A Tapestry: Susan Edwards-McKie Interviews Professor Dr B. F. McGuinness on the Occasion of His 90th Birthday

Susan Edwards-McKie interviews Professor Dr B. F. McGuinness on the occasion of his 90th birthday

Inference Rules and the Meaning of the Logical Constants

The dissertation provides an analysis and elaboration of Michael Dummett's proof-theoretic notions of validity. Dummett's notions of validity are contrasted with standard proof-theoretic notions and formally evaluated with respect to their adequacy to propositional intuitionistic logic

Putnam and contemporary fictionalism

Putnam rejects having argued in the terms of the argument known in the literature as “the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument”. He considers that mathematics contribution to physics does not have to be interpreted in platonist terms but in his favorite modal variety (Putnam 1975; Putnam 2012). The purpose of this paper is to consider Putnam’s acknowledged argument and philosophical position against contemporary so called in the literature ‘fictionalist’ views about applied mathematics. The conclusion will be that the account of the applicability of mathematics that stems from Putnam‘s acknowledged argument can be assimilated to so-called ‘fictionalist’ views about applied mathematics

Putnam and contemporary fictionalism

Putnam rejects having argued in the terms of the argument known in the literature as “the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument”. He considers that mathematics contribution to physics does not have to be interpreted in platonist terms but in his favorite modal variety (Putnam 1975; Putnam 2012).The purpose of this paper is to consider Putnam’s acknowledged argument and philosophical position against contemporary so called in the literature ‘fictionalist’ views about applied mathematics.The conclusion will be that the account of the applicability of mathematics that stems from Putnam‘s acknowledged argument can be assimilated in many aspects to so-called ‘fictionalist’ views about applied mathematics. ; Putnam rechaza haber suscrito el argumento conocido como "argumento de la indispensabilidad de Quine y Putnam". Considera que la contribución de la matemática a la física no tiene por qué interpretarse en términos platónicos sino en términos modales (Putnam 1975; Putnam 2012). En este trabajo se contrapone el argumento que Putnam sostiene haber defendido—y la posición filosófica que lo sustenta—, a ciertas concepciones ficcionalistas contemporáneas de la matemática aplicada. De ese análisis se concluye que la concepción de la aplicabilidad de la matemática que subyace a la propuesta de Putnam coincide en muchos aspectos con las concepciones ficcionalistas analizada

ACPQ Special Issue on Elizabeth Anscombe : Editor's Introduction

Introduction to Special Issue of the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly on The Philosophy of Elizabeth AnscombePostprintNon peer reviewe

Eleccions mitjançant el vot d'aprovació. El mètode de Phragmén i algunes variants

S'estudien diverses variants d'un mètode de representació proporcional que Edvard Phragmén va proposar a finals del segle xix. Cada elector expressa la seva opinió mitjançant un vot d'aprovació, on indica totes les opcions que li semblen adients. Les opcions poden ser candidats individuals, com suposava Phragmén, o bé candidatures de partit que ofereixen múltiples representants cadascuna. Donat un conjunt de vots d'aquest tipus i un nombre prefixat d'escons, es tracta de repartir aquests escons entre les diferents candidatures de manera que el resultat sigui el més representatiu possible. El present estudi presta una atenció especial a una propietat de monotonia que demana que l'addició d'aprovacions a favor d'una candidatura no pugui produir una disminució del nombre d'escons que li són assignats. En la variant bàsica, on els escons s'assignen mitjançant un procediment seqüencial, aquesta monotonia es compleix en el cas de candidats individuals, però no en el cas de candidatures de partit. També s'exploren breument unes variants directes, on els escons s'assignen tots d'una vegada mitjançant algun criteri adient d'optimització. Aquestes variants semblen millors des del punt de vista de la monotonia, però presenten un problema de multiplicitat de solucions que fa necessari algun criteri addicional de selecció.We study certain variants of a method for proportional representation that was proposed at the end of the nineteenth century by Edvard Phragmén. Every elector expresses his opinion by means of an approval ballot, where he indicates all the options that he deems suitable. The options can be individual candidates, as it was considered by Phragmén, or party candidatures which can provide several representatives each. Given a set of votes of this kind and a prefixed number of seats, the aim is to distribute these seats among the candidatures so as to achieve as much representativeness as possible. This work pays special attention to a condition of monotonicity which requires that adding approvals in favour of a certain candidature cannot result in its getting a smaller number of seats. In the basic variant, where seats are assigned by means of a sequential procedure, such a monotonicity holds in the case of individual candidates but not in the general case. We briefly explore also some direct variants, where seats are assigned all at once by means of a suitable optimization criterion. These variants seem to be better from the point of view of monotonicity. However, they suffer from a problem of multiplicity of solutions that calls for a supplementary criterion to choose among them