A Counterexample to Modus Ponenses

McGee argued that modus ponens was invalid for the natural language conditional ‘If…then…’. Many subsequent responses have argued that, while McGee’s examples show that modus ponens fails to preserve truth, they do not show that modus ponens fails to preserve rational full acceptance, and thus modus ponens may still be valid in the latter informational sense. I show that when we turn our attention from indicative conditionals to subjunctive conditionals, we find that modus ponens does not preserve either truth or rational full acceptance, and thus is not valid in either sense. In concluding I briefly consider how we can account for these facts

Stella Benson: a life of reading, writing and publishing

Stella Benson – feminist, diarist, novelist and travel writer – published her first novel, I Pose, in 1915.  Her last book, a collection of short stories, was published posthumously in 1936.  Although her diaries might suggest some reservations about the reception of her earlier novels, in a letter to Marie Belloc Lowndes, Benson’s husband James O’Gorman Anderson said of her work: ‘Stella was quite happy about her writing, was sure of herself there, and had no thought of not being sufficiently appreciated.’  Others shared that opinion; for example, her 1932 novel Tobit Transplanted (titled The Far-Away Bride in America) won the Femina-Vie Heureuse Prize and the silver medal of the Royal Society of Literature. Benson’s writing was informed by her reading; she was an avid reader throughout her life and talked at length in her diaries about books that she enjoyed.  She often read a book in a day and it is evident from her diaries that she was always keen to read contemporary, Modernist and avant-garde poets and authors such Sturge Moore, Dorothy Richardson and Ford Maddox Ford (reading, for example, The Good Soldier in just one day on 3rd January 1918).  Her diaries, for the most part unpublished, provide a rich source of material, detailing both her reading and her writing.  Drawing extensively on those diaries, this paper discusses the connections between Benson’s reading, her writing and the subsequent publication of her early novels. It will explore her relationship with her publishers and will also, as a postscript, consider the role of the recent republication of her fiction by Michael Walmer in a possible reclamation and re-examination of Benson’s work in the twenty first century.

The Social Return on Investment (SROI) of the Master Gardener Programme

Background Garden Organic’s volunteer mentor network team coordinates and manages a number of programmes each designed to promote the core principles of organic horticulture and the benefits that composting and growing your own produce can bring

Boston University Collegium Musicum: La Princesse De Navarre

This is the concert program of the Boston University Collegium Musicum performance on Monday, May 5, 1997 at 8:00 p.m., at the Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue. The work performed was La Princesse De Navarre, a three act comedie-ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau with libretto by Voltaire. Digitization for Boston University Concert Programs was supported by the Boston University Humanities Library Endowed Fund

Book Review: The Physic Garden by Catherine Czerkawska

No abstract available

Max E. G. Bartels and the Javan lapwing Vanellus macropterus

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What ‘must’ adds

There is a difference between the conditions in which one can felicitously use a ‘must’-claim like and those in which one can use the corresponding claim without the ‘must’, as in 'It must be raining out' versus 'It is raining out. It is difficult to pin down just what this difference amounts to. And it is difficult to account for this difference, since assertions of 'Must p' and assertions of p alone seem to have the same basic goal: namely, communicating that p is true. In this paper I give a new account of the conversational role of ‘must’. I begin by arguing that a ‘must’-claim is felicitous only if there is a shared argument for the proposition it embeds. I then argue that this generalization, which I call Support, can explain the more familiar generalization that ‘must’-claims are felicitous only if the speaker’s evidence for them is in some sense indirect. Finally, I propose a pragmatic derivation of Support as a manner implicature

Surname studies with genetics

Genetic studies of surnames are briefly reviewed. In particular, such DNA studies can sometimes provide clues to a surname's meaning. A few surnames are being found to include unusually large single families, which are far more populous than computer simulations for monogamous families predict, suggesting that they might best be explained by their getting off to a fast start through polygyny or concubines: Brehon Law in Ireland and medieval Welsh Law were relatively accepting of polygyny. The Plant surname in the Welsh Marches largely comprises an abnormally large single family and this favours the Welsh meaning '[many] children', though various other meanings for this surname have been suggested. The surnames Meates, Meats, Mates, Mate and Myatt in north Staffordshire and Ireland belong to a single family and appear to have derived from the female forename Maiot

THE PROBLEMS FACED BY THE HOUSEKEEPING DEPARTMENT OF NOVOTEL SOLO

The aims of this final project report are to present the importance of Housekeeping Department of Novotel Solo and to present the problems and solutions of the Housekeeping Department of Novotel Solo. Direct interview and library study are used to collect the data. The activities during his job training are as follows: wearing the uniform, taking presence and briefing, preparing the guest supplies, cleaning the room, taking a break, returning the guest supplies to the Housekeeping Department, and finally preparing to go home. The Housekeeping Department of Novotel Solo is one of hotel departments which has duties and responsibilities to maintain freshness, neatness, tidiness, and cleanness of hotel area. During the job training period, the writer found several problems, such as most of the Housekeeping staffs cannot speak other languages than English, many staffs cannot speak English fluently, limited work time, limited numbers of the Housekeeping staffs, many staffs working out of procedure, lack of amenities supplies. The writer suggests holding language training programs, holding upgrading programs, adding more staff members, and controlling the amenities regularly