Synchronizing the Logic of Inquiry with the Logic of Action: The Case of Urban Climate Policy

Policymakers often rely on scientific knowledge for making policy decisions, and many scientists aim to produce knowledge that is useful to policymakers. However, the logic of action (which guides policy) and the logic of inquiry (which guides research) do not always align. We introduce the term “logic synchronization” to characterize the degree to which the logic of policy action aligns with the logic of scientific inquiry. We use the case of urban climate policy to explore this dynamic using a purposive literature review. The framework presented here is helpful in identifying areas in which the logic of inquiry and the logic of action synchronize, creating the opportunity for both policy-relevant science and science-informed policy. It also reveals where the logics do not yet synchronize, which indicates where scientists and policy makers can productively focus their efforts. The framework introduced here can be both theoretically and practically useful for linking scientific knowledge to policy action.

Popular Capitalism? Privatization and Demutualization in the 1980s and 1990s

While Margaret Thatcher publicly promoted a Puritan emphasis on thrift, hard work, and asceticism, the outcome of her policies stood in stark contrast to this side of her rhetoric. Her way of selling off nationalized industries allowed the British to have a heavily subsidized flutter on the stock market and increased the shareholder population to ten million investors. Reality, however, was a far cry from Thatcher’s slogan of a ‘share-owning democracy’, not least because the continued growth of large financial institutions meant that small shareholders had very little influence on corporate governance. Millions of people merely ‘stagged’ the privatization issues, meaning that they sold for a quick and easy profit in early trading. ‘Investors’ new and old applied the same short-term logic during the demutualization of major building societies like Halifax or Northern Rock during the 1990s, when ‘carpet-bagging’ became a national sport. Carpetbaggers opened accounts in societies ripe for demutualization not in order to save for a house, but to make a quick profit from selling their accounts once they were converted into shares due to the building society becoming a public company. This chapter places centre stage prominent carpetbaggers such as the former royal butler, Michael Hardern, who during the late 1990s campaigned to become a board member of all remaining building societies. The extent of ‘stagging’ and ‘carpet-bagging’ shows that popular capitalism was less an economic enfranchisement of the nation, and more an expressive culture of self-referential speculation, personal enrichment, and stock market gambling.

Term Logic

The predominant form of logic before Frege, the logic of terms has been largely neglected since. Terms may be singular, empty or plural in their denotation. This article, presupposing propositional logic, provides an axiomatization based on an identity predicate, a predicate of non-existence, a constant empty term, and term conjunction and negation. The idea of basing term logic on existence or non-existence, outlined by Brentano, is here carried through in modern guise. It is shown how categorical syllogistic reduces to just two forms of inference. Tree and diagram methods of testing validity are described. An obvious translation into monadic predicate logic shows the system is decidable, and additional expressive power brought by adding quantifiers enables numerical predicates to be defined. The system’s advantages for pedagogy are indicated.

Quantum logic

The topic of quantum logic was introduced by Birkhoff and von Neumann (1936), who described the formal properties of a certain algebraic system associated with quantum theory. To avoid begging questions, it is convenient to use the term ‘logic’ broadly enough to cover any algebraic system with formal characteristics similar to the standard sentential calculus. In that sense it is uncontroversial that there is a logic of experimental questions (for example, ‘Is the particle in region R?’ or ‘Do the particles have opposite spins?’) associated with any physical system. Having introduced this logic for quantum theory, we may ask how it differs from the standard sentential calculus, the logic for the experimental questions in classical mechanics. The most notable difference is that the distributive laws fail, being replaced by a weaker law known as orthomodularity. All this can be discussed without deciding whether quantum logic is a genuine logic, in the sense of a system of deduction. Putnam argued that quantum logic was indeed a genuine logic, because taking it as such solved various problems, notably that of reconciling the wave-like character of a beam of, say, electrons, as it passes through two slits, with the thesis that the electrons in the beam go through one or other of the two slits. If Putnam’s argument succeeds this would be a remarkable case of the empirical defeat of logical intuitions. Subsequent discussion, however, seems to have undermined his claim.

Fuzzy logic

The term ‘fuzzy’ refers to concepts without precise borders. Membership in a ‘fuzzy’ set – the set of things to which a ‘fuzzy’ concept (fuzzily) applies – is to be thought of as being a matter of degree. Hence, in order to specify a fuzzy set, one must specify for every item in the universe the extent to which the item is a member of the set. The engineer Lotfi Zadeh developed a theory of fuzzy sets and advocated their use in many areas of engineering and science. Zadeh and his zealous followers have attempted to develop fuzzy systems theory, fuzzy algorithms and even fuzzy arithmetic. The phrase ‘fuzzy logic’ has come to be applied rather imprecisely to any analysis that is not strictly binary. It does not refer to any particular formal logic, in the sense in which the term ‘logic’ is used by philosophers and mathematicians. (‘Fuzzy logic’ is sometimes used anachronistically to refer to any many-valued logic.)

Logic, ancient

Western antiquity produced two great bodies of logical theory – those of Aristotle and the Stoics. Both aim to explain what distinguishes good arguments from bad. Both see that the best arguments are valid and that an argument’s validity depends on its form. For both, therefore, logic’s business is to identify the valid argument forms. Both theories do this by laying down a small number of basic argument forms – Aristotle’s ‘perfect syllogisms’, the Stoics’ ‘indemonstrables’ – and rigorously deriving other valid forms from them. Both theories also try – though in a less systematic manner – to classify the ways in which an argument can go wrong. Here the similarities between these two logics end. Their most significant differences can be illustrated by comparing basic argument forms from each. The argument ‘Every swan is an animal and every animal is moving, so every swan is moving’ has the same form as the argument ‘Every musician is human and every human is a substance, so every musician is a substance’. The Aristotelian expression of this form is ‘A belongs to all B and B belongs to all C, so A belongs to all C’. In this form the letters ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ stand for any terms whatever, and ‘A belongs to all B’ replaces ‘Every B is an A’. This represents the Aristotelian approach. Compare it with the following. The argument ‘If it is day then it is light, it is day, so it is light’ has the same form as the argument ‘If Dion walks then Dion moves, Dion walks, so Dion moves’. This form is expressed by the Stoics as ‘If the first then the second, the first, so the second’. Here the expressions ‘the first’ and ‘the second’ stand for any declarative sentences whatever. In both cases, the validity of the argument form is tantamount to the validity of all arguments having that form (though the Stoics, unlike Aristotle, require that the precise words used in an argument should recur in its form). But the Aristotelian argument form is different in kind from the Stoic one: while it abstracts from terms, the Stoic form abstracts from sentences. Aristotelian logic is a term logic, Stoic logic a sentential one.

Partycypacja społeczna na tle zasady zrównoważonego rozwoju

SOCIAL PARTICIPATION AGAINST THE PRINCIPLE OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTThe problems of sustainable development take on meaning in proportion to growth of the meaning of these problems, which result from disrespect of principle of sustainable development. The matters of drawing out of resources, irrational using of them, inappropriate management of wasters, the unbalanced consumption are clearly perceptible through these problems, which appear as result from applying the simply and short-term logic of profit. In last years however, especially after financial crisis from 2008 it is quite clear, that the logic of free market is not appropriate to manage of supplies and to create stable and sustainable economic growth. In order to solve these problems and create the terms of sustainable development, it is necessary to create the mechanisms of social participation. The social commitment, which is evidence of responsibility and using a social potential can be tool to direct of social-economic development to more reasonable and sustainable tendency.