71 research outputs found

    Extensions of modal logic KTB and other topics

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    This thesis covers four topics. They are the extensions of the modal logic KTB, the use of normal forms in modal logic, automated reasoning in the modal logic S4 and the problem of unavoidable words. Extensions of KTB: The modal logic KTB is the logic of reflexive and symmetric frames. Dually, KTB-algebras have a unary (normal) operator f that satisfies the identities f (x){u2265}x and {u231D}x{u2264}f ({u231D}f(x)). Extensions of KTB are subvarieties of the algebra KTB. Both of these form a lattice, and we investigate the structure of the bottom of the lattice of subvarieties. The unique atom is known to correspond to the modal logic whose frame is a single reflexive point. Yutaka demonstrated that this atom has a unique cover, corresponding to the frame of the two element chain. We construct covers of this element, and so demonstrate that there are a continuum of such covers. Normal Forms in Modal Logic: Fine proposed the use of normal forms as an alternative to traditional methods of determining Kripke completeness. We expand on this paper and demonstrate the application of normal forms to a number of traditional modal logics, and define new terms needed to apply normal forms in this situation. Automated reasoning in 84: History based methods for automated reasoning are well understood and accepted. Pliu{u0161}kevi{u010D}ius & Pliu{u0161}kevi{u010D}ien{u0117} propose a new, potentially revolutionary method of applying marks and indices to sequents. We show that the method is flawed, and empirically compare a different mark/index based method to the traditional methods instead. Unavoidable words: The unavoidable words problem is concerned with repetition in strings of symbols. There are two main ways to identify a word as unavoidable, one based on generalised pattern matching and one from an algorithm. Both methods are in NP, but do not appear to be in P. We define the simple unavoidable words as a subset of the standard unavoidable words that can be identified by the algorithm in P-time. We define depth separating IX x homomorphisms as an easy way to generate a subset of the unavoidable words using the pattern matching method. We then show that the two simpler problems are equivalent to each other

    Development of a Predictive Modeling System for Validation of the Cumulative Mirobial Inactivation of the Salmonellae in Pepperoni Utilizing a Non-Pathogenic Surrogate Microorganism (Enterococcus faecalis)

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    Salmonellosis is the most frequently occurring bacterial foodborne illness in the United States and the human case rate has not improved for the past two decades. The federal agency responsible for oversight of meat and poultry processors has announced the intent to extend existing pathogen reduction performance standards for Salmonella spp. to cover all classes of products including fermented sausages that are currently produced under HACCP plans that are validated for control of Escherichia coli O157:H7. The proposed regulatory modifications will require processors to revalidate HACCP plan controls to achieve either a 6.5 or a 7.0 log10 inactivation of the salmonellae. Validated and accepted predictive microbial inactivation models that may be used to estimate the inactivation effects achieved for different product formulations under different processing conditions hold the potential to substantially reduce the impact that the proposed regulatory changes might have on the industry. This review examines the history of food preservation; the history of fermented sausages; the pepperoni production process; the food safety hazards most often associated with fermented sausage products; recent outbreaks of illness associated with fermented meat products; and the process controls that may be employed to prevent foodborne illness from consumption of fermented sausage products. The papers intended for publication will be beneficial to processors of pepperoni, providing a modeled estimate of the log10 reductions achieved under a variety of processing conditions

    The Issue of Solipsism in the early works of Sartre and Wittgenstein

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    Solipsism was conceived as a preliminary to grounding knowledge in the seventeenth century. This doctrine suggested that, in order to achieve certainty, one had to temporarily admit the conceivability of doubt about the existence of other minds and the external world as a whole. The existence of the external world was then taken to be established by means of proofs of the existence of a unique creator, or assured by means of transcendental deduction. By comparison, nothing seems to prove the existence of others. On the one hand, nothing seems to count as proof a posteriori of the existence of others, for the doubt it would dispel cannot be grounded in experience. On the other hand, nor can a proof which would dispel such doubt be produced a priori, for the empirical and generalized absence of others is conceivable a posteriori. Thus, nothing seems to exclude the possibility of an a priori discovery of one’s unicity. This thesis endeavours to bring out the similarity of the treatment of this difficulty by Sartre and Wittgenstein. Each of these philosophers confronted the illusion of confinement that presupposes admitting the generalized absence of others. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre proposes a conceptual means to establish that the theoretical problem of the existence of other minds is a pseudo-problem. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein proposes to dissolve the philosophical problems of the existence of the external world and the existence of other minds via reflexion on the intelligibility conditions of expression. Both cases involve dispelling the appearance that doubt about the world and other minds is possible and required. Not only that proof of the existence of other minds is impossible, it is also superfluous. To require such a proof therefore can lead to nothing but missing the obviousness of our commitments to others, and thereby to denying their existence

    A Study of Existentialism in Certain Poems by Charles Baudelaire, R.M. Rilke, and T.S. Eliot

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    This study deals with three poets from three different countries--Germany, France, and England--and therefore may be considered a dissertation in comparative literature. It examines the reflection of a complex philosophical concept in an aesthetic form--literature--and thereby involves the two distinct disciplines of philosophy and literature. The interdisciplinary emphasis of this dissertation represents a distinguishing aspect of the Inter-collegiate Program

    Remains of a Self:Solitudes and Responsibilities

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    Probabilistic Arguments in Mathematics

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    This thesis addresses a question that emerges naturally from some observations about contemporary mathematical practice. Firstly, mathematicians always demand proof for the acceptance of new results. Secondly, the ability of mathematicians to tell if a discourse gives expression to a proof is less than perfect, and the computers they use are subject to a variety of hardware and software failures. So false results are sometimes accepted, despite insistence on proof. Thirdly, over the past few decades, researchers have also developed a variety of methods that are probabilistic in nature. Even if carried out perfectly, these procedures only yield a conclusion that is very likely to be true. In some cases, these chances of error are precisely specifiable and can be made as small as desired. The likelihood of an error arising from the inherently uncertain nature of these probabilistic algorithms can therefore be made vanishingly small in comparison to the chances of an error arising when implementing an equivalent deductive algorithm. Moreover, the structure of probabilistic algorithms tends to minimise these Implementation Errors too. So overall, probabilistic methods are sometimes more reliable than deductive ones. This invites the question: ‘Are mathematicians rational in continuing to reject these probabilistic methods as a means of establishing mathematical claims?

    Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 Michael Starks 3rd Edition

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    This collection of articles and reviews are about human behavior (as are all articles by anyone about anything), and so about the limitations of having a recent monkey ancestry (8 million years or much less depending on viewpoint) and manifest words and deeds within the framework of our innate psychology as presented in the table of intentionality. As famous evolutionist Richard Leakey says, it is critical to keep in mind not that we evolved from apes, but that in every important way, we are apes. If everyone was given a real understanding of this (i.e., of human ecology and psychology to actually give them some control over themselves), maybe civilization would have a chance. As things are however the leaders of society have no more grasp of things than their constituents and so collapse into anarchy and dictatorship appears inevitable. Since philosophy proper is essentially the same as the descriptive psychology of higher order thought (behavior), and philosophical problems are the result of our innate psychology, or as Wittgenstein put it, due to the lack of perspicuity of language, they run throughout human discourse and behavior, so there is endless need for philosophical analysis, not only in the ‘human sciences’ of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, history, literature, religion, etc., but in the ‘hard sciences’ of physics, mathematics, and biology. It is universal to mix the language game questions with the real scientific ones as to what the empirical facts are. Scientism is ever present and the master has laid it before us long ago, i.e., Wittgenstein (hereafter W) beginning with the Blue and Brown Books in the early 1930’s. Although I separate the book into sections on philosophy and psychology, religion, biology, the ‘hard sciences’ and politics/sociology/economics, all the articles, like all behavior, are intimately connected if one knows how to look at them. As I note, The Phenomenological Illusion (oblivion to our automated System 1) is universal and extends not merely throughout philosophy but throughout life. I am sure that Chomsky, Obama, Zuckerberg and the Pope would be incredulous if told that they suffer from the same problems as Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, or that that they differ only in degree from drug and sex addicts in being motivated by stimulation of their frontal cortices by the delivery of dopamine (and over 100 other chemicals) via the ventral tegmentum and the nucleus accumbens, but it’s clearly true. While the phenomenologists only wasted a lot of people’s time, they are wasting the earth and their descendant’s future. I hope that these essays will help to separate the philosophical issues of language use from the scientific factual issues, and in some small way hinder the collapse of civilization, or at least make it clear why it is doomed. Those wishing to read my other writings may see Talking Monkeys 2nd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle 2nd ed (2019), Suicide by Democracy 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Stucture of Human Behavior (2019) and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019

    Nonhistory: Slavery and the Black Historical Imagination

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    This dissertation examines the theoretical significance of slavery in contemporary novels by black writers of English and French expression. I contend that black authors like Gayl Jones, Edouard Glissant, Léonora Miano, Sherley Anne Williams, Jean Métellus, and Fred D’Aguiar use literature to revise historical narratives and generate new histories of slavery. By reading novels as historical texts, I theorize nonhistory as a critique of the epistemological limitations of historiography. I argue that Black Francophone and Anglophone Atlantic writers of the postcolonial and post-Jim Crow era narrate the past as a nonhistory whose discursive and aesthetic afterimages expose the disjointed experience of time engendered by the lived experience of antiblackness. This project questions the endurance of slavery in the black historical imagination. In thinking with black Anglophone and Francophone writers, I consider how literary texts explore complementary dimensions to historical inquiry. By theorizing nonhistory as a historiographical tool, I question what kinds of subjunctive knowledges might be invented to explain the often-disjointed experience of black time

    Language, origin and mimesis : a particular reading of the relationship between word and image

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    Cataloged from PDF version of article.In the historical affinity of West, language has always been ‘erected’ as a construct of Idea (sign/presence/speech/logos). In this ‘logocentric teleology’ (Derrida), opposition between nature and institution, play of differences between symbol, sign, image etc. is a naïve conceptualization of representation, an uncritical opposition between sensible and intelligible, between soul and body proper and the diversity of sense functions. By the creative links found among various authors such as Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Gilles Deleuze, Philippe Lacoue- Labarthe, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Luc Nancy, through the inscription of the belowmentioned keywords found in their numerous studies, this thesis is a theoretical survey of how the erection or the usage of language that has an absolute link with God’s logos that belongs to a particular history and time, can be deconstructed. As a prospect, it, further, will be promised that certain authors in the history of literature, who have been condemned according to their distance from the logos, instead of being rendered in passivity, can be studied by the pathway followed and developed by this thesis.Kasap, Çağrı BarışM.S
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