveld 2004a,b; Hengeveld/Mackenzie 2006) for which a more adequate model of Functional Discourse Grammar should be hierarchical and modular.