Search Results

The book features a collection of ten essays on themes from Aristotle’s Physics. Six of these have been previously published, and four are newly written for this volume. The first five essays are based on single theme, namely Aristotle’s conception of substance as it appears in his physical works. The basic texts here are Physics I-II, but the essays also range quite widely over Aristotle’s other physical works, where these are relevant to his understanding of the notions of substance, matter, and form. The general view of these five essays is that Aristotle’s idea of matter was a winner, but his idea of form certainly was not. The remaining five essays are on various topics from Physics III-VI, with each confined to the text of the Physics itself. The topics covered fall broadly under the headings: space, time, and infinity.

This book concerns the nature of time. It shows how presentism, the view that only the present exists, can be defended. Part I of the book shows how presentism is the only viable alternative to the tenseless theory of time. It then develops a framework for solving problems traditionally associated with the position, such as finding truthmakers for past‐tensed statements; McTaggart's argument; the need for other times other than the present time; how to give the proper semantics for future contingent statements; how to deal with transtemporal relations between the past and the present; how we can meaningfully talk about past individuals; and how accounts of causation relations can be formulated. Part I concludes with a discussion of the direction of time and causation, the decision‐theoretic problem known as ‘Newcomb's problem’, and the possibility of time travel and causal loops. Part II focuses on the problems for presentism raised by relativity theory. It begins by giving a self‐contained exposition of the concepts of special relativity and its philosophical implications. The last two chapters focus on certain cosmological models of general relativity: namely, the expanding universes, and Gödel's infamous model. The necessary physics is explained, with the aid of diagrams.

This book revolves around the theme that psychological space demands physical space; that the inner world is embedded in, and fabricated from, interactions between world and mind. The following themes in moral philosophy are considered: the nature of the ‘subject’, agency, free will, and self-knowledge. The first three chapters of the book focus on memory, anxiety, and time. The next three chapters are explicitly about the subject, and about first-person, propositional thought. The final chapters articulate the idea that one cannot hive off the subjective aspects of a person from those that are objective.

This book explores how truth depends on the world or on things or on being, and examines philosophical debates concerning modality, time, and dispositions. For accounts of truth's dependence on being have implications for these debates. Moreover, these debates have implications for how truth depends on being. Along the way, the book makes a number of new points about each of these debates, points that are of interest quite apart from the question of truth's dependence on being. The book concludes that some truths do not depend on being in any non-trivial way at all. One result of this conclusion is that it is a mistake to oppose a philosophical theory merely because it violates truth's alleged substantive dependence on being. Another result is that the correspondence theory of truth is false and, more fundamentally, that truth itself is not a relation of any sort between truth-bearers and that which makes them true.

What fundamental account of the world is implicit in physical theory? Physics straightforwardly postulates quarks and electrons, but what of the more intangible elements, such as laws of nature, universals, and the direction of time? Do they have a place in the physical structure of the world? This book argues that the ontology derived from physics takes a form quite different from those most commonly defended by philosophers. Physics postulates irreducible fundamental laws, eschews universals, does not require a fundamental notion of causation, and makes room for the passage of time. The book contains a series of linked essays in the form of chapters and through them it outlines an approach to metaphysics opposed to the Humean reductionism that motivates much analytical metaphysics.

These nine chapters, commissioned on the initiative of the Philosophy section of the British Academy, address fundamental questions about time in philosophy, physics, linguistics, and psychology. Are there facts about the future? Could we affect the past? Physics, general relativity and quantum theory give contradictory treatments of time. So in the search for a theory of quantum gravity, which should give way: general relativity or quantum theory? In linguistics and psychology, how does our language represent time, and how do our minds keep track of it?

This book is concerned with the quantitative aspects of the theory of nonlinear diffusion equations; equations which can be seen as nonlinear variations of the classical heat equation. They appear as mathematical models in different branches of physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering, and are also relevant in differential geometry and relativistic physics. Much of the modern theory of such equations is based on estimates and functional analysis. Concentrating on a class of equations with nonlinearities of power type that lead to degenerate or singular parabolicity (equations of porous medium type), the aim of this book is to obtain sharp a priori estimates and decay rates for general classes of solutions in terms of estimates of particular problems. These estimates are the building blocks in understanding the qualitative theory, and the decay rates pave the way to the fine study of asymptotics. Many technically relevant questions are presented and analyzed in detail. A systematic picture of the most relevant phenomena is obtained for the equations under study, including time decay, smoothing, extinction in finite time, and delayed regularity.

Spectral methods have long been popular in direct and large eddy simulation of turbulent flows, but their use in areas with complex-geometry computational domains has historically been much more limited. More recently, the need to find accurate solutions to the viscous flow equations around complex configurations has led to the development of high-order discretization procedures on unstructured meshes, which are also recognized as more efficient for solution of time-dependent oscillatory solutions over long time periods. This book, an updated edition on the original text, presents the recent and significant progress in multi-domain spectral methods at both the fundamental and application level. Containing material on discontinuous Galerkin methods, non-tensorial nodal spectral element methods in simplex domains, and stabilization and filtering techniques, this text introduces the use of spectral/hp element methods with particular emphasis on their application to unstructured meshes. It provides a detailed explanation of the key concepts underlying the methods along with practical examples of their derivation and application.

Building on Bernstein's concept of recontextualization, Foucault's theory of discourse, Halliday's systemic-functional linguistics and Martin's theory of activity sequences, this book defines discourses as frameworks for the interpretation of reality and presents detailed and explicit methods for reconstructing these frameworks through text analysis. There are methods for analyzing the representation of social action, social actors and the timings and spatial locations of social practices as well as methods for analyzing how the purposes, legitimations and moral evaluations of social practices can be, and are, constructed in discourse. Discourse analytical categories are linked to sociological theories to bring out their relevance for the purpose of critical discourse analysis, and a variety of examples demonstrate how they can be used to this end. The final chapters apply aspects of the book's methodological framework to the analysis of multimodal texts such as visual images and children's toys.

This book considers periodic time series models for seasonal data, characterized by parameters that differ across the seasons, and focuses on their usefulness for out-of-sample forecasting. Providing an up-to-date survey of the recent developments in periodic time series, the book presents a large number of empirical results. The first part of the book deals with model selection, diagnostic checking, and forecasting of univariate periodic autoregressive models. It discusses tests for periodic integration, and provides an extensive discussion of the role of deterministic regressors in testing for periodic integration and in forecasting. The second part discusses multivariate periodic autoregressive models. It provides an overview of periodic cointegration models, including single-equation type tests and a full-system approach based on generalized method of moments. All methods are illustrated with extensive examples, and the book will be invaluable to advanced graduate students and researchers in econometrics and to practitioners looking for an understanding of how to approach seasonal data.

Everywhere and Everywhen is an introduction to the ideas and arguments of the central questions that arise when physics meets philosophy: for instance, what are space and time? What are Zeno's paradoxes? Are there just three dimensions? Are there other universes? What is the shape of space and how do we know? Why does time seem to pass while space does not? What is the difference between the past and future? Is time travel possible? What is spacetime? What is time according to relativity? What is the difference between left and right? What is a quantum particle? Some of these questions are among the oldest humanity has asked about our place in the world, but some are among the most recent: the book both explores their history and the thinkers that have shaped them, and explains the fundamentals of their current understanding. Readers aren't just spectators to the journey, but are engaged in the debates. This book shows that philosophy, by analyzing fundamental concepts and their relationship to the human experience, has a great deal to say about these profound topics. They are not reserved for physics; as the book demonstrates, philosophy can not only address but help advance our view of our deepest questions about the universe, space, and time, and their implications for humanity. It is aimed at inspiring the reader to think philosophically about the universe revealed by physics.

Relativism has dominated many intellectual circles, past and present, but the 20th century saw it banished to the fringes of mainstream analytic philosophy. Of late, however, it is making something of a comeback within that loosely configured tradition, a comeback that attempts to capitalize on some important ideas in foundational semantics. This book aims not merely to combat analytic relativism but also to combat the foundational ideas in semantics that led to its revival. Doing so requires a proper understanding of the significance of possible worlds semantics, an examination of the relation between truth and the flow of time, an account of putatively relevant data from attitude and speech act reporting, and a careful treatment of various operators. This book contrasts relativism with a view according to which the contents of thought and talk are propositions that instantiate the fundamental monadic properties of truth simpliciter and falsity simpliciter. Such propositions, it argues, are the semantic values of sentences (relative to context), the objects of illocutionary acts, and, unsurprisingly, the objects of propositional attitudes.

This book presents a comprehensive and unified treatment of finite sample theory, and its application to estimators and test statistics used in various econometric models. Time series, cross section, and panel data models are considered. The results are explored for linear and nonlinear models, as well as models with normal and nonnormal errors. The book contains seven chapters. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to finite sample econometrics. Chapter 2 gives methods of obtaining the moments of econometric statistics. Chapter 3 provides methods for analysing distributions. Finite sample results for various econometric models are discussed in Chapters 4-7.

What are the things that we assert, believe, and desire? The orthodox view among philosophers is eternalism: these are contents that have their truth-values eternally. Transient Truths provides the first book-length exposition and defense of the opposing view, temporalism: these are contents that can change their truth-values along with changes in the world. Berit Brogaard argues that temporal contents are contents and propositions in the full sense. This project involves a thorough analysis of how we talk about and retain mental states over time, an examination of how the phenomenology of mental states bears on the content of mental states, an analysis of how we pass on information in temporally extended conversations, and a revival of a Priorian tense logic. The view suggests a broader view according to which some types of representation have a determinate truth-value only relative to features about the subject who does the representing. If this view is right, successful semantic representation requires an eye on our own position in the world.