Consciousness

Consciousness is sometimes viewed as a particular parametric factor in the analogy of blood pressure or electric charge. The paper argues that this is an erroneous conception becomes consciousness involves a varied assortment of different phenomena that have no single unified commonality. And so even as ‘abnormal psychology’ has to be a disjointed assembly of diverse specialties so will ‘consciousness studies’ have to be

Temporal Aspects of Smart Contracts for Financial Derivatives

Implementing smart contracts to automate the performance of high-value over-the-counter (OTC) financial derivatives is a formidable challenge. Due to the regulatory framework and the scale of financial risk if a contract were to go wrong, the performance of these contracts must be enforceable in law and there is an absolute requirement that the smart contract will be faithful to the intentions of the parties as expressed in the original legal documentation. Formal methods provide an attractive route for validation and assurance, and here we present early results from an investigation of the semantics of industry-standard legal documentation for OTC derivatives. We explain the need for a formal representation that combines temporal, deontic and operational aspects, and focus on the requirements for the temporal aspects as derived from the legal text. The relevance of this work extends beyond OTC derivatives and is applicable to understanding the temporal semantics of a wide range of legal documentation

The Role of Rhetoric in Rational Argumentation

The structure of this discussion will be tripartite. First it will set out a way of distinguishing between rhetoric and strictly rational argumentation. Next it will consider some of the ramifications of this proposed way of looking at the matter—in particular what its implications are for rationality and for rhetoric, respectively. Finally it examines how this perspective bears on the project of philosophizing. The paper\u27s ultimate aim, accordingly, is to consider what light such an analysis can shed upon philosophy and philosophizing

Leibniz and the Plurality of Space-Time Frameworks

Paper by Nicholas Resche

Luck and the Enigmas of Fate

Luck is a formidable and ubiquitous factor in human life as we know it. It is a rogue force that prevents human life from being fully domesticated to rational management. This paper explores the nature of luck and its role in human life

Interpreting Philosophy. The Elements of Philosophical Hermeneutics

Metaphilosophy is philosophy’s poor and neglected cousin. Philosophers are on the whole too busy doing philosophy to take time to stand back and consider reflectively how the project itself actually works. And they lead tend to produce texts without too much consideration of how this looks from the standpoint of the consumer. All this, it seems to be, affords good reason for attending to philosophical hermeneutics, reflecting on the issue of how philosophical texts are to be understood and interpreted

Data, problems, heuristics and results in cognitive metaphor research

Cognitive metaphor research is characterised by the diversity of rival theories. Starting from this observation, the paper focuses on the problem of how the unity and diversity of cognitive theories of metaphor can be accounted for. The first part of the paper outlines a suitable metascientific approach which emerges as a modification of B. von Eckardt’s notion of research framework. In the second part, by the help of this approach, some aspects of the sophisticated relationship between Lakoff and Johnson’s, Glucksberg’s, and Gentner’s theories are discussed. The main finding is that the data, the problems, the heuristics and the hypotheses which have been partly shaped by the rivals contribute to the development of the particular theories to a considerable extent

Why is there anything at all? What does it mean to be a person? Rescher on metaphysics

In this essay, I set out key aspects of Nicholas’ Rescher’s Metaphysical Perspectives. I illustrate the tenor and value of the text based on extended analysis of Chapter 1 on fundamental issues of what there is and Chapter 2 on personhood. Rescher is one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century. His works are intrinsically interesting, but also important as resources for realists working in the social sciences