Sound Logic Research Articles

New perspectives in economic history

Abstract The article raises the question why conventional growth theory, including the “new economic history” has gone sour recently. The dissatisfaction reiects a growing consensus within the economic history profession that predictive models, despite the trappings of deductive logic and precision, fail empirically. Yet the remedy is not to drop all attempts at historical model building, were that at all possible, but that economic historians should give up any lingering ambition to predict Instead economic history should cultivate the paradigms, or broader explanatory schemes, derived from comparative history. Comparative history has a solid past, it rests upon sound logic, and may yield impressive results if used with circumspection. Paradigms or their synonyms merely indicate a set of structural elements and the way they are combined, as gathered from a comparative analysis of the evidence. Next the article illustrates how economic history can profit from the insights presented in recent works by mili...

Composition Theory in the Eighties: Axiological Consensus and Paradigmatic Diversity

In 1979, in a CCC article, I discussed four conflicting views about the ends of teaching composition, views which I called philosophies of Adapting the perspective of M. H. Abrams in The Mirror and the Lamp, I asserted that composition teachers, textbooks, and curricula could privilege any element in a communicative transaction and generate a of composition. I need here to summarize that article briefly. Readers familiar with it are invited to skip the next three paragraphs. If one privileges the text in a communicative transaction, I said, one adopts a formalist philosophy of composition. If the writer, an expressive philosophy. If the external reality, a mimetic philosophy. If the reader, a rhetorical philosophy. Each philosophy represents a view of the end composition values. Formalists value specified formal features, most often correctness at the sentence level, but conceivably a privileged style of sentence or a structure for a paragraph, or even the five-paragraph format for a paper. Expressivists value openness, honesty, sincerity, originality, authentic voice, and personal topics for writing. Mimeticists value accuracy of information, sound logic, and truth in prose (perhaps the best illustration being a traditional technical writing class). Finally, rhetoricists value effectiveness, audience awareness, per-

Mechanically verifying concurrent programs with the Boyer-Moore prover

A proof system suitable for the mechanical verification of concurrent programs is described. This proof system is based on Unity, and may be used to specify and verify both safety and liveness properties. However, it is defined with respect to an operational semantics of the transition system model of concurrency. Proof rules are simply theorems of this operational semantics. This methodology makes a clear distinction between the theorems in the proof system and the logical inference rules and syntax which define the underlying logic. Since this proof system essentially encodes Unity in another sound logic, and this encoding has been mechanically verified, this encoding proves the soundness of this formalization of Unity. This proof system has been mechanically verified by the Boyer-Moore prover. This proof system has been used to mechanically verify the correctness of a distributed algorithm that computes the minimum node value in a tree.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Building models of values

To achieve a set of objectives, whether they are made explicit or not, is the entire intent of decisionmaking. When they are explicitly stated, the objectives are often quantified with an objective function. Because of its critical role for decisionmaking, the objective function should be developed from first principles, sound logic, reasoned judgments, and carefully acquired consistent data. Unfortunately, in practice many objective functions are hastily chosen from a process that can at best be described as arbitrary. This paper presents a better alternative for developing the objective function, namely to construct it from a quality modelling effort.

Building models of values

To achieve a set of objectives, whether they are made explicit or not, is the entire intent of decisionmaking. When they are explicitly stated, the objectives are often quantified with an objective function. Because of its critical role for decisionmaking, the objective function should be developed from first principles, sound logic, reasoned judgments, and carefully acquired consistent data. Unfortunately, in practice many objective functions are hastily chosen froma process that can at best be described as arbitrary. This paper presents a better alternative for developing the objective function, namely to construct it from a quality modelling effort.

An axiomatic version of positive semilattice relevance logic

In [8] and [9] Urquhart presented the semilattice semantics for a relevance logic with conjunction and disjunction. These semantics combined the simplest known semantics for relevant implication, with minimal modification of the truth conditions for conjunction and disjunction. A slightly different approach leads to the distinct positive relevance logic of [7] and [5]. Sound and complete axiomatic logics for the semilattice semantics were readily available, so long as disjunction was left out.The purpose of this paper is to report the remedy of this lack. In [1] the author developed work of Fine ([3], announced in [4]) and Prawitz [6] to show soundness and completeness of an axiomatic logic and two natural deduction logics, with respect to Urquhart's semantics. Thus Prawitz' positive relevance logic is equivalent to the semilattice logic, rather than the logic of [5]. We present here the axiomatic logic and show its equivalence to the semilattice semantics.In §1 the languages and logic are given, along with a few proof-theoretic remarks. In §2 the semantics are defined, and the soundness proof is sketched. In §3, the completeness proof is given.

In Shakespeares America

In Shakespeares America By WILLIAM ASPENWALL BRADLEY Old English and Scottish popular ballads are not the only legacy of the Old World to the New that time has kept more or less intact in the dark Kentucky hills. Sink a shaft almost anywhere in the obscure social and spiritual strata of that secluded section and you will make striking, often startling, discoveries. The very language itself, far from being, as is too commonly supposed, a mere uncouth dialect, preserves in many respects the obsolete idiom of our ancestors, and is starred with interesting and significant survivals. It is said that when the mountaineer begins to read at all, he displays so marked a preference for Shakespeare that it is invariably the works of that poet that have most frequently to be rebound in any library to which he has access. The reason he himself gives for this predilection is that the things Shakespeare makes his characters do always seem so "natural." So also must seem the things he makes them say. Words and turns of expression employed by Shakespeare and in the King James version of the Bible are of such common occurrence in the mountain speech that it is quite possible for a native student of his own people's peculiar characteristics to argue, with no small show of reason, 27 that "the purest English on earth is that of the Kentucky mountains" — however unpolished and crude it may be grammatically . Another asserts that this racy idiom is the one real literary dialect as yet produced in America. A teacher in a settlement school told me that her greatest trouble was getting the children to talk "good English." Yet the natural, untutored speech of these children (and of the grown people as well, when they have remained uncontaminated by outside influences ) is of a pristine poetic quality seldom found save among the very primitive. Just because the mountaineers are for the most part, either illiterate or able to see few newspapers, they have no stereotyped forms of expression. For them the language is in the same state of fluidity and flux that it was for Shakespeare and his contemporaries, so that they are always free to vary and invent, and are often forced to feel around, as it were, not only for the right word, but for their own word, which, since they have a natural esthetic instinct for verbal shapes and sounds, gives their speech a remarkable sense of freshness and stylistic distinction. Moreover, the very fact that their vocabulary is extremely limited tends to foster a fanciful and figurative form of expression, as in the case of the old preacher who, referring to the white-haired among his auditors, called down a blessing upon those "whose heads were bloomin' for the grave." There is much that is coarse and crude in the mountaineer's method of expression, reflecting, frequently, the conditions under which he lives. But what at first sight appears most corrupt or colloquial often proves on closer acquaintance to possess unexceptionable linguistic credentials. What, for example, could possibly have a more bucolic or Boeotian flavor than the use of the verb "to talk" in the sense of "to court" or "to woo"? Yet, in 'King Lear" we find Regan saying, precisely: 'My lord is dead; Edmund and I have talked." In Shakespeare also we find "holp" for "helped," a form of the preterite very common in the mountains, as are also "whup" for "whipped," "wrop" for "wrapped," "clomb" for "climbed." If a mountain man becomes suddenly bereft of his senses, it is said of him that "he's tuk a franzy spell," and this rustic pronunciation has the authority of no less a poet than Sir Philip Sidney. There is also sound logic, if not literary authority, for "ary" and "nary," which are nothing more or less than contractions of "e'er a" and "ne'er a" — adaptions, if one chooses, but notably judicious and convenient — and the use of "farder" and "furder " for "farther" and "further" have exactly the same qualification from an etymological point of view as "murder," which used to be written "murther"; while the impersonal pronoun "hit" is no mere cockneyism...

Editorial: The problem-oriented record in psychiatry.

The problem-oriented approach to record keeping developed by Lawrence Weed, M.D. is having a significant impact upon psychiatry in the U.S. Under the system, a patient&amp;s problems are listed and all subsequent data, plans and progress notes are cross-indexed to the appropriate problems. This encourages the use of sound logic in therapy. Communication with others about the patient is also improved. Although the system does not require a computer it anticipates and facilitates the computerization of psychiatric records. Precise documentation also allows more accurate clinical research. Some problems posed by the system are also discussed.

Ten reasons why Lawrence Weed is right.

THE innovations of Lawrence Weed concerning medical records are correct.1 The purpose of this note is to encourage all physicians to hear what he is saying. Here are 10 reasons why we must.In the first place, he has devised a medical-record system that encourages the student, house officer and practicing physician to use sound logic in his thoughts about patients. In this sense his system is the essence of education itself.Secondly, the display system that he has created for medical data enables one to use the record as efficiently as one uses a dictionary.Thirdly, he has devised . . .

Invasion and Racial Attitudes: A Study of Housing in a Border City

at least five ways in which this type of research may be used in family education: (1) To acquaint parents, teachers, and the public generally with the actual facts, attitudes, and problems of youths or any other members of the family which one might study. (2) To provoke thought and discussion concerning the causes and consequences of such conditions, attitudes, and problems. (3) To stimulate inquiry concerning the resources already available in instutitons and in communities for taking some action to change the circumstances and attitudes of those persons being studied and to minimize or resolve the problems. (4) To arrive at some specific conclusions as to the expansion of resources and the development of techniques and skills for remedial purposes. (5) To stimulate further studies of various types of family problems in different localities. The need for the coordination of research and action in the field of family life has been repeatedly stressed. As Ernest W. Burgess puts it, In a changing, complex and complicated society, the family and its members need the findings of psychological and sociological research. Young people of today are willing to participate in this research. They are not so much asking for advice as for the scientific knowledge which they can use to plan the patterns of family relationships which will give self-expression to the members of the family and promote their personal development.2 The present situation demands that we take up Burgess' challenge in our teaching and research; that we commit ourselves to the utilization of what ability we possess in ascertaining facts and their interrelations, in establishing social norms through our research, in applying the force of sound logic to the interpretation of our findings, and in disseminating in every way information which will benefit mankind. If we are negligent in our work as students of family life, we cannot hope for a reduction in the number of broken homes, the rate of juvenile delinquency, the quantity of sex vice, and related problems.

Rational Therapy for Cancer of the Lower Lip

During recent years such a controversy has arisen over proper therapeutic measures to be applied to patients suffering from cancer of the lower lip that it appears pertinent to review the subject in the light of experience gained through twenty-five years in the surgical service of a specialized cancer institution. The attitude of the general surgeon to the treatment of cancer is best expressed by the biblical quotation, “If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.” If the cancer is out, thoroughly out , it cannot kill the patient. This is certainly sound logic, and has stood the test of centuries of surgical practice and thought. But today there is much discussion on two main issues of the subject: should the cancer be destroyed in situ , with the conservation of normal tissue, or should normal tissue and cancer be removed together, and, if so, how much normal tissue?