The Ursinus Weekly, December 31, 1928

Ursinus debating league holds ninth conference • Debating very practical; a ladder to success • Some objections answered with a desire to help • The best ways to refute an opponents arguments • A baker\u27s dozen of helps for the young debater • How to fit debating into high school curriculum • How to get out audiences for our league debates • Report for last season: eleven trophies given • Importance of delivery in high school debatinghttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/weekly/2170/thumbnail.jp

Contraction-free proofs and finitary games for Linear Logic

In the standard sequent presentations of Girard's Linear Logic (LL), there are two "non-decreasing" rules, where the premises are not smaller than the conclusion, namely the cut and the contraction rules. It is a universal concern to eliminate the cut rule. We show that, using an admissible modification of the tensor rule, contractions can be eliminated, and that cuts can be simultaneously limited to a single initial occurrence. This view leads to a consistent, but incomplete game model for LL with exponentials, which is finitary, in the sense that each play is finite. The game is based on a set of inference rules which does not enjoy cut elimination. Nevertheless, the cut rule is valid in the model.Comment: 19 pages, uses tikz and Paul Taylor's diagram

Innocent strategies as presheaves and interactive equivalences for CCS

Seeking a general framework for reasoning about and comparing programming languages, we derive a new view of Milner's CCS. We construct a category E of plays, and a subcategory V of views. We argue that presheaves on V adequately represent innocent strategies, in the sense of game semantics. We then equip innocent strategies with a simple notion of interaction. This results in an interpretation of CCS. Based on this, we propose a notion of interactive equivalence for innocent strategies, which is close in spirit to Beffara's interpretation of testing equivalences in concurrency theory. In this framework we prove that the analogues of fair and must testing equivalences coincide, while they differ in the standard setting.Comment: In Proceedings ICE 2011, arXiv:1108.014

Civil Rights 3.0

It is now commonplace to hear the LGBT rights movement being described as the last, or the next, or today’s, pre-eminent civil rights issue. This chapter will explore what that means from several perspectives: What does the label tell us about the civil rights paradigm itself? If the achievement of marriage equality is the great civil rights achievement of this generation, what does that suggest about a future for equality more generally? How have new forms of, and technologies for, movement building affected the idea and practice of civil rights? Does the civil rights paradigm have a future? I focus in on three aspects of the social meaning of civil rights: legal doctrine and legal institutions, social movement strategies, and the tension between the discourse of challenges to social hierarchy and that of civil rights. What we learn is that LGBT advocates have contributed to the overall project of formal equality under law primarily by developing an extraordinary strategic and tactical dexterity, uniquely so at the state level and in its alliance with the business sector. As to the latter, however, there are serious potential disadvantages. In the current political framework, the possibility of advances in substantive equality law-–either statutory or Constitutional-–has shrunken to the point that, even as LGBT rights groups make breakthroughs in achieving goals such as marriage equality, they will do well to avoid having to take backward steps with regard to such overarching concepts as the disparate impact principle or heightened scrutiny. For the future, the big question for this movement-–and all other social justice movements in the United States-–is whether it will deploy its talents and resources to challenge embedded, structural forms of discrimination

The Battle of Deer Creek Crossing: A Case Study of Rhetorical Exigence and Environmental Controversy

THE BATTLE OF DEER CREEK CROSSING:A Case Study of Rhetorical Exigence and Environmental RhetoricMichael John Bannon, PhDUniversity of Pittsburgh, 2006 This dissertation is a case study that analyzes rhetorical tactics and strategies surrounding the environmental public argument over the fate of Deer Creek Crossing, a proposed commercial development in Western Pennsylvania's Allegheny River valley within three miles of the birthplace of pioneering environmentalist Rachel Carson. Drawing predominantly from primary sources, it contributes to our understanding of how lengthy rhetorical processes evolve and what influences them. The study shows that the analysis of context as manifested in the rhetorical situation and analyzed through a rhetorical history framework can clarify both singular events and prolonged argumentative processes by uncovering aspects of those events and processes which may be less apparent in a more narrowly focused study of individual rhetorical artifacts. The opening chapter provides necessary background and lays out the theoretical foundation supporting the analysis of the Deer Creek Crossing controversy. Chapter two analyzes the use and misuse of public forums, including the press, in governmental decision-making associated with the Deer Creek Crossing case. Chapter three investigates the adaptation of arguments and changes in tone in response to exigencies and constraints arising from the denial of the first permit application. Chapter four reconstructs the rhetorical decision-making process that led to the deployment of Rachel Carson's name, analyzes the argumentation arising in opposition, and examines the fight for scientific authority. Chapter five evaluates the decision-making processes of regulatory agencies charged with approving environmental permits, as well as the intricate and highly structured legal processes that dominated courtrooms, in which the last and most decisive actions were undertaken. Chapter six explores the implications of the Deer Creek Crossing case for environmental rhetoric and for the effect of particular strategies and tactics on environmental public argument from the perspective of environmental activists, of developers, and for rhetorical scholarship

Making fiction out of fact: attention and belief in the discourse of conspiracy

This article explores fictionality within the context of the discourse of conspiracy. In particular it examines the phenomenon of ‘false flag’ narratives: alternative versions of an event constructed by individuals who have become convinced that a news story has in fact been staged for malfeasant purposes. The chapter uses figure-ground analysis, which facilitates examination of how attention is distributed within a text. Specifically, it enables an examination of the prominence and salience that is afforded to particular elements within a text, and how this can be used to construct a fiction out of facts. The article problematises the notion of using a pragmatic assessment of authorial intention to establish the fictive or nonfictive status of a text. Finally, it proposes that more work needs to be undertaken in considering instances where authors either do not know or are conflicted about what they believe

A SURVEY ON THE DIFFICULTIES IN WRITING ESSAYS OF ENGLISH MAJORED SOPHOMORES AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM

This thesis “A study on the difficulties in writing essays of English-majored sophomores at Tay Do University” was conducted to examine the difficulties that second-year students majoring in English often met in writing essays. For this purpose, the participants in this study were 100 English majored sophomores in classes 14A, 14B and 14C at Tay Do University. The interview with 3 extended statements for English majored teachers and a questionnaire with 25 closed statements for students is used as instruments to collect the data. The data from the interview and questionnaire were collected to make clear and prove the problems that the students have had in writing essays. The study figured out some difficulties about background knowledge, vocabulary, grammar structure, idea arrangement and orthography in writing essays faced by English majors sophomores at Tay Do University. Besides, this study also helps students realize their challenges and improve their writing essays.  Article visualizations

On the possibility of Kant's answer to Hume : subjective necessity and objective validity

This thesis argues that Kant is able to maintain the distinctiveness of his position in opposition to Hume's naturalism (contrary to the arguments of R. A. Mall and L. W. Beck) without invoking premises which are question begging with regard to Hume's scepticism. The argument of Kant's Transcendental Deduction of the Categories, as presented in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, is considered in relation to the two sets of criticism that have been levelled at it from its publication up to the present day, both of which aim to demonstrate that synthetic a priori judgements are subjectively necessary but without objective validity. The first set of criticisms involves problems raised with regard to the status of transcendental arguments. The difficulties identified here (by B. Stroud, M. S. Gram, and others) are that the Deduction can either, at best, show that it is necessary for experience to be regarded in a certain way without demonstrating anything as to the nature of experience as such, or the argument is circular in that it begins by making assumptions regarding the nature of our experience. Alternatively, if the Deduction is taken to establish the objective nature of concepts via an analysis of the conditions under which it is possible for us to have some knowledge of ourselves, then incoherence is said to arise because this requires either an implausible reflective theory of consciousness (according to D. Henrich) or that we have knowledge of the subject-in-itself (as held by J. G. Fichte and other contemporaries of Kant). Through a consideration of both the historical and contemporary manifestations of these criticisms, the thesis advances an interpretation of the Deduction, with special attention paid to the role and nature of the subject, which does not fall prey to the alleged incoherence. As such, the thesis defends both the distinctiveness and legitimacy of transcendental philosophy