The argument from absence of analysis (AAA) infers primitivism about some x from the absence of a reductive analysis of x. But philosophers use the word ‘primitive’ to mean many distinct things. I argue that there is a robust sense of ‘primitive’ present in the metaphysics literature that cannot be inferred via the AAA. Successfully demonstrating robust primitivism about some x requires showing two things at once: that a reduction of x is not possible and that an explanatorily deep characterization of x is not available. In order to secure this second explanatory claim, the AAA must wrongly assume that reductive analysis is our only source of explanatory characterization. I argue that this is false by offering a distinct way of providing explanatory characterizations backed by suitably understood metaphysical constraints. While there remains a minimal sense of ‘primitive’ inferable via the AAA, this sense is exhausted by the denial of reduction. With minimal primitivism as its target, the AAA is uninteresting.

This article explores the legal structures and discursive framings informing the governance of one particular “backward” region of India, the Andaman Islands. I trace the shifting patterns of occupation and development of the islands in the colonial and postcolonial periods, with a focus on the changes wrought by independence in 1947 and the eventual history of planned development there. I demonstrate how intersecting discourses of indigenous savagery/primitivism and the geographical emptiness were repeatedly mobilized in colonial-era surveys and postcolonial policy documents. Postcolonial visions of developing the Andaman Islands ushered in a settler-colonial governmentality, infused with genocidal fantasies of the “dying savage.” Laws professing to protect aboriginal Jarawas actually worked to unilaterally extend Indian sovereignty over the lands and bodies of a community clearly hostile to such incorporation. I question the current exclusion of India from the global geographies of settler-colonialism and argue that the violent and continuing history of indigenous marginalization in the Andaman Islands represents a de facto operation of a logic of terra nullius.

I offer a counterexample to Timothy Williamson’s conjecture that knowledge is the most general factive mental state; i.e., that every factive mental state entails knowledge. I describe two counterexamples (Ernest Sosa’s and Baron Reed’s) that I find unpersuasive, and argue that they fail due to a specific feature they have in common. I then argue that there is a primitive mental state that is factive but does not entail knowledge, and that constitutes a counterexample to Williamson’s conjecture that is not subject to the problems faced by Sosa’s and Reed’s counterexamples.

Let $\def \xmlpi #1{}\def \mathsfbi #1{\boldsymbol {\mathsf {#1}}}\let \le =\leqslant \let \leq =\leqslant \let \ge =\geqslant \let \geq =\geqslant \def \Pr {\mathit {Pr}}\def \Fr {\mathit {Fr}}\def \Rey {\mathit {Re}}S$ be a semigroup. Elements $a,b$ of $S$ are $\widetilde{\mathscr{R}}$-related if they have the same idempotent left identities. Then $S$ is weakly left ample if (1) idempotents of $S$ commute, (2) $\widetilde{\mathscr{R}}$ is a left congruence, (3) for any $a \in S$, $a$ is $\widetilde{\mathscr{R}}$-related to a (unique) idempotent, say $a^+$, and (4) for any element $a$ and idempotent $e$ of $S$, $ae=(ae)^+a$. Elements $a,b$ of $S$ are $\mathscr{R}^*$-related if, for any $x,y \in S^1$, $xa=ya$ if and only if $xb=yb$. Then $S$ is left ample if it satisfies (1), (3) and (4) relative to $\mathscr{R}^*$ instead of $\widetilde{\mathscr{R}}$. Further, $S$ is (weakly) ample if it is both (weakly) left and right ample. We establish several characterizations of these classes of semigroups. For weakly left ample ones we provide a construction of all such semigroups with zero all of whose nonzero idempotents are primitive. Among characterizations of weakly ample semigroups figure (strong) semilattices of unipotent monoids, and among those for ample semigroups, (strong) semilattices of cancellative monoids. This describes the structure of these two classes of semigroups in an optimal way, while, for the ‘one-sided’ case, the problem of structure remains open.

Single-celled parasites like Entamoeba, Trypanosoma, Phytophthora and Plasmodium wreak untold havoc on human habitat and health. Understanding the position of the various protistan pathogens in the larger context of eukaryotic diversity informs our study of how these parasites operate on a cellular level, as well as how they have evolved. Here, we review the literature that has brought our understanding of eukaryotic relationships from an idea of parasites as primitive cells to a crystallized view of diversity that encompasses 6 major divisions, or supergroups, of eukaryotes. We provide an updated taxonomic scheme (for 2011), based on extensive genomic, ultrastructural and phylogenetic evidence, with three differing levels of taxonomic detail for ease of referencing and accessibility (see supplementary material at Cambridge Journals On-line). Two of the most pressing issues in cellular evolution, the root of the eukaryotic tree and the evolution of photosynthesis in complex algae, are also discussed along with ideas about what the new generation of genome sequencing technologies may contribute to the field of eukaryotic systematics. We hope that, armed with this user's guide, cell biologists and parasitologists will be encouraged about taking an increasingly evolutionary point of view in the battle against parasites representing real dangers to our livelihoods and lives.

Let S be the semigroup with identity, generated by x and y, subject to y being invertible and yx = xy2. We study two Banach algebra completions of the semigroup algebra ℂS. Both completions are shown to be left-primitive and have separating families of irreducible infinite-dimensional right modules. As an appendix, we offer an alternative proof that ℂS is left-primitive but not right-primitive. We show further that, in contrast to the completions, every irreducible right module for ℂS is finite dimensional and hence that ℂS has a separating family of such modules.

Various lattices of subgroups of a finite transitive permutation group G can be used to define a set of ‘basic’ permutation groups associated with G that are analogues of composition factors for abstract finite groups. In particular G can be embedded in an iterated wreath product of a chain of its associated basic permutation groups. The basic permutation groups corresponding to the lattice L of all subgroups of G containing a given point stabiliser are a set of primitive permutation groups. We introduce two new subgroup lattices contained in L, called the seminormal subgroup lattice and the subnormal subgroup lattice. For these lattices the basic permutation groups are quasiprimitive and innately transitive groups, respectively.

Let {W(t), t ≥ 0} be a standard Brownian motion. For a positive integer m, define a Gaussian process Watanabe and Lachal gave some asymptotic properties of the process Xm(·), m ≥ 1. In this paper, we study the bounds of its moduli of continuity and large increments by establishing large deviation results.

If an n × n stochastic matrix has a column with no zeros, one can immediately conclude that the chain is ergodic and the state corresponding to that column is persistent and aperiodic. In this paper it is shown that it is decidable whether or not some power of a finite stochastic matrix has a positive column. Some problems regarding positive columns in infinite stochastic matrices are also considered.