Examination of Molinism

What is the driving force behind salvation? Is it God’s sovereign will, enacting His efficacious grace upon the heart of man? Or is it the free will of man himself, choosing to accept the grace that has been extended to him? This is the age-old question behind the argument of sovereignty versus free will. Luis de Molina, a sixteenth century Jesuit theologian, believed that God, through His omniscience and omnipotence, can predestine an individual for salvation while keeping the free will of that individual intact. This system, known as Molinism, stands on three main principles: a wholly libertarian account of man’s free will, the conviction that the grace the Lord extends to complete salvific acts is not in itself intrinsically efficacious, and the assumption of the truth of the concept of Scientia media, or Middle Knowledge

Liberated Presentism

(The version now posted is a revision of what was posted earlier. Final version now published.) The article gives a novel argument to show that there is sense of 'exists' suitable for posing a substantive issue between presentists and eternalists. It then seeks to invigorate a neglected variety of presentism. There are seven doctrines, widely accepted even among presentists, that create problems for presentism. Without distinguishing existence and being, presentists can comfortably reject all seven. Doing so would dispose of the majority of presentism’s problems. Further, it would enable presentists to reduce A-judgments to B-judgments, thereby insulating presentism from doubts about the intelligibility of A-theories. For reasons indicated very briefly, it might also make presentism less difficult to reconcile with special relativity, though the point is not pursued here

On the Unnikrishnan approach to the notion of locality

Recent proposals by C.S. Unnikrishnan concerning locality and Bell's theorem are critically analysed

Stratified Labelings for Abstract Argumentation

We introduce stratified labelings as a novel semantical approach to abstract argumentation frameworks. Compared to standard labelings, stratified labelings provide a more fine-grained assessment of the controversiality of arguments using ranks instead of the usual labels in, out, and undecided. We relate the framework of stratified labelings to conditional logic and, in particular, to the System Z ranking functions

(WP 2018-02) Extending Behavioral Economics’ Methodological Critique of Rational Choice Theory to Include Counterfactual Reasoning

This paper extends behavioral economics’ realist methodological critique of rational choice theory to include the type of logical reasoning underlying its axiomatic foundations. A purely realist critique ignores Kahneman’s emphasis on how the theory’s axiomatic foundations make it normative. I extend his critique to the theory’s reliance on classical logic, which excludes the concept of possibility employed in counterfactual reasoning. Nudge theory reflects this in employing counterfactual conditionals. This answers the complaint that the Homo sapiens agent conception ultimately reduces to a Homo economicus conception, and also provides grounds for treating Homo sapiens as an adaptive, non-optimizing, reflexive agent

The cognitive construction of programs by novice programmers : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science at Massey University

Human memory and cognition are studied to aid novice programmers with the cognitive construction and the acquisition of program plans. Particular emphasis is placed on the storage and retrieval of program knowledge, the cognitive structure of stored program knowledge, the effects of transferring cognitive structures from one programming language to another, and the learning activities involved with learning a new programming language. Cognitive principles are applied to the design of a programming language and environment. The design of both the programming language and environment are discussed together with an introduction of how they are used. The hypothetical results of two experiments are argued to demonstrate that the programming language and environment are well suited in supporting the development of program plans

Predicting the socio-technical future (and other myths)

A snooker ball model implies that simple, linear and predictable social change follows from the introduction of new technologies. Unfortunately technology does not have and has never had simple linear predictable social impacts. In this chapter we show that in most measurable ways, the pervasiveness of modern information and communication technologies has had little discernable ?impact? on most human behaviours of sociological significance. Historians of technology remind us that human society co-evolves with the technology it invents and that the eventual social and economic uses of a technology often turn out to be far removed from those originally envisioned. Rather than using the snooker ball model to attempt to predict future ICT usage and revenue models that are inevitably wrong, we suggest that truly participatory, grounded innovation, open systems and adaptive revenue models can lead us to a more effective, flexible and responsive innovation process