The philosophical significance of binary categories in Habermas’s discourse ethics

The philosophical programme associated with the discourse ethics of Jürgen Habermas has been widely discussed in the literature. The fact that Habermas has devoted a considerable part of his work to the elaboration of this philosophical programme indicates that discourse ethics can be regarded as a cornerstone of his communication-theoretic approach to society. In essence, Habermas conceives of discourse ethics as a philosophical framework which derives the coordinative power of social normativity from the discursive power of communicative rationality. Although there is an extensive literature on Habermas’s communication-theoretic account of society, almost no attention has been paid to the fact that the theoretical framework which undergirds his discourse ethics is based on a number of binary conceptual divisions. It is the purpose of this paper to shed light on the philosophical significance of these binary categories in Habermas’s discourse ethics and thereby demonstrate that their complexity is indicative of the subject’s tension-laden immersion in social reality

The Wonder of Colors and the Principle of Ariadne

The Principle of Ariadne, formulated in 1988 ago by Walter Carnielli and Carlos Di Prisco and later published in 1993, is an infinitary principle that is independent of the Axiom of Choice in ZF, although it can be consistently added to the remaining ZF axioms. The present paper surveys, and motivates, the foundational importance of the Principle of Ariadne and proposes the Ariadne Game, showing that the Principle of Ariadne, corresponds precisely to a winning strategy for the Ariadne Game. Some relations to other alternative. set-theoretical principles are also briefly discussed

APETALA2 antagonizes the transcriptional activity of AGAMOUS in regulating floral stem cells in Arabidopsis thaliana.

APETALA2 (AP2) is best known for its function in the outer two floral whorls, where it specifies the identities of sepals and petals by restricting the expression of AGAMOUS (AG) to the inner two whorls in Arabidopsis thaliana. Here, we describe a role of AP2 in promoting the maintenance of floral stem cell fate, not by repressing AG transcription, but by antagonizing AG activity in the center of the flower. We performed a genetic screen with ag-10 plants, which exhibit a weak floral determinacy defect, and isolated a mutant with a strong floral determinacy defect. This mutant was found to harbor another mutation in AG and was named ag-11. We performed a genetic screen in the ag-11 background to isolate mutations that suppress the floral determinacy defect. Two suppressor mutants were found to harbor mutations in AP2. While AG is known to shut down the expression of the stem cell maintenance gene WUSCHEL (WUS) to terminate floral stem cell fate, AP2 promotes the expression of WUS. AP2 does not repress the transcription of AG in the inner two whorls, but instead counteracts AG activity

O papel da determinação e da condição da força na teoria da relevância para a interpretação das implicaturas griceanas

The notion of implicature has been a matter of discussion since Grice put it forward. He proposed a schema to explain how implicatures are generated and inferred, but the key condition it contains has been surprisingly overlooked. Davis detected it and named it determinacy, though for him this requirement raises several problems that make the whole Gricean theory of implicature untenable. I claim that, although the determinacy condition is flawed, it still captures a crucial mechanism of how implicatures are interpreted. I attempt to recover this requirement under the relevance theory approach and show that, unlike the determinacy condition, the strength condition does not face the problems Davis formulates.Keywords: implicature, determinacy, strength, Cooperative Principle, principle of relevance, Gricean theory, relevance theory. A noção de implicatura tem sido objeto de discussão desde que Grice a apresentou. Ele propôs um esquema para explicar como as implicaturas são geradas e inferidas, mas a condição-chave que ela contém foi surpreendentemente ignorada. Davis a detectou e chamou de determinação, embora para ele esse requisito suscite vários problemas que tornam insustentável toda a teoria griceana da implicatura. Afirmo que, embora a condição de determinação seja falha, ela ainda captura um mecanismo crucial de como as implicaturas são interpretadas. Tento recuperar esse requisito sob a abordagem da teoria da relevância e mostro que, diferentemente da condição de determinação, a condição de força não enfrenta os problemas que Davis formula.Palavras-chave: implicatura, determinação, força, Princípio Cooperativo, princípio da relevância, teoria griceana, teoria da relevância

NOTES ON Bl-mathrmADomega1mathrm{AD}_{omega_{1}} (Infinite Combinatorics and Forcing Theory)

In this note, we show that the axiom B1-mathrm{AD}_{$omega$_{1} is inconsistent under ZF + mathrm{AC}_{(v}(mathbb{R}). This answers the question of Löwe in [3, Question 52]

A global analysis of liquidity effects, interest rate rules, and deflationary traps

The prevailing models of liquidity traps suggest that a deflationary trap is a stable steady state in a multiple equilibria model. These models implicitly assume that the central bank accelerates the process of disinflation by following a Taylor rule even though there is a long run positive relationship between the nominal interest rate and inflation rate. This paper presents a reduced-form model that integrates liquidity effects into the analysis of interest rate rules to generalize the previous results about uniqueness, determinacy, and dynamic property of the economy.Taylor rules, liquidity effects, liquidity traps, deflation.

Monetary policy indeterminacy in the U.S.: results from a classical test

We work with a newly developed method to empirically assess whether a specified new-Keynesian business cycle monetary model estimated with U.S. quarterly data is consistent with a unique equilibrium or multiple equilibria under rational expectations. We conduct classical tests to verify if the structural model is correctly specified. Conditional on a positive answer, we formally assess if such model is either consistent with a unique equilibrium or with indeterminacy. Importantly, our full-system approach requires neither the use of prior distributions nor that of nonstandard inference. The case of an indeterminate equilibrium in the pre-1984 sample and of a determinate equilibrium in the post-1984 sample is favored by the data. The long-run coefficients on inflation and the output gap in the monetary policy rule are found to be weakly identified. However, our results are further supported by a proposed identification-robust indicator of indeterminacyGMM, Indeterminatezza, Massima Verosimiglianza, Errata specificazione, modello neo-Keynesiano per il ciclo economico, VAR, Identificazione debole GMM, Indeterminacy, Maximum Likelihood, Misspecification, new-Keynesian business cycle model, VAR, Weak identification.

Limited asset market participation, income inequality and macroeconomic volatility

By introducing external consumption habits and Limited Asset Market Participation in an otherwise standard New Keynesian DSGE model we uncover a causality link between limited asset market participation, consumption inequality and macroeconomic volatility. We also obtain that monetary contractions have redistributive effects in favour of asset holders, broadly confirming the findings in Coibion et al. (2012). Finally we analyze the impact of redistributive fiscal policies that target consumption inequality between households groups. Such policies have beneficial implications for macroeconomic stability, bringing the dynamic performance of the model close to the one generated by representative-agent DSGE models

The Age of Trickery

This is partly fictional. It is chiefly a reconstruction (not always faithful) of Hume’s fundamental uses of notions of similarity, mostly based on Enquiry. It is the first part (out of four) of a monograph on the evolution of similarity toolmaking. Histories of doctrines are common in our discipline, not so for histories of tools; this is what it’s about. What’s disturbing: I write as if I were talking about the customs and beliefs of ancient tribes instead of real philosophers. Advantages: helps focus on what similarity tools are apt to, I don’t have to worry about my Hume being merely MY Hume; more fun. Here is the thematic layout: 1.1: (very fictional) methodological introduction; page 2. 1.2: on the origin of ideas + missing shade of blue; p. 4. 1.3: the Xenophobia model; p. 12. 1.4: case studies of cognitive trickery; p. 16 : 1.4.1: arguments from experience; p. 17. 1.4.2: the idea of necessary connection; p. 21. 1.4.3: abstract and very general ideas; p. 23. 1.5: conceptual distinctions between used similarity tools and a few comments; p. 29

Monetary policy in a non-representative agent economy: A survey

It is well-known that central bank policies affect not only macroeconomic aggregates, but also their distribution across economic agents. Similarly, a number of papers demonstrated that heterogeneity of agents may matter for the transmission of monetary policy on macro variables. Despite this, the mainstream monetary economics literature has so far been dominated by dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models with representative agents. This article aims to tilt this imbalance towards heterogeneous agents setups by surveying the main positive and normative findings of this line of the literature, and suggesting areas in which these models could be implemented. In particular, we review studies that analyze the heterogeneity of (i) households’ income, (ii) households’ preferences, (iii) consumers’ age, (iv) expectations, and (v) firms’ productivity and financial position. We highlight the results on issues that, by construction, cannot be investigated in a representative agent framework and discuss important papers modifying the findings from the representative agent literature.Heterogeneous Agents; Monetary Policy