Systems of combinatory logic related to Quine's ‘New Foundations’

AbstractSystems TRC and TRCU of illative combinatory logic are introduced and shown to be equivalent in consistency strength and expressive power to Quine's set theory ‘New Foundations’ (NF) and the fragment NFU + Infinity of NF described by Jensen, respectively. Jensen demonstrated the consistency of NFU + Infinity relative to ZFC; the question of the consistency of NF remains open. TRC and TRCU are presented here as classical first-order theories, although they can be presented as equational theories; they are not constructive

THE PHILOSOPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF QUINE'S D-THESIS

The philosophical significance of Quine's D-thesis is considered. The D-thesis - "Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system? (W.V.0. Quine, From a Logical Point of View, p. 43) - named for Pierre Duhem, marked a significant turning point in the evolution of Quine's thoughts on epistemology. A brief survey of Quine's epistemological work is presented to show the evolution of his thought. Adolf Grünbaum's criticisms are examined and it is shown that the D-thesis can be defended from Grünbaum's attacks. Writings of Harry Frankfurt and Philip Quinn are considered in this context. Using some ideas due to Israel Scheffler, we are able to show that a D-theorist can avoid the subjectivist's problems. We conclude that the D-thesis is worthy of consideration as a possible basis for a philosophy of science

Rule analysis and social analysis

This thesis investigates the use of rules in the analysis of language mastery and human action, which are both viewed as social phenomena. The investigation is conducted through an examination of two analyses of the use of language in everyday social life and documents how each formulates a different understanding of rule-following in explaining linguistic and social action. The analyses in question are ‘Speech Act Theory' and 'Ethnomethodology'. The principal idea of speech act theory is that social action is rule-governed, and the theory attempts to explain the possibility of meaningful social interaction on that basis. The rigidities imposed by the notion of rule-governance frustrate that aim. The thesis then turns to an examination of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis and contrasts the notion of rule-orientation developed by that perspective. From that examination it becomes clear that what is on offer is not just a greater flexibility in the use of rules, but a restructuring of the concept of analysis itself. It is argued that re-structuring amounts to a reflexive conception of analysis. Its meaning and implications are enlarged upon through a close scrutiny of the later philosophy of Wittgenstein, particularly his concern with the nature of rule-following in his ‘Philosophical Investigations'. The thesis argues that his concern with rules was motivated by his insight that their use as ‘explanations’ of action said as much about the formulater of the rule as the activities the rules were held to formulate. The thesis concludes by outlining the meaning of this analytic reflexivity for social scientific findings

Semantic networks

AbstractA semantic network is a graph of the structure of meaning. This article introduces semantic network systems and their importance in Artificial Intelligence, followed by I. the early background; II. a summary of the basic ideas and issues including link types, frame systems, case relations, link valence, abstraction, inheritance hierarchies and logic extensions; and III. a survey of ‘world-structuring’ systems including ontologies, causal link models, continuous models, relevance, formal dictionaries, semantic primitives and intersecting inference hierarchies. Speed and practical implementation are briefly discussed. The conclusion argues for a synthesis of relational graph theory, graph-grammar theory and order theory based on semantic primitives and multiple intersecting inference hierarchies

Virtual Reality: Consciousness Really Explained! (Third Edition)

Employing the ideas of modern mathematics and biology, seen in the context of Ernst Cassirer's "Symbolic Forms, the author presents an entirely new and novel solution to the classical mind-brain problem. This is a "hard" book, I'm sorry, but it is the problem itself, and not me which has made it so. I say that Dennett, and, indeed, the whole of academia is wrong

Wittgenstein's philosophy of language

Includes bibliographical references

Rethinking the Culture - Economy Dialectic

The culture - economy dialectic (CED), the opposition of the concepts and phenomena of culture and economy, is one of the most important notions in the modern history of ideas. Both the disciplinary boundaries and much theoretical thought in social science are strongly influenced or even determined by the CED. Hence, a thorough analysis and evaluation of the CED might be useful to better understand the history of ideas in social science and the currently fashionable research on the cultural influences on economic differences between countries and regions. This book, my PhD thesis, attempts to do just that. The concepts of "culture" and "economy" (and related concepts) and the (assumed) relationships therebetween are compared and analysed. Empirical results from earlier studies are summarised and some new test are presented. These new tests are partly based on a measurement of Dutch regional culture. However, it appeared that most theories of the CED are (nearly) impossible to (empirically) verify. There seems to be some influence of wealth on specific cultural phenomena (such individualism and post-materialism), but the often assumed influence of culture on entrepreneurship and economic growth remains unconfirmed. Moreover, from an analysis of the theories themselves, it appears that most of these cannot be falsified and are, therefore, hardly 'scientific'. Many of the theories of the CED and, in fact, many theories of social science in general are of a conceptual rather than a causal nature. These theories cannot easily be falsified by empirical means alone, but must be studied by means of conceptual analysis. In the final conclusions, this book, therefore, argues for conceptual analysis in, and a more anarchist approach to, social science.Culture; Economy; Philosophy of Social Science; Economic Sociology; Economic Geography

Alien theory : the decline of materialism in the name of matter

The thesis tries to define and explain the rudiments of a 'nonphilosophical' or 'non-decisional' theory of materialism on the basis of a theoretical framework provided by the 'non-philosophy' of Francois Laruelle. Neither anti-philosophical nor anti-materialist in character, non-materialism tries to construct a rigorously transcendental theory of matter by using certain instances of philosophical materialism as its source material. The materialist decision to identify the real with matter is seen to retain a structural isomorphy with the phenomenological decision to identify the real with the phenomenon. Both decisions are shown to operate on the basis of a methodological idealism; materialism on account of its confusion of matter and concept; phenomenology by virtue of its confusion of phenomenon and logos. By dissolving the respectively 'materiological' and 'phenomenological' amlphibolies which are the result of the failure to effect a rigorously transcendental separation between matter and concept on the one hand; and between phenomenon and logos on the other, non-materialist theory proposes to mobilise the non-hybrid or non-decisional concepts of a 'matter-without-concept' and of a 'phenomenon-without-logos' in order to effect a unified but non-unitary theory of phenomenology and materialism. The result is a materialisation of thinking that operates according to matter's foreclosure to decision. That is to say, a transcendental theory of the phenomenon that licenses limitless phenomenological plasticity, unconstrained by the apparatus of eidetic intuition or any horizon of apophantic disclosure; yet one which is simultaneously a transcendental theory of matter, uncontaminated by the bounds of empirical perception and free of all phenomenological circumscription