According to Bolton & Prince’s “Top 10 Things You Should Know About Social Networking”, social software is driven essentially by “grassroots” end-users and – comparatively speaking – has not been so widely adopted in corporate and/or collaborative ways.  (EWeek August 17, 2009)

• How long might it take for a firm to adopt social networking within existing corporate intranet infrastructure?

A study by Nielson Norman Group found that typical adoption times range from 3-5 years.

• What’s the biggest concern concerning the wide scale government and business adoption of social networking and/or increased integration of social networks within existing corporate intranets?

By far the biggest threat to consider is the security and privacy-related issues associated with the vast increases in end-user/consumer adoption of social networking. Bolton & Prince (2009) point out that The Pentagon is reviewing these implications, which is a significant marker of the mounting awareness of the unique IT security threats which parallel these massively distributed applications:

The Pentagon is reviewing its policies toward social networking sites amid network security and other concerns. According to reports, U.S. officials have ordered a review of the threats and benefits of using sites such as Facebook.

Related:

• Read PC Magazine’s article about Facebook Privacy: Facebook Privacy? No Sweat
• Example of the business use of social network integration: read a review

Deliverable definition tables are easy to create and are very useful for representing the mapping human resources to deliverables.

Here’s an example DDT from a group project I was apart of in graduate school. 

Deliverable Definition Table

The following table lists the deliverable for the project, with classifications and resources required for each:

Deliverable	Structure	Approval Needed By	Resources Required
Software Requirements Document	Document	Technical Lead	Technical analysts
Software Architecture Document	Document	Technical Lead	Technical analysts
Prioritized Subsystems List	Document	Technical Lead and Project Manager	Technical Analysts
Master Test Plan	Document	Technical Lead and Project Manager	Technical Analysts
Qualified Hosting Candidates List	Document	Technical Lead and Project Manager	Technical Lead, Program Manager, Technical Analysts, Hosting provider contacts
Contract with new Hosting Provider	Document	Program Manager, Accounting	Program Manager, Accounting, Technical Staff, HR
Shipping contract/invoice	Document	Program Manager
Master Test Plan Acceptance sheets	Document	Technical Lead	Technical Analysts
Application	Hardware	Program Manager	Technical Staff
Modified SAD (if applicable)	Document	Program Manager	Technical Analysts
Problem Reports (if applicable)	Document	Program Manager	Technical Analysts

Figure 1: Deliverable Definition Table

wishing, remembering et cetera. Of course that captures some of what "intentionality" means in philosophy and in more common discourse. The problem with the standard description is that it seems to lend significance to thoughts, and the significance of language/meaning is either merely implicit or in some sense irrelevant. Additionally, it informs a particular epistemology and metaphysics that treats linguistic acts as mere expressions of thought. Suffice it to say that the absence of the import of language and/or meaning is manifest, I think, in Brentano’s own description of intentionality in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint:

"Every mental phenomena is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction toward an object (which is not to be understand as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although they do not do so in the same way. In presentation, something is presented, in judgment something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on.[1]"

"This intentional inexistence is characteristic exclusively of mental phenomena. No physical phenomenon exhibits anything like it. We can, therefore, define mental phenomena by saying that they are those phenomena which contain an object intentionally within themselves.[2]"

Brentano’s description above, and it is taken to be the starting point for contemporary discussions of intentionality, stresses the ontological dualism between mental and physical things. Brentano tells us that what separates mental phenomena from physical phenomena is that mental phenomena are marked by intentionality. In order for a thing to be mental it has to have intentionality: it must be able to refer to something with the bizarre difficulty that the referent need not exist. This, in a nutshell, is intentional inexistence. It merely holds that a thought about p does not require that p’s referent indeed exists. After all, people have thoughts about unicorns and unicorns don’t exist. If this all seems intuitive, it largely is. However, the reason why it is has to do, as I will later explicate, more to do with linguistic convention than with ‘how mental phenomena really are’.

The second standard of Brentano’s description above is that it yields the idea that it is, in a sense, logically impossible to have a thought simpliciter: that is, whatever else a thought is, it must be a thought of something. One is reminded here of Plato’s Theaetetus in which Socrates and the young Theaetetus are struggling with the notion of false belief: how can one think falsely (if false belief is defined as thinking that which is not) given that one’s thought that p necessitates that something is thought? The relevant point is that Brentano’s characterization echoes the (somewhat) Platonic idea that one cannot have a thought without indicating or being aware of what the thought states is the case, what it represents, what it is about, or what it is in relation to. If one is thinking, one must be thinking of something, and that something is somehow related to the thinker.[3] This second standard can be termed as the relational nature of intentionality.

Third, intentional acts are directed upon things that are not sufficiently specified by the language one uses to describe those acts. Thus if someone describes her occurent–that is, current mental state of— fear of bats in virtue of the fact that she is aware of a bat and is trembling, then it is not the case that the description is sufficient for the content of her intentional state; in effect, the descriptions "S is presently fearful of bats" and "S is aware of a bat and is trembling" are not necessarily equivalent statements since there could be other things present in S’s mind that are not described by the predicate "is fearful" , not to mention the fact that "awareness of a bat and trembling" may occur independent of "being afraid". As Grant Gillett explains, "…those things [that a mental predicate is meant to represent] are in general not adequately specified for the purpose of mental descriptions by mentioning the objects concerned."[4]

Husserl, like Brentano, posits that consciousness is essentially intentional. But where Brentano turns to cognitive significance in his characterization of intentionality in terms of the sort of mental states that have intentional content, Husserl turns to meaning:

"Every intentional experience, thanks to its noetic phase, is noetic, it is its essential nature to harbour in itself a ‘meaning’ of some sort, it may be many meanings.[5]"

I am not certain if ‘meaning’ is used in the sense of ‘meaning to act or behave a certain way’ or if he is referring to the activity of language and the linguistic expression of intentional contents in some psychological states. That said, it is not inconsistent with either Brentano or Husserl’s description, I think, to consider the underspecified nature of linguistic expressions taken to name intentional contents.

Psychological explanations then call for an elucidation of the underspecified mental predicate: to express the meaning of experiences of cognitive significance, a theory of intentionality must elucidate how it is that a particular mental state is realized.

When these standards are put together they inform the following sort of argument (numbered 1-4):

1. If S believes that p, then it doesn’t follow that what p refers to actually exists. (intentional inexistence)

2. Q: In order for S to believe that p it must be that p represents or is about something which is related to something outside the thought or belief itself. (relational nature of intentionality) S’s belief that p must be a belief about something (i.e. the belief must have content).

3. For any relation to obtain, the objects in the relation must both exist; i.e. it’s senseless to hold that A is related to B if it is the case that A or B does not exist.

4. In order for S to believe to that p, where p need not refer to any existent object and "the belief that p" logically necessitates that p be about something, then the content of S’s belief must denote an intentional object. Thus, intentional acts or states are those that express contents that refer to some sort of object (intentional object) that may not really exist.

The conclusion that there must exist intentional objects raises a metaphysical problem: what is an intentional object and in what sense do they exist? On the one hand, it is a principle of all intentional acts (thoughts, beliefs, desires, et cetera) that what is presented as object need not actually exist. On the other hand, something must exist in order for a belief to exist, for if a belief exists it must follow that it is a belief about something (unless Socrates isn’t taken seriously). The existence of intentional objects raises a third realm of existence and seems like an ad hoc conclusion to resolve (otherwise) major metaphysical flaws. That said, the sort of metaphysical and epistemological work that this kind of characterization of intentionality yields is something to avoid, given recent developments in the philosophy of language and (to some extent) in the philosophy of mind.

Introducing intentionality in this (rather) characteristic way is, as I have hinted above, problematic. The reason I want to steer away from this sort of talk is that it masks the essential role of language in determining the intentionality of a thought, belief, proposition, expression, et cetera.

Moreover, that intentionality is described here as "the mark of the mental" is indicative of a dualistic metaphysics, one that presupposes an ontological distinction between "what is mental" and "what is physical." When I say that contemporary discussions of intentionality are not interested in this sort of dualism (although depending on what one means by dualism, certainly it could be argued that in a sense another sort of dualism exists), I mean that (in general) analytic and post-analytic accounts of intentionality either do not ascribe an ontological level to that sort of mental phenomena or are mostly reductive such that intentionality belongs to the physical. Nevertheless, it is a fact that must be appreciated: contemporary discussions of intentionality are not voiced in the interest of carving out the proper object of psychological inquiry. Brentano’s use of the term is indicative of the motivation to establish psychology as a scientific discourse in some sense analogous to physics. The same does not hold true today (though there is, in some instances, the want to treat intentionality systematically according to its logical properties in language, so there is some reverence of science) and this constitutes the second reason why my discussion of intentionality will steer clear of the traditional ontological obstacles described above.[6]

Current work on intentionality in various philosophical circles can be assessed according to levels of explanation. What I mean by that is that the various hallmarks of intentionality, what it conditions and how it is conditioned, are related to the level of analysis in which it is assessed. That’s not to say that there is no interplay between, for instance, a teleological or causal explanation of intentionality, like one offered by Ruth Millikan, and the logical explanation offered by Roderick Chisholm. But treating these levels as somewhat autonomous has the distinct advantage of making clear the sorts of problems philosophers encounter when talking about mental representations, the capacity of the mind to be directed towards something outside of it, and the individuation of meaning. After having introduced the more or less traditional (metaphysical) construction of intentionality, I will now turn to a level-of-analysis approach in which the network of problems associated with intentionality is given proper theoretical context. The levels and the questions appropriate to them might look something like this:

Logical/Linguistic: what are the logical features of intentionality that structure their expression in linguistic acts?

Teleological/Functional: what sort of causality is involved in the intentional relation (‘internal representations’ vs. ‘what the representations are representative of’) and what is its function within a naturalistic metaphysics?

After sufficiently presenting each level of explanation via the philosophers that characterize them, I’m going to turn to Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of language in an effort to assess the scope and value of these efforts in general. Here I will use particular examples of language-games involving the meaning of psychological ascriptions and compare them to some of the more recent work involving intentionality.[7] What I will show in using Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is that these efforts dissociate the actual contexts of use of philosophically-heavy terms like to know, to remember, to represent and thus cannot, properly said, speak to or about intentionality and all its related phenomena. Wittgenstein’s attention to the social nature of meaning in general serves as catalyst for the conclusion regarding intentionality that I submit: intentionality is social to the extent that it is senseless to theorize about it in the sort of mind-object and/or subject-object relation it is typically characterized in.

[1] See Franz Brentano. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. 1874: 88-89

[2] See Franz Brentano. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, 1874: 88-89

[3] Brentano describes the relational nature of intentionality as an implication of the idea that "what is characteristic of every mental activity is…the reference to something as object. In this respect, every mental activity seems to be something relational."

[4] For a useful description of Husserl’s understanding of mental contents and objects see Gillett, 333. Grant Gillett. Husserl, Wittgenstein and the Snark: Intentionality and Social Naturalism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 57, No. 2. (Jun., 1997) pp. 331-349

[5] Edmond Husserl. Ideas (1962) p. 237

[6] At this point I also want to note that while I am aware of the proximity of Husserl’s phenomenological tradition in the development of the notion of intentionality, I am going to steer clear of it as well. However that trajectory influenced the "linguistic turn" turn in philosophy and the emphasis on linguistically realized normative aspects of intentionality is certainly very interesting, it is a topic quite outside the scope of this project.

[7] If it’s not already clear, most of the contemporary work I review here can be characterized as theories of mental content (or theories of intentional content). The move from the philosophical inquiring into intentionality to ‘intentional content’ reflects the practices of positivist and post-positivist accounts of meaning and language. ‘Intentional content’ more or less becomes ‘that which is specified by an ascription of a folk-psychological state’.

CVS’s 1999 acquisition and subsequent launch of its online pharmacy service marked a significant moment for web-based distribution of the heavily regulated pharmaceutical industry. 

Here are a few notes and/or quotes I was drawn to while studying Harvard Business School’s famous case study of CVS’s first steps into web-based pharmaceutical distribution (as a major US retailer & not a “pure-play” company)

“On June 3, 1999, under pressure from Wall Street to respond to Web-based drugstores like Drugstore.com and Planet Rx, the CVS drugstore chain acquired a Web startup, Soma.com, for 30 million in stock. One consequence for Helena Foulkes was a wetter-than-usual summer. As vice president of marketing at CVS, she traveled often from the CVS headquarters in Woonsocket, Rhode Island to Seattle to work with Soma’s founder, Tom Pigott and others to relaunch Soma as CVS.com before the end of August.” (Harvard Business School, 1)

“She [Helena Foulkes] reflected on the uncertainties of the online drugstore world. It was not at all clear who would emerge with the upper hand in the pharmaceutical industry’s newest distribution channel. Pharmaceutical Benefit Managers (PBM’s) had threatened to exercise their muscle and deny reimbursement to online pharmacies.” (Harvard Business School, 1)

Foulkes’ fascination with CVS’s web development strategy was motivated by awareness of the relatively huge size of drugstore product sales compared to books and CD’s (which represented Web commerce’s most significant market in terms of sales statistics up to that point)

Strategic vs. Tactical issues:

(strategy) Would brand awareness be able to overcome reimbursement muscle?

(tactics) How much revenue would this new distribution channel (i.e. the Internet channel of distribution for drugstores and pharmaceuticals) generate in the short-term?

The Drugstore Industry

The drugstore industry is relatively insulated from industry changes yielded by way of sociological and technological changes. This is implicated in the fact that the very existence of the industry is primarily made possible by the governmental and regulatory pressures which govern the distribution of its essential products (i.e. prescription drugs). (Harvard Business Review, 1)

The industry’s insulation necessitates a relative stagnation in terms of progress in acceptable business practices correlated in other, non-regulated industries (e.g. self-service). (Harvard Business Review, 1)

Timeline of business practices development and corresponding sources of pressure

1950′s – introduction of self-service (response to supermarkets’ inclusion of the same practice)

1960′s – Lost drugstore soda fountain business to fast food restaurants

1980′s through the 1990′s – Independently-owned drugstores yield to chains

Largest chains pursue “regional dominance” – this implicated in the distinctly regional boundaries manifest in the top drugstore chains (CVS, Walgreen, Rite Aid, and Eckerd)

1997 – Employment of a nationally-motivated strategy marked by CVS’s purchase of Revco, which was located within Walgreen’s regionally-dominated boundaries

Web presence – criterions for decision

“Building a website isn’t that hard, we learned, but integrating it with a $17 million chain with over 4,000 locations and legacy systems and 280 million scripts per year was a huge challenge.”

Acquisition of Soma.com:

“First was speed. It would have taken us 3 to 4 months to build what we bought for the same cost. Second, with Soma.com, we were buying some very good health care talent, and a fulfillment center in Cincinnati that was high tech in terms of its ability to fill scripts. They had invested more than you’d think a start-up would, because they’d hired people with mail order prescription backgrounds. Third, CVS shared the health-care-focused beliefs of Soma.com. Finally, we wanted 100% ownership so that we would have no bias for or against doing business on the Web.”

Branding, Trust and Privacy

“Many marketers have noted that a brand is a promise to customers. Delivering on this promise builds trust, lowers risk, and helps customers by reducing the stress of making product switching decisions. Reducing stress is especially important online because of concern over security and privacy issues and because firms and customers are often separated by large distances.” (Strauss, El-Ansary, & Frost, 2006)

Website launch

Pricing

“Pricing on the web was trickier, particularly when cross-channel fulfillment was implemented.” (Harvard Business School, 2001)

For web-enabled, non-prescription drug products, CVS.com won the pricing war to the extent that products of these types saw lower prices while yielding better markup for CVS when compared to the markup of the same products sold in the stores.

Price determination was somewhat a function of customers’ selection of how the product will be made available to him, but there were complicating factors.

“One argument was that pricing should depend on how a customer took delivery of a product. If a customer ordered online and chose to pick up in the store, the argument went, the store’s prices should apply. If customers chose to have products mailed to them, should CVS meet competitors’ online prices or charge the prices prevailing at stores near to the customer’s home?”

Negotiations with Managed Care

Presented in April 2007 at the Goucher College Philosophy Conference (VERITAS) w/keynote speaker John Carvalho, Villanova University

Abstract: In this paper I treat Keith Lehrer’s characterization of knowledge and epistemic justification as presented “Knowledge, Scepticism, and Coherence.” (1999) In doing so, I delineate the appropriateness of Lehrer’s notion of the ‘personal acceptance system’ and advance cases in which one would not require the kind of justificatory mechanism Lehrer ascribes but nevertheless be quick to ascribe knowledge to. At a more general level, this paper attempts to refine certain presumptions and delineations characteristic in epistemology and philosophy of mind so as to arrive at a more complete and provocative conception of certain mental (intentional) phenomena.

Keith Lehrer, in “Knowledge, Scepticism, and Coherence”[1] develops a coherence theory of justification so that the following objectives can be met: (a) setup replies to some traditional skeptical arguments, (b) admit fallibilism in knowledge, and (c) orient the constitution of knowledge around “an adequate match between coherence and truth.”[2] Justification, according to Lehrer, is the key to epistemic responsibility: the avoidance of error and the pursuit of knowledge. However, Lehrer’s theory seems to disallow that some of the things we purport to know need not be processed through some system consisting of states of acceptance. I shall proceed to articulate this assertion through recent work on the philosophy of mind, especially by Searle and Chalmers, as well as through recourse to the distinction between sense and reference. Specifically, Lehrer’s theory of coherence fails to acknowledge the distinction of the ‘psychological conception of mind’ and the ‘phenomenal conception of mind’, which ultimately renders his theory incomplete in an important sense.[3] According to Searle,[4] failure to grasp this distinction correspondingly means a failure to grasp the experiential nature of a belief, which he maintains is necessary for something to be called a belief in the first place. The ‘phenomenal mind’ is conceived of as conscious experience, and “of a mental state as a consciously experienced mental state.” Quite distinctly, the ‘psychological mind’ is concerned with the mind insofar as it is relevant to, produces, causes, or may be affected by human behavior. It will be demonstrated that Lehrer’s epistemology, as articulated in this article, fails to explain this important distinction of mind, one that we should not be so quick to dismiss.

As distinct from my central criticism noted above, I must indicate that throughout my examination of Lehrer’s theory I will partake in a degree of chiding. At various points throughout this essay, I find considerable dilemmas which I must bring to the fore at the time they are approached in the analysis. As these criticisms do not collectively join into one category which I may set aside and treat later, I must acknowledge them as they occur. However, these immediate criticisms depart from what is centrally at stake. After a synopsis of the relevant parts of Lehrer’s theory, I will propose just what I mean by this in more profound and specific ways.

Lehrer begins by positing that coherence produces justification, not truth, but that an adequate matching of the two yields knowledge. Thus, it is clear that Lehrer will not partake in defining knowledge per se, but rather will invoke a conception of knowledge via recourse to the relationship between justification (of a coherence theory) and truth. He then proposes (albeit somewhat confusedly), “Knowledge is based on what we accept as true and on the truth of what we accept.”[5] He further clarifies that it is not sufficient that we accept a true proposition for knowledge, because our reasons, or the way in which we arrive at a true proposition, may be irrational, unwarranted, or perhaps accidental. Acceptance in this respect differs from belief: “acceptance is [different] from belief in [that it constitutes] a positive evaluation of belief at a metamental level of evaluation.”[6] This “metamental level of evaluation” implies to me that the evaluation and subsequent rejection or acceptance of a belief requires conscious awareness, so that we may examine and judge a particular belief, whereas our entertainment of something may be relegated to both the conscious and the unconscious mind; that is, we may entertain something we are completely aware of, or we may entertain something we are completely unaware of. Justification, according to Lehrer, is the method by which accepted beliefs may be converted to knowledge.

Justification is “the place where the sceptic dwells,” according to Lehrer. I find reason to fault this attribution. Justification is something certainly relevant to skepticism, but it is not primary to its condition. Rather, “the sceptic dwells” in conceivability. Whereas there may be several conditions one must satisfy for one to be justified in believing something, that it is conceivable in the first place requires only that its entertainment be epistemically possible. What is epistemic possibility? The answer: namely, anything that is not immediately contradictory in conception. The Cartesian dream argument, which says that we cannot be sure of our ability to distinguish the waking world from the dreaming world, is a position contingent on the fact that to entertain as much does not involve contradiction. With this in mind, it seems evident that, at the very least, metaphysical skepticism resides in conceivability. While it is true that “The sceptic raises objections to what we accept, whether it concerns tables, persons, galaxies or neutrinos,”[7] it is clearer that these objections reside in conceivability, and thus affect justification. Lehrer acknowledges only the latter.

Lehrer, in response to the objections of “the sceptic,” proposes that he can only appeal to what he accepts, and what he accepts is that which is more reasonable. Lehrer may see it this way, but I am not so sure others do. When S accepts a particular belief p, does he do so because he has more reasons for accepting it compared to those for not accepting it? If so, then acceptance of belief is merely a quantitative act. If not, then Lehrer forgets something important. Is it not the case that S sometimes accepts a particular belief p not because S has more reasons for acceptance, but rather because the reasons S has for acceptance, while perhaps comparatively fewer, are nonetheless better reasons for S. S may accept the particular belief that it rained yesterday merely because when he woke up and looked out the window he saw rain marks on the driveway. Suppose that that is the only reason why S accepts such a belief. Suppose too that S looked at the weather.com and read that yesterday’s forecast, which indicated a 0% chance of rain, and suppose too that S talked with a local friend who said that yesterday they had gone swimming all day and all night, and that it was beautiful outside. In this instance, S has more reasons to reject the belief that it rained yesterday, but for S, perhaps these reasons are simply not as good as the fact that when S woke up he saw water marks on the driveway.

Then again, perhaps I am reading too much into all of this. Perhaps that, because Lehrer is only referring to what he accepts, then it is unwarranted that I attack his own view of what he accepts. However, I am not entirely too sure of this position, either. It is at least conceivable and at most probable that people, myself included, go about accepting beliefs merely because they feel that the reasons they have for accepting these beliefs are simply better than the alternatives, which may be greater in number. I am now playing the role of the “sceptic”, and it does not seem Lehrer can adequately respond to my position, so we seem to be at a divergence that lacks simple resolution.

I move now to Lehrer’s discussion of the nature of coherence and of the acceptance system. Personal justification is coherence with one’s personal acceptance system, which itself is made up states of acceptance. Lehrer’s response to the skeptic’s objections of what he accepts instantiates these general terms: first, Lehrer reasons that it is more reasonable to believe there is a chair than it is to believe that there may not, or is not a chair. This has to do with personal acceptance. Now, according to Lehrer, if this particular case of acceptance coheres with his personal acceptance system, then Lehrer is justified in accepting this belief over the skeptical alternative. Okay, so the definition of personal justification is coherence with one’s personal acceptance system. Lehrer intelligibly but insubstantially claims that the personal acceptance system is a system consisting of states of acceptance, that is, cases which instantiate the general form of “I accept that p.” “Thus, the acceptance system does not consist of the thing accepted, namely, p, but instead my acceptance of it, of p.”[8] If acceptance is at a metamental level, then what level is the acceptance system at? Lehrer does not explicitly provide an answer, but seeing as how the acceptance system is constructed from states of particular acceptances, it is reasonable to infer that it is at a ‘meta-metalevel’. And what exactly does this level tell us about an epistemic situation? I pose the question only because I do not know. Lehrer’s hierarchical method brings the reader so high he is liable to forget from where he came. This is another one of my gripes.

At last, Lehrer posits that if his acceptance coheres with (the peculiar) acceptance system, and thus achieves justification, the last condition for knowledge is undefeated justification. He posits,

“Justification defeated by error is useless to convert anything into knowledge. If, however, what I accept to meet the skeptical objections is true, then my justification is undefeated by error. Undefeated justification of something I accept is what is required for the conversion of knowledge. It exhibits the need match of coherence and truth.”[9]

So whereas justification requires only coherence of states of acceptance, undefeated justification requires that there be no proposition which contradicts the justification of the set of coherently-linked accepted beliefs. Lehrer posits that the link between a coherent acceptance system and undefeated justification exhibits the match of coherence and truth. I suppose this makes some sense: whereas S’s personal justification is somewhat subjective and does not necessitate that what he is personally justified in is true, if his justification is undefeated then it would be reasonable to say that his personal justification is something he can claim to know, as well. So it is here that Lehrer moves from subjective or personal justification to an objective justification, one that provides the match to truth. Lehrer goes on to qualify this match, but seeing as how he fails to bring up the notion of t-acceptances and the ‘ultrasystem’ later on, it seems trivial to the basic course of his paper. Thus, I will not treat it but simply move past it.

According to Lehrer, his theory allows him to solve all problems of knowledge. I suppose that would include the isolation argument, seeing as how that is an objection to his theory of knowledge. According to this objection, given that personal justification and the acceptance system are inherently subjective notions (i.e., Lehrer’s acceptance system is probably wholly distinct from S’s acceptance system), then it is possible that any acceptance system could be systemically erroneous. Lehrer acknowledges this:

“…but the recognition of fallibilism, which says, in effect, our most fully justified acceptances may be false, reveals that the problem is a problem for any theory of knowledge and is not specific to the coherence theory…so every theory of knowledge, not simply the coherence theory, must face the isolation argument.”[10]

Lehrer’s answer to the isolation argument comes in the first-person singular form, so I suppose such is consistent with the basic nature of his theory. Lehrer maintains that every specific thing he accepts, that is, every state of acceptance, goes towards the undefeated justification that he is not isolated from reality, that he is not deceived, and that his faculties “are connected with reality and are not fallacious.”[11] Lehrer’s response does not presuppose truth, but it personally defeats the isolation argument because the justification of the above is instantiated in every state of acceptance that has to do with something about reality, so Lehrer says. It goes towards undefeated justification, which is, at the least, in the vicinity of truth. I have now finished what is immediately relevant to the proper articulation of the central pursuit of this paper: to see primarily why and how some types of knowledge claims are not at all handled by his theory but that nevertheless should be treated in any complete theory of knowledge and philosophy of mind.

Something immediately wrong with Lehrer’s response is the claim that “it is part and parcel of any justification that I have for any specific thing that I accept about the world that I am not isolated from the world and that my evidence about the world is not deceptive.”[12] Without qualification, this response seems entirely too inclusive. What exactly constitutes an acceptance about the world? There are clear-cut instances (e.g. the proposition “The thing in front of me is presented as a tree to me so it is a tree.”), but this generality says nothing certain, I think, about propositions like “I am aware of the way in which my perception of a tree is presented to my conscious mind .” In cases such as these, the subject is predicating conscious awareness of awareness about a tree; if S accepts this, would this instantiate the justification for a conclusion against skeptical arguments? Lehrer may say yes, because perhaps he would think too that ‘consciousness’ is something based on reality, or created from reality, and I suppose reality in this sense denotes objective reality, though he never explicitly states so (at the least I think it is reasonable to assume as much given his notion of truth). But the direct object pronoun in this assertion, namely the awareness of a certain experience of consciousness, does not purport the existence of something in ‘objective reality’, but rather something global about subjective consciousness. In cases such as these, it would prove difficult, I think, for Lehrer to explain this proposition in terms of its instantiation of a more general justification pertaining to the ontological independence of objective reality, even if he would maintain that the proposition is only possible because of objective reality (which is something I think he would maintain).

More importantly, I do not think it necessary that such a judgment go through some personal acceptance system. If I say I am aware of the way in which a tree is presented in this state of consciousness, such implies that I am positing a distinct, specific, and phenomenal experience instantiating what may be called a second-order phenomenal judgment.[13] Second-order phenomenal judgments are judgments one makes about conscious experiences, not necessarily about sense-datum. It is immediately evident to me that I am phenomenally aware of things in this way and not that way, that the world is presented to my conscious mind in discrete ways; further, this is not something I at all need to justify through some acceptance system I am conscious of…the whole endeavor seems useless, for if one were to claim that it was possible that I am actually phenomenally conscious in another way, I would respond that he does not understand the notion of phenomenal consciousness, and tell him to go look it up in a philosophy of mind dictionary. As distinct from empirical experience, which is reproducible and subject to more objective methods which function to verify (and thus justify) empirical claims, phenomenal consciousness is irreproducible but undeniable; I may linguistically present the fact that in instance A I saw a tree, and that now, in instance B, I see the same tree. However, my conscious mind was different in A compared to B, because the phenomenal presentation of the tree, from A to B, is probably distinct enough for me to notice so long as I attend to, say, the leafs of the tree instead of the bark, in instance B. If I were to form a comparative proposition denoting the phenomenal distinction between A and B, I should not have to go through some acceptance system that coheres with my acceptance of this comparison, which purports that, although I maintain both experiences denote the same object (in the empirical sense), it is not the case that they both were present in my mind in the same way. Language may be ill-equipped to make clear exactly how the two were different, but suppose I say that the senses of A and B were different, because they were presented differently, yet they both denote the same object (the tree); this perhaps would go towards the claim that, within my conscious experiences, two events can denote the same object but present distinctly. To go back to Lehrer, I may say that each case is “part and parcel of any justification that I have for any specific thing that I accept about the world,” only with respect to object denotation, and not at all with the phenomenal content of each assertion. But according to Lehrer, I could not claim to know that my phenomenal experience was different from A to B, because the content is not essential to the state of acceptance. If I cannot instantiate this claim in a state of acceptance, then I cannot, on Lehrer’s account, proceed to undefeated justification and then finally to knowledge. Clearly though, I would want to maintain that I know both A and B may denote the same object, and yet in fact were phenomenally distinct to my mind!

That Lehrer’s theory should fail to make these distinctions reflects his supposition that justification must occur in mental states. Not all knowledge, with the above example in mind, requires justification with appeal to states of acceptances of the form ‘I accept that-p.’ In phenomenal cases such as those characterized above, the general rule can be described via the following: S phenomenally knows p if and only if S is aware of the distinct way in which the object of p is present in his mind at T2 as distinct from another proposition entertained at another time T1, which S thinks denoted the same object, but which S was phenomenally aware of in a different way. Furthermore, I add the following qualification: if S phenomenally knows p, then S need not justify that-p. This qualification is in respect to the notion that knowledge about phenomenal judgments is immediate in the sense that we cannot but help to know immediately that, despite our linguistic denotation of a given object, the sense of the object may be completely distinguishable based on how we attend to it. Propositions that purport distinctions of this kind do not require justification, for they simply are, within the confines of our conscious mind.

It is necessary that I am phenomenally aware in this and not that way about something because it is not possible that I could be phenomenally aware in a different way. Phenomenal awareness, according to Chalmers, Searle, and others,[14] is accessible in only the way in which it is present in the subject. Evidently, the way in which I am conscious of something is contingent on what features I attenuate. The way in which I am aware of my awareness of a tree could be altered if I switched attenuation from the bark of the tree to the color of the tree. Attention instantiates change in the focus of the features of a given object, and while there may be a host of features which would tell someone they are looking at a tree, we can only be aware of a very limited number of these features at once. Thus, if we wish to appreciate and be aware of subtle differences in object perception, we are required to alter our attenuation of which features to delineate. The way which we are conscious changes in response to these attention-shifts, though surely we intend and think it reasonable that our judgments are denoting the same entity. We are knowledgeable of the former, but not the latter. Lehrer’s account of justification, which requires states of acceptance, misses accessible consciousness, and appropriates knowledge claims only insofar as a proposition may be susceptible to states of acceptance which are not concerned with the contents of a given belief but rather that the belief is acceptable.

I would not find reason to fault Lehrer’s account had the essay been published earlier. However, seeing as how such warranted speculation was in circulation at the time in which Lehrer’s piece was published (1999), and taking into account the ‘naturalized epistemology’ attitude of Quine and others following him, I think it reasonable to criticize Lehrer’s on just these grounds. An epistemological theory which fails to account for the most cognitively direct and inevitable attitudes leaves much to be desired as an explanatory device for how we may arrive at justification, and further what may be properly called knowledge.

[1] Lehrer, Keith. “Knowledge, Scepticism, and Coherence,” Philosophical Perspectives, 33:13, 131-139, 1999

[2] Lehrer, 131

[3] Chalmers, David. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, Oxford University Press: 1996. Chalmers introduces this distinction in chapter 1 of his book on consciousness.

[4] Searle, J.R. “Consciousness, Explanatory Inversion, and cognitive science,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 13:585-642

[5] Lehrer, 131

[6] Lehrer, 131

[7] Lehrer, 131

[8] Lehrer, 132

[9] Lehrer, 132-133

[10] Lehrer, 134

[11] Lehrer, 134

[12] Lehrer, 134

[13] David Chalmers introduces this term in his book The Conscious Mind: in Search of a Fundamental Theory. The sense I am evoking of it here is similar if not equal to the sense of it in Chalmers’ works. Second-order phenomenal judgments are judgments pertaining to the awareness of the way in which the perception of something is distinct in the moment of its presentation. These experiences are not reproducible in the empirical sense, because the qualia involved are not the same.

[14] Again, the work of David Chalmers acknowledges the distinction of phenomenal v. psychological consciousness. Psychological consciousness has to do with the objects of perception, mostly, whereas phenomenal consciousness has to do with the way in which we are conscious of something, the way a judgment is presented in our minds, or perhaps judgments we form about general concepts. I think it is reasonable to claim that we know both forms of consciousness, and can form propositions about them, so I include them here to indicate the limitations of Lehrer’s account.

One might say that such a position has problems of a familiar sort. Consider the following argument:

1. A and B are different words.[For example, "car mechanic" and "surgeon"]

2. How A is used=How B is used in virtue of the fact that A and B are explained in the same way.

The mechanic performed surgery on my car this morning.

The doctor performed surgery on my body this morning

3. Therefore, A and B mean the same thing. [they share the same meaning]

3.  If that’s the case, then as long as someone can reasonably explain the meaning of A in the same way as B, then A and B can mean the same thing despite significant differences in

(i) the social environments they were originally (or currently are) used in,

(ii) respective etymologies

(iii) characteristic sensory modality they are appropriate within

A modal logic framework for multi-agent belief fusion

Liau, C. 2005. A modal logic framework for multi-agent belief fusion. ACM Trans. Comput. Logic 6, 1 (Jan. 2005), 124-174. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1042038.1042043

Keywords:
Epistemic logic, belief fusion, belief revision, database merging, multi-agent systems, multi-sources reasoning

ABSTRACT

This article provides a modal logic framework for reasoning about multi-agent belief and its fusion. We propose logics for reasoning about cautiously merged agent beliefs that have different degrees of reliability. These logics are obtained by combining the multi-agent epistemic logic and multi-source reasoning systems. The fusion is cautious in the sense that if an agent’s belief is in conflict with those of higher priorities, then his belief is completely discarded from the merged result. We consider two strategies for the cautious merging of beliefs. In the first, called level cutting fusion, if inconsistency occurs at some level, then all beliefs at the lower levels are discarded simultaneously. In the second, called level skipping fusion, only the level at which the inconsistency occurs is skipped. We present the formal semantics and axiomatic systems for these two strategies and discuss some applications of the proposed logical systems. We also develop a tableau proof system for the logics and prove the complexity result for the satisfiability and validity problems of these logics.

An internal semantics for modal logic

Fagin, R. and Vardi, M. Y. 1985. An internal semantics for modal logic. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual ACM Symposium on theory of Computing (Providence, Rhode Island, United States, May 06 – 08, 1985). STOC ’85. ACM, New York, NY, 305-315. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/22145.22179

ABSTRACT

In Kripke semantics for modal logic, “possible worlds” and the possibility relation are both primitive notions. This has both technical and conceptual shortcomings. From a technical point of view, the mathematics associated with Kripke semantics is often quite complicated. From a conceptual point of view, it is not clear how to use Kripke structures to model knowledge and belief, where one wants a clearer understanding of the notions that are primitive in Kripke semantics. We introduce modal structures as models for modal logic. We use the idea of possible worlds, but by directly describing the “internal semantics” of each possible world. It is much easier to study the standard logical questions, such as completeness, decidability, and compactness, using modal structures. Furthermore, modal structures offer a much more intuitive approach to modelling knowledge and belief.

First-order classical modal logic: applications in logics of knowledge and probability

Arló-Costa, H. and Pacuit, E. 2005. First-order classical modal logic: applications in logics of knowledge and probability. In Proceedings of the 10th Conference on theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge (Singapore, June 10 – 12, 2005). R. van der Meyden, Ed. Theoretical Aspects Of Rationality And Knowledge. National University of Singapore, Singapore, 262-278.

The paper focuses on extending to the first order case the semantical program for modalities first introduced by Dana Scott and Richard Montague. We focus on the study of neighborhood frames with constant domains and we offer a series of new completeness results for salient classical systems of first order modal logic. Among other results we show that it is possible to prove strong completeness results for normal systems without the Barcan Formula (like FOL + K) in terms of neighborhood frames with constant domains. The first order models we present permit the study of many epistemic modalities recently proposed in computer science as well as the development of adequate models for monadic operators of high probability. We conclude by offering a general completeness result for the entire family of first order classical modal logics (encompassing both normal and non-normal systems).

A modal logic framework for multi-agent belief fusion

Liau, C. 2005. A modal logic framework for multi-agent belief fusion. ACM Trans. Comput. Logic 6, 1 (Jan. 2005), 124-174. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1042038.1042043

Keywords:
Epistemic logic, belief fusion, belief revision, database merging, multi-agent systems, multi-sources reasoning

ABSTRACT

This article provides a modal logic framework for reasoning about multi-agent belief and its fusion. We propose logics for reasoning about cautiously merged agent beliefs that have different degrees of reliability. These logics are obtained by combining the multi-agent epistemic logic and multi-source reasoning systems. The fusion is cautious in the sense that if an agent’s belief is in conflict with those of higher priorities, then his belief is completely discarded from the merged result. We consider two strategies for the cautious merging of beliefs. In the first, called level cutting fusion, if inconsistency occurs at some level, then all beliefs at the lower levels are discarded simultaneously. In the second, called level skipping fusion, only the level at which the inconsistency occurs is skipped. We present the formal semantics and axiomatic systems for these two strategies and discuss some applications of the proposed logical systems. We also develop a tableau proof system for the logics and prove the complexity result for the satisfiability and validity problems of these logics.

An internal semantics for modal logic

Fagin, R. and Vardi, M. Y. 1985. An internal semantics for modal logic. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual ACM Symposium on theory of Computing (Providence, Rhode Island, United States, May 06 – 08, 1985). STOC ’85. ACM, New York, NY, 305-315. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/22145.22179

ABSTRACT

In Kripke semantics for modal logic, “possible worlds” and the possibility relation are both primitive notions. This has both technical and conceptual shortcomings. From a technical point of view, the mathematics associated with Kripke semantics is often quite complicated. From a conceptual point of view, it is not clear how to use Kripke structures to model knowledge and belief, where one wants a clearer understanding of the notions that are primitive in Kripke semantics. We introduce modal structures as models for modal logic. We use the idea of possible worlds, but by directly describing the “internal semantics” of each possible world. It is much easier to study the standard logical questions, such as completeness, decidability, and compactness, using modal structures. Furthermore, modal structures offer a much more intuitive approach to modelling knowledge and belief.

First-order classical modal logic: applications in logics of knowledge and probability

Arló-Costa, H. and Pacuit, E. 2005. First-order classical modal logic: applications in logics of knowledge and probability. In Proceedings of the 10th Conference on theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge (Singapore, June 10 – 12, 2005). R. van der Meyden, Ed. Theoretical Aspects Of Rationality And Knowledge. National University of Singapore, Singapore, 262-278.

The paper focuses on extending to the first order case the semantical program for modalities first introduced by Dana Scott and Richard Montague. We focus on the study of neighborhood frames with constant domains and we offer a series of new completeness results for salient classical systems of first order modal logic. Among other results we show that it is possible to prove strong completeness results for normal systems without the Barcan Formula (like FOL + K) in terms of neighborhood frames with constant domains. The first order models we present permit the study of many epistemic modalities recently proposed in computer science as well as the development of adequate models for monadic operators of high probability. We conclude by offering a general completeness result for the entire family of first order classical modal logics (encompassing both normal and non-normal systems).

I’ll post a review of it after I have been able to spend sufficient time with it. Needless to say at first glance I am impressed. Anyone interested in academic philosophy should create a free profile.

Mine is available at http://philpapers.org/profile/6668

When we think of a method of designation as the correlating of an utterance and a particular thing (or object), the use or function of the utterance is no longer a primary concern for us.  Thus for Wittgenstein’s sense of meaning as use, we lose the meaning of what we utter.

Explanatory philosophy ends up reducing or constricting the use of an expression to a non-contextual, purely grammatical, mysterious relation. The substitution terms end up forming the relation itself. One that can be applied in a number of cases, but only at the expenses of a more grounded and useful description.

Take away the reason for a particular term to belong to the category “mental events” or “intentionality” and you take away the seemingly inherent mystery or intrigue that blinded you to the term’s original use (i.e. real meaning).

Here’s Wittgenstein’s comment, with the comments above as linked footnotes so you can see what I am exactly responding to:

#19.  The danger of delusion which we are in becomes most clear if we propose to ourselves to give the aspects ‘this’ and ‘that’ names, say A and B. For we are tempted to imagine that giving a name consists in correlating in a peculiar and rather mysterious way a sound (or other sign) with something. How we can make use of this peculiar correlation then seems to be almost a secondary matter. (One could almost imagine that naming was done by a peculiar sacramental act, and that this produced some magic relation between the name and the thing.)[DP1]

But let us look at an example; consider this language game: A sends B to various houses in their town to fetch goods of various sorts from various people.  A gives B various lists.  On top of every list he puts a scribble, and B is trained to go to that house on the door of which he finds the same scribble, this is the name of the house.  In the first column of every list he then finds one or more scribbles which he has been taught to read out.  When he enters the house he calls out these words, and every inhabitant of the house has been trained to run up to him when a certain one of these sounds is called out, these sounds are the names of the people. He then addresses himself to each one of them in turn and shows to each two consecutive scribbles which stand on the list against his name. The first of these two, people of that town have been trained to associate with some particular kind of object, say, apples.  The second is one of a series of scribbles which each man carries about him on a slip of paper.  The person thus addressed fetches say, five apples.  The first scribble was the generic name of the objects required, the second, the name of their number.

What now is the relation between a name and the object named, say, the house and its name? I suppose we could give either of two answers. The one is that the relation consists in certain strokes having been painted on the door of the house.  The second answer I meant is that the relation we are now concerned with is established, not just by painting these strokes on the door, but by the particular role which they play in the practice of our language as we have been sketching it.-Again, the relation of the name of a person to the person here consists in the person having been trained to run up to someone who calls out the name; or again, we might say that it consists in this and the whole of the usage of the name in the language game.

Look into this language game and see if you can find the mysterious relation of the object and its name.-The relation of name and object we may say, consists in a scribble being written on an object (or some other such very trivial relation), and that’s all there is to it. But we are not satisfied with that, for we feel that a scribble written on an object in itself is of no importance to us, and interests us in no way. And this is true; the whole importance lies in the particular use we make of the scribble written on the object, and we, in a sense, simplify matters by saying that the name has a peculiar relation to its object, a relation other than that say, of being written on the object, or of being spoken by a person pointing to an object with his finger. A primitive philosophy condenses the whole usage of the name into the idea of a relation which thereby becomes a mysterious relation.[DP2] (Compare the ideas of mental activities, wishing, believing, thinking, etc., which for the same reason have something mysterious and inexplicable about them.)[DP3]

[DP2]Explanatory philosophy ends up reducing or constricting the use of an expression to a non-contextual, purely grammatical, mysterious relation. The substitution terms end up forming the relation itself. One that can be applied in a number of cases, but only at the expenses of a more grounded and useful description.

[DP3]Take away the reason for a particular term to belong to the category “mental events” or “intentionality” and you take away the seemingly inherent mystery or intrigue that blinded you to the term’s original use (i.e. real meaning).

read more | digg story

• insufficient local content
• costs associated with domestic plans
• ISP-associated performance and costs
• lack of content in native language

Strauss, El-Ansary, and Frost correctly implicate the additional cost of insecure online transactions as well as fradulent and/or malicious credit card users.

This is going to seem irrelevant but and it sort of is, but we could introduce another sort of language game where I’m apt to use or convey that sense of necessity I just got through justifying a disagreement with.  This has more practical relevance – printing requirements.  I figured my undergraduate stint with philosophy would, naturally, of necessity (yes I’m stretching it) – represent more in terms of printing costs vs. my graduate studies information technology.  After all, those old philosophy research papers from the 1940s, they’re available in PDF, but nobody would think (I hope not) to try to read them on a monitor where resolutions are roughly (something like) 40% that of the resolution of the real deal (i.e., reading a real book).  And since IT itself is a new discipline, it stands to reason that documentation ought to be primarily available on screen, right?

None of this turns out, with me, to be true.  I’m beginning to mooch off the network printers and/or printers of my family/peers.  So yeah, this is all leading up to my find for the week.  Practical knowledge is the new metaphysical necessity, it helps to not purchase your printing equipment at oversized vendors with terrible prices.  So yeah, this is definitely a practical post.

Printing needs

IT security surveys typically run anywhere from 20-50+ pages with lots of images and/or non-text/colored content.  Lexmark printers – especially the inkjets -  are pretty good for undergraduate/mid-level printing requirements.  I bought the Z1300 a year or so ago and while basic, its completely fine for low to mid-level use.  My gripe has to do with the software, and an aspect of it that’s quite irrelevant to its functionality.  There’s this annoying voice that activates whenever you use the thing, so I recommend NOT wearing headphones if you’re about to print something.  Of course you could shut it off in the options but who remembers that?  I’ll have to dig up an article on CNET which – I recall – named the z1300 a definite grab for the price.  If I buy online I tend to gravitate towards vendors who’ve been around for awhile and that sport high customer ratings.

Anyway, for printer toners and ink/other printer supplies its probably easiest to buy the stuff online. Make sure to review CNET or Tom’s Hardware Guide or something to make sure the stuff you purchase is legitimate and/or corresponds with your printer.  Might pay a few extra bucks for shipping but from what I can tell the price is initially reduced at the best online vendors.  If the vendor’s been around for several years chances are you should feel confident buying printing supplies from them.

Scanners

Scanners probably aren’t too necessary for most undergraduates unless they’re into photo editing and/or really wanna share old pictures on social networking sites.  Color depth is important to watch out for, although honestly I dont’ know much about scanners other than a few good shopping places online.

Although, scanners would be extremely useful if you’re considering going into digital/online publishing for instance.  Especially if you were an editor or content producer for an academic publication, since physical documents are still digitally scanned as part of the update process for large academic databases such as EBSCO.

“We say that someone has the eye of a painter or the ear of a musician but anyone lacking these qualities hardly suffers from a kind of blindness or deafness.”

“We say that someone doesn’t have a musical ear, and aspect-blindness is (in a way) comparable to this inability to hear.”

These are quoted from Ray Monk’s great biography of Wittgenstein, The Duty of Genius. Apparently Wittgenstein uttered them in conversation with his friend, Drury, a psychologist.

The applications of modal logic to mathematics and computer science have become increasingly important. Provability logic is only one example of this trend. The term “advanced modal logic” refers to a tradition in modal logic research that is particularly well represented in departments of mathematics and computer science. This tradition has been woven into the history of modal logic right from its beginnings (Goldblatt, 2006). Research into relationships with topology and algebras represents some of the very first technical work on modal logic. However the term ‘advanced modal logic’ generally refers to a second wave of work done since the mid 1970s. Some example of the many interesting topics dealt with include results on decidability (whether it is possible to compute whether a formula of a given modal logic is a theorem) and complexity (the costs in time and memory needed to compute such facts about modal logics).

My recent attempt involved attempting to translate simple E-R logical data flows into modal propositions, though without quantification it was difficult and/or probably impossible.

read more | digg story

read more | digg story

Is this part of the philosopher in me slowly dying? If picture below is any indication, then either (p) I’m growing up or (q) I’m slowly divorcing myself from philosopher-type habits. As it turns out, if p or q, then r: D tracks his assignments.

I remember first learning what a reductio was while reading one of Plato’s dialogues.  I can’t remember exactly which one, probably The Theaetetus.  In any event, I came to the familiar question of how exactly to name my opposition to this particualr reductio.  Since a reductio ad absurdum is deductively invalid by definition, I could say “and this is inconsistent because…” The function of the argument WAS to be invalid and thus not sound.

I can’t discuss the specifics, but needless to say, it was entertaining to see a familiar problem arise in a quite distinct context or discourse.

Here are a few legitimate sources of information on reductio ad absurdum’s:

• Standard Encyclopedia article on Democritus

A reductio ad absurdum argument reported by Aristotle suggests that the atomists argued from the assumption that, if a magnitude is infinitely divisible, nothing prevents it actually having been divided at every point. The atomist then asks what would remain: if the answer is some extended particles, such as dust, then the hypothesized division has not yet been completed. If the answer is nothing or points, then the question is how an extended magnitude could be composed from what does not have extension