What is a premature death?

The one who dies is deprived of goods that this person would have enjoyed if he or she had continued living, according to the popular “deprivation account of harm.” The person who dies “prematurely” is generally thought to suffer the most harm from death. However, the concept of a premature death is unclear, as will be shown. I will evaluate various definitions of a premature death and will argue that the existing definitions are too ambiguous and unreliable to serve as the basis for estimating the degree of harm from death

What is a logical diagram?

Robert Brandom’s expressivism argues that not all semantic content may be made fully explicit. This view connects in interesting ways with recent movements in philosophy of mathematics and logic (e.g. Brown, Shin, Giaquinto) to take diagrams seriously - as more than a mere “heuristic aid” to proof, but either proofs themselves, or irreducible components of such. However what exactly is a diagram in logic? Does this constitute a semiotic natural kind? The paper will argue that such a natural kind does exist in Charles Peirce’s conception of iconic signs, but that fully understood, logical diagrams involve a structured array of normative reasoning practices, as well as just a “picture on a page”

What is “Vintage” in IR? A writer's note

The style of writing in international relations (IR) has evolved in recent decades. The lessons of “vintage” IR, to which we return in this article, have been largely forgotten by those writing in the discipline today. A merit will be substantial, we argue, in drawing more heavily from works by previous masters. Several lessons in style follow

Vainu Bappu Memorial Lecture: What is a sunspot?

Sunspots have been known in the West since Galileo Galilei and Thomas Harriot first used telescopes to observe the Sun nearly four centuries ago; they have been known to the Chinese for more than two thousand years. They appear as relatively dark patches on the surface of the Sun, and are caused by concentrations of magnetism which impede the flow of heat from deep inside the Sun up to its othewise brilliant surface. The spots are not permanent: the total number of spots on the Sun varies cyclically in time, with a period of about eleven years, associated with which there appear to be variations in our climate. When there are many spots, it is more dangerous for spacecraft to operate. The cause of the spots is not well understood; nor is it known for sure how they die. Their structure beneath the surface of the Sun is in some dispute, although much is known about their properties at the surface, including an outward material flow which was discovered by John Evershed observing the Sun from Kodaikanal a hundred years ago. I shall give you a glimpse of how we are striving to deepen our understanding of these fascinating features, and of some of the phenomena that appear to be associated with them.Comment: Lecture delivered at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, December 2008 Typing errors corrected To appear in Magnetic Coupling between the Interior and the Atmosphere of the Sun, ed. S.S. Hasan & R.J. Rutten, Astr. Sp. Sci. Pro

What Is a Recipe?

The ontology of recipes is by and large unexplored. In this paper, I offer a three-steps account. After introducing some key terminology, I distinguish four main options for a theory of recipes: realism, constructivism, existentialism, and the na < ve approach. Hence, I first argue that recipes are social entities whose identity depends (also) on a process of identification, typically performed by means of a performative utterance on the part of a cook (e.g. "This is fettuccine Alfredo," "This is falafel"); thus, the best theoretical framework for a theory of recipes is a constructivist. Secondly, I argue that the identity of recipes can be grasped only by being suitably acquainted with the dishes that instantiate them, because of the impossibility to spell out recipes in details that would match a full-fledged dish; hence, the authority to establish the identity of a recipe rests on a process of apprenticeship. Finally, I argue that the identity of recipes and-vicariously-of the dishes that instantiate them, rest on three factors: the expertise required on the part of the cook; authenticity (in turn based on the fit and approval rate of any purported rendering); and the open-ended character of recipes

What Is a Kamisar?

My good and old friend Yale Kamisar is said to be retiring after a remarkable life in academe spanning almost half a century. I deem it my extraordinary good fortune to have been able to count Yale as a friend for thirty-seven of those years (not that we were enemies the rest of the time), and to have been able to serve as a collaborator of his, working together in the vineyards of the law, for virtually the entirety of our acquaintance. And thus I am especially delighted to have this opportunity to offer up a fair and balanced appraisal and assessment of Yale as he settles into his new-found status of alter kocker

“It is Magic”: A Global Perspective on what Technology Means to Youth

As technology becomes ever more pervasive, it is increasingly important to understand the relationships between technology and youth. We seek to understand this bond at a global level. We have conducted focus groups and\ud video diaries with middle-school aged children in three different countries: Hungary, India, and Morocco. Our exploration has yielded five themes highlighting the emotional perspectives of youth regarding the devices in their everyday lives: 1) awe and appreciation, 2) fun and entertainment, 3) boredom, 4) communication, and 5) negativity. This paper discusses these themes and their\ud significance

What is a digital state?

There is much discussion about whether the human mind is a computer, whether the human brain could be emulated on a computer, and whether at all physical entities are computers (pancomputationalism). These discussions, and others, require criteria for what is digital. I propose that a state is digital if and only if it is a token of a type that serves a particular function - typically a representational function for the system. This proposal is made on a syntactic level, assuming three levels of description (physical, syntactic, semantic). It suggests that being digital is a matter of discovery or rather a matter of how we wish to describe the world, if a functional description can be assumed. Given the criterion provided and the necessary empirical research, we should be in a position to decide on a given system (e.g. the human brain) whether it is a digital system and can thus be reproduced in a different digital system (since digital systems allow multiple realization)