Understanding how biological organisms are autonomous—maintain themselves far from equilibrium through their own activities—requires understanding how they regulate those activities. In multicellular animals, such control can be exercised either via endocrine signaling through the vasculature or via neurons. In C. elegans this control is exercised by a well-delineated relatively small but distributed nervous system that relies on both chemical and electric transmission of signals. This system provides resources to integrate information from multiple sources as needed to maintain the organism. Especially (...) important for the exercise of neural control are neuromodulators, which we present as setting agendas for control through more traditional electrical signaling. To illustrate how the C. elegans nervous system integrates multiple sources of information in controlling activities important for autonomy, we focus on feeding behavior and responses to adverse conditions. We conclude by considering how a distributed nervous system without a centralized controller is nonetheless adequate for autonomy. (shrink)

We advance an account that grounds cognition, specifically decision-making, in an activity all organisms as autonomous systems must perform to keep themselves viable—controlling their production mechanisms. Production mechanisms, as we characterize them, perform activities such as procuring resources from their environment, putting these resources to use to construct and repair the organism's body and moving through the environment. Given the variable nature of the environment and the continual degradation of the organism, these production mechanisms must be regulated by control mechanisms (...) that select when a production is required and how it should be carried out. To operate on production mechanisms, control mechanisms need to procure information through measurement processes and evaluate possible actions. They are making decisions. In all organisms, these decisions are made by multiple different control mechanisms that are organized not hierarchically but heterarchically. In many cases, they employ internal models of features of the environment with which the organism must deal. Cognition, in the form of decision-making, is thus fundamental to living systems which must control their production mechanisms. (shrink)

Unless one embraces activities as foundational, understanding activities in mechanisms requires an account of the means by which entities in biological mechanisms engage in their activities—an account that does not merely explain activities in terms of more basic entities and activities. Recent biological research on molecular motors exemplifies such an account, one that explains activities in terms of free energy and constraints. After describing the characteristic “stepping” activities of these molecules and mapping the stages of those steps onto the stages (...) of the motors’ hydrolytic cycles, researchers pieced together from images of the molecules in different hydrolyzation states accounts of how the chemical energy in ATP is transformed in the constrained environments of the motors into the characteristic activities of the motors. We argue that New Mechanism’s standard set of analytic categories—entities, activities, and organization—should be expanded to include constraints and energetics. Not only is such an expansion required descriptively to capture research on molecular motors but, more importantly from a philosophical point of view, it enables a non-regressive account of activities in mechanisms. In other words, this expansion enables a philosophical account of mechanistic explanation that avoids a regress of entities and activities “all the way down.” Rather, mechanistic explanation bottoms out in constraints and energetics. (shrink)

According to new mechanists, mechanisms explain how specific biological phenomena are produced. New mechanists have had little to say about how mechanisms relate to the organism in which they reside. A key feature of organisms, emphasized by the autonomy tradition, is that organisms maintain themselves. To do this, they rely on mechanisms. But mechanisms must be controlled so that they produce the phenomena for which they are responsible when and in the manner needed by the organism. To account for how (...) they are controlled, we characterize mechanisms as sets of constraints on the flow of free energy. Some constraints are flexible and can be acted on by other mechanisms, control mechanisms, that utilize information procured from the organism and its environment to alter the flexible constraints in other mechanisms so that they produce phenomena appropriate to the circumstances. We further show that control mechanisms in living organisms are organized heterarchically—control is carried out primarily by local controllers that integrate information they acquire as well as that which they procure from other control mechanisms. The result is not a hierarchy of control but an integrated network of control mechanisms that has been crafted over the course of evolution. (shrink)

Due to the wide array of phenomena that are of interest to them, psychologists offer highly diverse and heterogeneous types of explanations. Initially, this suggests that the question "What is psychological explanation?" has no single answer. To provide appreciation of this diversity, we begin by noting some of the more common types of explanations that psychologists provide, with particular focus on classical examples of explanations advanced in three different areas of psychology: psychophysics, physiological psychology, and information-processing psychology. To analyze what (...) is involved in these types of explanations, we consider the ways in which law-like representations of regularities and representations of mechanisms factor in psychological explanations. This consideration directs us to certain fundamental questions, e.g., "To what extent are laws necessary for psychological explanations?" and "What do psychologists have in mind when they appeal to mechanisms in explanation?" In answering such questions, it appears that laws do play important roles in psychological explanations, although most explanations in psychology appeal to accounts of mechanisms. Consequently, we provide a unifying account of what psychological explanation is. (shrink)

Eating is a fundamental behavior in which all organisms must engage in order to procure the material and energy from their environment that they need to maintain themselves. Since controlling eating requires procuring, processing, and assessing information, it constitutes a cognitive activity that provides a productive domain for pursuing cognitive biology as proposed by Ladislav Kováč. In agreement with Kováč, we argue that cognition is fundamentally grounded in chemical signaling and processing. To support this thesis, we adopt Cisek’s strategy of (...) phylogenetic refinement, focusing on two animal phyla, Porifera and Placozoa, organisms that do not have neurons, muscles, or an alimentary canal, but nonetheless need to coordinate the activity of cells of multiple types in order to eat. We review what research has revealed so far about how these animals gather and process information to control their eating behavior. (shrink)

Organization figures centrally in the understanding of biological systems advanced by both new mechanists and proponents of the autonomy framework. The new mechanists focus on how components of mechanisms are organized to produce a phenomenon and emphasize productive continuity between these components. The autonomy framework focuses on how the components of a biological system are organized in such a way that they contribute to the maintenance of the organisms that produce them. In this paper we analyze and compare these two (...) accounts of organization and argue that understanding biological organisms as cohesively integrated systems benefits from insights from both. To bring together the two accounts, we focus on the notions of control and regulation as bridge concepts. We start from a characterization of biological mechanisms in terms of constraints and focus on a specific type of mechanism, control mechanisms, that operate on other mechanisms on the basis of measurements of variables in the system and its environment. Control mechanisms are characterized by their own set of constraints that enable them to sense conditions, convey signals, and effect changes on constraints in the controlled mechanism. They thereby allow living organisms to adapt to internal and external variations and to coordinate their parts in such a manner as to maintain viability. Because living organisms contain a vast number of control mechanisms, a central challenge is to understand how they are themselves organized. With the support of examples from both unicellular and multicellular systems we argue that control mechanisms are organized heterarchically, and we discuss how this type of control architecture can, without invoking top-down and centralized forms of organizations, succeed in coordinating internal activities of organisms. (shrink)

Living organisms act as integrated wholes to maintain themselves. Individual actions can each be explained by characterizing the mechanisms that perform the activity. But these alone do not explain how various activities are coordinated and performed versatilely. We argue that this depends on a specific type of mechanism, a control mechanism. We develop an account of control by examining several extensively studied control mechanisms operative in the bacterium E. coli. On our analysis, what distinguishes a control mechanism from other mechanisms (...) is that it relies on measuring one or more variables, which results in setting constraints in the control mechanism that determine its action on flexible constraints in other mechanisms. In the most basic arrangement, the measurement process directly determines the action of the control mechanism, but in more complex arrangements signals mediate between measurements and effectors. This opens the possibility of multiple responses to the same measurement and responses based on multiple measurements. It also allows crosstalk, resulting in networks of control mechanisms. Such networks integrate the behaviors of the organism but also present a challenge in tailoring responses to particular measurements. We discuss how integrated activity can still result in differential, versatile, responses. (shrink)

Autoinhibition is a design principle realized in many molecular mechanisms in biology. After explicating the notion of a design principle and showing that autoinhibition is such a principle, we focus on how researchers discovered instances of autoinhibition, using research establishing the autoinhibition of the molecular motors kinesin and dynein as our case study. Research on kinesin and dynein began in the fashion described in accounts of mechanistic explanation but, once the mechanisms had been discovered, researchers discovered that they exhibited a (...) second phenomenon, autoinhibition. The discovery of autoinhibition not only reverses the pattern in terms of which philosophers have understood mechanism discovery but runs counter to the one phenomenon-one mechanism principle assumed to relate mechanisms and the phenomena they explain. The ubiquity of autoinhibition as a design principle, therefore, necessitates a philosophical understanding of mechanisms that recognizes how they can participate in more than one phenomenon. Since mechanisms with this design are released from autoinhibition only when they are acted on by control mechanisms, we advance a revised account of mechanisms that accommodates attribution of multiple phenomena to the same mechanism and distinguishes them from other processes that control them. (shrink)

The new mechanists and the autonomy approach both aim to account for how biological phenomena are explained. One identifies appeals to how components of a mechanism are organized so that their activities produce a phenomenon. The other directs attention towards the whole organism and focuses on how it achieves self-maintenance. This paper discusses challenges each confronts and how each could benefit from collaboration with the other: the new mechanistic framework can gain by taking into account what happens outside individual mechanisms, (...) while the autonomy approach can ground itself in biological research into how the actual components constituting an autonomous system interact and contribute in different ways to realize and maintain the system. To press the case that these two traditions should be constructively integrated we describe how three recent developments in the autonomy tradition together provide a bridge between the two traditions: (1) a framework of work and constraints, (2) a conception of function grounded in the organization of an autonomous system, and (3) a focus on control. (shrink)

Psychological construction represents an important new approach to psychological phenomena, one that has the promise to help us reconceptualize the mind both as a behavioral and as a biological system. It has so far been developed in the greatest detail for emotion, but it has important implications for how researchers approach other mental phenomena such as reasoning, memory, and language use. Its key contention is that phenomena that are characterized in (folk) psychological vocabulary are not themselves basic features of the (...) mind, but are constructed from more basic psychological operations. The framework of mechanistic explanation, currently under development in philosophy of science, can provide a useful perspective on the psychological construction approach. A central insight of the mechanistic account of explanation is that biological and psychological phenomena result from mechanisms in which component parts and operations do not individually exhibit the phenomena of interest but function together in an orchestrated and sometimes in a complex dynamical manner to generate it. While at times acknowledging the compatibility of the mechanist approach with constructionist approach (Lindquist, Wager, Kober, Bliss-Moreau, & Barrett, 2012), proponents of the constructionist approach have at other times pitched their approach as anti-mechanist. For example, Barrett (2009) claims that the psychological constructionist approach rejects machines as the primary metaphor for understanding the mind, instead favoring a recipe metaphor; constructionism also purportedly rejects the “mechanistic” picture of causation, which it portrays as linear or sequential in nature (see also Barrett, Wilson-Mendenhall, & Barsalou, in press). While some mechanistic accounts do fit this description, we will see that the mechanisms generating phenomena can be complex and dynamic, producing phenomena far less stereotypic and more adaptive than people often associate with machines. Our goal, however, is not just to render constructionism and mechanism compatible. Philosophers of science have been examining the nature of mechanistic explanation in biology with the goal of gaining new insights into the operation of science. We will identify some of the places where the mechanistic account can shed new light on the constructionist project. (shrink)

Emergence is much discussed by both philosophers and scientists. But, as noted by Mitchell (2012), there is a significant gulf; philosophers and scientists talk past each other. We contend that this is because philosophers and scientists typically mean different things by emergence, leading us to distinguish being emergence and pattern emergence. While related to distinctions offered by others between, for example, strong/weak emergence or epistemic/ontological emergence (Clayton, 2004, pp. 9–11), we argue that the being vs. pattern distinction better captures what (...) the two groups are addressing. In identifying pattern emergence as the central concern of scientists, however, we do not mean that pattern emergence is of no interest to philosophers. Rather, we argue that philosophers should attend to, and even contribute to, discussions of pattern emergence. But it is important that this discussion be distinguished, not conflated, with discussions of being emergence. In the following section we explicate the notion of being emergence and show how it has been the focus of many philosophical discussions, historical and contemporary. In section 3 we turn to pattern emergence, briefly presenting a few of the ways it figures in the discussions of scientists (and philosophers of science who contribute to these discussions in science). Finally, in sections 4 and 5, we consider the relevance of pattern emergence to several central topics in philosophy of biology: the emergence of complexity, of control, and of goal-directedness in biological systems. (shrink)

Explanatory pluralism holds that the sorts of comprehensive theoretical and ontological economies, which microreductionists and New Wave reductionists envision and which antireductionists fear, offer misleading views of both scientific practice and scientific progress. Both advocates and foes of employing reductionist strategies at the interface of psychology and neuroscience have overplayed the alleged economies that interlevel connections (including identities) justify while overlooking their fundamental role in promoting scientific research. A brief review of research on visual processing provides support for the explanatory (...) pluralist=s general model of cross-scientific relations and discloses the valuable heuristic role hypothetical identities play in cross-scientific research. That model also supplies grounds for hesitation about the correlation objection to the psycho-physical identity theory and complaints about an explanatory gap in physicalist accounts of consciousness. These takes on psycho-neural connections miss both the sorts of considerations that motivate hypothetical identities in science and their fundamental contribution to progressive research. Thus, their focus on the contributions of research at multiple levels of analysis does not bar explanatory pluralists from considering heuristic identity theory (HIT). Arguably, it encourages it. (shrink)

As much as assumptions about mechanisms and mechanistic explanation have deeply affected psychology, they have received disproportionately little analysis in philosophy. After a historical survey of the influences of mechanistic approaches to explanation of psychological phenomena, we specify the nature of mechanisms and mechanistic explanation. Contrary to some treatments of mechanistic explanation, we maintain that explanation is an epistemic activity that involves representing and reasoning about mechanisms. We discuss the manner in which mechanistic approaches serve to bridge levels rather than (...) reduce them, as well as the different ways in which mechanisms are discovered. Finally, we offer a more detailed example of an important psychological phenomenon for which mechanistic explanation has provided the main source of scientific understanding. (shrink)

This article explores the use of model organisms in studying the cognitive phenomenon of decision-making. Drawing on the framework of biological control to develop a skeletal conception of decision-making, we show that two core features of decision-making mechanisms can be identified by studying model organisms, such as E. coli, jellyfish, C. elegans, lamprey, and so on. First, decision mechanisms are distributed and heterarchically structured. Second, they depend heavily on chemical information processing, such as that involving neuromodulators. We end by discussing (...) the implications for studying distinctively human decision-making. (shrink)

Abstract Scientific discoveries must have more impact on philosophy (Bechtel, 2001. Part. I.I.). That is the thesis of the American professor of philosophy William Bechtel. Applications of the insights from the neurosciences could perhaps lead to a breakthrough in solving metaphysical and religious questions. Philosophers must assume the task of building bridges between the exact (and cognitive) sciences and contemporary philosophy (Bechtel, 2002. 49). This paper is a critical analysis of the promises of a relatively new (...) discipline: Neurophilosophy. (shrink)

This paper describes a version of type identity physicalism, which we call Flat Physicalism, and shows how it meets several objections often raised against identity theories. This identity theory is informed by recent results in the conceptual foundations of physics, and in particular clar- ifies the notion of ‘physical kinds’ in light of a conceptual analysis of the paradigmatic case of reducing thermody- namics to statistical mechanics. We show how Flat Physi- calism is compatible with the appearance of multiple realisation (...) in the special sciences, and how and in what sense the special sciences laws are autonomous from the laws of physics, despite the full reductive picture of Flat Physicalism. We compare our view with a recent proposal by William Bechtel that accounts for the appearance of levels in mechanistic explanations. (shrink)

Cognitive neuroscience is an interdisciplinary enterprise aimed at explaining cognition and behavior. It appears to be succeeding. What accounts for this apparent explanatory success? According to one prominent philosophical thesis, cognitive neuroscience explains by discovering and describing mechanisms. This "mechanist thesis" is open to at least two interpretations: a strong metaphysical thesis that Carl Craver and David Kaplan defend, and a weaker methodological thesis that William Bechtel defends. I argue that the metaphysical thesis is false and that the (...) methodological thesis is too weak to account for the explanatory promise of cognitive neuroscience. My argument draws support from a representative example of research in this field, namely, the neuroscience of decision-making. The example shows that cognitive neuroscience explains in a variety of ways and that the discovery of mechanisms functions primarily as a way of marshaling evidence in support of the models of cognition that are its principle unit of explanatory significance. -/- The inadequacy of the mechanist program is symptomatic of an implausible but prominent view of scientific understanding. On this view, scientific understanding consists in an accurate and complete description of certain "objective" explanatory relations, that is, relations that hold independently of facts about human psychology. I trace this view to Carl Hempel's logical empiricist reconceptualization of scientific understanding, which then gets extended in Wesley Salmon's causal-mechanistic approach. I argue that the twin objectivist ideals of accuracy and completeness are neither ends we actually value nor ends we ought to value where scientific understanding is concerned. -/- The case against objectivism motivates psychologism about understanding, the view that understanding depends on human psychology. I propose and defend a normative psychologistic framework for investigating the nature of understanding in the mind sciences along three empirically-informed dimensions: 1) What are the ends of understanding? 2) What is the nature of the cognitive strategy that we deploy to achieve those ends; and 3) Under what conditions is our deployment of this strategy effective toward achieving those ends? To articulate and defend this view, I build on the work of Elliot Sober to develop a taxonomy of psychologisms about understanding. Epistemological psychologism, a species of naturalism, is the view that justifying claims about understanding requires appealing to what scientists actually do when they seek understanding. Metaphysical psychologism is the view that the truth-makers for claims about understanding include facts about human psychology. I defend both views against objections. (shrink)

(June 2013) “The mind-body problem in cognitive neuroscience”, Philosophia Scientiae 17/2, Gabriel Vacariu and Mihai Vacariu (eds.): 1. William Bechtel (Philosophy, Center for Chronobiology, and Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science University of California, San Diego) “The endogenously active brain: the need for an alternative cognitive architecture” 2. Rolls T. Edmund (Oxford Centre for Computational Neuroscience, Oxford, UK) “On the relation between the mind and the brain: a neuroscience perspective” 3. Cees van Leeuwen (University of Leuven, Belgium; Riken Brain (...) Science Institute, Japan) “Brain and mind” 4. Kari Theurer (Trinity College) and John Bickle (Philosophy, Mississippi State University) “What’s old is new again: Kemeny-Oppenheim reduction at work in current molecular neuroscience” 5. Bernard Andrieu (Staps Université de Lorraine) “Sentir son cerveau? Les dispositifs neuro-expérientiels en 1er personne” 6. Corey Maley and Gualtiero Piccinini (Philosophy, University of Missouri – St. Louis) “Get the latest upgrade: Functionalism 6.3.1” 7. Paula Droege (Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University) “Memory and consciousness” 8. Gabriel Vacariu and Mihai Vacariu (Philosophy, University of Bucharest) “Troubles with cognitive neuroscience”. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists used to deem reasoning either as a higher cognitive process based on the manipulation of abstract rules or as a higher cognitive process that is stochastic rather than involving abstract rules. I maintain that these different perspectives are closely intertwined with a theoretical and methodological endorsement of either cognitivism or connectionism. Cognitivism and connectionism represent two prevailing and opposed paradigms in cognitive science. I aim to extoll the virtues of connectionist models of enthymematic reasoning by following means: via (...) the phenomenon of creative enthymeme, viz. the inference where one cannot even articulate the missing premise, I introduce a connectionist mechanism of pattern recognition as underlying expertise; via Gestalt switch or Gestalt click, I demonstrate how differences in pattern recognition of an expert and a novice can be construed as qualitatively different, and not merely a matter of faster reasoning. (shrink)

The sense of form that provides the modern poet with a unique experience of the literary object has been crucial to various attempts to compare poetry to other cultural activities. In maintaining similar conceptions of the relationship between poetry and painting, Arthur Rimbaud and W. C. Williams establish a common basis for interpreting their creative work. And yet their poetry is more crucially concerned with the sudden emergence of visible "worlds" containing verbal objects that integrate a new kind of literary (...) text. This paper discusses the emergence of "aesthetic worlds" in the work of both poets and then examines how a common concern with Baroque form unites them in the phenomenological task of overcoming Cartesian dualism. (shrink)

This essay explains Donald Hoffman's Interface Theory of Perception using The Biological Framework for a Mathematical Universe proposed by Ronald Williams. According to Hoffman, what we perceive is more like a “desktop interface with icons representing complex underlying processes, rather than a direct window into the true nature of the world." The theory of a biological framework for a mathematical universes suggests that these complex underlying processes of “the desktop interface with icons” contain correspondences to biological systems. For example, “the (...) desktop icons” of the ocean’s arctic currents and the melting and freezing of Antartica contain “complex underlying processes” which mirror the processes of a circulatory system and beating heart. While indeed we do interpret reality from a superficial perspective as Hoffman suggests, our cognitive abilities are enhanced enough to recognize correspondences to these patterns pertaining to these biological systems which reveal the true nature of the world/universe/reality and thus highlight our evolved perceptual systems which can enable us how to recognize these patterns and organize ourselves to them in order to best survive it. Another example of a “desktop icon” is human society—the order and properties of human society contain “complex underlying processes” that are analogous to the order and properties of cellular society—thus “socioeconomic problems” can be understood through cellular economic problems. Moreover, the solution to the cellular economic problem is the solution to the socioeconomic problem. (shrink)

This précis summarizes the main topics, arguments and conclusions of the book. Many interesting arguments and critiques have, of course, been omitted in order to make this summary appropriately brief.

The theory proposing a biological framework for a mathematical universe hypothesis posits that biological patterns define the fundamental nature of reality. These biological patterns are initially hidden from view, but can only be unveiled and understood through the knowledge of biology’s patterns and structurally mapping correspondences from the biological domain to a target domain. This perspective aligns with the ideas establishing perennial wisdom, a concept that encompasses universal and timeless spiritual truths found across various traditions. By exploring the parallels between (...) perennial wisdom's core ideas and the theory of a biological universe, we can assert that the mystical concepts of Pnimiyut and Chitzoniyut from Kabbalah may have been attempting to express the underlying principles surrounding a biological universe. In this essay, we will delve into the concepts of Pnimiyut and Chitzniyut and their potential connection to the biological nature of the universe. (shrink)

The present study examines how online instruction during the COVID pandemic impacted learning and performs a partial replication of a study by Hahn et al. (2012), which compared students’ testing outcomes of the Major Field Test in Business (MFTB) and the Comprehensive Business Exam (CBE). Our results find that online instruction during the 2020-2021 pandemic isolation period had no significant impact on pre- and post-COVID testing outcomes for either exam. It was further found that the question set employed by the (...) CBE exam appears to have changed from the pre- to the post-COVID testing timeframes, making this exam questionable for assurance of learning purposes when compared to prior year results. (shrink)

An essential property of a thing tells us about the real definition of that thing. In this dissertation, I argue that a real definition states conditions on the identity of things and explains how they differ from other individuals or members of other kinds. I then apply this account to show that some essential properties are discovered by science. I also argue contrary to reductionist accounts of essence and show that several of Kit Fine's applications of the notion of essence (...) to ontological dependence and to the reduction of modality, are spurious. Finally, I argue that the real definition of each human person accounts for their personal identity over time. (shrink)

CLE aims and clients’ needs conflict where students’ interests are put beyond clients’ needs. Students have interests in gaining employment, impressing instructors and supervisors, and experiencing the active application of law. Where the clients’ service-needs are subordinated to students’ interests, the relationship between the two—the ‘tension’—is tilted in a manner in which the clients are disserved through the fulfilment of students’ interests. This may be exacerbated by faulty institutional cultures where clinical faculty are treated differently, or as less accomplished or (...) ‘worthwhile’ than their ‘traditional’ counterparts. This also emphasizes that it is the clinical law faculty who may exacerbate or assuage the tension, as it is for clinical faculty to assure that clients’ needs are met on ethical grounds,20 and to equate the practice of law with excellence before students. (shrink)

Neutral Theory is controversial in ecology. Ecologists and philosophers have diagnosed the source of the controversy as: its false assumption that individuals in different species within the same trophic level are ecologically equivalent, its conflict with Competition Theory and the adaptation of species, its role as a null hypothesis, and as a Lakatosian research programme. In this paper, I show why we should instead understand the conflict at the level of research programs which involve more than theory. The Neutralist and (...) Competitionist research programs borrow and construct theories, models, and experiments for various aims and given their home ecological systems. I present a holistic and pragmatic view of the controversy that foregrounds the interrelation between many kinds of practices and decisions in ecological research. (shrink)

There are two distinct approaches to Bayesian modelling in cognitive science. Black-box approaches use Bayesian theory to model the relationship between the inputs and outputs of a cognitive system without reference to the mediating causal processes; while mechanistic approaches make claims about the neural mechanisms which generate the outputs from the inputs. This paper concerns the relationship between these two approaches. We argue that the dominant trend in the philosophical literature, which characterizes the relationship between black-box and mechanistic approaches to (...) Bayesian cognitive science in terms of the dichotomy between instrumentalism and realism, is misguided. We propose that the two distinctions are orthogonal: black-box and mechanistic approaches to Bayesian modelling can each be given either an instrumentalist or a realist interpretation. We argue that the current tendency to conflate black-box approaches with instrumentalism and mechanistic approaches with realism stems from unwarranted assumptions about the nature of scientific explanation, the ontological commitments of scientific theories, and the role of abstraction and idealization in scientific models. We challenge each of these assumptions to reframe the debates over Bayesian modelling in cognitive science. (shrink)

A central theme in Wittgenstein’s post-Tractatus remarks on the limits of language is that we ‘cannot use language to get outside language’. One illustration of that idea is his comment that, once we have described the procedure of teaching and learning a rule, we have ‘said everything that can be said about acting correctly according to the rule’; ‘we can go no further’. That, it is argued, is an expression of anti-reductionism about meaning and rules. A framework is presented for (...) assessing the debate between reductionist and anti-reductionist readings of Wittgenstein’s views about meaning and use. It is argued that that debate cannot be settled merely by reference to Wittgenstein’s general opposition to reductionism. An important argument for anti-reductionism about rules and meaning, from Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, is discussed. Putative evidence of reductionism about meaning in the Brown Book is considered; an alternative reading is proposed. The nature of Wittgenstein’s anti-reductionism is examined. It is argued, first, that Wittgenstein accepts that semantic and normative facts supervene on non-semantic, non-normative facts and, second, that at many points his treatment of meaning and rules goes beyond the kind of pleonastic claim that is often taken to define non-reductionist, quietist, positions in philosophy. (shrink)

The United States carceral system, as currently designed and implemented, is widely considered to be an immoral and inhumane system of criminal punishment. There are a number of pressing issues related to this topic, but in this essay, I will focus upon the problem of prison violence. Inadequate supervision has resulted in unsafe prison conditions where inmates are regularly threatened with rape, assault, and other forms of physical violence. Such callous disregard and exposure to unreasonable risk constitutes a severe violation (...) of the rights of prisoners by the state. While there have been numerous legal, political, and activist efforts to draw attention to this issue—with the goal of reforming and making prisons safer—my goal is different. I argue that inmates who are victims of prison violence should have their sentences automatically reduced. Two distinct arguments are advanced in support of this claim. First, I argue that acts of prison violence are a sort of state-mediated harm which can thus be appropriately described as punishment-constituting. Second, and more straightforwardly, I argue that the compensation owed to prisoners who are victims of prison violence may naturally take the form of a reduced sentence. (shrink)

How do we determine whether individuals accept the actual consistency of a political argument instead of just its rhetorical good looks? This article answers this question by proposing an interpretation of political argument within the constraints of political liberalism. It utilises modern developments in the philosophy of logic and language to reclaim ‘meaningless nonsense’ from use as a partisan war cry and to build up political argument as something more than a power struggle between competing conceptions of the good. Standard (...) solutions for ‘clarifying’ meaning through descriptive definition encounter difficulties with the biases of status quo idioms (long noted by theorists like William Connolly and Quentin Skinner), as well as partisan translations and circularity. Collectively called linguistic gerrymandering, these difficulties threaten political liberalism’s underlying coherency. The proposed interpretation of political argument overcomes this with a new brand of conceptual analysis that can falsifiably determine whether rhetoric has hijacked political argument. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Kant has a far more communitarian theory of aesthetic life than is usually acknowledged. I focus on two aspects of Kant’s theory that might otherwise be taken to support an individualist reading, namely, Kant’s emphasis on aesthetic autonomy and his characterization of judgments of taste as involving demands for agreement. I argue that the full expression of autonomy in fact requires being a member of an aesthetic community and that within such a community, judgments (...) of taste are issued as invitations to others to engage their faculties towards the goal of shared aesthetic appreciation. (shrink)

Husserl’s early picture of explanation in the sciences has never been completely provided. This lack represents an oversight, which we here redress. In contrast to currently accepted interpretations, we demonstrate that Husserl does not adhere to the much maligned deductive-nomological (DN) model of scientific explanation. Instead, via a close reading of early Husserlian texts, we reveal that he presents a unificationist account of scientific explanation. By doing so, we disclose that Husserl’s philosophy of scientific explanation is no mere anachronism. It (...) is, instead, tenable and relevant. We discuss how Husserl and other contemporary thinkers draw theoretical inspiration from the same source—namely, Bernard Bolzano. Husserl’s theory of scientific explanation shares a common language and discusses the same themes as, for example, Phillip Kitcher and Kit Fine. To advance our novel reading, we discuss Husserl’s investigations of grounding, inter-lawful explanation, intra-mathematical explanation, and scientific unification. (shrink)

In this research, we focus on the usage of adversarial sampling to test for the fairness in the prediction of deep neural network model across different classes of image in a given dataset. While several framework had been proposed to ensure robustness of machine learning model against adversarial attack, some of which includes adversarial training algorithm. There is still the pitfall that adversarial training algorithm tends to cause disparity in accuracy and robustness among different group. Our research is aimed at (...) using adversarial sampling to test for fairness in the prediction of deep neural network model across different classes or categories of image in a given dataset. We successfully demonstrated a new method of ensuring fairness across various group of input in deep neural network classifier. We trained our neural network model on the original image, and without training our model on the perturbed or attacked image. When we feed the adversarial samplings to our model, it was able to predict the original category/ class of the image the adversarial sample belongs to. We also introduced and used the separation of concern concept from software engineering whereby there is an additional standalone filter layer that filters perturbed image by heavily removing the noise or attack before automatically passing it to the network for classification, we were able to have accuracy of 93.3%. Cifar-10 dataset have ten categories of dataset, and so, in order to account for fairness, we applied our hypothesis across each categories of dataset and were able to get a consistent result and accuracy. (shrink)

Catalan translation, introductory study and notes on W. K. Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief”. Published in Clifford, W.K. “L’ètica de la creença”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 129–150. // Catalan translation, introductory study and notes on William James’s “The Will to Believe”. Published in James, William. “La voluntat de creure”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 151–172. [Introductory study published in Oya, Alberto. “Introducció. El debat entre W. K. Clifford i (...) class='Hi'>William James”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 123–127]. (shrink)

As a retired professor, I join in the growing concerns among educators, and others, about plagiarism, especially now that AI tools like ChatGPT are so readily available. However, I feel more caution is needed, regarding temptations to rely on supposed automatic detection tools, like Turnitin, to solve the problems. Students can be unfairly accused if such tools are used unreflectingly. The Toronto Star's online version of this published Op Ed is available at the link shown below. The version attached here (...) is a pre-print, which also includes annotations for my references, which are not displayed in the published version. (shrink)

In recent history, we have seen the birth of a democratic nation in Nepal, after years of war between Maoist revolutionaries and the prior Monarchic State. Of course, the war was violent, there remain questions on human rights abuses, and, there had been a significant loss of civilian lives during the process. Indeed, to the Maoist, war in Nepal was part of their struggle, in what they called the 'People's War'. The struggle was borne out of much more than mere (...) dissatisfaction with the prior status quo. It was a resistance to non-democratic conditions within Nepali political life. The Maoist viewed democratic governance and citizen's rights as intrinsic to Nepali life. Of course, historically speaking, there had been no time before the Maoist struggle where Nepali life seemed all that democratic, nor did Nepali citizens ever enjoy any basic rights to speak of. Nevertheless, the Maoists saw such conditions as inextricably linked to Nepali political life. The claim that the Maoists made was that the prior status quo had to be brought to an end, and that the struggle to do so could require permanent revolution. That is, the struggle would not stop until success had been achieved, success being the formation of a new democratic state. Of course, the Maoists-being Maoists-were claiming to see the revolution to an end beyond democracy: to communist society. However, the tenets of communism have had very little to do with the Maoist revolution, as the outcome since is far more representative of a Federal Constitutional Democracy. Nevertheless, what the Maoist undertook, on behalf of all Nepali people, was to cause a severe departure from the past; to instigate a new state under new conditions and within a structure that is viable and sustainable. In light of Hannah Arendt's discussions on revolution, the beginnings of the Maoist Revolution are very interesting. Indeed, they appear to be emblematic of the sort of 'founding' that was seen in the American Revolution. (shrink)

The Roman imperial Stoics were familiar with exile. This paper argues that the Stoics’ view of being a refugee differed sharply from their view of what is owed to refugees. A Stoic adopts the perspective of a cosmopolitēs, a “citizen of the world,” a rational being everywhere at home in the universe. Virtue can be cultivated and practiced in any locale, so being a refugee is an “indifferent” that poses no obstacle to happiness. Other people are our fellow cosmic citizens, (...) however, regardless of their language, race, ethnicity, customs, or country of origin. Our natural affinity and shared sociability with all people require us to help refugees and embrace them as welcome neighbors. Failure to do so violates our common reason, justice, and the gods’ cosmic law. (shrink)

Worlds where things divide forever ("gunk" worlds) are apparently conceivable. The conceivability of such scenarios has been used as an argument against "nihilist" or "near-nihilist" answers to the special composition question. I argue that the mereological nihilist has the resources to explain away the illusion that gunk is possible.

Wittgenstein’s philosophy involves a general anti-platonism about properties or standards of similarity. On his view, what it is for one thing to have the same property as another is not dictated by reality itself; it depends on our classificatory practices and the standards of similarity they embody. Wittgenstein’s anti-platonism plays an important role in the private language sections and in his discussion of the conceptual problem of other minds. In sharp contrast to Wittgenstein’s views stands the contemporary doctrine of natural (...) properties, which holds that there is an objective hierarchy of naturalness amongst properties, a hierarchy that is completely independent of our concepts or practices. Some authors have appealed to the natural properties view to offer an explicitly anti-Wittgensteinian account of sensation concepts. The paper discusses these competing views of properties and sensation concepts. It is argued that, if our account of concepts of conscious states starts from a commitment to natural properties, we are bound to recognize that our actual classificatory practices also play a crucial role in determining which properties our concepts pick out. On the other hand, if we start from the anti-platonist position, we are bound to recognize that we also need a notion of sameness of property that extends beyond our limited capacity to recognize similarity or sameness of property. The correct view, it is concluded, must occupy a middle position between an extreme anti-realism about properties and an extreme version of the natural properties view. It is suggested that Wittgenstein’s own view does just that. (shrink)

[This download contains the introductory chapter.] People confabulate when they make an ill-grounded claim that they honestly believe is true, for example in claiming to recall an event from their childhood that never actually happened. This interdisciplinary book brings together some of the leading thinkers on confabulation in neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, and philosophy.

For anyone approaching the Encheiridion of Epictetus for the first time, this book provides a comprehensive guide to understanding a complex philosophical text. Including a full translation and clear explanatory commentaries, Epictetus's 'Encheiridion' introduces readers to a hugely influential work of Stoic philosophy. Scott Aikin and William O. Stephens unravel the core themes of Stoic ethics found within this ancient handbook. Focusing on the core themes of self-control, seeing things as they are, living according to nature, owning one's roles (...) and fulfilling the responsibilities that those roles entail, the authors elucidate the extremely challenging ideas in Epictetus's brisk chapters. Divided into five distinct parts, this book provides readers with: -/- - A new translation of the Encheiridion by William O. Stephens. - A new introduction to ancient Stoicism, its system of concepts, and the ancient figures who shaped it. - A fresh treatment of the notorious and counter-intuitive 'Stoic paradoxes'. - An accessible overview of the origin and historical context of the Encheiridion. - Detailed commentaries on each chapter of the Encheiridion that clarify its recurring themes and highlight their interconnections. - Careful attention to the presentation of the arguments embedded in Epictetus's aphoristic style. - A thoughtful discussion of serious criticisms of Epictetus's Stoicism and replies to these objections. -/- Written with clarity and authority, Epictetus's 'Encheiridion' provides a foundation from which readers can understand this important text and engage with the fundamental questions of Stoic philosophy and ethics. This guide will aid teachers of Epictetus, students encountering Stoicism for the first time, and readers seeking a greater understanding of Stoic ethics. (shrink)

Debate between the A- and B-theories has rested on the supposition that there is a clear difference between A- and B-time. I argue that this supposition is mistaken for two reasons. We cannot distinguish the two conceptions of time by means of Bergsonian intuition. Unless we can do so, we cannot distinguish them at all. I defend by imagining various ways to intuit the two kinds of time, and maintaining that none of them works. I defend by showing that the (...) issue is an experiential one, unlike metaphysical issues that are less connected to experience. My conclusion is that no progress will be made in the debate between the two theories until it becomes clear what the difference is between the two kinds of time. (shrink)

John Hawthorne in a recent paper takes issue with Lewisian accounts of counterfactuals, when relevant laws of nature are chancy. I respond to his arguments on behalf of the Lewisian, and conclude that while some can be rebutted, the case against the original Lewisian account is strong.I develop a neo-Lewisian account of what makes for closeness of worlds. I argue that my revised version avoids Hawthorne’s challenges. I argue that this is closer to the spirit of Lewis’s first (non-chancy) proposal (...) than is Lewis’s own suggested modification. (shrink)

Anglo-American general jurisprudence remains preoccupied with the relationship of legality to morality. This has especially been so in the re-reading of Lon Fuller’s theory of an implied morality in any law. More often than not, Fuller has been said to distinguish between the identity of a discrete rule and something called ‘morality’. In this reading of Fuller, however, insufficient attention to what is signified by ‘morality’. Such an implied morality has been understood in terms of deontological duties, the Good life, (...) naturalism, and subjectively posited values. Each of these interpretations has a shared common denominator: namely, the distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, ‘facts’ and ‘values’. Legality is said to be nested in an ‘is’ world. An ‘is’ cannot be derived from an ‘ought’. This essay aims to press this distinction further. Fuller, I intend to argue, does indeed accept the is/ought distinction as have his commentators. The associations of the ‘oughts’ with deontological duties, the Good life, naturalism and subjective values, however, have been misdirected. This has been so because Fuller presupposed that legality was a matter of a spatial structure. Non-law was situated outside the structure. If a legislator or judge considered matters outside the structure as if they were binding upon jurists and, for that matter, upon members of the legal structure, the law was not binding. The crucial incident of the structure was the boundary of the structure. Fuller’s structuralist theory of law offers the opportunity to better understand what he signified by ‘the internal morality of law’. I shall privilege several elements of his theory: the relation of legal units to a structure, the nature of a structure, the constituents of a structure (territorial space, its pillars and its matter); the forms of the legal structure; the centrifugal and centripetal structures, the structure and traditional theories of morality, the role of the legal official in a structure, and why the internal knowledge in the structure is binding. Fuller especially privileged two features of a legal structure. The one was the boundary of the structure. The second concerned the exteriority of the boundary. Both features presupposed a territorial sense view of legal knowledge. The legal mind analysed any social problem through the map of such a sense of legal space. By concentrating upon the discrete rule in isolation of the implied structural boundary to which the rule referred, commentators have attributed been misdirected in their analyses of Fuller’s theory of law and morality. My argument in this respect will proceed as follows. In order to clarify Fuller’s senses of the morality of law, I shall first outline what he means by a ‘structure’. Second, how is the structure related to legal knowledge? Third, what are the various forms of the structure? Fourth, is the structure centrifugal or centripetal? And finally, why is the structure binding? (shrink)