578 research outputs found

    Contextual Epistemic Logic

    Full text link
    One of the highlights of recent informal epistemology is its growing theoretical emphasis upon various notions of context. The present paper addresses the connections between knowledge and context within a formal approach. To this end, a "contextual epistemic logic", CEL, is proposed, which consists of an extension of standard S5 epistemic modal logic with appropriate reduction axioms to deal with an extra contextual operator. We describe the axiomatics and supply both a Kripkean and a dialogical semantics for CEL. An illustration of how it may fruitfully be applied to informal epistemological matters is provided

    Logical content and empirical significance

    Get PDF

    Interpretation of quantal manifolds

    Full text link
    In quantum gravity, one looks for alternative structures to spacetime physics than ordinary real manifolds. Here, we propose an alternative universal construction containing the latter as an equilibrium state under the action of the universal diffeomorphism group. Our theory contains many other previous proposals in the literature as special cases. However, the crucial point we make is that those have to be appreciated in the universal context developed here.Comment: 16 pages. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1101.511

    Efficient holographic proofs

    Get PDF
    Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mathematics, 1996.Includes bibliographical references (p. 57-63).by Alexander Craig Russell.Ph.D

    Epistemology as Engineering?

    Get PDF
    According to a common objection to epistemological naturalism, no empirical, scientific theory of knowledge can be normative in the way epistemological theories need to be. In response, such naturalists as W.V. Quine have claimed naturalized epistemology can be normative by emulating engineering disciplines and addressing the relations of causal efficacy between our cognitive means and ends. This paper evaluates that "engineering reply" and finds it a mixed success. Based on consideration of what it might mean to call a theory "normative," seven versions of the normativity objection to epistemological naturalism are formulated. The engineering reply alone is sufficient to answer only the four least sophisticated versions. To answer the others, naturalists must draw on more resources than their engineering reply alone provides

    Ellipsis, economy, and the (non)uniformity of traces

    Get PDF
    A number of works have attempted to account for the interaction between movement and ellipsis in terms of an economy condition Max- Elide. We show that the elimination of MaxElide leads to an empirically superior account of these interactions. We show that a number of the core effects attributed to MaxElide can be accounted for with a parallelism condition on ellipsis. The remaining cases are then treated with a generalized economy condition that favors shorter derivations over longer ones. The resulting analysis has no need for the ellipsisspecific economy constraint MaxElide
    • …
    corecore