The philosophy of the art of living asks the age-old question of orienting one’s own life: ‘How can I live well?’ An art of living is always called for when people do not know what to do and how to go on, when the ways of life are no longer self-evident, when traditions, conventions, rules, and norms lose their plausibility and individuals begin to worry about themselves. The art of living and of its philosophy has a practical aim: It is (...) not concerned with ethical principles, but with the concrete practice of people’s everyday life, with their individual and successful lives. Friedrich Nietzsche, as he often did, pushed the problem of the art of living to the extreme, making it palpable both in its dignity and in its force. For him, the modern uncertainty of human orientation caused by nihilism pointed to art and aesthetics, which, he supposed, makes life if not justifiable, at least bearable. The arts open up a multi-perspectival seeing and hearing, they experiment with alternative forms and techniques, and create the finest sensibilities for both – Nietzsche himself, with his rich forms of philosophical writing, is an outstanding example of this. -/- The volume we present here, entails contributions of German-speaking scholars on Nietzsche and the ways of living he proposes, especially, but not alone in Dawn. The papers are selected from a book series on the common issue “Critical Art of Living,” edited by Günter Gödde, Jörg Zirfas, and others, and translated on behalf of the Foundation for Philosophical Orientation. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss a new perspective on the syntax-semantics interface. Semantics, in this new set-up, is not ‘read off’ from Logical Forms as in mainstream approaches to generative grammar. Nor is it assigned to syntactic proofs using a Curry-Howard correspondence as in versions of the Lambek Calculus, or read off from f-structures using Linear Logic as in Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG, Kaplan & Bresnan [9]). All such approaches are based on the idea that syntactic objects (trees, proofs, fstructures) are (...) somehow prior and that semantics must be parasitic on those syntactic objects. We challenge this idea and develop a grammar in which syntax and semantics are treated in a strictly parallel fashion. The grammar will have many ideas in common with the (converging) frameworks of categorial grammar and LFG, but its treatment of the syntax-semantics interface is radically different. Also, although the meaning component of the grammar is a version of Montague semantics and although there are obvious affinities between Montague’s conception of grammar and the work presented here, the grammar is not compositional, in the sense that composition of meaning need not follow surface structure. (shrink)

In a recent paper we have defined an analytic tableau calculus PL_16 for a functionally complete extension of Shramko and Wansing's logic based on the trilattice SIXTEEN_3. This calculus makes it possible to define syntactic entailment relations that capture central semantic relations of the logic---such as the relations |=_t, |=_f, and |=_i that each correspond to a lattice order in SIXTEEN_3; and |=, the intersection of |=_t and |=_f,. -/- It turns out that our method of characterising these semantic relations---as (...) intersections of auxiliary relations that can be captured with the help of a single calculus---lends itself well to proving interpolation. All entailment relations just mentioned have the interpolation property, not only when they are defined with respect to a functionally complete language, but also in a range of cases where less expressive languages are considered. For example, we will show that |=, when restricted to L_{tf}, the language originally considered by Shramko and Wansing, enjoys interpolation. This answers a question that was recently posed by M. Takano. (shrink)

In this paper we give an analytic tableau calculus P L 1 6 for a functionally complete extension of Shramko and Wansing’s logic. The calculus is based on signed formulas and a single set of tableau rules is involved in axiomatising each of the four entailment relations ⊧ t, ⊧ f, ⊧ i, and ⊧ under consideration—the differences only residing in initial assignments of signs to formulas. Proving that two sets of formulas are in one of the first three entailment (...) relations will in general require developing four tableaux, while proving that they are in the ⊧ relation may require six. (shrink)

The automatic integration of rapidly expanding information resources in the life sciences is one of the most challenging goals facing biomedical research today. Controlled vocabularies, terminologies, and coding systems play an important role in realizing this goal, by making it possible to draw together information from heterogeneous sources – for example pertaining to genes and proteins, drugs and diseases – secure in the knowledge that the same terms will also represent the same entities on all occasions of use. In the (...) naming of genes, proteins, and other molecular structures, considerable efforts are under way to reduce the effects of the different naming conventions which have been spawned by different groups of researchers. Electronic patient records, too, increasingly involve the use of standardized terminologies, and tremendous efforts are currently being devoted to the creation of terminology resources that can meet the needs of a future era of personalized medicine, in which genomic and clinical data can be aligned in such a way that the corresponding information systems become interoperable. (shrink)

What is to be learned from the chaotic downfall of the Weimar Republic and the erosion of European liberal statehood in the interwar period vis-a-vis the ongoing European crisis? This book analyses and explains the recurrent emergence of crises in European societies. It asks how previous crises can inform our understanding of the present crisis. The particular perspective advanced is that these crises not only are economic and social crises, but must also be understood as crises of public power, order (...) and authority. In other words, it argues that substantial challenges to the functional and normative setup of democracy and the rule of law were central to the emergence and the unfolding of these crises. The book draws on and adds to the rich ’crises literature’ developed within the critical theory tradition to outline a conceptual framework for understanding what societal crises are. The central idea is that societal crises represent a discrepancy between the unfolding of social processes and the institutional frameworks that have been established to normatively stabilize such processes. The crises at issue emerged in periods characterized by strong social, economic and technological transformations as well as situations of political upheaval. As such, the crises represented moments where the existing functional and normative grid of society, as embodied in notions of public order and authority, were severely challenged and in many instances undermined. Seen in this perspective, the book reconstructs how crises unfolded, how they were experienced, and what kind of responses the specific crises in question provoked. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction: European Crises of Public Power: From Weimar until Today, Poul F. Kjaer & Niklas Olsen / Part I: Semantics, Notions and Narratives of Societal Crisis / 1. What Time Frame Makes Sense for Thinking About Crises?, David Runciman / 2. The Stakes of Crises, Janet Roitman / Part II: Weimar and the Interwar Period: Ideologies of Anti-Modernism and Liberalism / 3. The Crisis of Modernity – Modernity as Crisis: Towards a Typology of Crisis Discourses in Interwar East Central Europe and Beyond, Balázs Trencsényi / 4. European Legitimacy Crisis – Weimar and Today: Rational and Theocratic Authority in the Schmitt-Strauss Exchange, John P. McCormick / 5. Crisis and the Consumer: Reconstructions of Liberalism in Twentieth Century Political Thought , Niklas Olsen / Part III: The Causes of Crises: From Corporatism to Governance / 6. The Constitutionalization of Labour Law and the Crisis of National Democracy , Chris Thornhill / 7. The Crisis in Labour Law: From Weimar to Austerity Ruth Dukes / 8. From the Crisis of Corporatism to the Crisis of Governance, Poul F. Kjaer / Part IV: The Euro and the Crisis of Law and Democracy / 9. What is left of the European Economic Constitution II? From Pyrrhic Victory to Cannae Defeat Christian Joerges / 10. Reflections on Europe’s “Rule of Law Crisis”, Jan-Werner Müller. 11. Democracy under Siege: The Decay of Constitutionalisation and the Crisis of Public Law and Public Opinion, Hauke Brunkhorst/ Part V: The Consequences of Crises and the Future of Europe / 12. Crises and Extra-Legality: From Above and From Below, William E. Scheuermann / 13. “We could all go Down the Road of Lebanon” – Crisis Thinking on the Anti-Muslim Far Right, Mikkel Thorup / 14. Conclusions and Perspectives: The Re-Constitution of Europe, Poul F. Kjaer & Niklas Olsen Index . (shrink)

This paper comments on Werner Flach’s assessment of the ‘linguistic turn’ and signals some parallels between Flach’s and P.F. Strawson’s positions concerning the philosophical interest of the ‘linguistic turn’ in the context of the Kantianism in both philosophers.

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 (...) o pensamento de vários filósofos, como Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762 -1814), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775 -1854), Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768 -1834), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 -1831) e Friedrich W. Nietzsche (1844-1900). -/- O representante mais expressivo da Sociologia alemã é Max Weber (1864-1920). Outros pensadores, entretanto, contribuíram significativamente para a formação e o desenvolvimento da Sociologia na Alemanha, entre os quais Ferdinand Tönnies (1855 -1936), Werner Sombart (1863-1941), Georg Simmel (1858-1918) e os estudiosos que a partir da década de 1920 constituíram a chamada Escola de Frankfurt. -/- A obra desses autores liga-se fortemente ao processo de unificação alemã, promovido somente após o triunfo de Otto von Bismarck na Guerra Franco-Prussiana (1871), e à aceleração da industrialização alemã. Esses dois fatores conferiram à Alemanha uma situação muito diferente da de outros países europeus. -/- A alteração nas estruturas de poder, na Alemanha, não ocorreu por meio de uma revolução, como na França, mas por um acordo entre a bur-guesia industrial e os grandes proprietários de terra, tendo em vista uma transição mais adequada aos seus interesses. -/- Vale salientar, em nota, que após a Guerra Franco-Prussiana (1870-71), os príncipes alemães se reuniram no palácio de Versalhes (França), onde aclamaram Guilherme I, da Prússia, como o imperador alemão. Assim surgia o Império da Alemanha, em 1871. -/- A burguesia industrial não estava preocupada em alterar de modo significativo a estrutura fundiária, e os grandes proprietários, que se encastelaram na burocracia estatal, não permitiram a formulação de uma legislação trabalhista que prejudicasse os interesses da burguesia. Assim se fez uma mudança “por cima”, sem levar em conta os interesses dos trabalhadores urbanos ou rurais. Destacam-se aqui dois importantes soció-logos alemães: Georg Simmel e Max Weber, pela presença no Brasil. Depois, brevemente, falar-se-á aqui da famosa Escola de Frankfurt. -/- 1. Georg Simmel (1858-1918) -/- Nascido em Berlim, Georg Simmel é um pensador difícil de enquadrar em alguma tendência ou campo específico do conhecimento. Vamos ler um trecho do que escreveu sobre ele o sociólogo brasileiro Leopoldo Waizbort: -/- Quem tentar esboçar a fisionomia de Georg Simmel (1858-1918), logo se encontra em meio a dificuldades que são características próprias daquilo que se quer apreender. Simmel sempre postulou para seu próprio pensamento uma mobilidade e uma plasticidade para se adaptar ao seu objeto – uma multiplicidade de direções, uma defesa do fragmento –, que se opõem a toda tentativa de fixação e acabamento, a toda pretensão de sistema. Por isso todos os rótulos que lhe são atribuídos, apesar de possuírem seu teor de verdade, sempre soam tão falsos: vitalismo, relativismo, esteticismo, formalismo, irracionalismo, psicologismo, impressionismo e tantos mais. Disto também é exemplo o fato de Simmel, hoje considerado, ao lado de Max Weber e Ferdinand Tönnies, um dos “pais” da sociologia alemã, não poder ser classificado sem mais como “sociólogo”, sob pena de se perderem várias outras dimensões que são essenciais ao seu pensamento (WAIZBORT, 2000. p. 11). -/- G. Simmel foi o último dos sete filhos de um próspero comerciante judeu convertido ao cristianismo. Com a morte do pai, herdou uma fortuna considerável que lhe permitiu independência para desenvolver a vida acadêmica. Estudou História e Filosofia na Universidade de Berlim, onde foi aluno das mais importantes figuras acadêmicas da época. Em 1881, defendeu uma tese sobre Immanuel Kant e recebeu o título de doutor em Filosofia. Entre 1885 e 1914, lecionou Filosofia, Ética e Sociologia na Universidade de Berlim, mas nunca foi incorporado formalmente à universidade. -/- Ocupou o cargo de professor titular de Filosofia somente em 1914, em Estrasburgo, cidade onde permaneceu até a morte, em 1918. -/- Na virada do século XIX para o século XX na Alemanha, houve uma intensa efervescência filosófica, cultural e artística, cenário em que se desenvolveram a psicanálise, a teoria da relatividade, o positivismo lógico e a música atonal. Nesse cenário, Simmel tornou-se um conferencista muito aclamado e escreveu artigos e ensaios sobre os mais variados temas da Filosofia, como lógica, teoria do conhecimento, ética, estética ou metafísica, além de temas da Psicologia, da Sociologia, da História e da religião. -/- Escreveu também muitas biografias (de Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, de Friedrich Nietzsche, de Immanuel Kant e de Rembrandt, entre outros). -/- Suas obras sociológicas mais importantes são: Da diferenciação social (1890), A filosofia do dinheiro (1907), Sociologia (1908) e Questões fundamentais da Sociologia (1917). Georg Simmel teve influência marcante no desenvolvimento da Sociologia na Alemanha, nos Estados Unidos (em especial na Escola de Chicago) e na França (em Durkheim e seus colaboradores diretos). Suas obras foram traduzidas para o francês e o inglês, muitas vezes antes de ser publicadas em alemão. -/- 2. Max Weber (1864-1920) -/- Max Weber nasceu em 21 de abril de 1864, em Erfurt, e morreu em Munique, em 1920. De família abastada, teve uma educação formal de boa qualidade, o que lhe permitiu uma erudição notável. Com 18 anos, ingressou na Universidade de Heidelberg, onde escolheu como área de concentração o Direito e como correlatas a História, a Filosofia e a Economia. Nessa universidade, teve o primeiro contato com os escritos de Immanuel Kant e com neokantianos, os quais nunca deixou de lado em seus estudos. -/- Em 1889, concluiu o doutorado em Direito Comercial com uma tese sobre a história das sociedades comerciais da Idade Média. Em 1891, defendeu outra tese: A importância da história agrária romana para o direito público e privado. Em 1894, tornou-se professor de Economia na Universidade de Freiburg e, dois anos depois, transferiu-se para a Universidade de Heidelberg. -/- A partir de 1897, acometido de uma depressão profunda, não conseguiu desenvolver as atividades acadêmicas. Entre 1902 e 1903, retomou as atividades intelectuais, mas fora da universidade, pois não tinha condições psicológicas para ministrar aulas. No ano seguinte, tornou-se coeditor do Arquivo de Ciências Sociais, publicação muito importante para o desenvolvimento dos estudos sociológicos na Alemanha. -/- Entre agosto e dezembro de 1904, viajou, com Ferdinand Tönnies e Werner Sombart, aos Estados Unidos, por ocasião da Exposição Universal de Saint-Louis, onde entrou em contato com as igrejas e seitas protestantes daquele país e também com vários escritos de Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), o que foi fundamental para suas pesquisas sobre a relação entre a ética protestante e o capitalismo. -/- Em 1907, recebeu uma herança significativa. A partir de então, dedicou-se exclusivamente à investigação histórica e sociológica. Em 1909, colaborou na fundação da Sociedade Alemã de Sociologia. Ao ser deflagrada a Primeira Guerra Mundial, em 1914, Weber foi convocado como oficial da reserva para dirigir um hospital militar. Entre as atividades no hospital encontrou tempo para continuar a escrever partes do livro que foi publicado postumamente por sua esposa, com o título Economia e sociedade. Além disso, desenvolveu estudos sobre ética econômica e as religiões universais e escreveu uma série de artigos para os grandes jornais da Alemanha. Nesses artigos, criticou a estrutura partidária do país e a burocratização das esferas políticas na Alemanha, afirmando que aquela situação ainda era a herança de Otto von Bismarck. -/- Em 1917, pronunciou uma conferência – A ciência como vocação – e produziu um escrito, no qual explicitou seu método – Ensaio sobre neutralidade axiológica nas ciências sociológicas e econômicas. -/- Pelas ideias expostas em debates e nos jornais e por sua erudição, Max Weber, após a derrota alemã na Primeira Guerra Mundial, fez parte da comissão que redigiu, em 1919, a nova constituição política alemã, conhecida como a Constituição de Weimar. -/- Pode-se afirmar que a vida de Max Weber foi dedicada aos estudos, à pesquisa e à participação ativa na política alemã de seu tempo, por meio de conferências e artigos para jornais e revistas. -/- Weber não media esforços para analisar e com-preender mais profundamente os temas que elegia. Aprendeu grego e hebraico para ler a Bíblia no original, espanhol para ler os documentos sobre as companhias de navegação e comércio espanhol, russo para ler os jornais sobre os acontecimentos na Rússia de 1905 até a revolução de 1917, inglês para ler os textos estadunidenses sobre a vida religiosa e a ética dos protestantes. -/- Para Max Weber, o indivíduo é o núcleo de análise por ser o único que pode definir intenções e finalidades para seus atos. Desse modo, o ponto de partida da Sociologia é a compreensão da ação dos indivíduos, atuando e vivenciando situações sociais com determinadas motivações e intenções. Instituições como Estado e família só ganham sentido quando vistas da perspectiva das relações sociais. Assim, Max Weber não concebe a sociedade como um bloco, uma estrutura una, mas como uma teia de relações capazes de produzir sentido. -/- A obra de Max Weber é vasta e engloba história, direito e economia, passando pelas questões religiosas, pelos processos burocráticos, pela análise da cidade, da música e, enfim, pela discussão metodológica das ciências humanas e dos conceitos sociológicos. -/- Entre os seus escritos, podemos destacar: A ética protestante e o “espírito” do capitalismo (1904-1905/1920), A ciência como vocação (1917), A política como vocação (1919), Economia e sociedade (1920), História geral da economia (1923) e Ensaios reunidos de sociologia da religião (1917/1920). -/- Outros sociólogos alemães mantiveram-se em atividade após a Primeira Guerra Mundial, como Ferdinand Tönnies, Leopold von Wiese (1876 -1969), Hans Freyer (1887-1969) e Franz Oppenheimer (1864 -1943), que fundou, em 1919, a primeira cátedra de Sociologia na Alemanha, em Frankfurt. -/- 3. A Escola de Frankfurt -/- Logo após a morte de Max Weber, abriu-se um novo horizonte para a Sociologia alemã com a fundação do Instituto de Pesquisa Social, vinculado à Universidade Johann Wolfgang Goethe de Frankfurt, que ficou conhecido como Escola de Frankfurt. Em 1923, um grupo de intelectuais – entre eles Friedrich Pollok (1894-1970), Leo Löwenthal (1900-1993), Karl August Wittfogel (1896-1988), Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) e Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) – desenvolveu uma análise da sociedade contemporânea com base em concepções filosóficas de Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Hegel e Friedrich Nietzsche, em visões sociológicas de Karl Marx e de Max Weber e no pensamento de Sigmund Freud. -/- Os integrantes do grupo de Frankfurt pretendiam desenvolver uma teoria crítica da sociedade capitalista e buscavam explicar fenômenos que iam da análise da personalidade autoritária à indústria cultural. Mantiveram a crítica ao positivismo e ao pragmatismo, procurando demonstrar a necessida-de de refletir sobre as condições que permitiram a emergência do nazismo e sobre o significado dessa ideologia. As reflexões desses intelectuais culminaram com uma crítica à razão instrumental e às formas de controle sobre a sociedade contemporânea. -/- Além dos estudiosos citados, são representantes desse pensamento Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), Erich Fromm (1900-1980) e Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), entre outros. Todos os integrantes da Escola de Frankfurt precisaram sair da Alema-nha por causa da perseguição nazista. Adorno e Horkheimer voltaram ao país depois do fim da Segunda Guerra Mundial. Deram continuidade à Escola de Frankfurt, entre outros, Jürgen Habermas (1929-), da segunda geração, e Axel Honneth (1949-), da terceira e atual geração. -/- REFERENCIAL TEÓRICO -/- CUIN, C. H.; GRESLE, F. História da Sociologia. Trad. Roberto Leal Ferreira. São Paulo: Ensaio, 1994. -/- CULTURAL, A. Max Weber. Textos selecionados. 2ª ed. São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1980. (Col. Os Pensadores). -/- NOVA, S. V. Introdução à Sociologia. 6ª ed. São Paulo: Atlas, 2004. -/- SILVA, A. et al. Sociologia em movimento. 2ª ed. São Paulo: Ática, 2016. -/- VANDENBERGHE, F. As sociologias de Georg Simmel. 1ª ed. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2018. -/- WAIZBORT, L. As aventuras de Georg Simmel. São Paulo: USP, Curso de Pós-Graduação em Sociologia/Editora 34, 2000. -/- SBS - Sociedade Brasileira de Sociologia PUCRS - PPG em Ciências Sociais Avenida Ipiranga, 6681 - Partenon CEP: 90619-900 - Porto Alegre, RS [email protected] Emanuel Isaque © 2019. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Tim Henning argues that the result that we should save the greatest number in rescue cases can be established on procedural grounds without making use of the aggregation of interests. He first argues that we ought to respect the affected persons' equal claims to have a say in the rescue decision and that this can only be achieved by the majority rule, which consists in giving each affected person an equal vote. Then he argues for the (...) second claim that if everyone votes in their self-interest, then the greatest number will be saved. I present a class of cases in which the second claim fails. This establishes that even if self-interested voting is assumed, the majority rule does not always lead to the greatest number being saved. (shrink)

This paper embeds the core part of Discourse Representation Theory in the classical theory of types plus a few simple axioms that allow the theory to express key facts about variables and assignments on the object level of the logic. It is shown how the embedding can be used to combine core analyses of natural language phenomena in Discourse Representation Theory with analyses that can be obtained in Montague Semantics.

In this paper we define intensional models for the classical theory of types, thus arriving at an intensional type logic ITL. Intensional models generalize Henkin's general models and have a natural definition. As a class they do not validate the axiom of Extensionality. We give a cut-free sequent calculus for type theory and show completeness of this calculus with respect to the class of intensional models via a model existence theorem. After this we turn our attention to applications. Firstly, it (...) is argued that, since ITL is truly intensional, it can be used to model ascriptions of propositional attitude without predicting logical omniscience. In order to illustrate this a small fragment of English is defined and provided with an ITL semantics. Secondly, it is shown that ITL models contain certain objects that can be identified with possible worlds. Essential elements of modal logic become available within classical type theory once the axiom of Extensionality is given up. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the theory of predicate logics in which the principle of Bivalence or the principle of Non-Contradiction or both fail. Such logics are partial or paraconsistent or both. We consider sequent calculi for these logics and prove Model Existence. For L4, the most general logic under consideration, we also prove a version of the Craig-Lyndon Interpolation Theorem. The paper shows that many techniques used for classical predicate logic generalise to partial and paraconsistent logics once the right (...) set-up is chosen. Our logic L4 has a semantics that also underlies Belnap’s [4] and is related to the logic of bilattices. L4 is in focus most of the time, but it is also shown how results obtained for L4 can be transferred to several variants. (shrink)

Moral perceptualism is the theory that perception and perceptual experience is attuned to moral features in our environment. This idea has received renewed attention in the last 15–20 years, for its potential to do theoretical work in moral epistemology and moral psychology. In this paper, I review the main motivations and arguments for moral perceptualism, the variety of theories that go under the heading of “moral perception,” and the three biggest challenges to moral perception. https://youtu.be/9cc_1zykq80.

The paper develops Lambda Grammars, a form of categorial grammar that, unlike other categorial formalisms, is non-directional. Linguistic signs are represented as sequences of lambda terms and are combined with the help of linear combinators.

The paper shows how ideas that explain the sense of an expression as a method or algorithm for finding its reference, preshadowed in Frege’s dictum that sense is the way in which a referent is given, can be formalized on the basis of the ideas in Thomason (1980). To this end, the function that sends propositions to truth values or sets of possible worlds in Thomason (1980) must be replaced by a relation and the meaning postulates governing the behaviour of (...) this relation must be given in the form of a logic program. The resulting system does not only throw light on the properties of sense and their relation to computation, but also shows circular behaviour if some ingredients of the Liar Paradox are added. The connection is natural, as algorithms can be inherently circular and the Liar is explained as expressing one of those. Many ideas in the present paper are closely related to those in Moschovakis (1994), but receive a considerably lighter formalization. (shrink)

This contribution focuses on three aspects of Nietzsche’s art of living that have become relevant today especially in the United States (but not only here): first, regarding some facets of the economic-political conditions of any contemporary art of living; second, the widespread adoption of Nietzsche’s notion of self-overcoming and artistic self-design in entrepreneurship and individual’s lives; and third, how his notion of ‘incorporation’ has been further developed in current approaches to habit design. Eventually I will show via the example of (...) Anthony Robbins that some notions of Nietzsche’s art of living have become most popular outside of academia, namely in the commercial industries of what has been called ‘self-growth’ or ‘self-development.’. (shrink)

This essay investigates, via the concepts of the philosophy of orientation, Annie Duke’s decision-making theory in "Thinking in Bets" and scrutinizes as to what extent one can universalize the 'orientation skill' of decision-making with regard to our everyday and professional life.

In this paper it is shown how the DRT (Discourse Representation Theory) treatment of temporal anaphora can be formalized within a version of Montague Semantics that is based on classical type logic.

A logic is called higher order if it allows for quantification over higher order objects, such as functions of individuals, relations between individuals, functions of functions, relations between functions, etc. Higher order logic began with Frege, was formalized in Russell [46] and Whitehead and Russell [52] early in the previous century, and received its canonical formulation in Church [14].1 While classical type theory has since long been overshadowed by set theory as a foundation of mathematics, recent decades have shown remarkable (...) comebacks in the fields of mechanized reasoning (see, e.g., Benzm¨. (shrink)

The IPAP Schizophrenia Algorithm was originally designed in the form of a flow chart to help physicians optimise the treatment of schizophrenic patients. We examined the current version from the perspective of recent work on terminologies and ontologies thereby drawing on the resources of Basic Formal Ontology, and this with the objective to make the algorithm appropriate for Semantic Web applications. We found that Basic Formal Ontology is a rich enough theory to represent all the entities involved and that applying (...) the theory to the IPAP schizophrenia algorithm results in a representation that can be used by software agents to perform monitoring and control in a referent tracking environment. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to introduce, elucidate and defend the usefulness of a variant of grounding, or metaphysical explanation, that has the feature that the grounds explain of some states of affairs that one of them obtains without explaining which one obtains. I will dub this variant arbitrary grounding. After informally elucidating the basic idea in the first section, I will provide three metaphysical hypotheses that are best formulated in terms of arbitrary grounding in the second section. The (...) third section will be concerned with the relation between arbitrary grounding and non-arbitrary grounding. The fourth section will compare arbitrary grounding to two extant proposals in the literature. (shrink)

Ambiguities in natural language can multiply so fast that no person or machine can be expected to process a text of even moderate length by enumerating all possible disambiguations. A sentence containing $n$ scope bearing elements which are freely permutable will have $n!$ readings, if there are no other, say lexical or syntactic, sources of ambiguity. A series of $m$ such sentences would lead to $(n!)^m$ possibilities. All in all the growth of possibilities will be so fast that generating readings (...) first and testing their acceptability afterwards will not be feasible. -/- This insight has led a series of researchers to adopt a level of representation at which ambiguities remain unresolved. The idea here is not to generate and test many possible interpretations but to first generate one `underspecified' representation which in a sense represents all its complete specifications and then use whatever information is available to further specify the result. -/- One central hypothesis in the paper will be that the relation between an underspecified representation and its full representations is not so much the relation between one structure and a set of other structures but is in fact the relation between a description (a set of logical sentences) and its models. (shrink)

There are two kinds of semantic theories of anaphora. Some, such as Heim’s File Change Semantics, Groenendijk and Stokhof’s Dynamic Predicate Logic, or Muskens’ Compositional DRT (CDRT), seem to require full coindexing of anaphora and their antecedents prior to interpretation. Others, such as Kamp’s Discourse Representation Theory (DRT), do not require this coindexing and seem to have an important advantage here. In this squib I will sketch a procedure that the first group of theories may help themselves to so that (...) they can interleave interpretation and coindexing in DRT’s way. (shrink)

Quality assurance in large terminologies is a difficult issue. We present two algorithms that can help terminology developers and users to identify potential mistakes. We demon­strate the methodology by outlining the different types of mistakes that are found when the algorithms are applied to SNOMED-CT. On the basis of the results, we argue that both formal logical and linguistic tools should be used in the development and quality-assurance process of large terminologies.

PURPOSE—A substantial fraction of the observations made by clinicians and entered into patient records are expressed by means of negation or by using terms which contain negative qualifiers (as in “absence of pulse” or “surgical procedure not performed”). This seems at first sight to present problems for ontologies, terminologies and data repositories that adhere to a realist view and thus reject any reference to putative non-existing entities. Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and Referent Tracking (RT) are examples of such paradigms. The (...) purpose of the research here described was to test a proposal to capture negative findings in electronic health record systems based on BFO and RT. METHODS—We analysed a series of negative findings encountered in 748 sentences taken from 41 patient charts. We classified the phenomena described in terms of the various top-level categories and relations defined in BFO, taking into account the role of negation in the corresponding descriptions. We also studied terms from SNOMED-CT containing one or other form of negation. We then explored ways to represent the described phenomena by means of the types of representational units available to realist ontologies such as BFO. RESULTS—We introduced a new family of ‘lacks’ relations into the OBO Relation Ontology. The relation lacks_part, for example, defined in terms of the positive relation part_of, holds between a particular p and a universal U when p has no instance of U as part. Since p and U both exist, assertions involving ‘lacks_part’ and its cognates meet the requirements of positivity. CONCLUSION—By expanding the OBO Relation Ontology, we were able to accommodate nearly all occurrences of negative findings in the sample studied. (shrink)

Vector models of language are based on the contextual aspects of words and how they co-occur in text. Truth conditional models focus on the logical aspects of language, the denotations of phrases, and their compositional properties. In the latter approach the denotation of a sentence determines its truth conditions and can be taken to be a truth value, a set of possible worlds, a context change potential, or similar. In this short paper, we develop a vector semantics for language based (...) on the simply typed lambda calculus. Our semantics uses techniques familiar from the truth conditional tradition and is based on a form of dynamic interpretation inspired by Heim's context updates. (shrink)

Nietzsche and Shaw are famous and infamous: famous for their innovative and influential forms of writing, but infamous for their apparent support of totalitarianism and Nazism. However, while it has long been shown that Nietzsche’s provocative language about “breeding” and “masters and slaves” was intended to enhance culture through competition, it is still an open question how and when Shaw supported biological eugenics. Via Nietzsche’s “philosophical breeding,” this article presents a new reading of Shaw’s Man and Superman: on the one (...) hand, it contrasts Nietzsche’s philosophical Übermensch with Shaw’s eugenic Superman; and on the other hand, it connects Nietzsche’s agonistic enhancement of culture with Shaw’s philosophical reflections in “Don Juan in Hell.” In contrast to Tanner’s support of eugenic breeding in his Revolutionist’s Handbook, Shaw’s Don Juan remarkably resembles Nietzsche’s notion of “philosophical breeding” toward a more competent, truthful, and autonomous orientation that is needed in increasingly complex global politics. (shrink)

The Information Artifact Ontology (IAO) was created to serve as a domain‐neutral resource for the representation of types of information content entities (ICEs) such as documents, data‐bases, and digital im‐ages. We identify a series of problems with the current version of the IAO and suggest solutions designed to advance our understanding of the relations between ICEs and associated cognitive representations in the minds of human subjects. This requires embedding IAO in a larger framework of ontologies, including most importantly the Mental (...) Func‐tioning Ontology (MFO). It also requires a careful treatment of the aboutness relations between ICEs and associated cognitive representa‐tions and their targets in reality, which implies in turn a new treatment of the relation of truthmaking. (shrink)

This paper develops the metaphysical hypothesis that there are irreducibly collective pluralities, pluralities of objects that do not have a singular object among them. A way to formulate this hypothesis using plural quantification will be proposed and the coherence of irreducibly collective existence will be defended. Furthermore, irreducibly collective existence will be shown to allow for bottomless scenarios that do not involve things standing in relations of parthood. This will create logical space for an anti-atomistic form of mereological nihilism.

We performed a qualitative analysis of the Thesaurus in order to assess its conformity with principles of good practice in terminology and ontology design. We used both the on-line browsable version of the Thesaurus and its OWL-representation (version 04.08b, released on August 2, 2004), measuring each in light of the requirements put forward in relevant ISO terminology standards and in light of ontological principles advanced in the recent literature. Version 04.08b of the NCI Thesaurus suffers from the same broad range (...) of problems that have been observed in other biomedical terminologies. For its further development, we recommend the use of a more principled approach that allows the Thesaurus to be tested not just for internal consistency but also for its degree of correspondence to that part of reality which it is designed to represent. (shrink)

During the last years of his life, the mathematician Karl Menger worked on a biography of his father, the economist and founder of the Austrian School of Economics, Carl Menger. The younger Menger never finished the work. While working in the Menger collections at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, we discovered draft chapters of the biography, a valuable source of information given that relatively little is known about Carl Menger’s life nearly a hundred years after (...) his death. The unfinished biography covers Carl Menger’s family background and his life through early 1889. In this article, we discuss the biography and the most valuable new insights it provides into Carl Menger’s life, including Carl Menger’s family, his childhood, his student years, his time working as a journalist and newspaper editor, his early scientific career, and his relationship with Crown Prince Rudolf. (shrink)

Non-naturalism is the view that normative properties are response-independent, irreducible to natural properties, and causally inefficacious. An underexplored question for non-naturalism concerns the metasemantics of normative terms. Ideally, the non-naturalist could remain ecumenical, but it appears they cannot. Call this challenge the metasemantic challenge. This chapter suggests that non-naturalists endorse an epistemic account of reference determination of the sort recently defended by Imogen Dickie, with some modifications. An important implication of this account is that, if correct, a fully fleshed out (...) moral epistemology will simultaneously rebut metasemantic objections to non-naturalism. Thus, both the metasemantic and the more widely discussed epistemological challenges in effect amount to one. Before setting out the positive view, the chapter considers why all of the traditional metasemantic theories cause trouble for the non-naturalist. This includes discussions of teleosemantics, conceptual role semantics, as well as Schroeter and Schroeter’s “connectedness” model. (shrink)

This paper introduces λ-grammar, a form of categorial grammar that has much in common with LFG. Like other forms of categorial grammar, λ-grammars are multi-dimensional and their components are combined in a strictly parallel fashion. Grammatical representations are combined with the help of linear combinators, closed pure λ-terms in which each abstractor binds exactly one variable. Mathematically this is equivalent to employing linear logic, in use in LFG for semantic composition, but the method seems more practicable.

Stance-independent nonnaturalist moral realism is subject to two related epistemological objections. First, there is the metaethical descendant of the Benacerraf problem. Second, there are evolutionary debunking arguments. Standard attempts to solve these epistemological problems have not appealed to any particular moral epistemology. The focus on these epistemologically neutral responses leaves many interesting theoretical stones unturned. Exploring the ability of particular theories in moral epistemology to handle these difficult epistemological objections can help illuminate strengths or weaknesses within these theories themselves, as (...) well as opening up potentially unexplored avenues for responding to deeply entrenched concerns about our epistemic access to the moral properties. In this paper, I assess the prospects of an empiricist and perceptualist model of moral knowledge for responding to epistemological arguments against non-skeptical moral realism. I argue that such a view has powerful responses to these objections that are not open to other moral epistemologists. The upshot is that if some version of the view is correct, then the realist has less to fear from Benacerraf and evolutionary debunking–style epistemological objections. Insofar as one is already a committed realist, then, this provides some indirect support for moral perceptualism. (shrink)

We present the details of a methodology for quality assurance in large medical terminologies and describe three algorithms that can help terminology developers and users to identify potential mistakes. The methodology is based in part on linguistic criteria and in part on logical and ontological principles governing sound classifications. We conclude by outlining the results of applying the methodology in the form of a taxonomy different types of errors and potential errors detected in SNOMED-CT.

Moral perception has made something of a comeback in recent work on moral epistemology. Many traditional objections to the view have been argued to fail upon closer inspection. But it remains an open question just how far moral perception might extend. In this paper, I provide the beginnings of an answer to this question by assessing the relationship between the metaphysical structure of different normative properties and a plausible constraint on which properties are eligible for perceptual awareness which I call (...) the Counterfactual Strengthening Test. Along the way I consider and reject a few other possible constraints on perceptual awareness. I defend the view that moral perception is restricted to the perception of evaluative and pro tanto deontic properties. I conclude with a few gestures toward what this limitation on moral perception may mean for broader moral epistemology. (shrink)

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are organized around two kinds of statements: those reporting observations made, and those reporting acts performed. In neither case does the record involve any direct reference to what such statements are actually about. They record not: what is happening on the side of the patient, but rather: what is said about what is happening. While the need for a unique patient identifier is generally recognized, we argue that we should now move to an EHR regime in (...) which all clinically salient particulars – from the concrete disorder on the side of the patient and the body parts in which it occurs to the concrete treatments given – should be uniquely identified. This will allow us to achieve interoperability among different systems of records at the level where it really matters: in regard to what is happening in the real world. It will also allow us to keep track of particular disorders and of the effects of particular treatments in a precise and unambiguous way. We discuss the ontological and epistemological aspects of our claim and describe a scenario for implementation within EHR systems. (shrink)

Standard approaches to proper names, based on Kripke's views, hold that the semantic values of expressions are (set-theoretic) functions from possible worlds to extensions and that names are rigid designators, i.e.\ that their values are \emph{constant} functions from worlds to entities. The difficulties with these approaches are well-known and in this paper we develop an alternative. Based on earlier work on a higher order logic that is \emph{truly intensional} in the sense that it does not validate the axiom scheme of (...) Extensionality, we develop a simple theory of names in which Kripke's intuitions concerning rigidity are accounted for, but the more unpalatable consequences of standard implementations of his theory are avoided. The logic uses Frege's distinction between sense and reference and while it accepts the rigidity of names it rejects the view that names have direct reference. Names have constant denotations across possible worlds, but the semantic value of a name is not determined by its denotation. (shrink)

Against the background of the current debate in Germany, the paper explains and discusses ethical aspects of alternative consent systems for post-mortem organ donation. The focus is on opt-out and prompted choice solutions. The authors explain why libertarian paternalism might favour a prompted choice.

The ‘syntax’ and ‘combinatorics’ of my title are what Curry (1961) referred to as phenogrammatics and tectogrammatics respectively. Tectogrammatics is concerned with the abstract combinatorial structure of the grammar and directly informs semantics, while phenogrammatics deals with concrete operations on syntactic data structures such as trees or strings. In a series of previous papers (Muskens, 2001a; Muskens, 2001b; Muskens, 2003) I have argued for an architecture of the grammar in which finite sequences of lambda terms are the basic data structures, (...) pairs of terms syntax, semantics for example. These sequences then combine with the help of simple generalizations of the usual abstraction and application operations. This theory, which I call Lambda Grammars and which is closely related to the independently formulated theory of Abstract Categorial Grammars (de Groote, 2001; de Groote, 2002), in fact is an implementation of Curry’s ideas: the level of tectogrammar is encoded by the sequences of lambda-terms and their ways of combination, while the syntactic terms in those sequences constitute the phenogrammatical level. In de Groote’s formulation of the theory, tectogrammar is the level of abstract terms, while phenogrammar is the level of object terms. (shrink)

If SNOMED CT is to serve as a biomedical reference terminology, then steps must be taken to ensure comparability of information formulated using successive versions. New releases are therefore shipped with a history mechanism. We assessed the adequacy of this mechanism for its treatment of the distinction between changes occurring on the side of entities in reality and changes in our understanding thereof. We found that these two types are only partially distinguished and that a more detailed study is required (...) to propose clear recommendations for enhancement along at least the following lines: (1) explicit representation of the provenance of a class; (2) separation of the time-period during which a component is stated valid in SNOMED CT from the period it is (or has been) valid in reality, and (3) redesign of the historical relationships table to give users better assistance for recovery in case of introduced mistakes. (shrink)

Type-logical semantics studies linguistic meaning with the help of the theory of types. The latter originated with Russell as an answer to the paradoxes, but has the additional virtue that it is very close to ordinary language. In fact, type theory is so much more similar to language than predicate logic is, that adopting it as a vehicle of representation can overcome the mismatches between grammatical form and predicate logical form that were observed by Frege and Russell. The grammatical forms (...) of ordinary language sentences consequently may be taken to be much less misleading than logicians in the first half of the 20th century often thought them to be. This was realized by Richard Montague, who used the theory of types to translate fragments of ordinary language into a logical language. Semantics is commonly divided into lexical semantics, which studies the meaning of words, and compositional semantics, which studies the way in which complex phrases obtain a meaning from their constituents. The strength of type-logical semantics lies with the latter, but type-logical theories can be combined with many competing hypotheses about lexical meaning, provided these hypotheses are expressed using the language of type theory. (shrink)

In this paper it is shown how a formal theory of interpretation in Montague’s style can be reconciled with a view on meaning as a social construct. We sketch a formal theory in which agents can have their own theory of interpretation and in which groups can have common theories of interpretation. Frege solved the problem how different persons can have access to the same proposition by placing the proposition in a Platonic realm, independent from all language users but accessible (...) to all of them. Here we explore the alternative of letting meaning be socially constructed. The meaning of a sentence is accessible to each member of a linguistic community because the way the sentence is to be interpreted is common knowledge among the members of that community. Misunderstandings can arise when the semantic knowledge of two or more individuals is not completely in sync. (shrink)

Referent tracking (RT) is a new paradigm, based on unique identification, for representing and keeping track of particulars. It was first introduced to support the entry and retrieval of data in electronic health records (EHRs). Its purpose is to avoid the ambiguity that arises when statements in an EHR refer to disorders or other entities on the side of the patient exclusively by means of compound descriptions utilizing general terms such as ‘pimple on nose’ or ‘small left breast tumor’. In (...) this paper, we describe the theoretical foundations of this paradigm and show how it is being applied to the solution of analogous problems of ambiguous identification in the fields of digital rights management, corporate memories and decision algorithms. (shrink)

Logic has its roots in the study of valid argument, but while traditional logicians worked with natural language directly, modern approaches first translate natural arguments into an artificial language. The reason for this step is that some artificial languages now have very well developed inferential systems. There is no doubt that this is a great advantage in general, but for the study of natural reasoning it is a drawback that the original linguistic forms get lost in translation. An alternative approach (...) would be to develop a general theory of the natural logic behind human reasoning and human information processing by studying formal logics that operate directly on linguistic representations. That this is possible we will try to make plausible in this paper. It will turn out that one level of representation, that of Logical Form, can meaningfully be identified with the language of an existing and well-understood logic, a restricted form of the theory of types. It is not difficult to devise inference systems for this language, and it is thus possible to study reasoning systems that are based directly on language. (shrink)

While classifications of mental disorders have existed for over one hundred years, it still remains unspecified what terms such as 'mental disorder', 'disease' and 'illness' might actually denote. While ontologies have been called in aid to address this shortfall since the GALEN project of the early 1990s, most attempts thus far have sought to provide a formal description of the structure of some pre-existing terminology or classification, rather than of the corresponding structures and processes on the side of the patient. (...) We here present a view of mental disease that is based on ontological realism and which follows the principles embodied in Basic Formal Ontology and in the application of BFO in the Ontology of General Medical Science. We analyzed statements about what counts as a mental disease provided in the research agenda for the DSM-V, and in Pies' model. The results were used to assess whether the representational units of BFO and OGMS were adequate as foundations for a formal representation of the entities in reality that these statements attempt to describe. We then analyzed the representational units specific to mental disease and provided corresponding definitions. Our key contributions lie in the identification of confusions and conflations in the existing terminology of mental disease and in providing what we believe is a framework for the sort of clear and unambiguous reference to entities on the side of the patient that is needed in order to avoid these confusions in the future. (shrink)

Digital Rights Management (DRM) covers the description, identification, trading, protection, monitoring and tracking of all forms of rights over both tangible and intangible assets. The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system provides a framework for the persistent identification of entities involved in this domain. Although the system has been very well designed to manage object identifiers, some important questions relating to the creation and assignment of identifiers are left open. The paradigm of a Referent Tracking System (RTS) recently advanced in the (...) healthcare and life sciences environment is able to fill these gaps. This is demonstrated by pointing out inconsistencies in the existing DOI models and by showing how they can be corrected using an RTS. (shrink)

In this paper it is shown how simple texts that can be parsed in a Lambek Categorial Grammar can also automatically be provided with a semantics in the form of a Discourse Representation Structure in the sense of Kamp [1981]. The assignment of meanings to texts uses the Curry-Howard-Van Benthem correspondence.