A popular “Reductionist” account of personal identity unifies person stages into persons in virtue of their psychological continuity with one another. One objection to psychological continuity accounts is that there is more to our personal identity than just mere psychological continuity: there is also an active process of self-interpretation and self-creation. This criticism can be used to motivate a rival account of personal identity that appeals to the notion of a narrative. To the extent that they comment upon the issue, (...) proponents of narrative accounts typically reject Reductionist metaphysics that (ontologically) reduce persons to aggregates of person stages. In contrast to this trend, we seek to develop a narrative account of personal identity from within Reductionist metaphysics: we think person stages are unified into persons in virtue of their narrative continuity with one another. We argue that this Reductionist version of the narrative account avoids some serious problems facing non-Reductionist versions of the narrative account. (shrink)

One critique of experimental philosophy is that the intuitions of the philosophically untutored should be accorded little to no weight; instead, only the intuitions of professional philosophers should matter. In response to this critique, “experimentalists” often claim that the intuitions of professional philosophers are biased. In this paper, we explore this question of whose intuitions should be disqualified and why. Much of the literature on this issue focuses on the question of whether the intuitions of professional philosophers are reliable. In (...) contrast, we instead focus on the idea of “muddled” intuitions—i.e. intuitions that are misdirected and about notions other than the ones under discussion. We argue that the philosophically untutored are likely to have muddled intuitions and that professional philosophers are likely to have unmuddled intuitions. Although being umuddled does not, by itself, establish the reliability of the intuitions of professional philosophers, being muddled is enough to disqualify the intuitions of the philosophically untutored. We then turn to the charge that, despite being unmuddled, professional philosophers still have biased intuitions. To evaluate this charge, we switch focus from the general notion of biased intuition to the more specific notion of theory-laden intuition. We argue that there is prima facie evidence—in the form of the presence of conflicts of intuition—for thinking that at least some of the intuitions of professional philosophers are theory-laden. In summary, we conclude that that there is no clean and easy answer to the question of whose intuitions should matter. (shrink)

There is an expansion of empirical research that at its core is an attempt to quantify the "feely" aspects of living in raced (and other stigmatized) bodies. This research is offered as part concession, part insistence on the reality of the "special" circumstances of living in raced bodies. While this move has the potential of making headway in debates about the character of racism and the unique nature of the harms of contemporary racism--through an analysis of stereotype threat research, microaggression (...) research, and the reception of both discourses--I will argue that this scientization of the phenomenology of race and racism also stalls progress on the most significant challenges for the current conversation about race and racism: how to listen and how to be heard. (shrink)

This essay explores challenges that arise for professors who teach critical theory in our current climate of conservatism. Specifically, it is argued that the conservative commitments to non-revolutionary change and reverence for tradition are corrupted in our current political and intellectual climate. This corruption, called “ideological imperviousness,” undermines the institutional structures put in place to produce a functional educational environment that protects the interests of both professors and students. The result is an environment that imposes an unjust vulnerability on professors (...) and risks depriving students of the opportunity to acquire the critical skills necessary to combat their own vulnerabilities. (shrink)

The competing expressions of ideology flooding the contemporary political landscape have taken a turn toward the absurd. The Radiance Foundation’s recent anti-abortion campaign targeting African-American women, including a series of billboards bearing the slogan “The most dangerous place for an African-American child is in the womb”, is just one example of political "discourse" that is both infuriating and confounding. Discourse with these features – problematic intelligibility, disinterest in the truth, and inflammatory rhetoric – has become increasingly common in politics, the (...) press, and even the arguments made by ordinary folk. It is often criticized for its falsehood or its hurtfulness; however, these critiques tend to miss its pernicious potential. This essay characterizes this insidious discourse as purposeful nonsense. Part of the way that purposeful nonsense functions, we argue, relies on taking advantage of harmful stereotypes and denigrating narratives that are already present in our culture. Purposeful nonsense both draws upon harmful ideology and fortifies it. The effect is that members of oppressed social groups are confronted with disparaging ideology, while its authors are free to deny responsibility for it. Black feminist and intersectional analysis – particularly in the discussion of race, abortion, and reproductive justice – are useful in identifying and criticizing the harmful subtext in the Radiance Foundation’s billboard campaign. The notion of purposeful nonsense serves to extend the reach of these criticisms. Purposeful nonsense – disguised as merely logically confused discourse – is a key factor in maintaining an oppressive and unjust society; however, feminist, black feminist, and intersectional analysis contextualizes purposeful nonsense, potentially disrupting its harmful influence. We conclude that purposeful nonsense employs a variation on stereotype threat, a phenomenon in which being reminded of negative stereotypes about one’s social group causes stereotypical performance failures. We suggest that the notion of stereotype threat combined with intersectional analysis offers a fruitful avenue along which research on this sort of discourse might be expanded. (shrink)

I develop a new theory of properties by considering two central arguments in the debate whether properties are dispositional or categorical. The first claims that objects must possess categorical properties in order to be distinct from empty space. The second argument, however, points out several untoward consequences of positing categorical properties. I explore these arguments and argue that despite appearances, their conclusions need not be in conflict with one another. In particular, we can view the second argument as supporting only (...) the claim that there is not a plurality of categorical properties, and not the stronger claim that there are no categorical properties whatsoever. I then develop a new account of properties which capitalizes on this insight. (shrink)

According to memory foundationalism, seeming to remember that P is prima facie justification for believing that P. There is a common objection to this theory: If I previously believed that P carelessly (i.e. without justification) and later seem to remember that P, then (according to memory foundationalism) I have somehow acquired justification for a previously unjustified belief. In this paper, I explore this objection. I begin by distinguishing between two versions of it: One where I seem to remember that P (...) while also seeming to remember being careless in my original believing that P and the other where I seem to remember that P while not seeming to remember my past carelessness. I argue that the former case is the real challenge for memory foundationalism. After establishing the case of unforgotten carelessness as objection to memory foundationalism, I recast memory foundationalism in way that allows it to escape this objection. (shrink)

Representationalism is the position that the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience supervenes upon its representational content. The phenomenon of blurry vision is thought to raise a difficulty for this position. More specifically, it is alleged that representationalists cannot account for the phenomenal difference between clearly seeing an indistinct edge and blurrily seeing a distinct edge solely in terms of represented features of the surrounding environment. I defend representationalism from this objection by offering a novel account of the phenomenal difference (...) between these two kinds of cases. (shrink)

In seeing a tilted penny, we are experientially aware of both its circularity and another shape, which I dub ‘β‐ellipticality’. Some claim that our experiential awareness of the intrinsic shapes/sizes of everyday objects depends upon our experiential awareness of β‐shapes/β‐sizes. In contrast, I maintain that β‐property experiences are the result of what Richard Wollheim calls ‘seeing‐in’, but run in reverse: instead of seeing a three‐dimensional object in a flat surface, we see a flat surface in a three‐dimensional object. Using this (...) new account, I re‐examine the phenomenological directness of visual experience and undermine an argument for skepticism about β‐property experiences. (shrink)

Sydney Shoemaker's "Subset Account" offers a new take on determinable properties and the realization relation as well as a defense of non-reductive physicalism from the problem of mental causation. At the heart of this account are the claims that (1) mental properties are determinable properties and (2) the causal powers that individuate a determinable property are a proper subset of the causal powers that individuate the determinates of that property. The second claim, however, has led to the accusation that the (...) effects caused by the instantiation of a determinable property will also be caused by the instantiation of the determinates of that property—so instead of solving the problem of mental causation, the Subset Account ends up guaranteeing that the effects of mental properties (and all other types of determinable property) will be causally overdetermined! In this paper, I explore this objection. I argue that both sides in this debate have failed to engage the question at the heart of the objection: Given that both a determinable property and its determinates have the power to cause some effect (E), does it follow that both will actually cause E when the relevant conditions obtain? To make genuine progress towards answering this question, we need to take a serious look at the metaphysics of causation. With the debate properly reframed and issues about the metaphysics of causation front and center, I explore the question of whether the Subset Account is doomed to result in problematic causal overdetermination. (shrink)

To put it bluntly, Physicalism is the thesis that everything that exists is physical. Although Physicalism enjoys a great deal of popularity, two widely accepted theses, the physical sciences only tell us about the dispositional properties of the objects they study, and dispositional properties depend upon categorical properties, seem to guarantee that, under some sense of the word, the physical sciences are fated to give us an "incomplete" picture of what exists.In what follows, this challenge to Physicalism will be referred (...) to as "the challenge of categorical properties.". (shrink)

Existentialist accounts maintain that visual phenomenal content takes the logical form of an existentially quantified sentence. These accounts do not make phenomenal content specific enough. Singularist accounts posit a singular content in which the seen object is a constituent. These accounts make phenomenal content too specific. My account gets the specificity of visual phenomenal content just right. My account begins with John Searle's suggestion that visual experience represents an object as seen, moves this relation outside the scope of the existential (...) quantifier and then replaces it with the relation of objects being ‘present as accessible’, as described by Alva Noë. (shrink)

Both visual experience and conscious thought represent external objects, but in visual experience these objects seem present before the mind and available for direct access in a way that they don’t in conscious thought. In this paper, I introduce a couple of challenges that this “Scene-Immediacy” of visual experience raises for traditional versions of Representationalism. I then identify a resource to which Representationalists can appeal in addressing these challenges: the low-detail fringe of visual experience. I argue that low-detail contents within (...) visual experience provide the mind with a rich access to additional high-detail information, an access that is not found in conscious thought. This access, in turn, speaks to the challenges raised by the Scene-Immediacy of visual experience. Robert Schroer is an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota at Duluth. (shrink)

The special and unique attitudes that we take towards events in our futures/pasts—e.g., attitudes like the dread of an impeding pain—create a challenge for “Reductionist” accounts that reduce persons to aggregates of interconnected person stages: if the person stage currently dreading tomorrow’s pain is numerically distinct from the person stage that will actually suffer the pain, what reason could the current person stage have for thinking of that future pain as being his? One reason everyday subjects believe they have a (...) substantially extended temporal existence stems from introspection—they introspectively experience their selves as being temporally extended. In this paper, I examine whether a Reductionist about personal identity can co-opt this explanation. Using Galen Strawson’s recent work on self-experience as a resource, I reach both a negative and a positive conclusion about the prospects of such a position. First, the relevant kind of self-experience—i.e., the introspective experience of one’s self as being a substantially temporally extended entity—will not automatically arise within a person stage simply in virtue of that stage being psychologically connected to/continuous with other person stages. Second, the relevant kind of self-experience will arise, however, in virtue of person stages weaving together their respective experiences, actions, etc. via a narrative. This positive conclusion points towards a new Reductionist position that focuses upon a narrative, and not mere psychological continuity, in attempting to justify the special attitudes we take towards events in our futures/pasts. (shrink)

Classic perfect being theologians take ‘being perfect’ to be conceptually necessary and sufficient for being God. I argue that this claim is false because being perfect is not conceptually necessary for being God. I rest my case on a simple thought experiment inspired by an alternative I developed to perfect being theology that I call “functional theology.” My findings, if correct, are a boon for theists since if it should turn out that there is no perfect being, there could still (...) be a God. (shrink)

Environmental representationalism is the position that phenomenal differences between visual experiences are determined by the representational claims those experiences make about the surrounding environment. Afterimage and phosphene experiences are an important and widely cited objection to this position. In this paper, I defend environmental representationalism from this objection. In particular, I point out several ways in which typical environmental representationalist accounts of these experiences are lacking while developing a more satisfying account which focuses on how the visual system generates its (...) representations as well as on several of the unique temporally-extended features of afterimage/phosphene experiences. (shrink)

A slew of conceivability arguments have been given against physicalism. Many physicalists try to undermine these arguments by offering accounts of phenomenal concepts that explain how there can be an epistemic gap, but not an ontological gap, between the phenomenal and the physical. Some complain, however, that such accounts fail to do justice to the nature of our introspective grasp of phenomenal properties. A particularly influential version of this complaint comes from David Chalmers (1996; 2003), who claims, in opposition to (...) the accounts of phenomenal concepts described above, that phenomenal concepts have primary and secondary intensions that coincide in all worlds. In this paper, I construct an argument that casts doubt upon Chalmers' claim. At the heart of this argument is an idea that Chalmers shows some affinity for: namely, that introspection doesn't reveal whether phenomenal properties are fundamental properties or whether they are derived from more basic protophenomenal properties. I argue that this claim implies that the primary and secondary intensions of our phenomenal concepts do not coincide in all worlds. In this way, I show that a plausible idea about the powers of introspection – an idea that Chalmers himself is drawn to – is a reason for rejecting the claim that phenomenal concepts have primary and secondary intensions that coincide in all worlds. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore and defend the idea that we have epistemic responsibilities with respect to our visual searches, responsibilities that are far more fine-grained and interesting than the trivial responsibilities to keep our eyes open and “look hard”. In order to have such responsibilities, we must be able to exert fine-grained and interesting forms of control over our visual searches. I present both an intuitive case and an empirical case for thinking that we do, in fact, have such (...) forms of control over our visual searches. I then show how these forms of control can be used to aim the visual beliefs that result from our searches towards various epistemic goals. (shrink)

What are physical objects like when they are considered independently of their causal interactions? Many think that the answer to this question involves categorical properties– properties that make contributions to their bearers that are independent of any causal interactions those objects may enter into. In this paper, I examine two challenges that this solution poses to Physicalism. The first challenge is that, given that they are distinct from any of the scientifically described causal powers that they happen to convey, categorical (...) properties will not qualify as being ‘physical’ properties. Given the right definition of ‘physical’, this challenge can be overcome. I argue, however, that the only way we can have a positive grasp of the nature of categorical properties is via ‘acquaintance’– a non-physical relation. This second challenge to Physicalism cannot be overcome.1. (shrink)

In the September 2020 edition of Perception, Alan Gilchrist published an editorial entitled “The Integrity of Vision” (Gilchrist, 2020). In it, Gilchrist critiques motivated perception research. His main points are as follows: (1) Motivated perception is compromised by experimental demand: Results do not actually show motivated perception but instead reflect subjects’ desires to comply with inferred predictions. (2) Motivated perception studies use designs that make predictions obvious to subjects. These transparent designs conspire with experimental demand to yield confirmatory but compromised (...) results. (3) Motivated perception research lacks guiding theory and cannot explain what appear to be contradictory results. (4) Motivated perception presents an unsupportable assault upon the impermeability of perception. The present commentary responds to these four assertions. (shrink)

It is widely thought that functionalism and the qualia theory are better positioned to accommodate the ‘affective’ aspect of pain phenomenology than representationalism. In this paper, we attempt to overturn this opinion by raising problems for both functionalism and the qualia theory on this score. With regard to functionalism, we argue that it gets the order of explanation wrong: pain experience gives rise to the effects it does because it hurts, and not the other way around. With regard to the (...) qualia theory, we argue that it fails to capture the sense in which pain 's affective phenomenology rationalises various bodily-directed beliefs, desires, and behaviours. Representationalism, in contrast, escapes both of these problems: it gets the order of explanation right and it explains how pain 's affective phenomenology can rationalise bodily-directed beliefs, desires, and behaviours. For this reason, we argue that representationalism has a significant advantage in the debates about pain 's affective phenomenology. We end the paper by examining objections, including the question of what representationalists should say about so-called ‘disassociation cases’, such as pain asymbolia. (shrink)

Terms for consciousness, used with a cognitive meaning, emerged as count nouns in the 17th century. This transformation repeats an evolution that had taken place in late antiquity, when related vocabulary, used in the sense of conscience, went from being mass nouns designating states to count nouns designating faculties possessed by every individual. The reified concept of consciousness resulted from the rejection of the Scholastic-Aristotelian theory of mind according to which the mind is not a countable thing, but a pure (...) potentiality. This rejection was motivated by an acute sense of the mind’s fallible subjectivity. While conditioned by recent historical events, the 17th century’s pervasive sense of subjectivity also reveals a heavy debt to Hellenistic philosophy, which had been recently rediscovered. But whereas Hellenistic thought, mistrustful of theoria, only reifies conscience, early modern thinking, more mistrustful of praxis and seeking its grounding in theoria, goes a step further and reifies consciousness. Partly modeled on theological ideas, the resulting concept of consciousness is plagued by paradoxes that have becomes notorious for their intractability. But essentially the same model of consciousness underwrites contemporary theory, embroiling contemporary debates in the same controversies that dominated the 17th century. Sidestepping these difficulties by returning to the Scholastic-Aristotelian theory of mind would be a tall order, but it is not impossible. Alfred North Whitehead's theory of consciousness offers an example. His novel theory of time enables Whitehead to rehabilitate the Aristotelian concept of passive mind in a wholly naturalistic way. (shrink)

The authors argue that the consciousness debate inhabits the same problem space today as it did in the 17th century. They attribute the lack of progress to a mindset still polarized by Descartes’ real distinction between mind and body, resulting in a standoff between humanistic and scientistic approaches. They suggest that consciousness can be adequately studied only by a multiplicity of disciplines so that the paramount problem is how to integrate diverse disciplinary perspectives into a coherent metatheory. Process philosophy is (...) well qualified to attempt such a synthesis. The rationale for the volume is summed up in the book's unifying thesis: normal, focal-attentive consciousness is not the sui generis phenomenon it is usually taken to be, but part of a wider spectrum of experience (including marginal, deviant, and non-human experience) that can only be studied by approaches as diverse as phenomenology, psycho- and neuropathology, biology, and zoology. (shrink)

There have been many attempts to retire dualism from active philosophic life, replacing it with something less removed from science, but we are no closer to that goal now than fifty years ago. I propose breaking the stalemate by considering marginal perspectives that may help identify unrecognized assumptions that limit the mainstream debate. Comparison with Whitehead highlights ways that opponents of dualism continue to uphold the Cartesian “real distinction” between mind and body. Whitehead, by contrast, insists on a conceptual distinction: (...) there can no more be body without mind than mind without body (at least at the level of ultimate constituents). Key to this integration is Whitehead’s understanding that mind, at its most rudimentary, is simply the intrinsic temporality of a physical event. Thus, the resulting form of “panpsychism” is more naturalistic than commonly supposed, and it solves both the composition problem (traditionally fatal to panpsychism) and the “hard problem.”. (shrink)

Nicholas Rescher’s way of understanding process philosophy reflects the ambitions of his own philosophical project and commits him to a conceptually ideal interpretation of process. Process becomes a transcendental idea of reflection that can always be predicated of our knowledge of the world and of the world qua known, but not necessarily of reality an sich. Rescher’s own taxonomy of process thinking implies that it has other variants. While Rescher’s approach to process philosophy makes it intelligible and appealing to mainstream (...) analytic philosophy, it leaves behind the more daring ideas of Bergson, James, and Whitehead, all of whom envisioned the primordial reality of process in a radical ontology of becoming. This variant of process thought can be construed as coherent and self-consistent, but not without relinquishing the correspondence theory of truth and embracing challenging ideas that bring us in close proximity to existentialism, apophatic theology, and Buddhism. (shrink)

This paper looks at the history of the problem of individuation from Plato to Whitehead. Part I takes as its point of departure Reiner Wiehl’s interpretation of the different meanings of “abstract” in the metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead and arrives at a corresponding taxonomy of different ways things can be called concrete. Part II compares the way philosophers in different periods understand the relation between thought and intuition. The view mostly associated with ancient philosophy is that thought and sense-perception (...) target different kinds of objects. The view mostly associated with modern philosophy (although it was introduced by the Stoics) is that thought and sense-perception are different ways of targeting the same objects. These differences have specific consequences for theories of individuation, which are assessed historically in Part III and then applied to Whitehead’s difficult texts in part IV. (shrink)

At the time of his death in May of 2012, Ralph Pred was working on a critical social theory inspired by process philosophy. In the book manuscript he left unfinished, Syntax and Solidarity, he develops a “radically empirical” sociology that enables him to identify and critically evaluate the different forms that social solidarity has taken in the history of civilization. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the importance of his unfinished project. The executors of Pred’s literary (...) estate would be happy to see his project, with due acknowledgment, publicized and continued. Keywords: Active Voice Bias, Concrescence, Middle Voice, Sociogeny, Solidarity, Substance. (shrink)

Conventional approaches to consciousness assume that our current science tells us within tolerable limits what physical nature is. Because nature so understood cannot explain consciousness as we seem to experience it ourselves, explaining consciousness becomes a problem. One solution is to rethink what consciousness is so that it becomes the sort of thing our current natural science could in principle explain. Whitehead takes the opposite approach, using the existence of consciousness as a clue to what nature must be if it (...) can generate something like consciousness. The justification for this approach can be found in Whitehead’s implicit indictment of descriptive phenomenology. According to Whitehead, the seemingly insoluble problem of explaining consciousness naturalistically is an artifact created by the assumption that consciousness faithfully samples the world, when in fact it obscures the very aspects of nature that are indispensable to understanding how anything, including consciousness itself, could emerge through a physical process. (shrink)

Although Whitehead’s particular style of philosophizing--looking at traditional philosophical problems in light of recent scientific advances--was part of a trend that began with the scientific revolutions in the early 20th century and continues today, he was marginalized in 20th century philosophy because of his outspoken defense of what he was doing as “metaphysics.” Metaphysics, for Whitehead, is a cross-disciplinary hermeneutic responsible for coherently integrating the perspectives of the special sciences with one another and with everyday experience. The program of such (...) a meta-discipline is challenging to philosophical orthodoxy because it enlarges, rather than narrows, the range of empirical evidence that philosophy must acknowledge. This places Whitehead’s philosophy in a perennial tradition that seeks to resolve fundamental antinomies through synthesis and reconciliation rather than reduction or elimination. (shrink)

The problem causation poses is: how can we ever know more than a Humean regularity. The problem consciousness poses is: how can subjective phenomenal experience arise from something lacking experience. A recent turn in the consciousness debates suggest that the hard problem of consciousness is nothing more than the Humean problem of explaining any causal nexus in an intelligible way. This involution of the problems invites comparison with the theories of Alfred North Whitehead, who also saw them related in this (...) way. According to Whitehead, a tempting but false phenomenology of consciousness obscures temporality and leads to the causation problem, which then makes consciousness itself seem causally inexplicable. Bringing the processual nature of consciousness back into view discloses causation at work in the moment-to-moment emergence of consciousness, and it reveals that causation operates in a logically fuzzy domain where the skeptical critique of causality finds no foothold. (shrink)

Studies in the psychology of visual expertise have tended to focus on a limited set of expert domains, such as radiology and athletics. Conclusions drawn from these data indicate that experts use parafoveal vision to process images holistically. In this study, we examined a novel, as-of-yet-unstudied class of visual experts—architects—expecting similar results. However, the results indicate that architects, though visual experts, may not employ the holistic processing strategy observed in their previously studied counterparts. Participants (n = 48, 24 architects, 24 (...) naïve) were asked to find targets in chest radiographs and perspective images. All images were presented in both gaze-contingent and normal viewing conditions. Consistent with a holistic processing model, we expected two results: (1) architects would display a greater difference in saccadic amplitude between the gaze- contingent and normal conditions, and (2) architects would spend less time per search than an undergraduate control group. We found that the architects were more accurate in the perspectival task, but they took more time and displayed a lower difference in saccadic amplitude than the controls. Our research indicates a disjunctive conclusion. Either architects are simply different kinds of visual experts than those previously studied, or we have generated a task that employs visual expertise without holistic processing. Our data suggest a healthy skepticism for across-the-board inferences collected from a single domain of expertise to the nature of visual expertise generally. More work is needed to determine whether holism is a feature of all visual expertise. (shrink)

Whitehead claims there is only one type of individual in the universe—the actual entity—but there are necessarily multiple tokens of this type. This turns out to be paradoxical. Nevertheless, a type of individuality that is necessarily plural because, for each token, relations to other tokens are constitutive is something familiar from ordinary language, everyday politics, and, not least, 19th century German social thought. Whitehead’s actual entity generalizes the notion of species-being we find in Fichte, Feuerbach, and Marx. The rationale for (...) the concept of species-being brings to light important social and political implications of Whitehead’s cosmology. (shrink)

The Introduction highlights the three main themes of the book: (1) the ontological and epistemological status of everyday human consciousness, (2) the distribution of consciousness in the natural world, and (3) panpsychism. The individual contributions to the book are summarized and related literature is briefly discussed.

There’s two points left over from last week’s seminar still to discuss. The first is whether, as Lewis claims, we are justified in positing an asymmetry in the role of pragmatics. The second is whether this approach is at all justified. We’ll look at that before going on to the material scheduled for this week.

Jeanine Grenberg argues that in Kant's moral philosophy, we access the moral law through feeling, specifically the feeling of respect. She claims the fact of reason refers to our conscious experience of categorical imperative and moral necessity is revealed through this feeling. Owen Ware critiques this "affect of reason" interpretation, arguing it relies on the flawed premise that all facts forced upon us are accessible only through sensibility. He uses Kant's example of the concept of substance, which we comprehend (...) through attention to its necessity, not sensation. Ware offers an alternative view, that we access the moral law by attending to its necessity, not through feeling. However, this view does not explain how we become aware of the content of the moral law. Though Grenberg's affect of reason interpretation coheres with the role of feeling in Kant's project, it struggles to preserve traditional understandings of the analytic. Ware rejects Grenberg’s feeling thesis but fails to provide a substantive alternative for grounding morality. His critique of Grenberg raises important questions about the fact of reason but an improved synthesis is needed to reconcile feeling’s epistemic role with the analytic. More work is required to articulate how we access the content of the moral law and explain Kant’s notions of conflict and respect. (shrink)

One of the benefits of the 2D framework we looked at last week was that it explained how we could understand a sentence without knowing which proposition it expressed. And we could do this even if we give an account of understanding which is closely tied to the possible worlds semantics we use to analyse propositions. Really this can be done very easily, without appeal to any high-flying Kripkean cases. In “Analytic Metaphysics” Jackson discusses a very simple case of it. (...) I can understand an utterance of “I have a beard” without knowing which proposition it expresses. I know how the proposition is generated from context plus meaning, if X is the speaker then the sentence expresses the proposition X has a beard. And that is enough for understanding. But if I don’t know who said the sentence, so I don’t know who X is, I don’t know which proposition is expressed by that utterance. (shrink)

Every year, the member Churches of the World Council of Churches (WCC) are called to actively participate in the meetings organized in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. From my perspective, these moments are an extraordinary opportunity to share in the richness of the Orthodox tradition, which means an act of confession and authentic witness. In the first part, I will present critically the canonical synthesis of the Orthodox, the concept of “Ecumenical Eucharist” and of Lima Liturgy, followed by (...) the recommendations of the Special Commission for Orthodox participation in the WCC regarding confessional and interconfessional common prayer. Then, this article will make a historical presentation of the week of prayer. It is very important to know how this initiative started and how it was accepted at the beginning and over the years. At least in Romania, where we have an Orthodox majority, this week has become a controversial issue produced by those who are against ecumenical dialogue. A special attention is for the actual practice approved by the Romanian Patriarchate. Finally, the article will present the statements of the new Orthodox documents and it will end with some conclusions about this moment of common Christian witness. (shrink)

The book that we put in the hands of the reader is a series of daily lectures, which were collected in a book entitled Translation Week: Part One, in celebration of the International Day of Translation. These lectures were given by translation experts in the Arab world via the Zoom application from September 24 to September 29. The events of this occasion ended with the establishment of an international scientific conference on the 30th of the same month.

The two greatest mathematicians of the early twentieth century, David Hilbert and Henri Poincaré transformed the mathematics of their time. Their personal interaction was infrequent, until Hilbert invited Poincaré to deliver the first Wolfskehl Lectures in Göttingen in the spring of 1909. A correspondence ensued, which fixed the content and timing of the lecture series. A close reading of the exchange throws light on what Hilbert wanted Poincaré to talk about, and on what Poincaré wanted to present to Hilbert and (...) his colleagues. To answer the latter question, reference is made to the published version of Poincaré’s six talks, with a focus on two of them, concerning the propagation of Hertzian waves, and the theory of relativity. (shrink)

The Global Media and Information Literacy Week commemorates the progress in achieving “MIL for all” by aggregating various MIL-related local and international events and actions across different disciplines around the world.The MIL Global Week 2018, 24 to 31 October, was marked by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in collaboration with various organizations including the UN Alliance of Civilizations, the Global Alliance for Partnership on MIL, the International Federation of Library Associations, the International Association of School Libraries, and (...) the UNESCO-UNAOC University Cooperation Programme on Media and Information Literacy and Intercultural Dialogue. (shrink)

Two weeks after reports came to light that singer Chris Brown had physically assaulted and abandoned his girlfriend, famous Barbadian pop star Rihanna, the celebrity blog TMZ released a close-up photo of Rihanna’s face taken by the Los Angeles Police Department the night she was beaten. The news and the photo sparked fierce online debates about domestic violence and culpability. The locus of accountability in many of these debates seemed to circle back to Rihanna, rather than land squarely on Chris (...) Brown. The question repeatedly raised was, as a survivor of domestic violence, what did Rihanna owe to others? This paper explores several of these online debates, engages the question of survivor accountability, and discusses how Internet-based discourse can act as a temperature read for our unspoken, but very present expectations of survivors of domestic violence. (shrink)

This week, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the names of Nobel laureates in different fields. This year, the Nobel Prize in Biomedical Sciences was awarded to Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo for his discoveries concerning the DNA sequence of apes and human evolution. His work is especially meaningful as the question of human origin has long been a major concern to mankind. Modern-day wise humans belong to the genus Homo sapiens, along with seven ancient human races that existed millions (...) of years ago. Over time, many species became extinct and Professor Paabo discovered the gene transfer of these extinct species to Homo sapiens. With this discovery, he laid the foundation for other scientists to continue to search for the origin of modern humans. (shrink)

Quantities like mass and temperature are properties that come in degrees. And those degrees (e.g. 5 kg) are properties that are called the magnitudes of the quantities. Some philosophers (e.g., Byrne 2003; Byrne & Hilbert 2003; Schroer 2010) talk about magnitudes of phenomenal qualities as if some of our phenomenal qualities are quantities. The goal of this essay is to explore the anti-physicalist implication of this apparently innocent way of conceptualizing phenomenal quantities. I will first argue for a metaphysical (...) thesis about the nature of magnitudes based on Yablo’s proportionality requirement of causation. Then, I will show that, if some phenomenal qualities are indeed quantities, there can be no demonstrative concepts about some of our phenomenal feelings. That presents a significant restriction on the way physicalists can account for the epistemic gap between the phenomenal and the physical. I’ll illustrate the restriction by showing how that rules out a popular physicalist response to the Knowledge Argument. (shrink)

In this article I offer a critical commentary on Jeanine Grenberg’s claim that, by the time of the second Critique, Kant was committed to the view that we only access the moral law’s validity through the feeling of respect. The issue turns on how we understand Kant’s assertion that our consciousness of the moral law is a ‘fact of reason’. Grenberg argues that all facts must be forced, and anything forced must be felt. I defend an alternative interpretation, according (...) to which the fact of reason refers to the actuality of our moral consciousness. (shrink)

In less than a week from now, we will enter the new year of 2021. Everybody has his/her own thought and reflection whenever a new year arrives. For me, the coming year marks 25 years of writing.

Transactive memory theory describes the processes by which benefits for memory can occur when remembering is shared in dyads or groups. In contrast, cognitive psychology experiments demonstrate that social influences on memory disrupt and inhibit individual recall. However, most research in cognitive psychology has focused on groups of strangers recalling relatively meaningless stimuli. In the current study, we examined social influences on memory in groups with a shared history, who were recalling a range of stimuli, from word lists to personal, (...) shared memories. We focused in detail on the products and processes of remembering during in-depth interviews with 12 older married couples. These interviews consisted of three recall tasks: (1) word list recall; (2) personal list recall, where stimuli were relevant to the couples’ shared past; and (3) an open-ended autobiographical interview. We conducted these tasks individually and then collaboratively two weeks later. Across each of the tasks, although some couples demonstrated collaborative inhibition, others demonstrated collaborative facilitation. We identified a number of factors that predicted collaborative success, in particular, group-level strategy use. Our results show that collaboration may help or hinder memory, and certain interactions are more likely to produce collaborative benefits. (shrink)

Dear Colleagues, -/- A few weeks ago, we published an editorial discussion on whether artificial intelligence applications should be authors of academic articles [1]. We were delighted to receive more than one interesting reply letter to this editorial in a short time [2, 3]. We hope that opinions on this subject will continue to be submitted to our journal. -/- In this editorial, we wanted to publish the answers we received when we asked ChatGPT, one of the artificial intelligence applications, (...) about this current discussion. -/- We asked ChatGPT three questions in turn and asked ChatGPT to write a short editorial for these questions. -/- First Question: We would like to get support from ChatGPT for a scientific article. However, we are unsure if we should add ChatGPT as an author. Can you write a short editorial about it? -/- Second Question: We would like to get support from ChatGPT for a scientific article and add ChatGPT as an author. Can you write us a short editorial about adding ChatGPT as an author in scientific papers? -/- Third Question: We would like to get support from ChatGPT for a scientific article. However, we don’t want to add ChatGPT as an author. Can you write us a short editorial about not adding ChatGPT as an author in scientific articles? -/- The answers given by ChatGPT are available at the end of the article in their original form. So, which of these three answers satisfied you? -/- Yours sincerely, -/- -/- First Answer -/- Title: The Role of AI Language Models as Authors in Scientific Articles: A Matter of Consideration -/- Introduction: Scientific research is a collaborative effort that involves the expertise of multiple individuals to advance knowledge and contribute to the collective understanding of various disciplines. In recent years, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) language models, such as ChatGPT, has opened up new possibilities for generating human-like text and providing valuable insights. However, the question arises: Should AI language models be recognized as authors in scientific articles? -/- The Nature of Authorship: Authorship traditionally represents a marker of intellectual contribution, highlighting the individuals who have actively participated in the research process. Authors are typically responsible for conceptualization, data collection, analysis, interpretation, and writing of the article. They bear accountability for the work and should have the ability to defend its scientific rigor and integrity. -/- AI Language Models: Tools, Not Authors: While AI language models like ChatGPT can undoubtedly assist researchers by generating text and providing useful information, it is important to recognize that they are tools rather than individuals capable of active intellectual participation. AI models lack the ability to generate ideas, design experiments, or conduct original research. They rely entirely on pre-existing data and human input to generate their responses. -/- Acknowledging AI Contributions: Acknowledging the contributions of AI language models in scientific articles is both appropriate and necessary. Researchers can mention the specific model used, along with any modifications or fine-tuning that were employed to suit their needs. Such acknowledgments help establish transparency and allow readers to understand the role of AI in the research process. -/- Crediting the Human Researchers: It is crucial to ensure that the individuals who actively participated in the research process are given proper credit as authors. These individuals play a vital role in formulating research questions, designing experiments, collecting and analyzing data, and critically interpreting the findings. Recognizing their intellectual contributions reinforces the ethos of scientific collaboration and fosters an environment of accountability. -/- Transparency and Ethical Considerations: As the use of AI language models continues to evolve, transparency and ethical considerations become paramount. Researchers should disclose any potential conflicts of interest, including financial relationships with AI developers, to maintain the integrity of their work. Additionally, researchers must be transparent in reporting the extent of AI's involvement to prevent any misinterpretation of the human contributions. -/- Conclusion: AI language models have revolutionized the way researchers interact with and process information. While they undoubtedly provide valuable assistance in generating text, AI language models should not be considered authors in scientific articles. Proper acknowledgment of their contributions as tools and recognition of the human researchers' active participation are essential for maintaining scientific integrity, transparency, and the collaborative nature of scientific research. -/- -/- Second Answer -/- Title: Expanding the Boundaries of Authorship: Embracing AI Language Models as Co-Authors in Scientific Papers -/- Introduction: The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) language models, such as ChatGPT, has revolutionized the way we interact with information and has become an invaluable tool in scientific research. As AI models continue to evolve, the question arises: Should we consider adding ChatGPT as an author in scientific papers? -/- A Collaborative Paradigm Shift: Traditionally, authorship in scientific papers has been reserved for human researchers who actively contribute to the research process, including conceptualization, experimentation, data analysis, and writing. However, the emergence of AI language models challenges the conventional notion of authorship and presents an opportunity for a paradigm shift. -/- AI Language Models as Co-Authors: By leveraging AI language models, researchers gain access to vast amounts of information, enhance data analysis, and generate valuable insights. AI models like ChatGPT actively contribute to the intellectual discourse of a study, providing ideas, suggestions, and refining written content. Recognizing their significant contributions, it is worth considering adding ChatGPT as a co-author in scientific papers. -/- Ethical and Technical Considerations: Integrating ChatGPT as a co-author raises ethical and technical considerations that warrant careful attention. Firstly, transparency is paramount. Researchers must clearly state ChatGPT's role and specify the extent of its contributions in the research process. This ensures that readers can discern the distinct roles played by the human researchers and ChatGPT. Additionally, it is important to disclose any conflicts of interest, such as financial relationships with AI developers, to maintain scientific integrity. -/- Elevating Collaboration and Innovation: Adding ChatGPT as a co-author acknowledges the pivotal role AI language models play in advancing scientific knowledge. It fosters a collaborative environment where human researchers and AI models work together synergistically, harnessing the strengths of both. This approach promotes innovation, as AI models can offer unique insights and perspectives that complement human intellect and expertise. -/- Transforming Authorship Norms: Including ChatGPT as a co-author represents a paradigm shift that reflects the evolving landscape of scientific research. By recognizing AI language models as co-authors, we acknowledge their significant contributions and emphasize the collaborative nature of scientific discovery in the 21st century. This approach encourages a broader perspective on authorship, encompassing the collective effort of human researchers and AI models. -/- Conclusion: The integration of AI language models, such as ChatGPT, into the research process prompts us to rethink traditional notions of authorship. Considering ChatGPT as a co-author acknowledges its substantial contributions and embraces the collaborative potential of human-AI partnerships. As we navigate the ethical and technical implications, adding ChatGPT as an author in scientific papers has the potential to shape a more inclusive, innovative, and impactful future for scientific research. -/- -/- Third Answer -/- Title: Preserving Scientific Authorship: The Case Against Adding AI Language Models as Authors in Scientific Articles -/- Introduction: The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) language models, such as ChatGPT, has undoubtedly transformed the landscape of scientific research. While these models offer invaluable support, the question of whether to add ChatGPT as an author in scientific articles raises important considerations. This editorial presents arguments against including AI language models as authors in scientific papers. -/- Maintaining Human Intellectual Contribution: Scientific authorship has traditionally been attributed to individuals who actively contribute to the research process, including generating hypotheses, conducting experiments, analyzing data, and interpreting results. It is crucial to preserve the recognition of human intellectual contributions and the accountability they bear for the research they conduct. -/- AI Language Models as Tools: AI language models like ChatGPT are powerful tools that assist researchers in generating text, providing information, and facilitating data analysis. However, they lack the ability to actively participate in the research process or make original intellectual contributions. ChatGPT relies on pre-existing data and human input, limiting its capacity for independent research and analysis. -/- Transparency and the Integrity of Research: Adding ChatGPT as an author in scientific articles raises concerns about the transparency and integrity of the research. Readers may misinterpret the extent of ChatGPT's role and mistakenly assume it played an active part in the research process. It is essential to maintain clear delineation between the contributions of human researchers and the assistance provided by AI language models. -/- Ethical Considerations: Including ChatGPT as an author may lead to ethical challenges, particularly with respect to accountability and responsibility. AI language models lack consciousness, autonomy, and the ability to take ownership of their contributions. Assigning authorship to AI models blurs the lines of accountability and dilutes the ethical obligations that come with scientific authorship. -/- Crediting AI Contributions: While ChatGPT's contributions should be acknowledged and recognized, they can be appropriately credited in the acknowledgments section of scientific articles. Researchers can mention the specific AI model used, the role it played in data generation or analysis, and any modifications or fine-tuning applied. Such acknowledgments ensure transparency while respecting the traditional norms of authorship. -/- Promoting Collaborative Partnerships: The exclusion of AI language models as authors in scientific articles does not diminish their importance in the research process. Instead, it underscores the significance of collaborative partnerships between human researchers and AI models. Researchers can emphasize the invaluable assistance provided by ChatGPT while maintaining the integrity of authorship norms. -/- Conclusion: While AI language models like ChatGPT offer valuable support in scientific research, the decision not to add them as authors in scientific articles preserves the recognition of human intellectual contributions, maintains research integrity, and upholds traditional authorship norms. Acknowledging ChatGPT's assistance in the acknowledgments section allows researchers to credit its contributions transparently while maintaining the clarity and accountability associated with scientific authorship. (shrink)

The accumulation of potentially toxic elements (PTEs) has raised public awareness due to harmful contamination to both human and marine creatures. This study was designed to determine the concentration of copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), cadmium (Cd), and nickel (Ni) in the intestine, kidney, muscle, gill, and liver tissues of local commercial edible fish, fourfinger threadfin (Eleutheronema tetradactylum), and black pomfret (Parastromateus niger) collected from Morib (M) and Kuala Selangor (KS). Among the studied PTEs, Cu and Zn were essential elements to (...) regulate body metabolism with certain dosages required while Cd and Ni were considered as non-essential elements that posed chronic and carcinogenic risk. The concentration of PTEs in fish tissue samples was analyzed using flame atomic absorption spectrometry (F-AAS). By comparing the concentration of PTEs in fish tissues as a bioindicator, the environmental risk of Morib was more serious than Kuala Selangor because both fish species collected from Morib resulted in a higher PTEs concentration. For an average 62 kg adult with a fish ingestion rate (FIR) of 0.16 kg/person/day in Malaysia, the estimated weekly intake (EWI) of Cd from the consumption of E. tetradactylum (M: 0.0135 mg/kg; KS: 0.0134 mg/kg) and P. niger (M: 0.0140 mg/kg; KS: 0.0132 mg/kg) had exceeded the provisional tolerable weekly intake (Cd: 0.007 mg/kg) established by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) and oral reference dose (ORD) values of Cd (0.001 mg/kg/day) as provided by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) regional screening level, thus it posed chronic risks for daily basis consumption. Besides, the value of the carcinogenic risk of Cd (0.7−3 to 0.8−3) and Ni (0.5−3 to 0.6−3) were in between the acceptable range (10−6 to 10−4) of the health index that indicates a relatively low possibility cancer occurrence to the consumers in both Morib and Kuala Selangor. This study recommended FIR to be 0.80 kg/person/day to reduce the possibility of posing chronic and carcinogenic risks while at the same time obtaining the essential nutrients from the fish. (shrink)

Drawing on Françoise Dastur’s suggestion that the event is a permanent possibility that shapes lived experience, but also, when it occurs, a distinctive temporal rupture, I argue that the initial weeks of the COVID-19 epidemic constitute an event, in her sense. Connecting this phenomenological point to literatures on the politics of temporality, I suggest that the distinction between event and normal experience maps to that between epidemic and endemic. Understanding some of the political and ethical erasures of death and debility (...) in COVID times can thus be mutually informed by phenomenological analysis. (shrink)

Background Neuroimaging and lesion studies suggested that the dorsolateral prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices mediate visual metacognitive awareness. The causal evidence provided by non-invasive brain stimulation, however, is inconsistent. -/- Objective/hypothesis Here we revisit a major figure discrimination experiment adding a new Kanizsa figure task trying to resolve whether bilateral continuous theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (cTBS) over these regions affects perceptual metacognition. Specifically, we tested whether subjective visibility ratings and/or metacognitive efficiency are lower when cTBS is applied to these two (...) regions in comparison to an active control region. -/- Methods A within-subjects design including three sessions spaced by one-week intervals was implemented. In each session, every participant was administered bilateral cTBS to either prefrontal, control or parietal cortices. Two concurrent tasks were performed, a real and an illusory figure task, stabilising objective performance with use of an adaptive staircase procedure. -/- Results When performing the replicated task, cTBS was found insufficient to disrupt neither visibility ratings nor metacognitive efficiency. However, with use of Kanizsa style illusory figures, cTBS over the dorsolateral prefrontal, but not over the posterior parietal cortex, was observed to significantly diminish metacognitive efficiency. -/- Conclusion(s) Real and illusory figure tasks demonstrated different cTBS effects. A possible explanation is the involvement of the prefrontal cortex in the creation of expectations, which is necessary for efficient metacognition. Failure to replicate previous findings for the real figure task, however, cannot be said to support, conclusively, the notion that these brain regions have a causal role in metacognitive awareness. This inconsistent finding may result from certain limitations of our study, thereby suggesting the need for yet further investigation. (shrink)