The interrelations of science and technology as an object of study seem to have drawn the attention of a number of disciplines: the history of both science and technology, sociology, economics and economic history, and even the philosophy of science. The question that comes to mind is whether the phenomenon itself is new or if advances in the disciplines involved account for this novel interest, or, in fact, if both are intercon nected. When the editors set out to plan this (...) volume, their more or less explicit conviction was that the relationship of science and technology did reveal a new configuration and that the disciplines concerned with 1tS analysis failed at least in part to deal with the change because of conceptual and methodological preconceptions. To say this does not imply a verdict on the insufficiency of one and the superiority of any other one disciplinary approach. Rather, the situation is much more complex. In economics, for example, the interest in the relationship between science and technology is deeply influenced by the theoretical problem of accounting for the factors of economic growth. The primary concern is with technology and the problem is whether the market induces technological advances or whether they induce new demands that explain the subsequent diffusion of new technologies. Science is generally considered to be an exogenous factor not directly subject to market forces and, therefore, appears to be of no interest. (shrink)

In Am. Jr. Phil. 28, 413 I derived the suffix in Gothic fram-aps ‘alienus’, Latin com-et- ‘socius– and Greek τ ‘comites’ from the root et- ‘errare, ire’; and I proposed the name ‘confix’ for a suffix whose origin could be traced back to an original compounding element. I now find further evidence for the confix -et- in Latin interpret-, ‘go-between’; and I explain pr-et- as a fusion-product of the synonymous roots PER- and ET- ‘errare, ire’. Nor is this explanation in (...) conflict with the current comparison between interpres and Gothic frops ‘klug, verstandig’: it is simply that ‘go-between’ is nearer the meaning. The wisdom attributed to the wanderer, to the traveller in far lands,–an idea forever embalmed for English folk in Shakespeare's counter-turn. (shrink)

I. Latin interpres, miles etc. and the confix -et-, ‘errans,’ cf. -etum ‘allee.’In Am. Jr. Phil. 28, 413 I derived the suffix in Gothic fram-aps ‘alienus’, Latin com-et- ‘socius– and Greek τ ‘comites’ from the root et- ‘errare, ire’; and I proposed the name ‘confix’ for a suffix whose origin could be traced back to an original compounding element. I now find further evidence for the confix -et- in Latin interpret-, ‘go-between’; and I explain pr-et- as a fusion-product of the (...) synonymous roots PER- and ET- ‘errare, ire’. Nor is this explanation in conflict with the current comparison between interpres and Gothic frops ‘klug, verstandig’: it is simply that ‘go-between’ is nearer the meaning. The wisdom attributed to the wanderer, to the traveller in far lands,–an idea forever embalmed for English folk in Shakespeare's counter-turn. (shrink)

This book introduces the reader to relevant logic and provides the subject with a philosophical interpretation. The defining feature of relevant logic is that it forces the premises of an argument to be really used in deriving its conclusion. The logic is placed in the context of possible world semantics and situation semantics, which are then applied to provide an understanding of the various logical particles and natural language conditionals. The book ends by examining various applications of relevant logic and (...) presenting some interesting open problems. It will be of interest to a range of readers including advanced students of logic, philosophical and mathematical logicians, and computer scientists. (shrink)

In this innovative introduction, Robert Layton reviews the ideas that have inspired anthropologists in their studies of societies around the world. An Introduction to Theory in Anthropology provides a clear and concise analysis of the theories, and traces the way in which they have been translated into anthropological debates. The opening chapter sets out the classical theoretical issues formulated by Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx and Durkheim. Successive chapters discuss Functionalism, Structuralism, Interactionist theories, and Marxist anthropology, while the final chapters address (...) the competing paradigms of Socioecology and Postmodernism. Using detailed case studies, Professor Layton illustrates the way in which various theoretical perspectives have shaped competing, or complementary, accounts of specific human societies. (shrink)

This Element looks at two projects that relate logic and information: the project of using logic to integrate, manipulate and interpret information and the proect of using the notion of information to provide interpretations of logical systems. The Element defines 'information' in a manner that includes misinformation and disinformation and uses this general concept of information to provide an interpretation of various paraconsistent and relevant logics. It also integrates these logics into contemporary theories of informational updating, probability theory and (rather (...) informally) some ideas from the theory of the complexity of proofs. The Element assumes some prior knowledge of modal logic and its possible world semantics, but all the other necessary background is provided. (shrink)

This paper uses Avron’s algebraic semantics for the logic RMI to model some ideas in the philosophy of science. Avron’s relevant disjunctive structures are each partitioned into relevance domains. Each relevance domain is a boolean algebra. I employ this semantics to act as a formal framework to represent what Nancy Cartwright calls the “dappled world”. On the dappled world hypothesis, local scientific theories each represent restricted aspects and regions of the universe. I use relevance domains to represent the domains of (...) each of these local theories and I provide a formalisation of the salient relationships between so-called fundamental theories and local theories. I also examine ways in which the paraconsistent nature of RMI can be used to deal with inconsistencies within and between theories adopted by scientists. The paper ends with some suggestions about updating RDS given changes in the theories that science adopts. (shrink)

Contemporary theories of consciousness are based on widely different concepts of its nature, most or all of which probably embody aspects of the truth about it. Starting with a concept of consciousness indicated by the phrase “the feeling of what happens” (the title of a book by Antonio Damásio), we attempt to build a framework capable of supporting and resolving divergent views. We picture consciousness in terms of Reality experiencing itself from the perspective of cognitive agents. Each conscious experience is (...) regarded as composed of momentary feeling events that are combined by recognition and evaluation into extended conscious episodes that bind cognitive contents with a wide range of apparent durations (0.1 secs to 2 or more secs, for us humans, depending on circumstances and context). Three necessary conditions for the existence of consciousness are identified: a) a ground of Reality, envisaged as an universal field of potentiality encompassing all possible manifestations, whether material or 'mental'; b) a transitional zone, leading to; c) a manifest world with its fundamental divisions into material, 'informational' and quale-endowed aspects. We explore ideas about the nature of these necessary conditions, how they may relate to one another and whether our suggestions have empirical implications. (shrink)

The evolving nature of armed conflict, characterized by a new emphasis on crisis management and peace support, is bringing morality to the forefront of military leadership. The challenges of today's military operations place a new imperative upon Professional Military Education (PME) to maximize the quality of instruction on ethics in terms of both content and effectiveness. This volume presents the refined proceedings of two conferences of the European Forum on Military Pedagogy dealing with ethical issues of teaching and learning in (...) PME. It explores the philosophical and scientific aspects of current ethical questions, as well as the historical, psychological, and technological dimensions of education in ethics. Further attention is given to ethical and educational implications of asymmetric conflict and warfare. (shrink)

Our doxastic states are our belief-like states, and these include outright doxastic states and degreed doxastic states. The former include believing that p, having the opinion that p, thinking that p, being sure that p, being certain that p, and doubting that p. The latter include degrees of confidence, credences, and perhaps some phenomenal states. But we also have conviction (being convinced simpliciter that p) and degrees of conviction (being more or less convinced that p). This volume shows: how and (...) why all of the outright doxastic states mentioned above can be reduced to conviction thresholds; what degrees of conviction fundamentally are (degreed reliance-dispositions); why degrees of conviction are not credences; when suspending a belief is compatible with continuing to believe; and the surprising extent to which Kant endorsed the theory of conviction that emerges in this volume. (shrink)

I explain why, from the perspective of knowledge-centric anti-luck epistemology, objective act consequentialist theories of ethics imply skepticism about the moral status of our prospective actions and also tend to be self-defeating, undermining the justification of consequentialist theories themselves. For according to knowledge-centric anti-luck epistemology there are modal anti-luck demands on both knowledge and justification, and it turns out that our beliefs about the moral status of our prospective actions are almost never able to satisfy these demands if objective act (...) consequentialism is true. This kind of applied moral skepticism introduces problematic limits on our ability to use objective act consequentialism’s explanatory power as evidence for its truth. This is, in part, a product of higher-order defeat as I explain in the final section. There is, however, a silver lining for objective act consequentialists. For there is at least one type of objective act consequentialism, prior existence consequentialism, that is poised to avoid at least some of the epistemic problems discussed in this paper. (shrink)

In earlier work, the author has studied the economic role of planning horizons in making a case for complementarity as the predominant feature of social interdependence. This paper compares the different choice strategies implied by substitution, opposition and conflicts of interest in an economics of fear with those arising from horizon effects, economic complementarity and concerts of interest in an economics based on love. The contrasting implications of a psychological literature on negative vs. positive emotions and their health effects, along (...) with the findings in neurophysiological research about how humans are hard-wired for empathy and compassion leads to some fundamental changes in how we might address and revise social problems through economic analysis. The aim of this paper is to extend a horizonal case for complementarity in the author's previous work into its psychological links to research findings on healthy cognitive function and its emotional basis. An economics of substitution yields quite different conclusions about optimal institutional forms and how we address and frame social relations than are implied by an explicitly horizonal economics of complementary social relations. Recent psychological and neurophysiological studies support a horizonal case for complementarity in social relations, showing that our orthodox substitution assumptions and models of competitive equilibrium should be rejected for a renewed economic analysis based on horizonal models of complementarity and cooperation as a means to achieve greater social well-being in a healthier and more integrative form of social organization. The issues to be explored are not entertained within the currently existing frame of orthodox economics, so we must step beyond our standard habitual assumptions. (shrink)

Collaboration on the First Edition of Spacetime Physics began in the mid-1960s when Edwin Taylor took a junior faculty sabbatical at Princeton University where John Wheeler was a professor. The resulting text emphasized the unity of spacetime and those quantities (such as proper time, proper distance, mass) that are invariant, the same for all observers, rather than those quantities (such as space and time separations) that are relative, different for different observers. The book has become a standard introduction to (...) relativity. The Second Edition of Spacetime Physics embodies what the authors have learned during an additional quarter century of teaching and research. They have updated the text to reflect the immense strides in physics during the same period and modernized and increased the number of exercises, for which the First Edition was famous. Enrichment boxes provide expanded coverage of intriguing topics. An enlarged final chapter on general relativity includes new material on gravity waves, black holes, and cosmology. The Second Edition of Spacetime Physics provides a new generation of readers with a deep and simple overview of the principles of relativity. (shrink)

Information theory and statistical mechanics II.

Many statistical problems, including some of the most important for physical applications, have long been regarded as underdetermined from the standpoint of a strict frequency definition of probability; yet they may appear wellposed or even overdetermined by the principles of maximum entropy and transformation groups. Furthermore, the distributions found by these methods turn out to have a definite frequency correspondence; the distribution obtained by invariance under a transformation group is by far the most likely to be observed experimentally, in the (...) sense that it requires by far the least “skill.” These properties are illustrated by analyzing the famous Bertrand paradox. On the viewpoint advocated here, Bertrand's problem turns out to be well posed after all, and the unique solution has been verified experimentally. We conclude that probability theory has a wider range of useful applications than would be supposed from the standpoint of the usual frequency definitions. (shrink)