Tracing the leading role of emotions in the evolution of the mind, a philosopher and a psychologist pair up to reveal how thought and culture owe less to our faculty for reason than to our capacity to feel. Many accounts of the human mind concentrate on the brain’s computational power. Yet, in evolutionary terms, rational cognition emerged only the day before yesterday. For nearly 200 million years before humans developed a capacity to reason, the emotional centers of the brain were (...) hard at work. If we want to properly understand the evolution of the mind, we must explore this more primal capability that we share with other animals: the power to feel. Emotions saturate every thought and perception with the weight of feelings. The Emotional Mind reveals that many of the distinctive behaviors and social structures of our species are best discerned through the lens of emotions. Even the roots of so much that makes us uniquely human—art, mythology, religion—can be traced to feelings of caring, longing, fear, loneliness, awe, rage, lust, playfulness, and more. From prehistoric cave art to the songs of Hank Williams, Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel explore how the evolution of the emotional mind stimulated our species’ cultural expression in all its rich variety. Bringing together insights and data from philosophy, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and psychology, The Emotional Mind offers a new paradigm for understanding what it is that makes us so unique. (shrink)

Drawing from empirical literature on ecological psychology, affective neuroscience, and philosophy of mind, this article describes a model of affect-as-motivation in the intentional bond between organism and environment. An epistemological justification for the motivating role of emotions is provided through articulating the perceptual context of emotions as embodied, situated, and functional, and positing perceptual salience as a biasing signal in an affordance competition model. The motivational role of affect is pragmatically integrated into discussions of action selection in the neurosciences.

This paper describes some epistemic cultural considerations which shape the uses of psychology. I argue the study of mind is bound by the metaphysical background of the given locale and era in which it is practiced. The epistemic setting in which psychology takes place will shape what is worth observing, how it is to be studied, how the data is to be interpreted, and the nature of the ultimate explanatory units. To demonstrate conceptual epistemic constraints, I discuss metaphor use in (...) psychology. In addition, epistemic constraints shape the praxes that arise from structural study of the mind. In order to illustrate this cultural constraint, I discuss Soviet Psychology and provide a contrast between practical uses of psychoanalysis in India, Egypt, and rural Ghana. In response to these conceptual and practical epistemic limitations, psychology could adapt methods drawn from history and anthropology. (shrink)

The cultural project is a therapeutic melding of emotion, symbols, and knowledge. In this paper, I describe how spiritual emotions engendered through encounters in imaginative culture enable fixation of metaphysical beliefs. Evolved affective systems are domesticated through the social practices of imaginative culture so as to adapt people to live in culturally defined cooperative groups. Conditioning, as well as tertiary-level cognitive capacities such as symbols and language are enlisted to bond groups through the imaginative formats of myth and participatory ritual. (...) These cultural materializations can be shared by communities both synchronically and diachronically in works of art. Art is thus a form of self-knowledge that equips us with a motivated understanding of ourselves in the world. In the sacred state produced through the arts and in religious acts, the sense of meaning becomes noetically distinct because affect infuses the experience of immanence, and one's memory of it, with salience. The quality imbued thereby makes humans attentive to subtle signs and broad “truths.” Saturated by emotions and the experience of alterity in the immanent encounter of imaginative culture, information made salient in the sacred experience can become the basis for belief fixation. Using examples drawn from mimetic arts and arts of immanence, I put forward a theory about how sensible affective knowledge is mediated through affective systems, direct perception, and the imagination. (shrink)

This paper presents the design and development of intelligent tutoring system for teaching Oracle. The Oracle Intelligent Tutoring System (OITS) examined the power of a new methodology to supporting students in Oracle programming. The system presents the topic of Introduction to Oracle with automatically generated problems for the students to solve. The system is dynamically adapted at run time to the student’s individual progress. An initial evaluation study was done to investigate the effect of using the intelligent tutoring system on (...) the performance of students. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that hallucinations are not a type of perception. Coupled with the idea that hallucinations possess phenomenal character, hallucinations raise a problem for naive realism, which maintains that phenomenal character is at least partly constituted by perceived worldly objects. While naive realists have typically responded by adopting a disjunctive view of phenomenal character, I argue that to resolve this conflict we should instead reject the idea that hallucinations are not a type of perception. I defend this view (...) by considering six alleged differences between hallucination and perception that are thought to support the idea that we do not perceive worldly objects when hallucinating. I argue that these differences are all accommodated for in a particular type of perception, picture perception. Drawing on picture perception's resources, I offer an account of hallucinations and their idiosyncrasies, in a way that is plausible in our world, that accounts for the variety of hallucination types, and that is compatible with naive realism. (shrink)

Luck (2009) argues that gamers face a dilemma when it comes to performing certain virtual acts. Most gamers regularly commit acts of virtual murder, and take these acts to be morally permissible. They are permissible because unlike real murder, no one is harmed in performing them; their only victims are computer-controlled characters, and such characters are not moral patients. What Luck points out is that this justification equally applies to virtual pedophelia, but gamers intuitively think that such acts are not (...) morally permissible. The result is a dilemma: either gamers must reject the intuition that virtual pedophelic acts are impermissible and so accept partaking in such acts, or they must reject the intuition that virtual murder acts are permissible, and so abstain from many (if not most) extant games. While the prevailing solution to this dilemma has been to try and find a morally relevant feature to distinguish the two cases, I argue that a different route should be pursued. It is neither the case that all acts of virtual murder are morally permissible, nor are all acts of virtual pedophelia impermissible. Our intuitions falter and produce this dilemma because they are not sensitive to the different contexts in which games present virtual acts. (shrink)

A natural starting point for theories of perceptual states is ordinary perception, in which a subject is successfully related to her mind-independent surroundings. Correspondingly, the simplest theory of perceptual states models all such states on perception. Typically, this simple, common-factor relational view of perceptual states has received a perfunctory dismissal on the grounds that hallucinations are nonperceptual. But I argue that the nonperceptual view of hallucinations has been accepted too quickly. I consider three observations thought to support the view, and (...) argue that all three are dealt with equally well by an alternative view, illusionism, on which hallucinations do involve perception. Since this is so, adopting a common-factor relational view of all perceptual states remains a tenable option. (shrink)

Me, Gabriel Vacariu, professor at Department of Theoretical Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, Bucharest University, Romania, I declare that I have had the worst promotion during my entire career at this department even if I have had the best CV during my career (since 1998). With this memorandum, I want to find the criteria for the promotion at my department and faculty (from Bucharest University). From what I know, my promotion depends on the will of the chief of the department (...) and of my colleagues. If my colleagues do not want my promotion, I will never be promoted! I emphasize that, in relationship with my colleagues, I have had the worst promotion even if I have had the best CV. (shrink)

Gabriel Vacariu (2020) Unbelievable similarities - selected authors (Sean Carroll, Frank Wilczek, Carlo Rovelli, Kastner, Kauffman et all, Lee Somlin, Markus Gabriel) from much bigger manuscript (Gabriel Vacariu, (June 2020 to 2014) The UNBELIEVABLE SIMILARITIES between the ideas of some people (2011-2016) and my ideas (2002-2008) in physics (quantum mechanics, cosmology), cognitive neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and philosophy (this manuscript would require a REVOLUTION in international academy environment!) here -/- (During last 4 years, I have sent this (...) updated manuscript to thousands of people from many countries in each year! They have no chances!!!) All my main ideas (the mind-brain problem, main problems of cognitive science and quantum mechanics, Einstein’s relativity vs. quantum mechanics, etc.) from my Springer’s book (2016) can be found in my PhD thesis (2007), UNSW (Sydney, Australia, officially posted on university’s website, FREE, by the university’s Staff in 2007) . (shrink)

Gabriel Vacariu (November 2018) UNBELIEVABLE similarities between Ferraris’s ideas (2012) and my ideas (2002-2008).

Over the last two centuries, the relationship between philosophy and science has completely broken down, so the question we are confronted with is: How can we develop a new philosophy, which will influence science decisively? The physicists of the last century rejected their contemporary philosophy. They considered that “philosophy today is dead” (Hawking and Mlodinow 2010). However, we believe that the great scientific problems are always philosophical, and only philosophical problems. Therefore, these problems can be solved only by philosophers and (...) scientists who operate at the greatest level of thinking: that of the “paradigm of thinking”. In fact, these great scientific problems can usually be solved by changing the “paradigm of thinking” for scientists. This book furnished more applications of the “epistemologically different worlds” (that replaced the “world”/”universe” – in their previous books (2008, 2010, 2011, etc.), the authors indicated that the notion of the world/universe is wrong). Following Aristotle’s “Prime Mover” (or the “Unmoved Mover”), we stop the regress ad infinitum by discovering the first EW, the EW0 (the Hypernothing). Even if one EW does not exist for any EDW, the Hypernothing was the first EW and all other EDWs correspond to the EW0. Chapter 2 is about the “Hypernothing”. The other chapters continue our works of applying the EDWs to different concepts/areas of Physics: quantum mechanics, elementary particles, thermodynamics (with its main notion, “entropy”), etc. In the last chapter, knowing that Einstein’s special and general theory of relativity are very correct (but in a book 2016 we showed that “spacetime” cannot ontologically exist), we re-write both theories without “spacetime”. Content, Introduction and Chapter 1, FREE at https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=gabriel+vacariu&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Agabriel+vacariu . (shrink)

It is well-known the UNBELIEVABLE similarities between markus gabriel’s ideas from his book 2013 and my ideas (2002, 2005, 2008, etc.) (see my article or my manuscript). Not amazing, markus gabriel (mg) publishes (2017) more UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas (2002, 2005, 2008)! So, let me investigate mg’s ideas from his last book 2017: -/- Markus Gabriel (2017) I am not a brain. Philosophy of Mind for the Twenty-First Century, Polity Press -/- I draw the attention (...) that markus gabriel has never written an article on the Philosophy of Mind! However, we see now even in the title of his book that he talks about the Philosophy of mind for 21th Century! (shrink)

Mentionez ca, in raport cu colegii mei, la acest departament si facultate, eu am avut am avut cea mai slaba promovarea de-a lungul carierei mele, desi CVul meu a fost, inca de la inceput, cel mai bun raportat la cei din generatia mea sau apropiati de generatia mea. La ora actuala, raportat la criteriile INTERNATIONALE, CVul meu este cel mai bun de la aceasta facultate.

Since 2015, incredible many have published UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas published between 2002-2008!!! There were others who published UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas even earlier (since 2008, in general), but the number has an incredible jump after 2014. Why? In 2014, I have sent emails to thousands of people (many countries, many domains (Physics, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science)) regarding the UNBELIEVABLE similarities between my ideas (2002-2008) and Markus Gabriel’s ideas (his book from 2013). Is it this (...) a coincidence? I don’t believe so… Why so many people from so many countries from so many domains on so many topics have published UNBELIEVALBE similar ideas to my ideas (2002-2008 and later)? Because I have changed EVERYTHING! (shrink)

When I read this paragraph about her book: -/- In Form, Matter, Substance, Kathrin Koslicki develops a contemporary defence of the Aristotelian doctrine of hylomorphism. According to this approach, objects are compounds of matter (hule) and form (morphe or eidos) and a living organism is not exhausted by the body, cells, organs, tissue, and the like that compose it. Koslicki argues that a hylomorphic analysis of concrete particular objects is well equipped to compete with alternative approaches when measured against a (...) wide range of criteria of success. However, a plausible application of the doctrine of hylomorphism to the special case of concrete particular objects hinges on how hylomorphists conceive of the matter composing a concrete particular object, its form, and the hylomorphic relations which hold between a matter-form compound, its matter and its form. Koslicki offers detailed answers to the questions surrounding this approach to the metaphysics of concrete particular objects. As a result, matter-form compounds emerge as occupying the privileged ontological status traditionally associated with substances, despite their metaphysical complexity, due to their high degree of unity. (shrink)

Cursul va contine patru parti pe urmatoarele filme si lucrarile: I. Andrei Tarkovski: “Solaris”, “Calauza”, “Nostalghia”, “Sacrificiul” - Friedrich Nietzsche si “eterna reintoarcere” - Mircea Eliade si “eterna reintoarcere” II. Wong Kar-wai: “In the mood for love”, “2046” III. Cristi Puiu: “Sieranevada” IV. Constantin Brancusi: Ansamblul de la Targu Jiu + sculpturile principale (Pasarea in zbor, Mlle Pogany, etc.).

In this paper I am concerned with an analysis of negative existential sentences that contain proper names only by using negative or neutral free logic. I will compare different versions of neutral free logic with the standard system of negative free logic (Burge, Sainsbury) and aim to defend my version of neutral free logic that I have labeled non-standard neutral free logic.

Many people published UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas, long time after I published my ideas at Synthese (USA, 2005) and Springer (2015) and posted FREE on different webpages!!!!

The science of logic has occupied an important role in Islamic history. Especially when al-Gazali 505-1111 has come and claimed that who learned Islamic sciences, without learning the Logic we cannot trust in his knowledge. From this time The science of logic has been flourished and quietly began to include in many sciences even Tefsir and Fiqh. After that, Al-razzi 606/1210 has established a big school in Islamic philosophy in general and in logic in particular. al-Khonaji 646/1248 one of his (...) important students. Who moved from Iran to Egypt and became Qadi al-Qudat (Chief Islamic justice). He has improved The science of logic by his books; like Keshf al-Asrar. In the sixth/twelfth one of his books has been spread in Muslim world and became the first step for who wanted to learn Logic. Beside that we have a lot of scholars has made commentaries on this book. In this article we focused on (Metn al-Jumal) by al-Konaji with his spreading in the Sixth. Seventh h.centuries. (shrink)

Many people (many countries, many domains, many topics) have published UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas (published long time ago).

In this paper I aim to defend a first‐order non‐discriminating property view concerning existence. The version of this view that I prefer is based on negative (or a specific neutral) free logic that treats the existence predicate as first‐order logical predicate. I will provide reasons why such a view is more plausible than a second‐order discriminating property view concerning existence and I will also discuss four challenges for the proposed view and provide solutions to them.

In this paper I am concerned with the semantic analysis of sentences of the form 'It is true that p'. I will compare different proposals that have been made to analyse such sentences and will defend a view that treats this sentences as a mere sytactic variation of sentences of the form 'That p is true'.

In this paper, I aim to present the main components of my non-standard interpretation of Frege’s views on existence to the English-speaking public. First, I will outline the standard interpretation and show how to a great but not full extent the standard interpretation can be justified on the basis of Frege’s writings. Second, I show that the main error of the standard interpretation consists in the assimilation of the contents of the ordinary language expressions “exist” and “there is” according to (...) Frege. Third, I evaluate possible sources for this unfounded assimilation. After that, I outline my alternative interpretation that distinguishes in opposition to other non-standard interpretations between a substantive and a deflationary part of Frege’s complete conception of existence in analogy to Frege’s analysis of truth and negation. Fifthly, I justify my interpretation by the reconstruction of a so far overlooked master argument of Frege against the above-mentioned assimilation. In the last section, I introduce and discuss five objections against my interpretation that came to my attention. (shrink)

What is it for a picture to depict a scene? The most orthodox philosophical theory of pictorial representation holds that depiction is grounded in resemblance. A picture represents a scene in virtue of being similar to that scene in certain ways. This essay presents evidence against this claim: curvilinear perspective is one common style of depiction in which successful pictorial representation depends as much on a picture's systematic differences with the scene depicted as on the similarities; it cannot be analyzed (...) in terms of similarity alone. The same problem arises for many other kinds of depiction. The essay concludes that depiction in general is not grounded in resemblance but geometrical transformation. (shrink)

Public reason liberalism is defined by the idea that laws and policies should be justifiable to each person who is subject to them. But what does it mean for reasons to be public or, in other words, suitable for this process of justification? In response to this question, Kevin Vallier has recently developed the traditional distinction between consensus and convergence public reason into a classification distinguishing three main approaches: shareability, accessibility and intelligibility. The goal of this paper is to defend (...) the accessibility approach by demonstrating its ability to strike an appealing middle course in terms of inclusivity between shareability and intelligibility. We first argue against Vallier that accessibility can exclude religious reasons from public justification. Second, we use scientific reasons as a case study to show that accessibility excludes considerably fewer reasons than shareability. Throughout the paper, we connect our discussion of accessibility to John Rawls’s model of public reason, so as to give substance to the accessibility approach and to further our understanding of Rawls’s influential model. (shrink)

In this article, I investigate the UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas of Brukner’s article (2015) and my ideas (2002-2008) In this article, I investigate the UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas of Brukner’s article (2015) and my ideas (2002-2008) I emphasize that this paragraph is not from my works!! Instead of “objectivity of the ‘facts of the world’, I used EDWs! All the ideas from this paragraph (and the philosophical ideas referring to QM from this article, can be found in my works 2002-2008!

It is common to distinguish two great families of representation. Symbolic representations include logical and mathematical symbols, words, and complex linguistic expressions. Iconic representations include dials, diagrams, maps, pictures, 3-dimensional models, and depictive gestures. This essay describes and motivates a new way of distinguishing iconic from symbolic representation. It locates the difference not in the signs themselves, nor in the contents they express, but in the semantic rules by which signs are associated with contents. The two kinds of rule have (...) divergent forms, occupying opposite poles on a spectrum of naturalness. Symbolic rules are composed entirely of primitive juxtapositions of sign types with contents, while iconic rules determine contents entirely by uniform natural relations with sign types. This distinction is marked explicitly in the formal semantics of familiar sign systems, both for atomic first-order representations, like words, pixel colors, and dials, and for complex second-order representations, like sentences, diagrams, and pictures. (shrink)

A friend of my sent me the address where this paper has been posted by Adam Frank. Reading it, I realized that more than 90% of the main ideas of this paper (about the mind-brain problem, quantum mechanics (microparticles-wave relationship, Schrodinger equation, probabilities, “perceiving subject in physics”, the idea about consciousness and Nagel, etc. etc.) are UNBELIEVABLE similar to my ideas from my paper 2005 or my book 2008!!!

The recent discussion of fictional models has focused on imagination, implicitly considering fictions as something nonconcrete. We present two cases from synthetic biology that can be viewed as concrete fictions. Both minimal cells and alternative genetic systems are modal in nature: they, as well as their abstract cousins, can be used to study unactualized possibilia. We approach these synthetic constructs through Vaihinger’s notion of a semi-fiction and Goodman’s notion of semifactuality. Our study highlights the relative existence of such concrete fictions. (...) Before their realizations neither minimal cells nor alternative genetic systems were any well-defined objects, and the subsequent experimental work has given more content to these originally schematic imaginings. But it is as yet unclear whether individual members of these heterogeneous groups of somewhat functional synthetic constructs will eventually turn out to be fully realizable, remain only partially realizable, or prove outright impossible. (shrink)

This paper presents the design and development of intelligent tutoring system for teaching Oracle. The Oracle Intelligent Tutoring System (OITS) examined the power of a new methodology to supporting students in Oracle programming. The system presents the topic of Introduction to Oracle with automatically generated problems for the students to solve. The system is dynamically adapted at run time to the student’s individual progress. An initial evaluation study was done to investigate the effect of using the intelligent tutoring system on (...) the performance of students. (shrink)

On January 2023, I received an email from somebody regarding Velmans’s article 2008. After I took a look at the paper, I started to read his book 2000. Therefore, in this section, I will investigate Velmans’ works from 2000 and 2008. I emphasize that the main difference between Spinoza’s (Velmans) dual aspect theory and my EDWs approach is the framework of thinking: Spinoza, Velmans and everybody until me had been working within the unicorn world (the Universe/world), while my EDWs assumes (...) the rejection of the the universe/world; I replace this eternal and wrong notion with the EDWs. (see my previous works; my first five books and a book from 2022 and many of my articles are FREE on internet at my webpage and other pages). (shrink)

Recent epistemology of modality has seen a growing trend towards metaphysics-first approaches. Contrastingly, this paper offers a more philosophically modest account of justifying modal claims, focusing on the practices of scientific modal inferences. Two ways of making such inferences are identified and analyzed: actualist-manipulationist modality and relative modality. In AM, what is observed to be or not to be the case in actuality or under manipulations, allows us to make modal inferences. AM-based inferences are fallible, but the same holds for (...) practically all empirical inquiry. In RM, modal inferences are evaluated relative to what is kept fixed in a system, like a theory or a model. RM-based inferences are more certain but framework-dependent. While elements from both AM and RM can be found in some existing accounts of modality, it is worth highlighting them in their own right and isolating their features for closer scrutiny. This helps to establish their relevant epistemologies that are free from some strong philosophical assumptions often attached to them in the literature. We close by showing how combining these two routes amounts to a view that accounts for a rich variety of modal inferences in science. (shrink)

Tagging is the phenomenon in which regions of a picture, map, or diagram are annotated with words or other symbols, to provide descriptive information about a depicted object. The interpretive principles that govern tagged images are not well understood, due in part to the difficulty of integrating pictorial and linguistic semantic rules. Rather than directly combining these rules, I propose to use the framework of perspectival feature maps as an intermediary representation of content, in which the outputs of pictorial and (...) linguistic interpretation may be assimilated. The result is a simple and compositional semantics for tagged images. (shrink)

Norman Daniels’s theory of ‘accountability for reasonableness’ is an influential conception of fairness in healthcare resource allocation. Although it is widely thought that this theory provides a consistent extension of John Rawls’s general conception of justice, this paper shows that accountability for reasonableness has important points of contact with both utilitarianism and intuitionism, the main targets of Rawls’s argument. My aim is to demonstrate that its overlap with utilitarianism and intuitionism leaves accountability for reasonableness open to damaging critiques. The important (...) role that utilitarian-like cost-effectiveness calculations are allowed to play in resource allocation processes disregards the separateness of persons and is seriously unfair towards individuals whose interests are sacrificed for the sake of groups. Furthermore, the function played by intuitions in settling frequent value conflicts opens the door for sheer custom and vested interests to steer decision-making. (shrink)

Warfare is becoming increasingly automated, from automatic missile defense systems to micro-UAVs (WASPs) that can maneuver through urban environments with ease, and each advance brings with it ethical questions in need of resolving. Proponents of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) provide varied arguments in their favor; robots are capable of better identifying combatants and civilians, thus reducing "collateral damage"; robots need not protect themselves and so can incur more risks to protect innocents or gather more information before using deadly force; (...) robots can assess situations more quickly and do so without emotion, reducing the likelihood of fatal mistakes due to human error; and sending robots to war protects our own soldiers from harm. However, these arguments only point in favor of autonomous weapons systems, failing to demonstrate why such systems need be made *lethal*. In this paper I argue that if one grants all of the proponents' points in favor of LAWS, then, contrary to what might be expected, this leads to the conclusion that it would be both immoral and illegal to deploy *lethal* autonomous weapons, because the many features that speak in favor of them also undermine the need for them to be programmed to take lives. In particular, I argue that such systems, if lethal, would violate the moral and legal principle of necessity, which forbids the use of weapons that impose superfluous injury or unnecessary harm. I conclude by highlighting that the argument is not against autonomous weapons per se, but only against *lethal* autonomous weapons. (shrink)

Many ideas from Georg Nortoff’s works (published one paper in 2010, mainly his book in 2011, other papers in 2012, 2103, 2014, especially those related to Kant’s philosophy and the notion of the “observer”, the mind-brain problem, default mode network, the self, the mental states and their “correspondence” to the brain) are surprisingly very similar to my ideas published in my article from 2002, 2005 and my book from 2008. In two papers from 2002 (also my paper from 2005 and (...) my book 2008), following Kant’s philosophy, I introduced the notion of the “observer” for the mind-brain problem. After 2010 (mainly his book 2011 and other papers after this book), Nortoff also uses Kant’s philosophy (even if his knowledge about Kant’s philosophy is very superficial!) and the notion of the “observer” for the mind-brain problem in a methodology very similar to my methodology. Moreover, instead of EDWs, Nortoff uses a kind of “transdisciplinary” view, quite close to parallelism – the closest approach to my EDWs! In his works until 2014, Northoff’s conclusion within the unicorn world was different than my conclusion. However, in his book 2014 (two volumes) using notions like “correlations” and even “correspondences” many times, his conclusion is very closed to my EDWs! This dramatic change of framework in 3 years is quite unbelievable!!! Incredible many ideas from this book are very similar to my ideas from 2005 and 2008! (shrink)

In this chapter, I investigate a problem for Kant’s claim that metaphysics can reach the status of science. The problem arises when one considers Kant’s account of the “architectonic unity” of metaphysics in the Architectonic of Pure Reason. Attaining architectonic unity is a condition for becoming a science for any body of cognitions that purports to be such. This is achieved when the cognitions belonging to a science are systematically organized according to the “idea of reason” which lies at the (...) basis of that science. However, Kant suggests that nobody can ever legitimately claim to have matched the idea of the philosopher, where this appears to imply that nobody can justifiably claim that she has fully grasped the idea of metaphysics. This generates a problem. I suggest that when Kant claims that the idea of the philosopher must remain an ideal or an archetype, he has a particular conception of philosophy in mind, that is, philosophy as a doctrine of wisdom. According to this understanding, philosophy must provide an example of how one can become virtuous. However, this is only a partial solution to our problem, for reasons that will be illustrated. (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish three general approaches to public trust in science, which I call the individual approach, the semi-social approach, and the social approach, and critically examine their proposed solutions to what I call the problem of harmful distrust. I argue that, despite their differences, the individual and the semi-social approaches see the solution to the problem of harmful distrust as consisting primarily in trying to persuade individual citizens to trust science and that both approaches face two general (...) problems, which I call the problem of overidealizing science and the problem of overburdening citizens. I then argue that in order to avoid these problems we need to embrace a (thoroughly) social approach to public trust in science, which emphasizes the social dimensions of the reception, transmission, and uptake of scientific knowledge in society and the ways in which social forces influence both positively and negatively the trustworthiness of science. (shrink)

Carnap’s seminal ‘Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology’ makes important use of the notion of a framework and the related distinction between internal and external questions. But what exactly is a framework? And what role does the internal/external distinction play in Carnap’s metaontology? In an influential series of papers, Matti Eklund has recently defended a bracingly straightforward interpretation: A Carnapian framework, Eklund says, is just a natural language. To ask an internal question, then, is just to ask a question in, say, English. (...) To try to ask an external question is to try, absurdly, to ask a question in no language at all. Finding that so trivial an I/e distinction can’t help to explain Carnap’s deflationary metaontology, Eklund is led to attribute to Carnap a view he calls ontological pluralism. In this paper, I show that Eklund misreads Carnap, and I argue that this misreading obscures fundamental features of Carnap’s philosophy. I then defend an account of frameworks as what Carnap called semantical systems, and I place this account in the context of Carnap’s philosophical program of explication. Finally, I discuss the role that frameworks and the I/e distinction play in ESO, showing that ESO provides no reason to attribute the doctrine of ontological pluralism to Carnap. (shrink)

The predominant interpretation of Wittgenstein's later remarks on religion takes him to hold that all religious utterances are non-scientific, and to hold that the way to show that religious utterances are non-scientific is to identify and characterise the grammatical rules governing their use. This paper claims that though this does capture one strand of Wittgenstein's later thought on religion, there is an alternative strand of that thought which is quite different and more nuanced. In this alternative strand Wittgenstein stresses that (...) religious utterances and beliefs can come in both scientific and non-scientific varieties. More than that, he claims that the grammar of religious utterances, and the logic of religious beliefs, is often complex – in that individual utterances and beliefs will often be mixed between, indeterminate between, or fluid between being scientific and being non-scientific. This complexity means that it will often be unhelpful to try to pin down one particular grammar or logic for a given utterance or belief. Wittgenstein therefore suggests a new method of grammatical and logical investigation, which is less likely to distort complex grammars or logics by being overly simplistic or rigid. This method is to use simple examples of utterances and beliefs as objects of comparison, so as to illuminate the different aspects of the more complex actual utterances and beliefs under examination. This alternative strand in Wittgenstein's later remarks on religion is a manifestation of a broader strand of Wittgenstein's later thought as a whole, which was first described by Friedrich Waismann, and later developed by Gordon Baker and Oskari Kuusela. The paper concludes by providing examples of religious beliefs which are logically mixed, indeterminate, and fluid, and showing how simple objects of comparison can be used to illuminate them. (shrink)

My books (2023-2007): only covers and contents .

Studying evidence law as part of naturalized epistemology means using the tools and results of the sciences to evaluate evidence rules based on the accuracy of the verdicts they are likely to produce. In this chapter, we introduce the approach and address skeptical concerns about the value of systematic empirical research for evidence scholarship, focusing, in particular, on worries about the external validity of jury simulation studies. Finally, turning to applications, we consider possible reforms regarding eyewitness identifications and character evidence.

Hallucination: Philosophy and Psychology is an edited MIT press collection that contributes to the philosophy of perception. This collection is a significant addition to the literature both for its excellent choice of texts, and its emphasis on the case of hallucinations. Dedicating a volume to hallucinatory phenomena may seem somewhat peculiar for those not entrenched in the analytic philosophy of perception, but it is easy enough to grasp their significance. Theories of perception aim to give a fundamental characterization of perceptual (...) experience, which are experiences with a sensory phenomenal character. Such perceptual experiences include cases of successfully perceiving something, but also some cases of merely seeming to perceive. This is because prima facie, some cases of seeming to perceive are more than merely thinking that one does ; they are cases of misperceiving. Hallucinations are .. (shrink)

A semantics of pictorial representation should provide an account of how pictorial signs are associated with the contents they express. Unlike the familiar semantics of spoken languages, this problem has a distinctively spatial cast for depiction. Pictures themselves are two-dimensional artifacts, and their contents take the form of pictorial spaces, perspectival arrangements of objects and properties in three dimensions. A basic challenge is to explain how pictures are associated with the particular pictorial spaces they express. Inspiration here comes from recent (...) proposals that analyze depiction in terms of geometrical projection. In this essay, I will argue that, for a central class of pictures, the projection-based theory of depiction provides the best explanation for how pictures express pictorial spaces, while rival perceptual and resemblance theories fall short. Since the composition of pictorial space is itself the basis for all other aspects of pictorial content, the proposal provides a natural foundation for further pictorial semantics. (shrink)

My two daughters would love to go tobogganing down the hill by themselves, but they are just toddlers and I am an apprehensive parent, so, before letting them do so, I want to ensure that the toboggan won’t go too fast. But how fast will it go? One way to try to answer this question would be to tackle the problem head on. Since my daughters and their toboggan are initially at rest, according to classical mechanics, their final velocity will (...) be determined by the forces they will be subjected to between the moment the toboggan will be released at the top of the hill and the moment it will reach its highest speed. The problem is that, throughout their downhill journey, my daughters and the toboggan will be subjected to an incredibly large number of forces—from the gravitational pull of any massive object in the universe to the weight of the snowflake that is sitting on the tip of one of my youngest daughter’s hairs—so that any attempt to apply the theory directly to the real-world system in all its complexity seems to be doomed to failure. (shrink)