Hanoch Ben-Yami

Hanoch Ben-Yami

Professor

About

60
Publications
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360
Citations

Publications

Publications (60)
Article
Full-text available
When is it ethically permissible for clinicians to surgically intervene into the genitals of a legal minor? We distinguish between voluntary and nonvoluntary procedures and focus on nonvoluntary procedures, specifically in prepubescent minors (“children”). We do not address procedures in adolescence or adulthood. With respect to children categorize...
Chapter
Full-text available
This volume takes cue from the idea that the thought of no philosopher can be understood without considering it as the result of a lively dialogue with other thinkers. On this ground, it addresses the ways in which René Descartes’s philosophy evolved and was progressively understood by intellectuals from different contexts and eras, either by consi...
Article
Full-text available
We introduce a two-valued and a three-valued truth-valuational substitutional semantics for the Quantified Argument Calculus (Quarc). We then prove that the 2-valid arguments are identical to the 3-valid ones with strict-to-tolerant validity. Next, we introduce a Lemmon-style Natural Deduction system and prove the completeness of Quarc on both two-...
Article
Full-text available
The formalisation of natural language arguments in a formal language close to it in syntax has been a central aim of Moss's Natural Logic. I examine how the Quantified Argument Calculus (Quarc) can handle the inferences Moss has considered. I show that they can be incorporated in existing versions of Quarc or in straightforward extensions of it, al...
Article
Full-text available
The Modal Predicate Calculus gives rise to issues surrounding the Barcan formulas, their converses, and necessary existence. I examine these issues by means of the Quantified Argument Calculus (Quarc), a recently developed, powerful formal logic system. Quarc is closer in syntax and logical properties to Natural Language than is the Predicate Calcu...
Article
In the first chapter of his The World, Descartes compares light to words and discusses signs and ideas. This made scholars read into that passage our views of language as a representational medium and consider it Descartes’ model for representation in perception. I show, by contrast, that Descartes does not ascribe there any representational role t...
Preprint
Full-text available
I introduce a sequence which I call 'indefinite': a sequence every element of which has a successor but whose number of elements is bounded; this is no contradiction. I then consider the possibility of space and time being indefinitely divisible. This is theoretically possible and agrees with experience. If this is space and time's structure, then...
Article
Full-text available
What is simultaneous with an event is what can interact with it; events have duration; therefore, any given event has distant events simultaneous with it, even according to Special Relativity.
Article
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We seek to clarify and assess the underlying moral reasons for opposing all medically unnecessary genital cutting of female minors, no matter how severe. We find that within a Western medicolegal framework, these reasons are compelling. However, they do not only apply to female minors, but rather to non-consenting persons of any age irrespective of...
Article
Full-text available
I show that intuitive and logical considerations do not justify introducing Leibniz’s Law of the Indiscernibility of Identicals in more than a limited form, as applying to atomic formulas. Once this is accepted, it follows that Leibniz’s Law generalises to all formulas of the first-order Predicate Calculus but not to modal formulas. Among other thi...
Chapter
In his later writings, Wittgenstein developed, defended, and used alternative modes of explanation, similar to those Meno and other interlocutors of Socrates provide in the Platonic dialogues. The legitimacy of the pre-Socratic form of concept explanation in philosophy is demonstrated by the use Wittgenstein himself makes of it while introducing ne...
Book
In this book, Ben-Yami reassesses the way Descartes developed and justified some of his revolutionary philosophical ideas. The first part of the book shows that one of Descartes' most innovative and influential ideas was that of representation without resemblance. Ben-Yami shows how Descartes transfers insights originating in his work on analytic g...
Chapter
In 1625 Descartes returns to Paris from his journey to Italy. There he meets Mersenne, to whom he was very close from that time on, and others of his circle. He soon becomes well-known among them for his works in optics and mathematics and for the scientific method he is developing (during this time he works on the Rules). For instance, on 16 March...
Chapter
In order to examine the influences that brought Descartes to develop the theory of perception presented in the former chapter, we should return to his earliest work that has survived and contains a theory of perception, the Rules for the Direction of the Mind (Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii). Descartes worked on the Rules, perhaps intermittently, w...
Chapter
The general structure of the First Meditation, ‘What can be called into doubt’, is as follows. In order to establish something stable and likely to last in the sciences, Descartes decides to demolish all his old opinions, which were built on falsehoods he accepted in his childhood, and start again from the foundations. To do that he tries to underm...
Chapter
His work on The World brought Descartes to discuss physiology as well.1 At the end of 1632 he writes to Mersenne: My discussion of man in The World will be a little fuller than I had intended, for I have undertaken to explain all the main functions in man. I have already written of the vital functions, such as digestion of food, the heartbeat, the...
Chapter
Between the years 1629 and 1633 Descartes worked on a book which he called, in his correspondence, The World (Le Monde). In 1633, however, he decided to suppress the book, and he did not publish it later in his life. He used some of its materials in his Discourse on the Method and in the first two of its three accompanying Essays (Optics and Meteor...
Chapter
Descartes, we saw, thought that he had managed to explain not only movement, breathing, digestion and other processes mechanically, by corpuscularian-hydraulic means, but also mental features such as memory and imagination, and even character traits and moods. And all these, according to him, do not involve any immaterial soul. Why, then, does he a...
Article
Abstract I agree with Nachev and Hacker's general approach. However, their criticism of claims of covert automaticity can be strengthened. I first say a few words on what voluntary action involves and on the consequent limited relevance of brain research for the determination of voluntariness. I then turn to Nachev and Hacker's discussion of possib...
Article
I reconstruct from Rietdijk and Putnam’s well-known papers an argument against the applicability of the concept of becoming in Special Relativity, which I think is unaffected by some of the objections found in the literature. I then consider a line of thought found in the discussion of the possible conventionality of simultaneity in Special Relativ...
Article
In a series of publications I have claimed that by contrast to standard formal languages, quantifiers in natural language combine with a general term to form a quantified argument, in which the general term's role is to determine the domain or plurality over which the quantifier ranges. In a recent paper Zoltán Gendler Szabó tried to provide a coun...
Article
I develop a formal logic in which quantified arguments occur in argument positions of predicates. This logic also incorporates negative predication, anaphora and converse relation terms, namely, additional syntactic features of natural language. In these and additional respects, it represents the logic of natural language more adequately than does...
Chapter
According to Kripke, proper names in natural language are rigid designators. That is, a proper name that designates some object in our world, designates the same object in every possible world in which that object exists (Naming and Necessity (NN), pp. 48–9) and does not designate any different object in any other possible world (more on this last...
Article
Full-text available
I explain why I think that considerations regarding the opposing rights involved in the practice of circumcision-rights of the individual to bodily integrity and rights of the community to practice its religion-would not help us decide on the desirable policy towards this controversial practice. I then suggest a few measures that are not in conflic...
Article
In recent literature on plurals the claim has often been made that the move from singular to plural expressions can be iterated, generating what are occasionally called higher-level plurals or superplurals, often correlated with superplural predicates. I argue that the idea that the singular-to-plural move can be iterated is questionable. I then sh...
Article
Curtain. On the stage there's a row of about forty heads, of natural size, on a long and narrow white board roughly chest height, arranged facing the audience with equal spaces between them from near the left end of the stage to near its right end. The heads are all identical apart from two features. First, the leftmost head is completely bald, the...
Article
I develop a solution to the Sorites Paradox, according to which a concatenation of valid arguments need not itself be valid. I specify which chains of valid arguments are those that do not preserve validity: those that pass the vague boundary between cases where the relevant concept applies and cases where that concept does not apply. I also develo...
Article
In Naming and Necessity Kripke argued against the possible existence of fictional characters. I show that his argument is invalid, analyze the confusion it involves, and explain why the view that fictional characters could not have existed is implausible.
Article
In recent decades there has been considerable advance in our understanding of natural language quantification. Following a series of works, natural language quantifiers that are one-place determiners are now analyzed as a subset of generalized quantifiers: binary restricted ones. I think, however, that this analysis has failed to explain what is, a...
Article
I first show that most authors who developed Plural Quantification Logic (PQL) argued it could capture various features of natural language better than can other logic systems. I then show that it fails to do so: it radically departs from natural language in two of its essential features; namely, in distinguishing plural from singular quantificatio...
Article
Dummett and others have failed to show that an effect can precede its cause. Dummett claimed that ‘backwards causation’ is unproblematic in agentless worlds, and tried to show under what conditions it is rational to believe that even backwards agent-causation occurs. Relying on considerations originating in philosophical discussions of special rela...
Article
Full-text available
I develop Special Relativity with backward-light-cone simultaneity, which I call, for reasons made clear in the paper, 'Apparent Simultaneity'. In the first section I show some advantages of this approach. I then develop the kinematics in the second section. In the third section I apply the approach to the Twins Paradox: I show how it removes the p...
Article
David Malament tried to show that the causal theory of time leads to a unique determination of simultaneity relative to an inertial observer, namely standard simultaneity. I show that the causal relation Malament uses in his proofs, causal connectibility, should be replaced by a different causal relation, the one used by Reichenbach in his formulat...
Article
Frege analyzed the grammatical subject-term ‘S’ in quantified subject-predicate sentences, ‘q S are P’, as being logically predicative. This is in contrast to Aristotelian Logic, according to which it is a logical subject-term, like the proper name ‘a’ in ‘a is P’– albeit a plural one, designating many particulars. I show that Frege’s arguments for...
Article
Ned Block ((19812. Block , N . 1981. Psychologism and behaviorism. Philosophical Review, 90: 5–43. [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®], [CSA]View all references). Psychologism and behaviorism. Philosophical Review, 90, 5–43.) argued that a behaviorist conception of intelligence is mistaken, and that the nature of an agent's internal processes is releva...
Article
The reason for characterizing mental states as propositional attitudes is sentence form: ‘S Vs that p’. However, many mental states are not ascribed by means of such sentences, and the sentences that ascribe them cannot be appropriately paraphrased. Moreover, even if a paraphrase were always available, that in itself would not establish the charact...
Article
I have attempted to show that many attributive adjectives can be dealt with within the framework of first-order predicate calculus by the method suggested in this paper. I've also supplied independent reasons for the claim that attributive adjectives that are not responsive to this method require a formal treatment different from the one that the a...
Article
Searle's Chinese Room was supposed to prove that computers can't understand: the man in the room, following, like a computer, syntactical rules alone, though indistinguishable from a genuine Chinese speaker, doesn't understand a word. But such a room is impossible: the man won't be able to respond correctly to questions like What is the time?, even...
Article
Searle's Chinese Room was supposed to prove that computers cannot understand: the man in the room, following, like a computer, syntactical rules alone, despite being indistinguishable from a genuine Chinese speaker, does not understand a word. But such a room is impossible: the man would not be able to respond correctly to questions like 'What is t...
Article
Ned Block argued, in his 'Psychologism and Behaviorism', that a behaviorist conception of intelligence is mistaken, and that the nature of an agent's internal processes is relevant for determining whether the agent has intelligence. He did that by describing a machine which lacks intelligence, yet can answer questions put to it as an intelligent pe...

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