458,943 research outputs found
A Comparative Analysis of Descartesâ and Spinozaâs Notions of Intuition
This study aims at Comparatively Analysing Descartesâ and Spinozaâs Notions of Intuition. The rationalists employ logico-mathematico (logical and mathematical) model as the foundation of their epistemological pursuit, while the empiricists in opposition to the rationalists hold that knowledge is derived from sense experience. Because the rationalists are in unism in their argument against the empiricists and vice versa; it is important to note that there are variations in their approaches to those features they have in common. However, the rationalists among other things based their argument and judgement on intuition as a clear, certain and reliable strand of cognition. It is their conviction that only a living being can think, and so, they conceive intuition as an authentic and most certain route to knowledge. The variation in their arguments to uphold intuition as their common feature is what this work describes as epistemic sustainability. These scholarsâ variegated position on one issue brings about new insight, creativity and productivity within the epistemic circle. It shows that epistemology is on-going, interesting and indeed, a continuous process. This study employed analytic, historical, textual and contextual methods of research
Modular, Fully-abstract Compilation by Approximate Back-translation
A compiler is fully-abstract if the compilation from source language programs
to target language programs reflects and preserves behavioural equivalence.
Such compilers have important security benefits, as they limit the power of an
attacker interacting with the program in the target language to that of an
attacker interacting with the program in the source language. Proving compiler
full-abstraction is, however, rather complicated. A common proof technique is
based on the back-translation of target-level program contexts to
behaviourally-equivalent source-level contexts. However, constructing such a
back- translation is problematic when the source language is not strong enough
to embed an encoding of the target language. For instance, when compiling from
STLC to ULC, the lack of recursive types in the former prevents such a
back-translation.
We propose a general and elegant solution for this problem. The key insight
is that it suffices to construct an approximate back-translation. The
approximation is only accurate up to a certain number of steps and conservative
beyond that, in the sense that the context generated by the back-translation
may diverge when the original would not, but not vice versa. Based on this
insight, we describe a general technique for proving compiler full-abstraction
and demonstrate it on a compiler from STLC to ULC. The proof uses asymmetric
cross-language logical relations and makes innovative use of step-indexing to
express the relation between a context and its approximate back-translation.
The proof extends easily to common compiler patterns such as modular
compilation and it, to the best of our knowledge, it is the first compiler full
abstraction proof to have been fully mechanised in Coq. We believe this proof
technique can scale to challenging settings and enable simpler, more scalable
proofs of compiler full-abstraction
Outcomes for youth work : coming of age or masterâs bidding?
Abstract Providing evidence in youth work is a current and important debate. Modern youth work has, at least to some degree, recognised the need to produce practice information, through its various guises, with limited success as requirements and terminology have continually changed. In Scotland, the current demands for youth work to âproveâ itself are through a performance management system that promotes outcome-based practice. There are some difficulties with this position because outcome-based practice lacks methodological rigour, is aligned with national governmental commitments and does not adequately capture the impact of youth work practice. This paper argues that youth workers need to develop both a theoretical and methodological approach to data collection and management,which is in keeping with practice values, captures the voice of the young person and enhances youth work practice. Youth work should not be used as a mechanism to deliver the governmentâs policies but be liberated from centralist control to become a âfree practiceâ so that some of the perennial problems, such as democratic disillusionment, partly caused by this âperformance management industryâ, can be effectively dealt with. The generation of evidence for youth work should enable it to freely investigate and capture its impact, within the practice, based on the learning that has taken place, the articulation of the learnersâ voice with the most appropriate form of data presentation
The directionality of distinctively mathematical explanations
In âWhat Makes a Scientific Explanation Distinctively Mathematical?â (2013b), Lange uses several compelling examples to argue that certain explanations for natural phenomena appeal primarily to mathematical, rather than natural, facts. In such explanations, the core explanatory facts are modally stronger than facts about causation, regularity, and other natural relations. We show that Lange's account of distinctively mathematical explanation is flawed in that it fails to account for the implicit directionality in each of his examples. This inadequacy is remediable in each case by appeal to ontic facts that account for why the explanation is acceptable in one direction and unacceptable in the other direction. The mathematics involved in these examples cannot play this crucial normative role. While Lange's examples fail to demonstrate the existence of distinctively mathematical explanations, they help to emphasize that many superficially natural scientific explanations rely for their explanatory force on relations of stronger-than-natural necessity. These are not opposing kinds of scientific explanations; they are different aspects of scientific explanation
The Kantian Framework of Complementarity
A growing number of commentators have, in recent years, noted the important
affinities in the views of Immanuel Kant and Niels Bohr. While these
commentators are correct, the picture they present of the connections between
Bohr and Kant is painted in broad strokes; it is open to the criticism that
these affinities are merely superficial. In this essay, I provide a closer,
structural, analysis of both Bohr's and Kant's views that makes these
connections more explicit. In particular, I demonstrate the similarities
between Bohr's argument, on the one hand, that neither the wave nor the
particle description of atomic phenomena pick out an object in the ordinary
sense of the word, and Kant's requirement, on the other hand, that both
'mathematical' (having to do with magnitude) and 'dynamical' (having to do with
an object's interaction with other objects) principles must be applicable to
appearances in order for us to determine them as objects of experience. I argue
that Bohr's 'Complementarity interpretation' of quantum mechanics, which views
atomic objects as idealizations, and which licenses the repeal of the principle
of causality for the domain of atomic physics, is perfectly compatible with,
and indeed follows naturally from a broadly Kantian epistemological framework.Comment: Slight change between this version and previous in the wording of the
first paragraph of the section 'Complementarity
The complementarity of mindshaping and mindreading
Why do we engage in folk psychology, that is, why do we think about and ascribe
propositional attitudes such as beliefs, desires, intentions etc. to people? On the
standard view, folk psychology is primarily for mindreading, for detecting mental states
and explaining and/or predicting peopleâs behaviour in terms of them. In contrast,
McGeer (1996, 2007, 2015), and Zawidzki (2008, 2013) maintain that folk psychology
is not primarily for mindreading but for mindshaping, that is, for moulding peopleâs
behavior and minds (e.g., via the imposition of social norms) so that coordination
becomes easier. Mindreading is derived from and only as effective as it is because of
mindshaping, not vice versa. I critically assess McGeerâs, and Zawidzkiâs proposal and
contend that three common motivations for the mindshaping view do not provide
sufficient support for their particular version of it. I argue furthermore that their
proposal underestimates the role that epistemic processing plays for mindshaping. And I
provide reasons for favouring an alternative according to which, in social cognition
involving ascriptions of propositional attitudes, neither mindshaping nor mindreading is primary but both are complementary in that effective mindshaping depends as much on mindreading as effective mindreading depends on mindshaping
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