Skill building is a widely recognized teaching goal in philosophy. Some well-researched skill building techniques include scaffolded assignment design, low-stakes assignments, and peer-review. Many papers have highlighted the efficacy of these techniques by demonstrating novel course and assignment design; for example, the use of blogging in philosophy courses has been shown to have positive results on student writing. While the efficacy of skill building centered course design on student learning seems uncontroversial, two major problems are typically raised: the time investment (...) for such course design is significant and implementing these techniques in large classes is not possible. The central aim of this paper is to combat this second claim. I present a course designed around skill building that has been successfully implemented in classes of from 120 to 450 students. I show some techniques that make this implementation possible and not unwieldy, and I argue that students both improved their philosophical skills and enjoyed the course design. (shrink)

Successful implementation of teaching and learning in the classrooms (lecture halls) with large numbers of students has always been and remains one of the constant concerns of teachers. Recently, this has become more challenging because it is generally required that teaching should be developed according to new methodologies. The main hypothesis of this research paper is to give a modest contribution to researching and defining the possibilities for increasing the efficiency of teaching and learning in the realization of lectures (...) in classrooms with large numbers of students. The objectives of this research paper will be focused on: more persuasive transfer of knowledge to students, motivation of students in their critical thinking, and engaging students in problem solving. One of the main objectives is to research teaching methodology through which not only will the objectives of acquisition of new scientific knowledge be reached, but also improvement in teaching and a more rational and relaxing environment. (shrink)

We prove two sets of results concerning computational complexity classes. First, we propose a new variation of the random oracle hypothesis, originally posed by Bennett and Gill after they showed that relative to a randomly chosen oracle, with probability 1. Their original hypothesis was quickly disproven in several ways, most famously in 1992 with the result that, in spite of the classes being shown unequal with probability 1. Here we propose a variation of what it means to be “large” (...) using the Ellentuck topology. In this new context, we demonstrate that the set of oracles separating and is not small, and obtain similar results for the separation of from along with the separation of from. We also show that the set of oracles equating with is large in this new sense. We demonstrate that this version of the hypothesis provides a sufficient condition for unrelativized relationships, at least in the cases considered here. Second, we examine the descriptive complexity of the classes of oracles providing the separations for these various classes, and determine their exact placement in the Borel hierarchy. (shrink)

We prove that large cardinals need not generally exhibit their large cardinal nature in HOD. For example, a supercompact cardinal κ need not be weakly compact in HOD, and there can be a proper class of supercompact cardinals in V, none of them weakly compact in HOD, with no supercompact cardinals in HOD. Similar results hold for many other types of large cardinals, such as measurable and strong cardinals.

We prove two general results about the preservation of extendible and $C^{(n)}$ -extendible cardinals under a wide class of forcing iterations (Theorems 5.4 and 7.5). As applications we give new proofs of the preservation of Vopěnka’s Principle and $C^{(n)}$ -extendible cardinals under Jensen’s iteration for forcing the GCH [17], previously obtained in [8, 27], respectively. We prove that $C^{(n)}$ -extendible cardinals are preserved by forcing with standard Easton-support iterations for any possible $\Delta _2$ -definable behaviour of the power-set function (...) on regular cardinals. We show that one can force proper class-many disagreements between the universe and HOD with respect to the calculation of successors of regular cardinals, while preserving $C^{(n)}$ -extendible cardinals. We also show, assuming the GCH, that the class forcing iteration of Cummings–Foreman–Magidor for forcing $\diamondsuit _{\kappa ^+}^+$ at every $\kappa $ [10] preserves $C^{(n)}$ -extendible cardinals. We give an optimal result on the consistency of weak square principles and $C^{(n)}$ -extendible cardinals. In the last section prove another preservation result for $C^{(n)}$ -extendible cardinals under very general (not necessarily definable or weakly homogeneous) class forcing iterations. As applications we prove the consistency of $C^{(n)}$ -extendible cardinals with $\mathrm {{V}}=\mathrm {{HOD}}$, and also with $\mathrm {GA}$ (the Ground Axiom) plus $\mathrm {V}\neq \mathrm {HOD}$, the latter being a strengthening of a result from [14]. (shrink)

This paper is a sequel to Tzouvaras :571–601, 2010), where a local version of ZFC, LZFC, was introduced and examined and transitive models of ZFC with properties that resemble large cardinal properties, namely Mahlo and Π11\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\Pi_1^1}$$\end{document}-indescribable models, were considered. By analogy we refer to such models as “large models”, and the properties in question as “large model properties”. Continuing here in the same spirit we consider further large (...) model properties, that resemble stronger large cardinals, namely, “elementarily embeddable”, “extendible” and “strongly extendible”, “critical” and “strongly critical”, “self-critical” and “strongly self-critical”, the definitions of which involve elementary embeddings. Each large model property ϕ gives rise to a localization axiom Locϕ saying that every set belongs to a transitive model of ZFC satisfying ϕ. The theories LZFCϕ = LZFC + Locϕ are local analogues of the theories ZFC+“there is a proper class of large cardinals ψ”, where ψ is a large cardinal property. If sext is the property of strong extendibility, it is shown that LZFCsext proves Powerset and Σ1-Collection. In order to refute V = L over LZFC, we combine the existence of strongly critical models with an axiom of different flavor, the Tall Model Axiom. V = L can also be refuted by TMA plus the axiom GC saying that “there is a greatest cardinal”, although it is not known if TMA + GC is consistent over LZFC. Finally Vopěnka’s Principle and its impact on LZFC are examined. It is shown that LZFCsext + V P proves Powerset and Replacement, i.e., ZFC is fully recovered. The same is true for some weaker variants of LZFCsext. Moreover the theories LZFCsext+V P and ZFC+V P are shown to be identical. (shrink)

If large language models (LLMs) are models, what do they represent exactly? I address this question by applying the various conceptions of epistemic representation that have been entertained by philosophers of science to this case. After discarding the idea that they would represent the structure of natural languages, I argue that LLMs do not directly represent the world by linguistic means either, but rather a certain class of appropriate linguistic production that is constructed by their makers. They are (...) mostly used to generate fictitious instances of this class, although these fictions can be performative when appropriated by humans. The main implication of this analysis is that conversing with a LLM chatbot amounts to engaging in a fiction, where our own imagination plays a central role. I examine some ethical consequences of this conclusion regarding how LLMs are currently deployed in numerous places to serve as “AI assistants”. (shrink)

We use a reverse Easton forcing iteration to obtain a universe with a definable well-order, while preserving the GCH and proper classes of a variety of very large cardinals. This is achieved by coding using the principle ◊ $_{k^ - }^* $ at a proper class of cardinals k. By choosing the cardinals at which coding occurs sufficiently sparsely, we are able to lift the embeddings witnessing the large cardinal properties without having to meet any non-trivial master (...) conditions. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Background Concepts for Examining LTS Dynamics Societal Implications of LTS References and Further Reading.

Open and Distance Learning (ODL) is a mode of providing flexible educational opportunities at their doorsteps both in terms of access and multiple modes of acquiring knowledge. In Open and Distance Learning (ODL) institutions it is difficult to offer timely and effective support to students as there is no regular modes of classes, there is no regular contact or communication with the students and there is physical separation between students and teachers. Open and Distance Learning (ODL) systems facing huge challenges (...) of delivering timely and effective student support services over different geographical areas. The Universities working on ODL mode of education is dependent on human and machine interactions since there is no continuous classroom teaching-learning process involved, the application of the Artificial Intelligence fills the gap between the Students and Teachers. With the integration of Artificial Intelligence using Deep Learning and Machine Learning algorithms provide different applications in ODL such as giving continous feedback to the Students, shifting learning platform according to need of the students, automated arrangements of classes, evaluation of the assignments, checking plagiarism, assist students in adopting productive and qualitative learning behaviour. The incorporation of Large Language Models (LLMs) can solve these issues by automating student query responses, thus improving the learning process. The emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-4 has opened up new possibilities for the automation of student query management. This paper suggests an integrated proposed framework that incorporates LLMs into ODL environments to automatically process and respond to student queries. The framework aims to ensure precision, customization and scalability with human-in-the-loop control capabilities for ensuring quality. The present paper formulates a framework for designing an LLM-based system for addressing student questions in ODL. The paper involves a review of the literature, elaborated system design, implementation considerations and conceptual flow diagrams. (shrink)

We construct a variety of inner models exhibiting features usually obtained by forcing over universes with large cardinals. For example, if there is a supercompact cardinal, then there is an inner model with a Laver indestructible supercompact cardinal. If there is a supercompact cardinal, then there is an inner model with a supercompact cardinal κ for which 2κ = κ+, another for which 2κ = κ++ and another in which the least strongly compact cardinal is supercompact. If there is (...) a strongly compact cardinal, then there is an inner model with a strongly compact cardinal, for which the measurable cardinals are bounded below it and another inner model W with a strongly compact cardinal κ, such that \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${H^{V}_{\kappa^+} \subseteq {\rm HOD}^W}$$\end{document}. Similar facts hold for supercompact, measurable and strongly Ramsey cardinals. If a cardinal is supercompact up to a weakly iterable cardinal, then there is an inner model of the Proper Forcing Axiom and another inner model with a supercompact cardinal in which GCH + V = HOD holds. Under the same hypothesis, there is an inner model with level by level equivalence between strong compactness and supercompactness, and indeed, another in which there is level by level inequivalence between strong compactness and supercompactness. If a cardinal is strongly compact up to a weakly iterable cardinal, then there is an inner model in which the least measurable cardinal is strongly compact. If there is a weakly iterable limit δ of <δ-supercompact cardinals, then there is an inner model with a proper class of Laver-indestructible supercompact cardinals. We describe three general proof methods, which can be used to prove many similar results. (shrink)

In the Modern Synthesis, the ontology of species is context-dependent: species are seen as "individuals" at any instant in geological time; through time, species-lineages are class-like entities regularly transforming themselves into other, descendant species. Moreover, at any one instant in time, species are predominantly construed as reproductive communities; through time, they are seen as economic entities, bound together by the joint possession of anatomical similarities among constituent organisms. It is argued that a more complete picture sees species as spatiotemporally (...) bounded historical "individuals", hence as reproductive communities in time as well as space; that species are not economic units; and that a complete evolutionary theory must address large-scale economic units as well as large-scale informational units, visualizing particular instances of such hierarchically arranged classes as spatiotemporally bounded historical entities -- i.e., as "individuals". (shrink)

Gait recognition in video surveillance is still challenging because the employed gait features are usually affected by many variations. To overcome this difficulty, this paper presents a novel Deep Large Margin Nearest Neighbor (DLMNN) method for gait recognition. The proposed DLMNN trains a convolutional neural network to project gait feature onto a metric subspace, under which intra-class gait samples are pulled together as small as possible while inter-class samples are pushed apart by a large margin. We (...) provide an extensive evaluation in terms of various scenarios, namely, normal, carrying, clothing, and cross-view condition on two widely used gait datasets. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed DLMNN achieves competitive gait recognition performances and promising computational efficiency. (shrink)

On some cosmological models, we’re cosmically early: we arrived roughly 14 billion years after the Big Bang in a universe that will evidently remain conducive to the emergence of intelligent observers for trillions of years. Why are we so early? I’ll survey two broad classes of responses: large-world responses that turn on reality being much larger than on standard single-universe hypotheses and small-world responses that are compatible with the world being no larger than such hypotheses take it to be. (...) One upshot will be that cosmic earliness suggests a diverse range of large-world explanations. In contrast, it turns out to be difficult to account for cosmic earliness while steering clear of large-world commitments. I conclude with some reflections on why our time of arrival seems thoroughly entangled with our world’s size. (shrink)

In artificial intelligence literature, “delusions” are characterized as the generation of unfaithful output from reliable source content. There is an extensive literature on computer-generated delusions, ranging from visual hallucinations, like the production of nonsensical images in Computer Vision, to nonsensical text generated by (natural) language models, but this literature is predominantly taxonomic. In a recent research paper, however, a group of scientists from DeepMind successfully presented a formal treatment of an entire class of delusions in generative AI models (i.e., (...) models based on a transformer architecture, both with and without RLHF—reinforcement learning with human feedback, such as BERT, GPT-3 or the more recent GPT-3.5), referred to as auto-suggestive delusions. Auto-suggestive delusions are not mere unfaithful output, but are self-induced by the transformer models themselves. Typically, these delusions have been subsumed under the concept of exposure bias, but exposure bias alone does not elucidate their nature. In order to address their nature, I will introduce a formal framework that clarifies the probabilistic delusions capable of explaining exposure bias in a broad manner. This will serve as the foundation for exploring auto-suggestive delusions in language models. Next, an examination of self- or auto-suggestive delusions will be undertaken, by drawing an analogy with the rule-following problematic from the philosophy of mind and language. Finally, I will argue that this comprehensive approach leads to the suggestion that transformers, large language models in particular, may develop in a manner that touches upon solipsism and the emergence of a private language, in a weak sense. (shrink)

We explore whether children’s willingness to produce unfamiliar sequences of words reflects their experience with similar lexical patterns. We asked children to repeat unfamiliar sequences that were identical to familiar phrases (e.g.,A piece of toast) but for one word (e.g., a novel instantiation ofA piece ofX, likeA piece of brick). We explore two predictions—motivated by findings in the statistical learning literature—that children are likely to have detected an opportunity to substitute alternative words into the final position of a four‐word sequence (...) if (a) it is difficult to predict the fourth word given the first three words and (b) the words observed in the final position are distributionally similar. Twenty‐eight 2‐year‐olds and thirty‐one 3‐year‐olds were significantly more likely to correctly repeat unfamiliar variants of patterns for which these properties held. The results illustrate how children’s developing language is shaped by linguistic experience. (shrink)

We show that Shelah’s Eventual Categoricity Conjecture for successors follows from the existence of class many strongly compact cardinals. This is the first time the consistency of this conjecture has been proven. We do so by showing that every AEC withLS below a strongly compact cardinalκis <κ-tame and applying the categoricity transfer of Grossberg and VanDieren [11]. These techniques also apply to measurable and weakly compact cardinals and we prove similar tameness results under those hypotheses. We isolate a dual (...) property to tameness, calledtype shortness, and show that it follows similarly from large cardinals. (shrink)

When crafting argumentative essays, increasingly, students use large language models (LLMs) to help with writing, and we notice this happening with students taking ethics classes as part of their professional education. This chapter argues that relying too much on LLMs can lead to moral deskilling because writing argumentative texts shapes moral skills, including moral sensitivity and imagination of future professionals. Developing and sharpening moral skills relies on effort, which LLMs undermine by design. Furthermore, the struggle to develop an argument (...) and to find the right words, structure, and tone contributes to relevant skills like resilience and grit because it is the struggle itself that leads to a better understanding of how difficult it is to make ethical arguments, which can contribute to more complex perspective taking in ethical reflection. The upshot of the argument is that replacing written assignments in ethics education with other formats, like oral assessments or practical assignments, risks losing a valuable format for moral skill development. The chapter ends with practical advice for educators on dealing with the student’s tendency to delegate written assignments to LLMs without giving up on written formative assignments. (shrink)

We study the notion of weak amalgamation in the context of diagonal conjugacy classes. Generalizing results of Kechris and Rosendal, we prove that for every countable structure M, Polish group G of permutations of M, and \, G has a comeager n-diagonal conjugacy class iff the family of all n-tuples of G-extendable bijections between finitely generated substructures of M, has the joint embedding property and the weak amalgamation property. We characterize limits of weak Fraïssé classes that are not homogenizable. (...) Finally, we investigate 1- and 2-diagonal conjugacy classes in groups of ball-preserving bijections of certain ordered ultrametric spaces. (shrink)

By forcing over a model of with a class-sized partial order preserving this theory we produce a model in which there is a locally defined well-order of the universe; that is, one whose restriction to all levels H is a well-order of H definable over the structure H, by a parameter-free formula. Further, this forcing construction preserves all supercompact cardinals as well as all instances of regular local supercompactness. It is also possible to define variants of this construction which, (...) in addition to forcing a locally defined well-order of the universe, preserve many of the n-huge cardinals from the ground model. (shrink)

The observed large‑scale smoothness of dark‑energy contributions is typically treated as a phenomenological input to cosmological modeling. This paper addresses the conceptual question of why such smoothness should arise at all. The analysis is developed within a continuity‑constrained structural framework in which local deformation is bounded and terminal localization is not admissible. When localization is excluded, admissible evolution proceeds through redistribution that reduces persistent large‑scale gradients in the deformation field. Under these structural constraints, effective large‑scale uniformity emerges (...) as a relaxed background limit, independent of any specific microscopic transport mechanism. The aim is interpretive rather than dynamical: the paper does not propose a new physical field or derive the phenomenology of a cosmological constant. Instead, it clarifies why smoothness is a non‑arbitrary expectation within a continuity‑constrained and deformation‑bounded admissible class. The argument is situated within philosophy of cosmology and the conceptual foundations of physical theory. (shrink)

We provide comprehensive, level-by-level characterizations of large cardinals, in the range from weakly compact to strongly compact, by closure properties of powerful images of accessible functors. In the process, we show that these properties are also equivalent to various forms of tameness for abstract elementary classes. This systematizes and extends results of [W. Boney and S. Unger, Large cardinal axioms from tameness in AECs, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc.145(10) (2017) 4517–4532; A. Brooke-Taylor and J. Rosický, Accessible images revisited, Proc. (...) AMS145(3) (2016) 1317–1327; M. Lieberman, A category-theoretic characterization of almost measurable cardinals (Submitted, 2018); M. Lieberman and J. Rosický, Classification theory for accessible categories. J. Symbolic Logic81(1) (2016) 1647–1648]. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to shed light on our understanding of large scale properties of infinite strings. We say that one string $\alpha $ has weaker large scale geometry than that of $\beta $ if there is color preserving bi-Lipschitz map from $\alpha $ into $\beta $ with small distortion. This definition allows us to define a partially ordered set of large scale geometries on the classes of all infinite strings. This partial order compares (...) class='Hi'>large scale geometries of infinite strings. As such, it presents an algebraic tool for classification of global patterns. We study properties of this partial order. We prove, for instance, that this partial order has a greatest element and also possess infinite chains and antichains. We also investigate the sets of large scale geometries of strings accepted by finite state machines such as Büchi automata. We provide an algorithm that describes large scale geometries of strings accepted by Büchi automata. This connects the work with the complexity theory. We also prove that the quasi-isometry problem is a $\Sigma _2^0$ -complete set, thus providing a bridge with computability theory. Finally, we build algebraic structures that are invariants of large scale geometries. We invoke asymptotic cones, a key concept in geometric group theory, defined via model-theoretic notion of ultra-product. Partly, we study asymptotic cones of algorithmically random strings, thus connecting the topic with algorithmic randomness. (shrink)

Dummett's objections to the coherence of the strict finitist philosophy of mathematics are thus, at the present time at least, ill-taken. We have so far no definitive treatment of Sorites paradoxes; so no conclusive ground for dismissing Dummett's response — the response of simply writing off a large class of familiar, confidently handled expressions as semantically incoherent. I believe that cannot be the right response, if only because it threatens to open an unacceptable gulf between the insight into (...) his own understanding available to a philosophically reflective speaker and the conclusions available to one confined to observing the former's linguistic practice; for an observer of our linguistic practice could never justifiably arrive at the conclusion that 'red', 'child', etc., are governed by inconsistent rules. But the Sorites is not the subject of this paper. The points I hope to have made plausible are: that a generalized intuitionist position cannot be so much as formulated and that even a most local intuitionism, argued for the special case of arithmetic, is hard pressed effectively to stabilize and defend itself; that strict finitism remains the natural outcome of the anti-realism which Dummett has propounded by way of support for the intuitionist philosophy of mathematics; that it is powerfully buttressed by the ideas of the latter Wittgenstein on rule-following; and that there is no extant compelling reason to suppose that its involvement with predicates of surveyability calls its coherence into question. The correct philosophical assessment of strict finitism, and its proper mathematical exegesis, remain absolutely open, almost virgin issues. This is not a situation which philosophers of mathematics should tolerate very much longer. (shrink)

In this paper, we sketch the development of two important themes of modern set theory, both of which can be regarded as growing out of work of Kurt Gödel. We begin with a review of some basic concepts and conventions of set theory.§0. The ordinal numbers were Georg Cantor's deepest contribution to mathematics. After the natural numbers 0, 1, …, n, … comes the first infinite ordinal number ω, followed by ω + 1, ω + 2, …, ω + ω, (...) … and so forth. ω is the first limit ordinal as it is neither 0 nor a successor ordinal. We follow the von Neumann convention, according to which each ordinal number α is identified with the set {ν ∣ ν α} of its predecessors. The ∈ relation on ordinals thus coincides with <. We have 0 = ∅ and α + 1 = α ∪ {α}. According to the usual set-theoretic conventions, ω is identified with the first infinite cardinal ℵ0, similarly for the first uncountable ordinal number ω1 and the first uncountable cardinal number ℵ1, etc. We thus arrive at the following picture:The von Neumann hierarchy divides the class V of all sets into a hierarchy of sets Vα indexed by the ordinal numbers. The recursive definition reads: ;Vλ = ∪v<λVv for limit ordinals λ. We can represent this hierarchy by the following picture. (shrink)

When a large language model receives a prompt, it computes a probability distribution over all possible continuations before sampling produces a single output. This paper examines the ontological and ethical status of ungenerated completions (i.e. texts that were mathematically present in the distribution but never actualized). I argue that these ungenerated texts occupy a novel ontological category since they are neither merely possible nor fully actual. Therefore, they exist as computationally determinate potentials that are precisely weighted, semantically meaningful, and (...) accessible in principle, although not in practice. On this basis, I advance three claims. First, standard metaphysical categories fail to capture the mode of being proper to probability distributions over meaningful strings, and hence, a new category of computational abstracta is required. Second, the structured space of ungenerated completions is metaphysically more fundamental than any particular generated completion because it carries most of the probability mass, encodes more of the model’s structure, and preserves a richness of potential responses that any single realization necessarily truncates. Third, I sketch initial implications for what I term modal ethics. Insofar as the distribution assigns nontrivial probability to completions of moral significance, our practices of prompting and sampling are subject to normative assessment. What remains ungenerated can matter morally because foreclosing or enabling particular possibilities has consequences for actual agents, and this reveals a broader class of philosophical problems that could not have been formulated before the advent of large language models. (shrink)

We consider a large family of theories of equivalence relations, each with finitely many classes, and assuming the existence of an $$\omega $$ ω -Erdős cardinal, we determine which of these theories are Borel complete. We develop machinery, including forbidding nested sequences which implies a tight upper bound on Borel complexity, and admitting cross-cutting absolutely indiscernible sets which in our context implies Borel completeness.

The quantization error in a fixed-size Self-Organizing Map (SOM) with unsupervised winner-take-all learning has previously been used successfully to detect, in minimal computation time, highly meaningful changes across images in medical time series and in time series of satellite images. Here, the functional properties of the quantization error in SOM are explored further to show that the metric is capable of reliably discriminating between the finest differences in local contrast intensities and contrast signs. While this capability of the QE is (...) akin to functional characteristics of a specific class of retinal ganglion cells (the so-called Y-cells) in the visual systems of the primate and the cat, the sensitivity of the QE surpasses the capacity limits of human visual detection. Here, the quantization error in the SOM is found to reliably signal changes in contrast or colour when contrast information is removed from or added to the image, but not when the amount and relative weight of contrast information is constant and only the local spatial position of contrast elements in the pattern changes. While the RGB Mean reflects coarser changes in colour or contrast well enough, the SOM-QE is shown to outperform the RGB Mean in the detection of single-pixel changes in images with up to five million pixels. This could have important implications in the context of unsupervised image learning and computational building block approaches to large sets of image data (big data). (shrink)

For a sufficiently large class of formal systems a duality theorem is proved. We consider such formal set theories $\widetilde{\scr{T}}$ [2] which, at least, satisfy the following conditions: 1. The theory $\widetilde{\scr{T}}$ contains its own (either bounded or introduced by a definition) substantive constant U, for which $\vdash \forall x[x\in U]$ or $\vdash \forall x[x\subset U]$ . 2. The operation of "complement", denoted by C, is defined with respect to U. 3. For any formula (resp. a term), A (...) ⊦ A ↔ ⅂⅂ A (resp. ⊦ CCA = A), and some basic conclusions follow. (shrink)

In The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932), Berle and Means warned of the concentration of economic power brought on by the rise of the large corporation and the emergence of a powerful class of professional managers, insulated from the pressure not only of stockholders, but of the larger public as well. In the tradition of Thomas Jefferson, Berle and Means warned that the ascendance of management control and unchecked corporate power had potentially serious consequences for the democratic (...) character of the United States. Social scientists who drew on Berle and Means in subsequent decades presented a far more benign interpretation of the rise of managerialism, however. For them, the separation of ownership from control actually led to an increased level of democratization in the society as a whole. Beginning in the late 1960s, sociologists and other social scientists rekindled the debate over ownership and control, culminating in a series of rigorous empirical studies on the nature of corporate power in American society. In recent years, however, sociologists have largely abandoned the topic, ceding it to finance economists, legal scholars, and corporate strategy researchers. In this article, I provide a brief history of the sociological and finance/legal/strategy debates over corporate ownership and control. I discuss some of the similarities between the two streams of thought, and I discuss the reasons that the issue was of such significance sociologically. I then argue that by neglecting this topic in recent years, sociologists have failed to contribute to an understanding of some of the key issues in contemporary business behavior. I provide brief reviews of four loosely developed current perspectives and then present an argument of my own about the changing nature of the U.S. corporate elite over the past three decades. I conclude with a call for sociologists to refocus their attention on an issue that, however fruitfully handled by scholars in other fields, cries out for sociological analysis. (shrink)

Do university ethics classes influence students’ real-world moral choices? We aimed to conduct the first controlled study of the effects of ordinary philosophical ethics classes on real-world moral choices, using non-self-report, non-laboratory behavior as the dependent measure. We assigned 1332 students in four large philosophy classes to either an experimental group on the ethics of eating meat or a control group on the ethics of charitable giving. Students in each group read a philosophy article on their assigned topic and (...) optionally viewed a related video, then met with teaching assistants for 50-minute group discussion sections. They expressed their opinions about meat ethics and charitable giving in a follow-up questionnaire (1032 respondents after exclusions). We obtained 13,642 food purchase receipts from campus restaurants for 495 of the students, before and after the intervention. Purchase of meat products declined in the experimental group (52% of purchases of at least $4.99 contained meat before the intervention, compared to 45% after) but remained the same in the control group (52% both before and after). Ethical opinion also differed, with 43% of students in the experimental group agreeing that eating the meat of factory farmed animals is unethical compared to 29% in the control group. We also attempted to measure food choice using vouchers, but voucher redemption rates were low and no effect was statistically detectable. It remains unclear what aspect of instruction influenced behavior. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Background Concepts for Examining LTS Dynamics Societal Implications of LTS References and Further Reading.

Language learning is a complex process influenced by cognitive, emotional, and cultural factors. This pilot study compares human and Large Language Model (LLM) responses for a survey on language learning challenges. Language model is prompted to list out top 50 challenges while learning a new language. Similarly multiple human candidates were asked to provide list of challenges. Our analysis found only 24% similarity between human and LLM-generated responses, highlighting the AI’s limitations in addressing real human struggles. Although LLMs effectively (...) identify general linguistic difficulties, they fail to capture the key concerns of human learners and unique challenges. These findings suggest that LLMs produce commendable responses with utmost grammatical precision yet distant from human authenticity. We also examine the responses from different sources using different AI models. We train the models specifically trained for classifying two classes: human’s concern and LLM’s concern. To ensure eradicating any biasses occurring due to writing style or grammar errors, we paraphrase human responses via LLM. In our experiments, the AI models efficiently distinguish between LLM’s generated responses and human generated responses, with precision and recall values ranging from 86% to 92%, indicating the exclusiveness of two classes. (shrink)

AI's architecture is connectionist, not computational. Despite this, so the present work shows, AI's behavior is not only consistent with, but strongly supports, a number of shibboleths of classical semantics, each of which has always been assumed to align with computational conceptions of cognition. These include: (i) the contention that language divides neatly into syntax, semantics, and pragmatics; (ii) the contention that semantics and pragmatics are distinct and, in particular, that semantics is not an "abstraction" of pragmatics; (iii) the contention (...) that meaning is compositional, along with the related contention that linguistic processing is at least partly recursive in nature, granting that it is not solely or even predominantly so. At the same time, (iv) AI-functioning is shown to warrant a complete rejection of the Russell-Frege position that grammar and logical form are misaligned. In the course of establishing (iv), it is shown exactly why, pace Russell-Frege, "everybody snores" and "Bob snores" parallel each other both in respect of grammar and logical form. By way of anticipation: "Bob snores" maps onto "Bob-singleton (smallest class containing Bob) is a subset of the class of snorers"; and "everybody snores" maps onto "the class of people is a subset of the class of snorers." This analysis is easily generalized to hold of all quantified generalizations and of all other sentences whose grammars allegedly misalign with their logical forms. And this last fact comes as a relief to researchers concerned with the cognitive feasibility of semantic theories, especially those familiar with the hundreds of psycholinguistic experiments showing that reaction times, event-related potentials, and error rates are totally inexplicable on the assumption that anything remotely similar to the Russell-Frege position to any degree describes any stratum of linguistic cognition. (shrink)

Since then we have been engaged in the development of such results of greater relevance to mathematical practice. In January, 1997 we presented some new results of this kind involving what we call “jump free” classes of finite functions. This Jump Free Theorem is treated in section 2.

We lift Jensen's coding method into the context of Woodin cardinals. By a theorem of Woodin, any real which preserves a "strong witness" to Woodinness is set-generic. We show however that there are class-generic reals which are not set-generic but preserve Woodinness, using "weak witnesses".

Grammatical categories of English expressions are shown to differ with regard to the freedom we have in semantically interpreting their lexical (= syntactically simplest) expressions. Section 1 reviews the categories of expression we consider. Section 2 empirically supports that certain of these categories are lexically free, a notion we formally define, in the sense that anything which is denotable by a complex expression in the category is available as a denotation for lexical expressions in the category. Other categories are shown (...) to be not lexically free. Thus for those categories the interpretation of lexical expressions is inherently constrained compared to the interpretation of the full class of expressions in the category. (shrink)

It might be objected to the counterexamples I provided in the preceding section that one cannot refute a doctrine by showing that it is incompatible with another doctrine whose truth has not been established. This objection is beside the point because in outlining the syntactical, semantic and pragmatic levels of language organization I was merely locating kinds of meanings different from senses, and kinds of rulelike uses of words different from the ones Witgenstein identified with senses. I admittedly added some (...) interpretation, but the counterexamples I gave do not depend on it: they stand on their own.Another possible objection is that Wittgenstein did not claim that the doctrine of use holds for all meanings; he claimed only that it holds for a large class of meanings. We have seen that the only class of meanings for which it holds is the class of syntactical senses. This is a large class but I do not think that Wittgenstein would have claimed that his doctrine is correct on that account.Finally, it might be said that the whole paper is irrelevant because it is based on the assumption that in §43 of the Investigations Wittgenstein was proposing a philosophical theory of meaning rather than formulating a therapeutic device. Frankly, I do not know what Wittgenstein was doing, but if what I have called his doctrine of use was intended only to be a therapeutic device, it does not follow that this paper is irrelevant. For, arguments against a philosophical assertion, which the doctrine of use assuredly is, must, if they are correct, surely tend to undermine its therapeutic effectiveness. (shrink)

Class Society and Psychoanalysis. Despite being sidelined, Michel Clouscard was a prolific writer and taught sociology at the Université de Poitiers from 1975 to 1990. Clouscard focused on describing the peculiar discourse of emancipation that resulted from the marriage of psychoanalysis and Marxism, which was then termed Freudo-Marxism, and was gaining currency in the aftermath of May ’68. For Clouscard, the emancipation of desire and productivity upheld by the Freudo-Marxists went hand-in-hand with the emergence of new markets and techno-structures (...) which defined the development of social democracy in France. Two of his works, The Treatise of Mad Love and the Capitalism of Seduction are telling us the story of the birth of class society at the very dawn of Middle Age and his postmodern transformation. The first work is an interpretation of Tristan and Iseul myth. The second describe how the capitalism gave birth to a new category with veritable ferocity: parasitic non-productive jobs (a large category extending from the false artists of modern art to the intellectual sell-outs to the system, passing through publicists and other dealers). (shrink)

We describe a pattern acquisition algorithm that learns, in an unsupervised fashion, a streamlined representation of linguistic structures from a plain natural-language corpus. This paper addresses the issues of learning structured knowledge from a large-scale natural language data set, and of generalization to unseen text. The implemented algorithm represents sentences as paths on a graph whose vertices are words. Significant patterns, determined by recursive context-sensitive statistical inference, form new vertices. Linguistic constructions are represented by trees composed of significant patterns (...) and their associated equivalence classes. An input module allows the algorithm to be subjected to a standard test of English as a Second Language profi- ciency. The results are encouraging: the model attains a level of performance considered to be “intermediate” for 9th-grade students, despite having been trained on a corpus containing transcribed speech of parents directed to small children. (shrink)

Through the explicit introduction of hyperplane dependence as a form of relativistic dynamical evolution, we construct a manifestly covariant description of a single positive energy particle interacting with any one of a large class of “moving” external potentials. In1+1 dimensions, the simplified mathematics allows us to display a number of general properties of solutions to the equations of motion for evolution on hyperplanes.