Classical Insights and Today\u27s World

Professor Moravscik, as President of the Society, was invited to present his views on the current state of classical philosophy at the turn of the millennium. He comments on the role of the History of Philosophy in current education, sketches the work done in classical philosophy during the 20th century, posits Aristotelianism as an antidote for Cartesianism, and recommends a Platonic perspective for epistemology

The ‘Galilean Style in Science’ and the Inconsistency of Linguistic Theorising

Chomsky’s principle of epistemological tolerance says that in theoretical linguistics contradictions between the data and the hypotheses may be temporarily tolerated in order to protect the explanatory power of the theory. The paper raises the following problem: What kinds of contradictions may be tolerated between the data and the hypotheses in theoretical linguistics? First a model of paraconsistent logic is introduced which differentiates between week and strong contradiction. As a second step, a case study is carried out which exemplifies that the principle of epistemological tolerance may be interpreted as the tolerance of week contradiction. The third step of the argumentation focuses on another case study which exemplifies that the principle of epistemological tolerance must not be interpreted as the tolerance of strong contradiction. The reason for the latter insight is the unreliability and the uncertainty of introspective data. From this finding the author draws the conclusion that it is the integration of different data types that may lead to the improvement of current theoretical linguistics and that the integration of different data types requires a novel methodology which, for the time being, is not available

The ‘Galilean Style in Science’ and the Inconsistency of Linguistic Theorising

Chomsky’s principle of epistemological tolerance says that in theoretical linguistics contradictions between the data and the hypotheses may be temporarily tolerated in order to protect the explanatory power of the theory. The paper raises the following problem: What kinds of contradictions may be tolerated between the data and the hypotheses in theoretical linguistics? First a model of paraconsistent logic is introduced which differentiates between week and strong contradiction. As a second step, a case study is carried out which exemplifies that the principle of epistemological tolerance may be interpreted as the tolerance of week contradiction. The third step of the argumentation focuses on another case study which exemplifies that the principle of epistemological tolerance must not be interpreted as the tolerance of strong contradiction. The reason for the latter insight is the unreliability and the uncertainty of introspective data. From this finding the author draws the conclusion that it is the integration of different data types that may lead to the improvement of current theoretical linguistics and that the integration of different data types requires a novel methodology which, for the time being, is not available

Financing social and cohesion policy in an enlarged EU: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose?

The development of the Open Method of Coordination, agreement on the Lisbon Agenda and EU enlargement offered the prospect of a new and substantial EU social policy agenda. This article considers EU social and cohesion policies in the context of the recent negotiation of the EU budget for 2007—13. We find the Commission's wish to redistribute EU spending in favour of these policy areas and new member states was thwarted by key political features of EU budget making: CAP spending levels which are downwardly sticky; institutional arrangements which provide for budget making as, at best, a zero-sum game; and the preferences of contributor member states in the EU-15 to contain overall spending while preserving their net budget positions. Questions are thus raised as to the ability of the EU to make any progress, from a budgetary perspective, on the social and cohesion policy agenda in an enlarged EU

A simple, biologically plausible feature detector for language acquisition

Language has a complex grammatical system we still have to understand computationally and biologically (Hauser et al., 2002; Yang, 2013). However, some evolutionarily ancient mechanisms have been repurposed for grammar (Dehaene & Cohen, 2007; Endress, Cahill, et al., 2009; Endress, Nespor, et al., 2009; Fitch, 2017) so that we can use insight from other taxa into possible circuit level mechanisms of grammar. Drawing upon recent evidence for the importance of disinhibitory circuits across taxa and brain regions (Chevalier & Deniau, 1990; Letzkus et al., 2015; Hangya et al., 2014; Xu et al., 2013; Goddard et al., 2014; Mysore & Knudsen, 2012; Koyama et al., 2016; Koyama & Pujala, 2018), I suggest a simple circuit that explains the acquisition of core grammatical rules used in 85% of the world’s languages (Rubino, 2013): grammatical rules based on sameness/difference relations. This circuit acts as a sameness-detector. Different items are suppressed through inhibition, but presenting two identical items leads to inhibition of inhibition. The items are thus propagated for further processing. This sameness-detector thus acts as a feature detector for a grammatical rule. I suggest that having a set of feature detectors for elementary grammatical rules might make language acquisition feasible based on relatively simple computational mechanisms

Challenging assumptions of the enlargement literature : the impact of the EU on human and minority rights in Macedonia

This article argues that from the very start of the transition process in Macedonia, a fusion of concerns about security and democratisation locked local nationalist elites and international organisations intoa political dynamic that prioritised security over democratisation. This dynamic resulted in little progress in the implementation of human and minority rights until 2009, despite heavy EU involvement in Macedonia after the internal warfare of 2001. The effects of this informally institutionalised relationship have been overlooked by scholarship on EU enlargement towards Eastern Europe, which has made generalisations based on assumptions relevant to the democratisation of countries in Eastern Europe, but not the Western Balkans

Anatomy of the Soft-Photon Approximation in Hadron-Hadron Bremsstrahlung

A modified Low procedure for constructing soft-photon amplitudes has been used to derive two general soft-photon amplitudes, a two-s-two-t special amplitude $M^{TsTts}_{\mu}$ and a two-u-two-t special amplitude $M^{TuTts}_{\mu}$, where s, t and u are the Mandelstam variables. $M^{TsTts}_{\mu}$ depends only on the elastic T-matrix evaluated at four sets of (s,t) fixed by the requirement that the amplitude be free of derivatives ($\partial$T/$\partial$s and /or $\partial$T/$\partial t$). Likewise $M^{TuTts}_{\mu}$ depends only on the elastic T-matrix evaluated at four sets of (u,t). In deriving these amplitudes, we impose the condition that $M^{TsTts}_{\mu}$ and $M^{TuTts}_{\mu}$ reduce to $\bar{M}^{TsTts}_{\mu}$ and $\bar{M}^{TuTts}_{\mu}$, respectively, their tree level approximations. The amplitude $\bar{M}^{TsTts}_{\mu}$ represents photon emission from a sum of one-particle t-channel exchange diagrams and one-particle s-channel exchange diagrams, while the amplitude $\bar{M}^{TuTts} _{\mu}$ represents photon emission from a sum of one-particle t-channel exchange diagrams and one-particle u-channel exchange diagrams. The precise expressions for $\bar{M}^{TsTts}_{\mu}$ and $\bar{M}^{TuTts}_{\mu}$ are determined by using the radiation decomposition identities of Brodsky and Brown. We point out that it is theoretically impossible to describe all bremsstrahlung processes by using only a single class of soft-photon amplitudes. At least two different classes are required: the amplitudes which depend on s and t or the amplitudes which depend on u and t. When resonance effects are important, the amplitude $M^{TsTts}_{\mu}$, not $M^{Low(st)}_{\mu}$, should be used. For processes with strong u-channel exchange effects, the amplitude $M^{TuTts}_{\mu}$ should be the first choice.Comment: 49 pages report # LA-UR-92-270

Banking union in historical perspective: the initiative of the European Commission in the 1960s-1970s

This article shows that planning for the organization of EU banking regulation and supervision did not just appear on the agenda in recent years with discussions over the creation of the eurozone banking union. It unveils a hitherto neglected initiative of the European Commission in the 1960s and early 1970s. Drawing on extensive archival work, this article explains that this initiative, however, rested on a number of different assumptions, and emerged in a much different context. It first explains that the Commission's initial project was not crisis-driven; that it articulated the link between monetary integration and banking regulation; and finally that it did not set out to move the supervisory framework to the supranational level, unlike present-day developments

Radiative corrections to polarization observables in elastic electron-deuteron scattering in leptonic variables

The model--independent QED radiative corrections to polarization observables in elastic scattering of unpolarized and longitudinally--polarized electron beam by the deuteron target have been calculated in leptonic variables. The experimental setup when the deuteron target is arbitrarily polarized is considered and the procedure for applying derived results to the vector or tensor polarization of the recoil deuteron is discussed. The basis of the calculations consists of the account for all essential Feynman diagrams which results in the form of the Drell-Yan representation for the cross-section and use of the covariant parametrization of the deuteron polarization state. The numerical estimates of the radiative corrections are given for the case when event selection allows the undetected particles (photons and electron-positron pairs) and the restriction on the lost invariant mass is used.Comment: 43 pages,3 figures. To be published in ZhTEF. revised 14.02.2012. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:nucl-ex/0002003 by other author