Results for 'Benjamin C. Ampel'

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  1. Is Blameworthiness Forever?Andrew C. Khoury & Benjamin Matheson - 2018 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 4 (2):204-224.
    Many of those working on moral responsibility assume that "once blameworthy, always blameworthy." They believe that blameworthiness is like diamonds: it is forever. We argue that blameworthiness is not forever; rather, it can diminish through time. We begin by showing that the view that blameworthiness is forever is best understood as the claim that personal identity is sufficient for diachronic blameworthiness. We argue that this view should be rejected because it entails that blameworthiness for past action is completely divorced from (...)
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  2. Smelling Molecular Structure.Benjamin D. Young - 2019 - In Dena Shottenkirk, Manuel Curado & Steven S. Gouveia (eds.), Perception, Cognition and Aesthetics. New York: Routledge. pp. 64-84.
    There is consensus within the chemosciences that olfactory perception is of the molecular structure of chemical compounds, yet within philosophical theories of smell there is little agreement about the nature of smell. The paper critically assesses the current state of debate regarding smells within philosophy in the hopes of setting it upon firm scientific footing. The theories to be covered are: Naïve Realism, Hedonic Theories, Process Theory, Odor Theories, and non-Objectivist Theories. The aforementioned theories will be evaluated based on their (...)
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  3. Finding middle ground between intellectual arrogance and intellectual servility: Development and assessment of the limitations-owning intellectual humility scale.Megan Haggard, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Wade C. Rowatt, Joseph C. Leman, Benjamin Meagher, Courtney Lomax, Thomas Ferguson, Heather Battaly, Jason Baehr & Dennis Whitcomb - 2018 - Personality and Individual Differences 124:184-193.
    Recent scholarship in intellectual humility (IH) has attempted to provide deeper understanding of the virtue as personality trait and its impact on an individual's thoughts, beliefs, and actions. A limitations-owning perspective of IH focuses on a proper recognition of the impact of intellectual limitations and a motivation to overcome them, placing it as the mean between intellectual arrogance and intellectual servility. We developed the Limitations-Owning Intellectual Humility Scale to assess this conception of IH with related personality constructs. In Studies 1 (...)
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  4. Extensions of bundles of C*-algebras.Jer Steeger & Benjamin Feintzeig - 2021 - Reviews in Mathematical Physics 33 (8):2150025.
    Bundles of C*-algebras can be used to represent limits of physical theories whose algebraic structure depends on the value of a parameter. The primary example is the ℏ→0 limit of the C*-algebras of physical quantities in quantum theories, represented in the framework of strict deformation quantization. In this paper, we understand such limiting procedures in terms of the extension of a bundle of C*-algebras to some limiting value of a parameter. We prove existence and uniqueness results for such extensions. Moreover, (...)
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  5.  78
    Bioethics Should Not Seek to Reflect Public Opinion.Benjamin Gregg - 2024 - American Journal of Bioethics 24 (9):42-45.
    Bioethicists’ views diverge public opinion on various ethical issues, particularly in healthcare. For instance, bioethicists generally oppose payment for organs and advocate for preventing death at any age, whereas the public is more supportive of organ payment and prioritizing younger patients. I offer four arguments on how best to view this divergence. (a) Bioethicists’ specialized training, objectivity, and reliance on research often lead to views that differ from those of the public, which may be less informed and more influenced by (...)
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  6. (Draft) In defence of welfare subjectivism.Benjamin Davies - manuscript
    Subjectivists about welfare face two problems that pull them in opposite directions. The Paradox Problem, outlined by Ben Bradley, is that, for an agent who desires that her life go badly, subjectivist theories are sometimes unable to give a determinate answer about how well her life goes. This problem demands that subjectivists choose a complex mental attitude to ground well-being. The Infant Problem, from Eden Lin, is that many subjective theories end up denying that infants (and some others) have welfare. (...)
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  7. The Diffusion of the Codex.Benjamin Harnett - 2017 - Classical Antiquity 36 (2):183-235.
    The adoption of the codex for literature in the Roman world was one of the most significant developments in the history of the book, yet remains poorly understood. Physical evidence seems to contradict literary evidence from Martial's epigrams. Near-total adoption of the codex for early Christian works, even as the book roll dominated non-Christian book forms in the first centuries of our era, has led to endless speculation about possible ideological motives for adoption. What has been unquestioned is the importance (...)
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  8. Is the classical limit “singular”?Jer Steeger & Benjamin H. Feintzeig - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 88 (C):263-279.
    We argue against claims that the classical ℏ → 0 limit is “singular” in a way that frustrates an eliminative reduction of classical to quantum physics. We show one precise sense in which quantum mechanics and scaling behavior can be used to recover classical mechanics exactly, without making prior reference to the classical theory. To do so, we use the tools of strict deformation quantization, which provides a rigorous way to capture the ℏ → 0 limit. We then use the (...)
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  9. On Location: Aristotle's Concept of Place. [REVIEW]Elena Casetta & Achille C. Varzi - 2005 - Dialectica 59 (1):75–81.
    Benjamin Morison, On Location: Aristotle’s Concept of Place, Oxford University Press, 2002, 202pp, $45.00, ISBN 0199247919.
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  10. Regression to the Mean and Judy Benjamin.Randall G. McCutcheon - 2020 - Synthese 197 (3):1343-1355.
    Van Fraassen's Judy Benjamin problem asks how one ought to update one's credence in A upon receiving evidence of the sort ``A may or may not obtain, but B is k times likelier than C'', where {A,B,C} is a partition. Van Fraassen's solution, in the limiting case of increasing k, recommends a posterior converging to the probability of A conditional on A union B, where P is one's prior probability function. Grove and Halpern, and more recently Douven and Romeijn, (...)
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  11. La déconstruction de la violence chez Walter Benjamin et Jacques Derrida.Victor Babin - 2024 - Dissertation, Université de Montréal
    Ce mémoire vise à élucider le rapport entre la violence et le pouvoir souverain à partir de la Critique de la violence de Walter Benjamin et Force de loi de Jacques Derrida. Les réflexions proposées ici sont issues de deux constats : (i) que nos structures politiques reposent sur l’emploi continu de la violence et (ii) qu’une révolution abolit l’ordre existant en s’accordant le monopole sur la violence légitime, reconduisant ainsi le cycle de la violence. Pour sortir de cette (...)
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  12. Teoria Democrática Contemporânea.Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva - manuscript
    A partir do século XIX, a teoria democrática foi desenvolvida com base no confronto entre duas doutrinas políticas: o liberalismo e o socialismo. O liberalismo é um projeto que defende as limitações dos poderes governamentais, buscando a proteção dos direitos econômicos, políticos, religiosos e intelectuais dos membros da sociedade. Ou seja, para os liberais o poder do Estado deve ser limitado, pois eles acreditam que a verdadeira liberdade depende da menor interferência possível do Estado e das leis nesses direitos. A (...)
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  13. The nature of unsymbolized thinking.Agustín Vicente & Fernando Martínez-Manrique - 2016 - Philosophical Explorations 19 (2):173-187.
    Using the method of Descriptive Experience Sampling, some subjects report experiences of thinking that do not involve words or any other symbols [Hurlburt, R. T., and C. L. Heavey. 2006. Exploring Inner Experience. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Hurlburt, R. T., and S. A. Akhter. 2008. “Unsymbolized Thinking.” Consciousness and Cognition 17 : 1364–1374]. Even though the possibility of this unsymbolized thinking has consequences for the debate on the phenomenological status of cognitive states, the phenomenon is still insufficiently examined. This paper analyzes (...)
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  14. Zwischen Jugendbewegung und literarischer Avantgarde. Das Leben von Christoph Friedrich Heinle 1894−1914.Johannes Steizinger - 2016 - In Christoph Friedrich Heinle: Lyrik und Prosa. Kulturverlag Kadmos. pp. 149-183.
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  15. Architecture and Deconstruction. The Case of Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi.Cezary Wąs - 2015 - Dissertation, University of Wrocław
    Architecture and Deconstruction Case of Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi -/- Introduction Towards deconstruction in architecture Intensive relations between philosophical deconstruction and architecture, which were present in the late 1980s and early 1990s, belong to the past and therefore may be described from a greater than before distance. Within these relations three basic variations can be distinguished: the first one, in which philosophy of deconstruction deals with architectural terms but does not interfere with real architecture, the second one, in which (...)
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  16. História do pensamento social na Alemanha: uma abordagem histórica.Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva - manuscript
    HISTÓRIA DA SOCIOLOGIA: O DESENVOLVIMENTO DA SOCIOLOGIA I -/- A SOCIOLOGIA NA ALEMANHA -/- -/- HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY: THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGY I -/- SOCIOLOGY IN GERMANY -/- -/- -/- Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva – IFPE-BJ, CAP-UFPE e UFRPE. E-mail's: [email protected] e [email protected]. WhatsApp: (82)9.8143-8399. -/- PREMISSA -/- Na Alemanha, a Sociologia foi profundamente influenciada pela discussão filosófica, histórica e metodológica que se desenvolveu entre o final do século XIX e o início do século XX. Em seus fundamentos encontra-se (...)
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  17. La politique moderne à travers le prisme platonicien: les lectures de Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin et Hannah Arendt.Marie-Josée Lavallée - 2017 - Verbatim 1 (1):55-80.
    La thématique de ce recueil collectif consacré à l' esprit démocratique est mise à l' enseigne du célèbre discours de Benjamin Constant comparant, au nom de l'idéal démocratique, la liberté politique des Anciens et celle qui se décline chez les Modernes. Comme le résume Jean-Marc Narbonne dans l'une de ses conférences : « Dans une démocratie directe [...] la nécessité du sacrifice des intérêts privés au profit du service à la collectivité peut faire craindre la disparition ou l' effacement (...)
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  18. Supervaluationism and Its Logics.Achille C. Varzi - 2007 - Mind 116 (463):633-676.
    What sort of logic do we get if we adopt a supervaluational semantics for vagueness? As it turns out, the answer depends crucially on how the standard notion of validity as truth preservation is recasted. There are several ways of doing that within a supervaluational framework, the main alternative being between “global” construals (e.g., an argument is valid iff it preserves truth-under-all-precisifications) and “local” construals (an argument is valid iff, under all precisifications, it preserves truth). The former alternative is by (...)
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  19. The extensionality of parthood and composition.Achille C. Varzi - 2008 - Philosophical Quarterly 58 (230):108-133.
    I focus on three mereological principles: the Extensionality of Parthood (EP), the Uniqueness of Composition (UC), and the Extensionality of Composition (EC). These principles are not equivalent. Nonetheless, they are closely related (and often equated) as they all reflect the basic nominalistic dictum, No difference without a difference maker. And each one of them—individually or collectively—has been challenged on philosophical grounds. In the first part I argue that such challenges do not quite threaten EP insofar as they are either self-defeating (...)
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  20. ‘Reason’s Sympathy’ and its Foundations in Productive Imagination.Benjamin Vilhauer - 2021 - Kantian Review 26 (3):455–474..
    This paper argues that Kant endorses a distinction between rational and natural sympathy, and it presents an interpretation of rational sympathy as a power of voluntarya posterioriproductive imagination. In rational sympathy we draw on the imagination’s voluntary powers (a) to subjectively unify the contents of intuition, in order to imaginatively put ourselves in others’ places, and (b) to associate imagined intuitional contents with the concepts others use to convey their feelings, in such a way that those contents prompt feelings in (...)
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  21. Parts, Wholes, and Part-Whole Relations: The Prospects of Mereotopology.Achille C. Varzi - 1996 - Data and Knowledge Engineering 20:259–286.
    We can see mereology as a theory of parthood and topology as a theory of wholeness. How can these be combined to obtain a unified theory of parts and wholes? This paper examines various non-equivalent ways of pursuing this task, with specific reference to its relevance to spatio-temporal reasoning. In particular, three main strategies are compared: (i) mereology and topology as two independent (though mutually related) chapters; (ii) mereology as a general theory subsuming topology; (iii) topology as a general theory (...)
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  22. Universalism entails Extensionalism.Achille C. Varzi - 2009 - Analysis 69 (4):599-604.
    I argue that Universalism (the thesis that mereological composition is unrestricted) entails Extensionalism (the thesis that sameness of composition is sufficient for identity) as long as the parthood relation is transitive and satisfies the Weak Supplementation principle (to the effect that whenever a thing has a proper part, it has another part disjoint from the first).
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  23. Why we may not find intentions in the brain.Sebo Uithol, Daniel C. Burnston & Pim Haselager - 2014 - Neuropsychologia 56 (5):129-139.
    Intentions are commonly conceived of as discrete mental states that are the direct cause of actions. In the last several decades, neuroscientists have taken up the project of finding the neural implementation of intentions, and a number of areas have been posited as implementing these states. We argue, however, that the processes underlying action initiation and control are considerably more dynamic and context sensitive than the concept of intention can allow for. Therefore, adopting the notion of ‘intention’ in neuroscientific explanations (...)
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  24. Boundaries, continuity, and contact.Achille C. Varzi - 1997 - Noûs 31 (1):26-58.
    There are conflicting intuitions concerning the status of a boundary separating two adjacent entities (or two parts of the same entity). The boundary cannot belong to both things, for adjacency excludes overlap; and it cannot belong to neither, for nothing lies between two adjacent things. Yet how can the dilemma be avoided without assigning the boundary to one thing or the other at random? Some philosophers regard this as a reductio of the very notion of a boundary, which should accordingly (...)
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  25. Vagueness in Geography.Achille C. Varzi - 2001 - Philosophy and Geography 4 (1):49–65.
    Some have argued that the vagueness exhibited by geographic names and descriptions such as ‘Albuquerque’, ‘the Outback’, or ‘Mount Everest’ is ultimately ontological: these terms are vague because they refer to vague objects, objects with fuzzy boundaries. I take the opposite stand and hold the view that geographic vagueness is exclusively semantic, or conceptual at large. There is no such thing as a vague mountain. Rather, there are many things where we conceive a mountain to be, each with its precise (...)
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  26. On Logical Relativity.Achille C. Varzi - 2002 - Philosophical Issues 12 (1):197-219.
    One logic or many? I say—many. Or rather, I say there is one logic for each way of specifying the class of all possible circumstances, or models, i.e., all ways of interpreting a given language. But because there is no unique way of doing this, I say there is no unique logic except in a relative sense. Indeed, given any two competing logical theories T1 and T2 (in the same language) one could always consider their common core, T, and settle (...)
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  27. Boundaries, Conventions, and Realism.Achille C. Varzi - 2011 - In Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke & Matthew H. Slater (eds.), Carving nature at its joints: natural kinds in metaphysics and science. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press. pp. 129–153.
    Are there any bona fide boundaries, i.e., boundaries that carve at the joints? Or is any boundary —hence any object—the result of a fiat articulation reflecting our cognitive biases and our so-cial practices and conventions? Does the choice between these two options amount to a choice between realism and wholesome relativism?
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  28. Perdurantism, Universalism and Quantifiers.Achille C. Varzi - 2003 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (2):208-215.
    I argue that the conjunction of perdurantism (the view that objects are temporally extended) and universalism (the thesis that any old class of things has a mereological fusion) gives rise to undesired complications when combined with certain plausible assumptions concerning the semantics of tensed statements.
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  29. Omissions and Causal Explanations.Achille C. Varzi - 2007 - In Francesca Castellani & Josef Quitterer (eds.), Agency and Causation in the Human Sciences. Mentis Verlag. pp. 155–167.
    In previous work I have argued that talk about negative events should not be taken at face value: typically, what we are inclined to think of as a negative event (John’s failure to go jogging) is just an ordinary, positive event (his going to the movie instead); it is a positive event under a negative description. Here I consider more closely the difficulties that arise in those cases where no positive event seems available to do the job, as with putative (...)
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  30. A Note on the Transitivity of Parthood.Achille C. Varzi - 2006 - Applied ontology 1 (2):141-146.
    That parthood is a transitive relation is among the most basic principles of classical mereology. Alas, it is also very controversial. In a recent paper, Ingvar Johansson has put forward a novel diagnosis of the problem, along with a corresponding solution. The diagnosis is on the right track, I argue, but the solution is misleading. And once the pieces are properly put together, we end up with a reinforcement of the standard defense of transitivity on behalf of classical mereology.
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  31. The Universe among Other Things.Achille C. Varzi - 2006 - Ratio 19 (1):107–120.
    Peter Simons has argued that the expression ‘the universe’ is not a genuine singular term: it can name neither a single, completely encompassing individual, nor a collection of individuals. (It is, rather, a semantically plural term standing equally for every existing object.) I offer reasons for resisting Simons’s arguments on both scores.
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  32. Words and Objects.Achille C. Varzi - 2002 - In Andrea Bottani, Massimiliano Carrara & Daniele Giaretta (eds.), Individuals, Essence, and Identity. Themes of Analytic Metaphysics. Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 49–75.
    A lot of work in metaphysics relies on linguistic analysis and intuitions. Do we want to know what sort of things there are or could be? Then let’s see what sort of things there must be in order for what we truthfully say to be true. Do we want to see whether x is distinct from y? Then let’s see whether there is any statement that is true of x but not of y. And so on. In this paper I (...)
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  33. Events and Event Talk: An Introduction.Fabio Pianesi & Achille C. Varzi - 2000 - In James Higginbotham, Fabio Pianesi & Achille C. Varzi (eds.), Speaking of events. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 3–47.
    A critical review of the main themes arising out of recent literature on the semantics of ordinary event talk. The material is organized in four sections: (i) the nature of events, with emphasis on the opposition between events as particulars and events as universals; (ii) identity and indeterminacy, with emphasis on the unifier/multiplier controversy; (iii) events and logical form, with emphasis on Davidson’s treatment of the form of action sentences; (iv) linguistic applications, with emphasis on issues concerning aspectual phenomena, the (...)
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  34. The Talk I Was Supposed to Give….Achille C. Varzi - 2006 - In Andrea Bottani & Richard Davies (eds.), Modes of Existence: Papers in Ontology and Philosophical Logic. Ontos Verlag. pp. 131–152.
    Assuming that events form a genuine ontological category, shall we say that a good inventory of the world ought to include “negative” events—failures, omissions, things that didn’t happen—along with positive ones? I argue that we shouldn’t. Talk of non-occurring events is like talk of non-existing objects and should not be taken at face value. We often speak as though there were such things, but deep down we want our words to be interpreted in such a way as to avoid serious (...)
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  35. Coloniality, Epistemic Imbalance, and Africa’s Emigration Crisis.Donald Mark C. Ude - 2022 - Theory, Culture and Society 39 (6):3-19.
    The paper has two complementary objectives. First, it sustains an analysis of the concept of ‘coloniality’ that accounts for the epistemic imbalance in the modern world, demonstrating precisely how Africa is adversely affected, having been caught up in the throes of coloniality and its epistemic implications. Second – and complementarily – the paper attempts to bring this very concept of ‘coloniality’ into the discourse on Africa’s emigration crisis, arguing that Africa’s emigration crisis is traceable, inter alia, to the epistemic imbalance (...)
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  36. Reasoning about Space: The Hole Story.Achille C. Varzi - 1996 - Logic and Logical Philosophy 4:3-39.
    This is a revised and extended version of the formal theory of holes outlined in the Appendix to the book "Holes and Other Superficialities". The first part summarizes the basic framework (ontology, mereology, topology, morphology). The second part emphasizes its relevance to spatial reasoning and to the semantics of spatial prepositions in natural language. In particular, I discuss the semantics of ‘in’ and provide an account of such fallacious arguments as “There is a hole in the sheet. The sheet is (...)
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  37. Promiscuous Endurantism and Diachronic Vagueness.Achille C. Varzi - 2007 - American Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2):181-189.
    According to a popular line of reasoning, diachronic vagueness creates a problem for the endurantist conception of persistence. Some authors have replied that this line of reasoning is inconclusive, since the endurantist can subscribe to a principle of Diachronic Unrestricted Composition (DUC) that is perfectly parallel to the principle required by the perdurantist’s semantic account. I object that the endurantist should better avoid DUC. And I argue that even DUC, if accepted, would fail to provide the endurantist with the necessary (...)
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  38. Mechanisms and Laws: Clarifying the Debate.Marie I. Kaiser & C. F. Craver - 2013 - In Hsiang-Ke Chao, Szu-Ting Chen & Roberta L. Millstein (eds.), Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 125-145.
    Leuridan (2011) questions whether mechanisms can really replace laws at the heart of our thinking about science. In doing so, he enters a long-standing discussion about the relationship between the mech-anistic structures evident in the theories of contemporary biology and the laws of nature privileged especially in traditional empiricist traditions of the philosophy of science (see e.g. Wimsatt 1974; Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005; Bogen 2005; Darden 2006; Glennan 1996; MDC 2000; Schaffner 1993; Tabery 2003; Weber 2005). In our view, Leuridan (...)
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  39. The “ethnophilosophy” problem: How the idea of “social imaginaries” may remedy it.Donald Mark C. Ude - 2024 - Philosophical Forum 55 (1):71-86.
    The work argues that engaging Africa's cultural and epistemic resources as social imaginaries, and not as metaphysical or ontological “essences,” could help practitioners of African philosophy overcome the cluster of shortcomings and undesirable features associated with “ethnophilosophy.” A number of points are outlined to buttress this claim. First, the framework of social imaginaries does not operate with the false assumption that Africa's cultural forms and epistemic resources are static and immutable. Second, this framework does not lend itself to sweeping generalizations (...)
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  40. Events, Truth, and Indeterminacy.Achille C. Varzi - 2002 - The Dialogue 2:241-264.
    The semantics of our event talk is a complex affair. What is it that we are talking about when we speak of Brutus’s stabbing of Caesar? Exactly where and when did it take place? Was it the same event as the killing of Caesar? Some take questions such as these to be metaphysical questions. I think they are questions of semantics—questions about the way we talk and about what we mean. And I think that this conflict between metaphysic and semantic (...)
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  41. Parts, Counterparts and Modal Occurrents.Achille C. Varzi - 2001 - Travaux de Logique 14 (1):151-171.
    The paper investigates the link between the theory of modal occurrents (where individuals are allowed to stretch across possible worlds) and Lewis’s counterpart theory (where all individuals are world-bound but have counterparts in other worlds). First I show how to interpret modal talk extensionally within the theory of modal occurrents. Then I show that the assumption that worlds be pairwise discrete is all that is needed to reconstruct the bulk of counterpart theory (i.e., to define the concept of a counterpart (...)
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  42. Unsharpenable Vagueness.John Collins & Achille C. Varzi - 2000 - Philosophical Topics 28 (1):1-10.
    A plausible thought about vagueness is that it involves semantic incompleteness. To say that a predicate is vague is to say (at the very least) that its extension is incompletely specified. Where there is incomplete specification of extension there is indeterminacy, an indeterminacy between various ways in which the specification of the predicate might be completed or sharpened. In this paper we show that this idea is bound to founder by presenting an argument to the effect that there are vague (...)
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  43. Eleutheric-Conjectural Libertarianism: a Concise Philosophical Explanation.J. C. Lester - 2022 - MEST Journal 10 (2):111-123.
    The two purposes of this essay. The general philosophical problem with most versions of social libertarianism and how this essay will proceed. The specific problem with liberty explained by a thought-experiment. The positive and abstract theory of interpersonal liberty-in-itself as ‘the absence of interpersonal initiated constraints on want-satisfaction’, for short ‘no initiated impositions’. The individualistic liberty-maximisation theory solves the problems of clashes, defences, and rectifications without entailing interpersonal utility comparisons or libertarian consequentialism. The practical implications of instantiating liberty: three rules (...)
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  44. The People Problem.Benjamin Vilhauer - 2013 - In Gregg D. Caruso (ed.), Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. pp. 141.
    One reason that many philosophers are reluctant to seriously contemplate the possibility that we lack free will seems to be the view that we must believe we have free will if we are to regard each other as persons in the morally deep sense—the sense that involves deontological notions such as human rights. In the contemporary literature, this view is often informed by P.F. Strawson's view that to treat human beings as having free will is to respond to them with (...)
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  45. Supervaluationism and Paraconsistency.Achille C. Varzi - 2000 - In Diderik Batens, Chris Mortensen, Graham Priest & Jean Paul Van Bendegem (eds.), Frontiers in Paraconsistent Logic. Research Studies Press. pp. 279–297.
    Since its first appearance in 1966, the notion of a supervaluation has been regarded by many as a powerful tool for dealing with semantic gaps. Only recently, however, applications to semantic gluts have also been considered. In previous work I proposed a general framework exploiting the intrinsic gap/glut duality. Here I also examine an alternative account where gaps and gluts are treated on a par: although they reflect opposite situations, the semantic upshot is the same in both cases--the value of (...)
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  46. Statistical mechanics and thermodynamics: A Maxwellian view.Wayne C. Myrvold - 2011 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 42 (4):237-243.
    One finds, in Maxwell's writings on thermodynamics and statistical physics, a conception of the nature of these subjects that differs in interesting ways from the way that they are usually conceived. In particular, though—in agreement with the currently accepted view—Maxwell maintains that the second law of thermodynamics, as originally conceived, cannot be strictly true, the replacement he proposes is different from the version accepted by most physicists today. The modification of the second law accepted by most physicists is a probabilistic (...)
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  47. “They Did Not Walk the Green Talk!:” How Information Specificity Influences Consumer Evaluations of Disconfirmed Environmental Claims.Davide C. Orazi & Eugene Y. Chan - 2020 - Journal of Business Ethics 163 (1):107-123.
    While environmental claims are increasingly used by companies to appeal consumers, they also attract greater scrutiny from independent parties interested in consumer protection. Consumers are now able to compare corporate environmental claims against external, often disconfirming, information to form their brand attitudes and purchase intentions. What remains unclear is how the level of information specificity of both the environmental claims and external disconfirming information interact to influence consumer reactions. Two experiments address this gap in the CSR communication literature. When specific (...)
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  48. (1 other version)Conjunction and Contradiction.Achille C. Varzi - 2004 - In Graham Priest, Jc Beall & Bradley P. Armour-Garb (eds.), The law of non-contradiction : new philosophical essays. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 93–110.
    There are two ways of understanding the notion of a contradiction: as a conjunction of a statement and its negation, or as a pair of statements one of which is the negation of the other. Correspondingly, there are two ways of understanding the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC), i.e., the law that says that no contradictions can be true. In this paper I offer some arguments to the effect that on the first (collective) reading LNC is non-negotiable, but on the second (...)
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  49. Basic Problems of Mereotopology.Achille C. Varzi - 1998 - In Nicola Guarino (ed.), Formal Ontology in Information Systems. IOS Press. pp. 29–38.
    Mereotopology is today regarded as a major tool for ontological analysis, and for many good reasons. There are, however, a number of open questions that call for an answer. Some are philosophical, others have direct applicative import, but all are crucial for a proper assessment of the strengths and limits of mereotopology. This paper is an attempt to put sum order in this area.
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  50. Rawls and racial justice.D. C. Matthew - 2017 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 16 (3):235-258.
    This article discusses the adequacy of Rawls’ theory of justice as a tool for racial justice. It is argued that critics like Charles W Mills fail to appreciate both the insights and limits of the Rawlsian framework. The article has two main parts spread out over several different sections. The first is concerned with whether the Rawlsian framework suffices to prevent racial injustice. It is argued that there are reasons to doubt whether it does. The second part is concerned with (...)
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