This book constitutes refereed proceedings of the COST 2102 International Training School on Cognitive Behavioural Systems held in Dresden, Germany, in February 2011. The 39 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The volume presents new and original research results in the field of human-machine interaction inspired by cognitive behavioural human-human interaction features. The themes covered are on cognitive and computational social information processing, emotional and social believable Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) systems, behavioural and contextual analysis (...) of interaction, embodiment, perception, linguistics, semantics and sentiment analysis in dialogues and interactions, algorithmic and computational issues for the automatic recognition and synthesis of emotional states. (shrink)

Job burnout, organizational commitment, and work environment continue to be important areas of research to be studied in the realm of company employment and employee retention. Job burnout is the state of physical and emotional exhaustion and perceiving one’s profession as dull or overwhelming. Meanwhile, organizational commitment refers to the company’s attitude towards the organization and their employees, encompassing loyalty, moral responsibility, and their willingness to work. And lastly, work environment provides opportunities for employees to establish connections, develop skills, and (...) maximize their full potential in performing tasks. For the current study, researchers utilized descriptive-correlational research design to investigate the influence of Work Environment towards the job burnout and organizational commitment of BPO agents in selected companies in Bulacan, Philippines. Hence, Danish Psychosocial Work Environment Questionnaire (DPQ), Maslach Burnout Inventory - General Survey (MBI-GS), and the Three-Dimensional Model of Organizational Commitment Scale (ACS, NCS, CCS) were employed to properly assess the study's objectives. Multiple Linear Regression Analysis was performed to analyze the collected data. Based on the analysis, findings show that work environment has no significant influence on the job burnout and organizational commitment of BPO Agents. Furthermore, the results of this study were thoroughly evaluated, leading to an in-depth discussion. Based on the findings, recommendations were made to benefit the stakeholders of the study and contributeto the existing body of knowledge. (shrink)

Selbsttäuschung scheint ein alltägliches Phänomen zu sein. Wir nehmen an Anderen wahr, wie sie mehr oder weniger bewusst einer Einsicht ausweichen, die sie nicht wahrhaben wollen, und die meisten von uns können sich an Situationen erinnern, in denen sie sich selbst etwas vorgemacht haben. Wir können also Beispiele für Selbsttäuschung benennen, unser begriffliches Verständnis von Selbsttäuschung aber ist diffus, und der Versuch, das Phänomen aus philosophischer Perspektive begrifflich genau zu fassen, führt leicht zu starken Spannungen, für die bis heute keine (...) allgemein akzeptierte Lösung gefunden wurde. Auch die Frage, wie Selbsttäuschung prudentiell und moralisch zu bewerten ist, ist kontrovers. (shrink)

Author: Thomas Sören Hoffmann. Translated by Pedro Sepúlveda Zambrano.

Two decades ago, in 1994, in the context of the 4th EU Framework Programme, ELSA was introduced as a label for developing and funding research into the ethical, legal and social aspects of emerging sciences and technologies. Currently, particularly in the context of EU funding initiatives such as Horizon2020, a new label has been forged, namely Responsible Research and Innovation. What is implied in this metonymy, this semantic shift? What is so new about RRI in comparison to ELSA? First of (...) all, for both labels, the signifier was introduced in a top-down manner, well before the concept that was signified by it had acquired a clear and stable profile. In other words, the signifier preceded the research strategies actually covered by these labels. Moreover, the newness of RRI does not reside in its interactive and anticipatory orientation, as is suggested by authors who introduced the term, but rather in its emphases on social-economic impacts. (shrink)

Karoline von Günderrode’s reputation as a mystical writer makes her a likely candidate as a proponent of a negative philosophy. However, the historical emphasis on Günderrode’s mystical and lyrical writings reflects gender stereotypes about women’s writing and ignores Günderrode’s strengths as an epic and historical writer. It is therefore important to approach claims about Günderrode’s supposed mysticism carefully. This paper is a preliminary attempt to investigate Günderrode’s claims about knowledge, including knowledge of the absolute, asking: What does Günderrode think knowledge (...) is? What does she think the purpose of knowledge is—i.e., what does she think knowledge gets us, or does for us? And how do her claims differ from those philosophers, such as Novalis, whose thinking on knowledge (including of the absolute) seems to resemble hers? I argue that Günderrode maintains that human beings can experience, or “know,” a reality behind the discrete objects and events that comprise the world of appearances, and that she integrates this idea into a coherent worldview in a unique way. Specifically, I argue that Günderrode reconceptualizes the nature of death and selfhood in specific ways that allow her to make sense of the possibility of experiencing the true nature of the world behind the divisions that are characteristic of human knowledge and existence. (shrink)

From the early reception of Thomas Aquinas up to the present, many have interpreted his theory of liberum arbitrium to imply intellectual determinism: we do not control our choices, because we do not control the practical judgments that cause our choices. In this paper we argue instead that he rejects determinism in general and intellectual determinism in particular, which would effectively destroy liberum arbitrium as he conceives of it. We clarify that for Aquinas moral responsibility presupposes liberum arbitrium and thus (...) the ability to do otherwise, although the ability to do otherwise applies differently to praise and blame. His argument against intellectual determinism is not straightforward, but we construct it by analogy to his arguments against other deterministic threats. The non-determinism of the intellect’s causality with respect to the will results from his claims that practical reasoning is defeasible and that the reasons for actions are not contrastive reasons. (shrink)

Social scientists appeal to various “structures” in their explanations including public policies, economic systems, and social hierarchies. Significant debate surrounds the explanatory relevance of these factors for various outcomes such as health, behavioral, and economic patterns. This paper provides a causal account of social structural explanation that is motivated by Haslanger (2016). This account suggests that social structure can be explanatory in virtue of operating as a causal constraint, which is a causal factor with unique characteristics. A novel causal framework (...) is provided for understanding these explanations–this framework addresses puzzles regarding the mysterious causal influence of social structure, how to understand its relation to individual choice, and what makes it the main explanatory (and causally responsible) factor for various outcomes. (shrink)

Medieval authors generally agreed that we have the freedom to choose among alternative possibilities. But most medieval authors also thought that there are situations in which one cannot do otherwise, not even will otherwise. They also thought when willing necessarily, the will remains free. The questions, then, are what grounds the necessity or contingency of the will’s acts, and – since freedom is not defined by the ability to choose – what belongs to the essential character of freedom, the ratio (...) libertatis. This article studies medieval theories of freedom without choice from William of Auxerre to William of Ockham and their background in Augustine, Anselm of Canterbury, and Bernard of Clairvaux. (shrink)

According to mainstream philosophical views causal explanation in biology and neuroscience is mechanistic. As the term ‘mechanism’ gets regular use in these fields it is unsurprising that philosophers consider it important to scientific explanation. What is surprising is that they consider it the only causal term of importance. This paper provides an analysis of a new causal concept—it examines the cascade concept in science and the causal structure it refers to. I argue that this concept is importantly different from the (...) notion of mechanism and that this difference matters for our understanding of causation and explanation in science. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, the capabilities approach has become an increasingly influential theory of development. It conceptualises human wellbeing in terms of an individual's ability to achieve functionings we have reason to value. In contrast, the African ethic of ubuntu views human flourishing as the propensity to pursue relations of fellowship with others, such that relationships have fundamental value. These two theoretical perspectives seem to be in tension with each other; while the capabilities approach focuses on individuals as the (...) locus of ethical value, an ubuntu ethic concentrates on the relations between individuals. In this article, we ask: to what extent is the capabilities approach compatible with this African ethical theory? We argue that, on reflection, relations play a much stronger role in the capabilities approach than often assumed. There is good reason to believe that relationality is part of the concept of a capability itself, where such relationality has intrinsic ethical value. This understanding of the ethical centrality of relations grounds new normative perspectives on the capabilities approach, and offers a more comprehensive grasp of the relevance of relationships to empirical enquiry. (shrink)

Causal selection has to do with the distinction we make between background conditions and “the” true cause or causes of some outcome of interest. A longstanding consensus in philosophy views causal selection as lacking any objective rationale and as guided, instead, by arbitrary, pragmatic, and non-scientific considerations. I argue against this position in the context of causal selection for disease traits. In this domain, causes are selected on the basis of the type of causal control they exhibit over a disease (...) of interest. My analysis clarifies the principled rationale that guides this selection and how it involves both pragmatic and objective considerations, which have been overlooked in the extant literature. (shrink)

Teresa Brennan was born in 1952 in Australia and died in South Florida, following a hit-and-run car accident in December 2002. In the ten years between her doctorate and her death, Brennan published five monographs, the most famous posthumously. The Transmission of Affect begins with a question that readers often remember: “Is there anyone who has not, at least once, walked into a room and ‘felt the atmosphere’?” Here and throughout her work, Brennan challenges the self-contained subject of Western modernity, (...) whose affects are presumed to be possessions of that self, underscoring the historical emergence of this egoic construction.I never met Teresa Brennan; I did not know her name until a decade after she... (shrink)

Recent philosophical work on causation has focused on distinctions across types of causal relationships. This paper argues for another distinction that has yet to receive attention in this work. This distinction has to do with whether causal relationships have “material continuity,” which refers to the reliable movement of material from cause to effect. This paper provides an analysis of material continuity and argues that causal relationships with this feature are associated with a unique explanatory perspective, are studied with distinct causal (...) investigative methods, and provide different types of causal control over their effects. (shrink)

In ‘Affectivity in Heidegger I: Moods and Emotions in Being and Time’, we explicated the crucial role that Martin Heidegger assigns to our capacity to affectively find ourselves in the world. There, our discussion was restricted to Division I of Being and Time. Specifically, we discussed how Befindlichkeit as a basic existential and moods as the ontic counterparts of Befindlichkeit make circumspective engagement with the world possible. Indeed, according to Heidegger, it is primarily through moods that the world is ‘opened (...) up’ and revealed to us as a world that is suffused with values and entities that already matter to us. In this companion essay, our aim is to expand our analysis of affectivity in the following ways: first, we revisit our discussion of Befindlichkeit in light of Heidegger's discussion of temporality in Division II of BT; second, we discuss the basic or fundamental mood of boredom and its ontological significance; we conclude by providing a brief characterization of how Heidegger's notion of mood changes in his later thinking. (shrink)

This article interprets Teresa Brennan’s work on the forgetting of affect transmission in conjunction with Sylvia Wynter’s argument concerning the rise of Western Man through the dehumanization of native and African peoples. While not directly in dialogue, Wynter’s decolonial reading of Foucault’s epistemic ruptures enriches Brennan’s inquiry into this “forgetting,” given that callous, repeated acts of cruelty characteristic of Western imperialism and slavery required a denial of the capacity to sense suffering in others perceived as differently human. Supplementing Brennan with (...) Wynter, we can better describe the limits of sympathy discourses as resting on identification and perceived sameness. In turn, Brennan comes to Wynter’s defense in her call for a new science of plural cultures to redefine the human, which some have interpreted as a positivist misreading of Frantz Fanon. Brennan and Wynter alike have been criticized for their appeals to science; yet, I defend their respective proposals for social-scientific inquiry with support from Brennan’s response to the 1996 Sokal Hoax: the influence of the social on the biological body is, indeed, difficult to study, but this does not invalidate the inquiry as such. (shrink)

A recent wave of scholarship has challenged the traditional way of understanding of self-command in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments as ‘Stoic’ self-command. But the two most thorough alternative interpretations maintain a strong connection between self-command and rationalism, and thus apparently stand opposed to Smith’s overt allegiance to sentimentalism. In this paper I argue that we can and should interpret self-command in the context of Smith’s larger sentimentalist framework, and that when we do, we can see that self-command is (...) ‘sentimentalized’. I offer an interpretation of Smithian self-command, arguing that self-command has its motivational basis in the natural desire for the pleasure of mutual sympathy; that self-command is guided by the sentimental standard of propriety; and that self-command works through the psychological mechanism of the ‘supposed’ impartial spectator. And I show that Smithian self-command is a home-grown, sentimentalist virtue and not an awkward rationalistic transplant. (shrink)

In this article, I link Lisa Feldman Barrett's theory of constructed emotion1 to decolonial perspectives that also challenge this universality of affect in cross-cultural facial expressions. After first outlining some of the present-day political stakes of these questions, I turn to Sylvia Wynter on the "ethnoclass of Man" in Western modernity, where she asks: how were concepts of not only being, truth, power, and freedom but also affect—the intelligibility of one's feelings toward others—framed by histories of colonial violence and refusals (...) of imaginative identification?2 Wynter argues that the overrepresentation of the Western ethnoclass results in the naturalization of a limited and contingent mode of being as... (shrink)

One implication of Vetter's theory of modality is that necessity and possibility are regarded as unitary natural kinds. In this paper, I argue that from the perspective of the philosophy of causation, there are good reasons to distinguish between different kinds of necessity: causal necessity, which is nomologically necessary, and non-causal necessity, which is metaphysically necessary. One challenge for Vetter's approach is to explain this distinction.

On rationalist infallibilism, a wide range of both (i) analytic and (ii) synthetic a priori propositions can be infallibly justified (or absolutely warranted), i.e., justified to a degree that entails their truth and precludes their falsity. Though rationalist infallibilism is indisputably running its course, adherence to at least one of the two species of infallible a priori justification refuses to disappear from mainstream epistemology. Among others, Putnam (1978) still professes the a priori infallibility of some category (i) propositions, while Burge (...) (1986, 1988, 1996) and Lewis (1996) have recently affirmed the a priori infallibility of some category (ii) propositions. In this paper, I take aim at rationalist infallibilism by calling into question the a priori infallibility of both analytic and synthetic propositions. The upshot will be twofold: first, rationalist infallibilism unsurprisingly emerges as a defective epistemological doctrine, and second, more importantly, the case for the a priori infallibility of one or both categories of propositions turns out to lack cogency. (shrink)

Minimalism is currently the received deflationary theory of truth. On minimalism, truth is a transparent concept and a deflated property of truth bearers. In this paper, I situate minimalism within current deflationary debate about truth by contrasting it with its main alternative―the redundancy theory of truth. I also outline three of the primary challenges facing minimalism, its formulation, explanatory adequacy and stability, and draw some lessons for the soundness of its conception of truth.

Defining the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties has turned out to be one of the most difficult and controversial tasks in contemporary metaphysics. It is generally assumed that a definition of intrinsicness should aim to avoid as many counterexamples as possible and reduce the notion to less controversial philosophical notions. In this paper, the author argues for a new methodological approach to defining intrinsicness. Rather than trying to cover as many intuitive examples as possible, a definition of intrinsicness should (...) reflect the crucial features of our intuitive understanding of the notion, and one of these features is that the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction has to be characterized in a non-reductive way. (shrink)

According to Field’s influential incompleteness objection, Tarski’s semantic theory of truth is unsatisfactory since the definition that forms its basis is incomplete in two distinct senses: (1) it is physicalistically inadequate, and for this reason, (2) it is conceptually deficient. In this paper, I defend the semantic theory of truth against the incompleteness objection by conceding (1) but rejecting (2). After arguing that Davidson and McDowell’s reply to the incompleteness objection fails to pass muster, I argue that, within the constraints (...) of a non-reductive physicalism and a holism concerning the concepts of truth, reference and meaning, conceding Field’s physicalistic inadequacy conclusion while rejecting his conceptual deficiency conclusion is a promising reply to the incompleteness objection. (shrink)

The role of emotions in mental life is the subject of longstanding controversy, spanning the history of ethics, moral psychology, and educational theory. This paper defends an account of love’s cognitive power. My starting point is Plato’s dialogue, the Symposium, in which we find the surprising claim that love aims at engendering moral virtue. I argue that this understanding affords love a crucial place in educational curricula, as engaging the emotions can motivate both cognitive achievement and moral development. I first (...) outline the state of the challenge between dominant rival theories regarding emotions in learning. Next, I demonstrate how Platonic virtue ethics offers the most tenable prospect for an education of reason and emotion. Third, I sketch three practical ways educators might constructively engage emotions in the classroom. I conclude that love’s virtue is its peerless power to motivate the creative and lateral thinking which leads to moral development. (shrink)

Phenomenology's central insight is that affectivity is not an inconsequential or contingent characteristic of human existence. Emotions, moods, sentiments, and feelings are not accidents of human existence. They do not happen to happen to us. Rather, we exist the way we do because of and through our affective experiences. Phenomenology thus acknowledges the centrality and ubiquity of affectivity by noting the multitude of ways in which our existence is permeated by our various affective experiences. Yet, it also insists that such (...) experiences are both revealing and constitutive of human nature. It is precisely this last point that marks an important distinction between a phenomenological study of affectivity and perhaps all others. For phenomenology, one cannot understand the nature of human existence without coming to terms with the character of affectivity and at the same time, one cannot come to terms with the character of affectivity without understanding the nature of human existence. Practical and social engagements, scientific endeavors, familial and political interactions are all predicted on the fact that we are beings who are capable of being affectively attuned to ourselves, to the world, and to others. In this entry, we discuss Martin Heidegger's and Jean-Paul Sartre's respective accounts of affectivity. In the first section, we present Heidegger's understanding of affective existence. In this context, we discuss the significance of moods and offer an analysis of the affective phenomena of fear, anxiety, and boredom. In the second section, we present an overview of Sartre's account of emotions and advance a Sartrean interpretation of fear and boredom. We conclude by raising some brief concerns with both accounts. (shrink)

Linguistic competence, in general terms, involves the ability to learn, understand, and speak a language. The nativist view in the philosophy of linguistics holds that the principal foundation of linguistic competence is an innate faculty of linguistic cognition. In this paper, close scrutiny is given to nativism's fundamental commitments in the area of metaphysics. In the course of this exploration it is argued that any minimally defensible variety of nativism is, for better or worse, married to two theses: linguistic competence (...) is grounded in a faculty of linguistic cognition that is (i) embodied and (ii) whose operating rules are represented in the brains of human language users. (shrink)

What might Adam Smith have learned from Jane Austen and other novelists of his moment? This paper finds and examines a serious problem at the center of Adam Smith’s moral psychology, stemming from an unacknowledged tension between the effort of the spectator to sympathize with the feelings of the agent and that of the agent to moderate her feelings. The agent’s efforts will result in her opacity to spectators, blocking their attempts to read her emotions. I argue that we can (...) resolve this tension by looking to developments in eighteenth-century literature, as perfected in the hands of Jane Austen. I focus on two techniques, focalization and free indirect style, and I show that the problems for spectatorship diminish when we see that good Smithian spectators are savvy readers. (shrink)

The weak deflationist about truth is committed to two theses: one conceptual, the other ontological. On the conceptual thesis (what might be called a ‘triviality thesis’), the content of the truth predicate is exhausted by its involvement in some version of the ‘truth-schema’. On the ontological thesis, truth is a deflated property of truth bearers. In this paper, I focus on weak deflationism’s ontological thesis, arguing that it generates an instability in its view of truth: the view threatens to collapse (...) into either that of strong deflationism (i.e., truth is not a property) or that of some form of inflationism (i.e., truth is a substantial property). The instability objection to weak deflationism is sketched by way of a truth-property ascription dilemma, the two horns of which its proponent is at pains to circumvent. (shrink)

A central tenet of Heil's ontological conception is a no-levels account of reality, according to which there is just one class of basic properties and relations, while all higher-level entities are configurations of these base-level entities. I argue that if this picture is not to collapse into an eliminativist picture of the world – which, I contend, should be avoided –, Heil's ontological framework has to be supplemented by an independent theory of which configurations of basic entities should count as (...) complex entities. However, such an amendment represents a substantial ontological enhancement, so that the ensuing ontological picture is not as parsimonious as Heil claims it to be. (shrink)

Attempting to make clear different theories of cultural ownership, cultural property scholars have divided dominant views into two categories: cultural nationalism and cultural internationalism. Although not discussed in the relevant literature, I claim it is useful to understand these two categories as comprised of the ethical views of deontology and consequentialism. I claim cultural internationalists believe they have good independent reasons against returning problematic cultural heritage like the Parthenon marbles. However, I will demonstrate their arguments are based on consequentialist ethics, (...) and there are just as many consequentialist reasons to return the marbles as there are for them to remain in the British Museum, undermining cultural internationalist arguments against their return. (shrink)

Engineers fine-tune the design of robot bodies for control purposes, however, a methodology or set of tools is largely absent, and optimization of morphology (shape, material properties of robot bodies, etc.) is lagging behind the development of controllers. This has become even more prominent with the advent of compliant, deformable or ”soft” bodies. These carry substantial potential regarding their exploitation for control—sometimes referred to as ”morphological computation”. In this article, we briefly review different notions of computation by physical systems and (...) propose the dynamical systems framework as the most useful in the context of describing and eventually designing the interactions of controllers and bodies. Then, we look at the pros and cons of simple vs. complex bodies, critically reviewing the attractive notion of ”soft” bodies automatically taking over control tasks. We address another key dimension of the design space—whether model-based control should be used and to what extent it is feasible to develop faithful models for different morphologies. (shrink)

Do the new sciences of well-being provide knowledge that respects the nature of well-being? This book written from the perspective of philosophy of science articulates how this field can speak to well-being proper and can do so in a way that respects the demands of objectivity and measurement.

Richard Bradley and others endorse Reverse Bayesianism as the way to model awareness growth. I raise a problem for Reverse Bayesianism—at least for the general version that Bradley endorses—and argue that there is no plausible way to restrict the principle that will give us the right results. To get the right results, we need to pay attention to the attitudes that agents have towards propositions of which they are unaware. This raises more general questions about how awareness growth should be (...) modelled. (shrink)

It is commonly held that our intuitive judgements about imaginary problem cases are justified a priori, if and when they are justified at all. In this paper I defend this view — ‘rationalism’ — against a recent objection by Timothy Williamson. I argue that his objection fails on multiple grounds, but the reasons why it fails are instructive. Williamson argues from a claim about the semantics of intuitive judgements, to a claim about their psychological underpinnings, to the denial of rationalism. (...) I argue that the psychological claim — that a capacity for mental simulation explains our intuitive judgements — does not, even if true, provide reasons to reject rationalism. (More generally, a simulation hypothesis, about any category of judgements, is very limited in its epistemological implications: it is pitched at a level of explanation that is insensitive to central epistemic distinctions.) I also argue that Williamson’s semantic claim — that intuitive judgements are judgements of counterfactuals — is mistaken; rather, I propose, they are a certain kind of metaphysical possibility judgement. Several other competing proposals are also examined and criticized. (shrink)

W niniejszym artykule opisany i zbadany został jeden z wyznaczników dowcipu słownego, jakim jest szeroko pojęta wieloznaczność. Technika wykorzystywana w przypadku dowcipu polisemicznego polega na neutralizacji czynników, które sygnalizują w tekście różne znaczenia każdego wieloznacznego wyrazu. Elementem wyodrębniającym jedno konkretne znaczenie jest kontekst, czyli najbliższe leksykalne lub syntaktyczne otoczenie wyrazu kluczowego. W przypadku dowcipu polisemantycznego kompozycja kontekstu charakteryzuje się dużą różnorodnością – kontekst jest maksymalnie neutralny i sygnalizuje znaczenie, które nie może być zrealizowane.

We have been observing how infants between 3 and 21 months react when a vibrotactile stimulation (a buzzer) is applied to different parts of their bodies. Responses included in particular movement of the stimulated body part and successful reaching for and removal of the buzzer. Overall, there is a pronounced developmental progression from general to specific movement patterns, especially in the first year. In this article we review the series of studies we conducted and then focus on possible mechanisms that (...) might explain what we observed. One possible mechanism might rely on the brain extracting “sensorimotor contingencies” linking motor actions and resulting sensory consequences. This account posits that infants are driven by intrinsic motivation that guides exploratory motor activity, at first generating random motor babbling with self-touch occurring spontaneously. Later goal-oriented motor behavior occurs, with self-touch as a possible effective tool to induce informative contingencies. We connect this sensorimotor view with a second possible account that appeals to the neuroscientific concepts of cortical maps and coordinate transformations. In this second account, the improvement of reaching precision is mediated by refinement of neuronal maps in primary sensory and motor cortices—the homunculi—as well as in frontal and parietal corti- cal regions dedicated to sensorimotor processing. We complement this theoretical account with modeling on a humanoid robot with artificial skin where we implemented reaching for tactile stimuli as well as learning the “somatosensory homunculi”. We suggest that this account can be extended to reflect the driving role of sensorimotor contingencies in human development. In our conclusion we consider possible extensions of our current experiments which take account of predictions derived from both these kinds of models. (shrink)

In this paper, we identify some key features of what makes something a disease, and consider whether these apply to pregnancy. We argue that there are some compelling grounds for regarding pregnancy as a disease. Like a disease, pregnancy affects the health of the pregnant person, causing a range of symptoms from discomfort to death. Like a disease, pregnancy can be treated medically. Like a disease, pregnancy is caused by a pathogen, an external organism invading the host’s body. Like a (...) disease, the risk of getting pregnant can be reduced by using prophylactic measures. We address the question of whether the ‘normality’ of pregnancy, its current necessity for human survival, or the value often attached to it are reasons to reject the view that pregnancy is a disease. We point out that applying theories of disease to the case of pregnancy, can in many cases illuminate inconsistencies and problems within these theories. Finally, we show that it is difficult to find one theory of disease that captures all paradigm cases of diseases, while convincingly excluding pregnancy. We conclude that there are both normative and pragmatic reasons to consider pregnancy a disease. (shrink)

Enjoying great popularity in decision theory, epistemology, and philosophy of science, Bayesianism as understood here is fundamentally concerned with epistemically ideal rationality. It assumes a tight connection between evidential probability and ideally rational credence, and usually interprets evidential probability in terms of such credence. Timothy Williamson challenges Bayesianism by arguing that evidential probabilities cannot be adequately interpreted as the credences of an ideal agent. From this and his assumption that evidential probabilities cannot be interpreted as the actual credences of human (...) agents either, he concludes that no interpretation of evidential probabilities in terms of credence is adequate. I argue to the contrary. My overarching aim is to show on behalf of Bayesians how one can still interpret evidential probabilities in terms of ideally rational credence and how one can maintain a tight connection between evidential probabilities and ideally rational credence even if the former cannot be interpreted in terms of the latter. By achieving this aim I illuminate the limits and prospects of Bayesianism. (shrink)

This book surveys research in quantification starting with the foundational work in the 1970s. It paints a vivid picture of generalized quantifiers and Boolean semantics. It explains how the discovery of diverse scope behavior in the 1990s transformed the view of quantification, and how the study of the internal composition of quantifiers has become central in recent years. It presents different approaches to the same problems, and links modern logic and formal semantics to advances in generative syntax. A unique feature (...) of the book is that it systematically brings cross-linguistic data to bear on the theoretical issues, discussing French, German, Dutch, Hungarian, Russian, Japanese, Telugu (Dravidian), and Shupamem (Grassfield Bantu), and pointing to formal semantic literature involving quantification in around thirty languages. -- -/- 1. What this book is about and how to use it; 2. Generalized quantifiers and their elements: operators and their scopes; 3. Generalized quantifiers in non-nominal domains; 4. Some empirically significant properties of quantifiers and determiners; 5. Potential challenges for generalized quantifiers; 6. Scope is not uniform and not a primitive; 7. Existential scope versus distributive scope; 8. Distributivity and scope; 9. Bare numeral indefinites; 10. Modified numerals; 11. Clause-internal scopal diversity; 12. Towards a compositional semantics of quantifier words. (shrink)

A key challenge for probabilistic causal models is to distinguish non-causal probabilistic dependencies from true causal relations. To accomplish this task, causal models are usually required to satisfy several constraints. Two prominent constraints are the causal Markov condition and the faithfulness condition. However, other constraints are also needed. One of these additional constraints is the causal sufficiency condition, which states that models must not omit any direct common causes of the variables they contain. In this paper, I argue that the (...) causal sufficiency condition is problematic: (1) it is incompatible with the requirement that the variables in a model must not stand in non-causal necessary dependence relations, such as mathematical or conceptual relations, or relations described in terms of supervenience or grounding, (2) it presupposes more causal knowledge as primitive than is actually needed to create adequate causal models, and (3) if models are only required to be causally sufficient, they cannot deal with cases where variables are probabilistically related by accident, such as Sober’s example of the relationship between bread prices in England and the sea level in Venice. I show that these problems can be avoided if causal models are required to be monotonic in the following sense: the causal relations occurring in a model M would not disappear if further variables were added to M. I give a definition of this monotonicity condition and conclude that causal models should be required to be monotonic rather than causally sufficient. (shrink)

In summaries of “best practices” for pedagogy, one typically encounters enthusiastic advocacy for metacognition. Some researchers assert that the body of evidence supplied by decades of education studies indicates a clear pedagogical imperative: that if one wants their students to learn well, one must implement teaching practices that cultivate students’ metacognitive skills. -/- In this dissertation, I counter that education research does not impose such a mandate upon instructors. We lack sufficient and reliable evidence from studies that use the appropriate (...) research design to validate the efficacy of metacognitive skill-building interventions (not just evaluate their relationship to learning outcomes). I argue that improved academic outcomes following these interventions aren’t necessarily mediated by increased metacognitive skills; rather, enhanced student performance can be accounted for by other factors that accompany metacognitive training, particularly the explicit provision of domain-specific knowledge. -/- On the way to this conclusion, I elaborate some complications and controversies surrounding “metacognition.” This is a sprawling and nebulous construct, which makes generalizations about its pedagogical value dubious from the outset. Moreover, it is unclear the extent to which the end goal of metacognitive skill-building (cognitive self-mastery, involving knowledge of and control over our own minds) is even possible, given our mental architecture; some cognitive scientists allege that we are subject to phenomenological illusions which make this seem more achievable than it actually is. -/- I also attempt to provide an account of how metacognitive skill-building could receive glowing endorsements from educators and education researchers, even though its conceptual and empirical underpinnings are flimsy. The error theory I offer identifies two major factors that may foster belief in the efficacy of metacognitive training: goalpost-shifting around the objective of such efforts, and motivated reasoning in defense of the desirable conclusion that educators can significantly reshape students’ minds and unlock their intellectual potential through simple pedagogical interventions. (shrink)

This bibliography contains primary and secondary literature on Duns Scotus and Scotism.

In recent years, semiotics has become an innovative theoretical framework in mathematics education. The purpose of this article is to show that semiotics can be used to explain learning as a process of experimenting with and communicating about one's own representations of mathematical problems. As a paradigmatic example, we apply a Peircean semiotic framework to answer the question of how students learned the concept of "distribution" in a statistics course by "diagrammatic reasoning" and by developing "hypostatic abstractions," that is by (...) forming new mathematical objects which can be used as means for communication and further reasoning. Peirce's semiotic terminology is used as an alternative for notions such as modeling, symbolizing, and reification. We will show that it is a precise instrument of analysis with regard to the complexity of learning and of communication in mathematics classroom. (shrink)

A large body of compelling evidence has been accumulated demonstrating that embodiment – the agent’s physical setup, including its shape, materials, sensors and actuators – is constitutive for any form of cognition and as a consequence, models of cognition need to be embodied. In contrast to methods from empirical sciences to study cognition, robots can be freely manipulated and virtually all key variables of their embodiment and control programs can be systematically varied. As such, they provide an extremely powerful tool (...) of investigation. We present a robotic bottom-up or developmental approach, focusing on three stages: (a) low-level behaviors like walking and reflexes, (b) learning regularities in sensorimotor spaces, and (c) human-like cognition. We also show that robotic based research is not only a productive path to deepening our understanding of cognition, but that robots can strongly benefit from human-like cognition in order to become more autonomous, robust, resilient, and safe. (shrink)

Difficulty is often treated as blame-mitigating, and even exculpating. But on some occasions difficulty seems to have little or no bearing on our assessments of moral responsibility, and can even exacerbate it. In this paper, I argue that the relevance (and irrelevance) of difficulty with regard to assessments of moral responsibility is best understood via Quality of Will accounts. I look at various ways of characterising difficulty – including via sacrifice, effort, skill and ‘trying’ – and set out to demonstrate (...) that these factors are only blame-mitigating where, and to the extent that, they complicate ascriptions of insufficient concern. Matters become more complex, however, when we turn to difficult circumstances that seem to generate such objectionable attitudes. This is arguably the case with epistemic difficulty and certain instances of moral ignorance. Here I argue that certain difficult circumstances diminish the sense in which false moral beliefs are genuinely revelatory of the agents who hold them. In particular, I draw on the distinction between difficulty that generates objectionable attitudes, and objectionable attitudes that generate difficulty. I argue that the former, but not the latter, can plausibly be viewed as blame mitigating, and that this would apply to (limited) cases of moral ignorance. (shrink)