En un libro reciente McShea y Brandon defienden que la diversidad y la complejidad de la vida se explican, principalmente, por la acción de un principio que llaman “la ley evolutiva de fuerzas cero” o “ZFEL”. Tal principio actuaría de un modo implícito por detrás de muchas explicaciones de la biología, pero nunca habría sido explicitado. Asumiendo que esta idea es interesante, y que los autores en cuestión tienen razón, discutiremos el modo metateórico en que presentan dicho principio, como siendo (...) parte de la teoría de la probabilidad. Esto permite a los autores afirmar que la teoría de la probabilidad brindaría la base reductiva para toda la biología evolutiva (dado que consideran que otros principios, como el de selección natural, también serían parte de la teoría de la probabilidad). Defenderemos que, efectivamente, ZFEL no es propio de la biología únicamente, pero no por formar parte de la teoría de la probabilidad, sino por tratarse de una versión específica del principio de causa común. -/- In a recent book, McShea and Brandon argue that the observed diversity and complexity of life are explainable by a principle they call the “zero-force evolutionary law” or “ZFEL”. Although this principle would be implicit in many explanations given by biologists, it would have never been made explicit. Assuming that this idea is interesting, and that the authors are right, we will discuss the metatheoretical way in which they present said principle, as being a part of probability theory. This allows the authors to claim that probability theory provides the reductive basis for all evolutionary biology. We will defend, in accordance with them, that ZFEL is not a solely biological principle, but not because it is a part of probability theory, but rather because it is a specific version of the principle of common cause. (shrink)

La memética constituye un enfoque sobre la evolución cultural que se ha encontrado en el foco de la discusión y recolectado críticas de diverso tipo en las últimas décadas. El propósito de nuestro trabajo consiste en indagar si, más allá de las críticas y defensas existentes, puede considerarse que existe actualmente algún programa de investigación que pueda caracterizarse adecuadamente como memético. Nos centraremos, específicamente, en el ámbito del estudio de la evolución cultural de los cantos de aves, pues allí algunos (...) autores han utilizado la palabra «meme» para referirse a los ítems culturales bajo estudio. Sin embargo, no todos utilizan la palabra, pues, probablemente por su carácter controversial, ha caído en desuso. Eso implica que para cumplir con el objetivo de nuestro trabajo no pueda apelarse a análisis bibliométricos. Por este motivo elucidaremos los diferentes sentidos en los que puede caracterizarse a la memética. Nuestro objetivo es defender que en el área de cantos de aves se pueden encontrar investigaciones que responden a la perspectiva memética en todos los sentidos señalados. Texto del resumen en castellano o en el idioma que está redactado. (shrink)

Cognitive penetration of perception, broadly understood, is the influence that the cognitive system has on a perceptual system. The paper shows a form of cognitive penetration in the visual system which I call ‘architectural’. Architectural cognitive penetration is the process whereby the behaviour or the structure of the perceptual system is influenced by the cognitive system, which consequently may have an impact on the content of the perceptual experience. I scrutinize a study in perceptual learning that provides empirical evidence that (...) cognitive influences in the visual system produce neural reorganization in the primary visual cortex. The type of cognitive penetration can be synchronic and diachronic. (shrink)

Generics are sentences such as Birds fly, which express generalizations. They are prevalent in speech, and as far as is known, no human language lacks generics. Yet, it is very far from clear what they mean. After all, not all birds fly—penguins don’t! -/- There are two general views about the meaning of generics in the literature, and each view encompasses many specific theories. According to the inductivist view, a generic states that a sufficient number of individuals satisfy a certain (...) property—in the example above, it says that sufficiently many birds fly. This view faces the complicated problem of spelling out exactly how many is “sufficiently many” in a way that correctly captures the intuitive truth conditions of generics. -/- An alternative, the rules and regulations view, despairs from this project and proposes instead that generics directly express rules in the world. Rules are taken to be abstract objects, which are not related to the properties of specific individuals. This view faces the difficult problem of explaining how people come to know of such rules when judging the truth of falsity of generics, and accounting for the strong intuition that a sentence such as Birds fly talks about birds, not abstract objects. -/- What seems to be beyond dispute is that generics, even if they do not express rules, are lawlike: they state non-accidental generalizations. Many scholars have taken this fact to indicate that generics are parametric on possible worlds: they refer to worlds other than the actual world. This, again, raises the problem of how people come to know about what happens in these other worlds. However, a rigorous application of standard tests for intensionality shows that generics are not, in fact, parametric on possible worlds, but only on time. This unusual property may explain much of the mystery surrounding generics. -/- Another mysterious property of generics is that although there is no language without them, there is no linguistic construction that is devoted to the expression of genericity. Rather, generics can be expressed in a variety of ways, each of which can also express nongenerics. Yet, each manifestation of generics differs subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) in its meaning from the others. -/- Even when these and other puzzles of genericity are solved, one mystery would remain: Why are generics, which are so easy to produce and understand in conversation, so difficult to analyze? (shrink)

The notion of causation that Mary Shepherd develops in her 1824 An Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (ERCE) has a number of surprising features that have only recently begun to be studied by scholars. This relation is synchronic, rather than diachronic (ERCE 49-50); it always involves a “mixture” of pre-existing objects (ERCE 46-7); and the effect must be “a new nature, capable of exhibiting qualities varying from those of either of the objects unconjoined” (ERCE 63). In this (...) essay I argue for an emergentist interpretation of Shepherd’s causal theory. On the reading I defend, all effects have qualities that metaphysically emerge from the complex interactions of their constituents. This reading explains the structure of Shepherd’s causal relation and clarifies the central aims of her philosophical project. In response to the problems raised by the science of her time, Shepherd developed a theory of emergence and published it during the period when the concept was first being shaped and adopted by prominent philosophers. Her work thus merits a place in the history of emergentist ideas. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a way to translate the metainferences of a mixed metainferential system into formulae of an extended-language system, called its associated σ-system. To do this, the σ-system will contain new operators (one for each standard), called the σ operators, which represent the notions of "belonging to a (given) standard". We first prove, in a model-theoretic way, that these translations preserve (in)validity. That is, that a metainference is valid in the base system if and only if its (...) translation is a tautology of its corresponding σ-system. We then use these results to obtain other key advantages. Most interestingly, we provide a recipe for building unlabeled sequent calculi for σ-systems. We then exemplify this with a σ-system useful for logics of the ST family, and prove soundness and completeness for it, which indirectly gives us a calculus for the metainferences of all those mixed systems. Finally, we respond to some possible objections and show how our σ-framework can shed light on the “obeying” discussion within mixed metainferential contexts. (shrink)

This paper focuses on negative exemplarity-related emotions (NEREs) and on their educational implications. In this paper, we will first argue for the nonexpendability of negative emotions broadly conceived (section 2) by defending their instrumental and intrinsic role in a good and flourishing life. In section 3, we will make the claim more specific by focusing on the narrower domain of NEREs and argue for their moral and educational significance by evaluating whether they fit the arguments provided in the previous section. (...) In section 4, we will propose three educational strategies to foster NEREs’ positive moral role. In conclusion, we will point out that an exemplarist approach to character education would greatly benefit from a more fine-grained account of the emotions involved in the educational process and from a broader perspective on which of these emotions should be taken as valuable for educational purposes. (shrink)

Once upon a time, Aesop says, there was a donkey who wanted to be a pet dog. The pet dog was given many treats by the master and the household servants, and the donkey was envious of him. Hence, the donkey began emulating the pet dog. What happened next? The story ends up with the donkey beaten senseless, chased off to the stables, exhausted and barely alive. Who is to blame for the poor donkey’s unfortunate fate? Well, there could be (...) disagreement upon this, but we think emulation is to blame. And it’s on the kinds of envy-related emulation that we focus in this chapter. More analytically, we aim at vindicating the role of envy for moral exemplars within an exemplarist character educational framework. In the first section, we recall the central tenets of an exemplarist account of moral progress, and highlight how negative emotions, in general, have suffered a bad press within character education, with exemplarism being no exception. Then we provide a brief outline of standard strategies of defending envy by appealing to useful taxonomies of envy (e.g., Taylor 1988; Protasi 2016; Fussi 2018). After that, we put forward our 'Donkey Objection' by recalling Aesop’s fable on "foolish imitation", so as to show that when envy triggers mere emulation, it can bear devastating effects such as conformism and a lack of self-worth and personal integrity. In response to this objection, we bring into play a distinction between two rival forms of imitation—emulation and inspiration—and we coin the label of "inspired envy" for those forms of imitation by inspiration triggered by envy that lead to self-improvement avoiding morally detrimental consequences. (shrink)

The observational-theoretical distinction has played a central role in the philosophy of science from logical empiricism onwards. Developments within the discipline have shown that such a distinction hides two non-identical distinctions: observational vs. non-observational and theoretical vs. non-theoretical. Likewise, metatheoretical structuralism proposed a more sophisticated treatment of theoricity in terms of the operational dependence or independence of concepts from the theories in which they appear. Despite this remarkable sophistication, it is still generally accepted that the distinction between theoretical and non-theoretical (...) concepts coincides with the explanatory vs. non-explanatory and testing vs. non-testing distinctions. Ginnobili and Carman argued for the independence between theoricity and explanation. In this paper we will focus on testing and argue for its independence from both theoricity and explanation. To do so, we propose an account of theory testing based on the framework of metatheoretical structuralism and apply it to natural selection theory and cladistics. (shrink)

In this article, we provide three generators of propositional formulae for arbitrary languages, which uniformly sample three different formulae spaces. They take the same three parameters as input, namely, a desired depth, a set of atomics and a set of logical constants (with specified arities). The first generator returns formulae of exactly the given depth, using all or some of the propositional letters. The second does the same but samples up-to the given depth. The third generator outputs formulae with exactly (...) the desired depth and all the atomics in the set. To make the generators uniform (i.e. to make them return every formula in their space with the same probability), we will prove various cardinality results about those spaces. (shrink)

Psychopathic individuals display a callous-coldhearted approach to interpersonal and affective situations and engage in impulsive and antisocial behaviors. Despite early conceptualizations suggesting that psychopathy is related to enhanced cognitive functioning, research examining executive functioning (EF) in psychopathy has yielded few such findings. It is possible that some psychopathic trait dimensions are more related to EF than others. Research using a 2-factor or 4-facet model of psychopathy highlights some dimension-specific differences in EF, but this research is limited in scope. Another complicating (...) factor in teasing apart the EF–psychopathy relationship is the tendency to use different psychopathy assessments for incarcerated versus community samples. In this study, an EF battery and multiple measures of psychopathic dimensions were administered to a sample of male prisoners (N. (shrink)

Existe una evolución en la crítica fregueana al psicologismo, siendo de particular relevancia las diferencias que existen entre la posición de 1884 y la de 1893, momento a partir del cual la misma comienza a fundarse en una revisión de la teoría psicologista de la subjetividad.

Resumen -/- El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en analizar las relaciones entre los modelos de optimalidad y la selección natural. Defenderemos que esas relaciones pueden dividirse en dos tipos, en tanto hay dos tipos de explicaciones seleccionistas, que llamaremos “históricas” y “ahistóricas”. Las explicaciones históricas revelan como una población dada adquiere un rasgo que es adaptativo en ese ambiente e involucran muchas generaciones, variación, etc. Las explicaciones ahistóricas, explican por qué, en determinado momento, ciertos tipos de organismos tienen un (...) mayor éxito reproductivo que otros. Mostraremos que los modelos de optimalidad pueden jugar un rol en la determinación del explanandum de las explicaciones histórica seleccionistas, esto es, que ayudan a reconocer qué rasgos son adaptativos. Por otra parte, mostramos que los modelos de optimalidad nos permiten determinar a veces la parte del explanans de las explicaciones ahistóricas (particularmente, el concepto de fitness). -/- Abstract -/- The goal of this paper is to analyze the relations between optimality models and natural selection. We contend that these relationships can be divided into two kinds, as there are two kinds of natural selection explanations, which we call “historical” and “ahistorical”. Historical explanations reveal how a given population acquires a trait which is adaptive in its environment, and involves many generations, variations, etc. Ahistorical ones, explain why, at a given moment, certain kinds of organisms have a greater reproductive success than others. We show that optimality models can play a role in determining the explanandum of historical selectionist explanations, that is, they help us to recognize which traits are adaptive. And, on the other hand, that optimality models sometimes allow us to determine part of the explanans of ahistorical explanations (particularly, the concept of fitness). (shrink)

Nghiên cứu nhằm xác định các yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến quyết định mua các sản phẩm thân thiện với môi trường của cư dân trong đại đô thị Vinhomes Grand Park. Kết quả nghiên cứu chỉ ra 6 nhân tố: (1) Thái độ hướng đến bảo vệ môi trường; (2) Chuẩn chủ quan; (3) Chất lượng sản phẩm tốt; (4) Giá cả sản phẩm; (5) Truyền thông xã hội đều có ảnh hưởng đến quyết định mua các sản phẩm (...) thân thiện với môi trường. Qua đó, tác giả đề xuất hàm ý quản trị nhằm nâng cao chiến lược phát triển thị trường sản phẩm thân thiện với môi trường của cư dân. (shrink)

Defeasible argumentation has been applied successfully in several real-world domains in which it is necessary to handle incomplete and contradictory information. In recent years, there have been interesting attempts to carry out argumentation processes supported by massive repositories developing argumentative reasoning applications. One of such efforts builds arguments by retrieving information from relational databases using the DBI-DeLP framework; this article presents eDBI-DeLP, which extends the original DBI-DeLP framework by providing two novel aspects which refine the interaction between DeLP programs and (...) relational databases. First, we expand the expressiveness of dbi-delp programs by providing ways of controlling how the information in databases is recovered; this is done by introducing filters that enable an improved fine-grained control on the argumentation processes which become useful in applications, providing the semantics and the implementation of such filters. Second, we introduce an argument comparison criterion which can be adjusted at the level of literals to model particular features such as credibility and topic expertise, among others. These new tools can be particularly useful in environments such as medical diagnosis expert systems, decision support systems, or recommender systems based on argumentation, where datasets are often provided in the form of relational databases. (shrink)

Đánh giá chất lượng công chức nói chung và công chức quản lý nhà nước về kinh tế cấp huyện nói riêng là khâu mở đường quan trọng trong các hoạt động quản lý công chức và kết quả thực thi công vụ là tiêu chí cơ bản trong đánh giá. Nghiên cứu tiếp thu kết quả các nghiên cứu đi trước để xây dựng mô hình lý thuyết các nhân tố ảnh hưởng đến kết quả thực thi công vụ (...) của công chức quản lý nhà nước về kinh tế cấp huyện ở TP. Hà Nội gồm 8 nhân tố: (1) Đào tạo, bồi dưỡng công chức; (2) Chính sách đãi ngộ; (3) Đánh giá công chức; (4) Bố trí, sử dụng công chức; (5) Kỷ cương, kỷ luật; (6) Phong cách lãnh đạo; (7) Đổi mới, sáng tạo của công chức; (8) Gắn kết với công việc của công chức. (shrink)

This study aimed to determine the experiences of male and female students on Flexible Learning (FL) during the COVID-19. A qualitative method using a phenomenological approach was used to ascertain the students' experiences, while written questionnaires were utilized to gather the information. The 24 students taking Development Communication and Public Administration were chosen based on set criteria. Both male and female flexible learning participants appreciated its benefits, including convenience and reduced academic stress. They both faced technology-related challenges and suggested improvements. (...) However, differences emerged in their experiences. Males found FL fun, emphasizing family time, while females highlighted skill development and concerns about teaching methods. Females also mentioned practical skill development not emphasized by males. These variations may stem from differing learning preferences and experiences. Variations in male and female experiences in Flexible Learning highlight the need for teachers to tailor instruction, offer mental health support, and incorporate skill development. Improved teacher training and clear guidelines are crucial, as are gender-inclusive program design and regular feedback mechanisms to create equitable and effective educational experiences. (shrink)

This paper has a twofold aim. On the one hand, we will discuss the much debated question of the source of normativity (which traditionally has nature and practical reason as the two main contenders to this role) and propose a new answer to it. Second, in answering this question, we will present a new account of practical wisdom, which conceives of the ethical virtues as ultimately unified in the chief virtue of phronesis, understood as ethical expertise. To do so, we (...) will first criticize the main current view of phronesis and its bearer (the phronimos), then offer another view of the nature of phronesis and of its relation to the other ethical virtues. Our proposal should not be intended as an interpretation of Aristotle’s own view; rather, it should be seen as a broadly Aristotelian theoretical proposal, which we believe can satisfyingly address most of the problems that afflict the more traditional accounts of practical wisdom. In section 2 of this paper, after criticizing first-nature naturalistic views of moral virtue, we take practical reason to be the cornerstone of second-nature naturalistic views; in section 3, we will outline criticisms to which, in our view, the traditional views of phronesis are ill-suited to respond, and, in section 4, we will outline our view of phronesis as ethical expertise – a view which in our view is immune to the above-mentioned criticisms – by spelling out the three main tenets of phronesis as ethical expertise: a conceptual thesis, an epistemic thesis, and the educational implications of the two. Finally, we will support our proposal with some empirical evidence taken from cognitive science. (shrink)

Reconciling the many “faces” of Peirce – the Scientist, Philosopher, and Metaphysician - helps to make sense of the open-endedness and versatility of semiotics. Semiosis, for Peirce, knows no rigid hermeneutic or disciplinary bounds. It thus forces us to be open to interdisciplinary and holistic inquiries. The pragmatic maxim sets limits on metaphysical speculation, but it also legitimates the extension of the experimentalist method into cosmological, metaphysical, and even religious domains. Although Peirce's religious speculations are ultimately unsatisfactory, understanding why Peirce (...) expanded his thinking to such domains reveals the expansionist logic of Peircean semiotics beyond the mere idiosyncracies of the man. The triadic, dynamic logic of pragmatist inquiry seeks to expand to all social processes of fixing belief and forming habits, however quixotic; but it remains dubious whether such expansion can fully comport to the scientific, experimentalist method that Peirce preferred. (shrink)

A minimal truthmaker for a given proposition is the smallest portion of reality which makes this proposition true. Minimal truthmakers are frequently mentioned in the literature, but there has been no systematic account of what they are or of their importance. In this article we shall clarify the notion of a minimal truthmaker and argue that there is reason to think that at least some propositions have minimal truthmakers. We shall then argue that the notion can play a useful role (...) in truthmaker theory, by helping to explain the truth of certain propositions as precisely as possible. (shrink)

The republican ideal of non-domination identifies the capacity for arbitrary interference as a fundamental threat to liberty that can generate fearful uncertainty and servility in those dominated. I argue that republican accounts of domination can provide a powerful analysis of the nature of legal and institutional power that is encountered by people with mental disorders or cognitive disabilities. In doing so, I demonstrate that non-domination is an ideal which is pertinent, distinctive, and desirable in thinking through psychological disability. Finally, I (...) evaluate republican strategies for contesting domination, focusing on the limits of contestatory democracy, and proposing a participatory alternative which better addresses problems of political agency in the mentally disordered and cognitively disabled. (shrink)

Over 1000 companies have either curtailed or else completely ceased operations in Russia as a response to its invasion of Ukraine, a mass corporate exodus of a speed and scale which we’ve never seen. While corporate withdrawal appears to have considerable public support, it’s not obvious that it has done anything to hamper the Russian war effort, nor is it clear what the long-run effects of corporate withdrawal as a regularised response to war might be. Given this, it’s important the (...) evaluate the ethical merits of such a response. In this paper I critique what I take to be the two most common arguments given in favour of voluntary corporate withdrawal, which I label ‘the instrumental argument’ and ‘the clean hands argument’ respectively. After illustrating their shortcomings, I reframe corporations’ predicament as a ‘spattered hands’ case—one where they may do good by remaining in a war-waging state, but where they contribute indirectly to grave wrongdoing by doing so. Drawing on ideas from the ‘Business for Peace’ and ‘Business and Human Rights’ literature, I highlight the potentially positive role of corporate presence within war-waging countries, before highlighting four considerations which corporations ought to bear in mind when determining whether to withdraw, or whether it is the lesser evil to stay and to let their hands be spattered. (shrink)

Nghiên cứu xem xét mối quan hệ giữa các thành phần trong mô hình lý thuyết TPB (gồm: Chuẩn chủ quan, Nhận thức kiểm soát hành vi, Thái độ với việc lựa chọn) và Ý định lựa chọn sản phẩm du lịch xanh. Khảo sát trực tuyến được thực hiện với mẫu 185 bạn trẻ sinh sống tại TP. Hồ Chí Minh. Kết quả cho thấy, các thành phần Chuẩn chủ quan, Nhận thức kiểm soát hành vi, Thái độ với (...) việc lựa chọn đều có ảnh hưởng tích cực đến Ý định lựa chọn sản phẩm du lịch xanh. Hơn nữa, kết quả cũng chỉ ra được mối quan hệ trung gian một phần của Thái độ với việc lựa chọn. Từ kết quả nghiên cứu, một số hàm ý quản trị được đề xuất. (shrink)

Many corporations are large, powerful, and wealthy. There are massive shortfalls of global justice, with hundreds of millions of people in the world living below the threshold of extreme poverty, and billions more living not far above that threshold. Where injustice and needs shortfalls must be remediated, we often look towards agents’ capabilities to determine who ought to bear the costs of rectifying the situation. The combination of these three claims grounds what I call a ‘linkage-based’ account of why corporations (...) have demanding positive duties to the global poor. In this paper, I put forward a distinctive linkage-based account of corporations’ positive duties centred on the idea of dependence and the importance of meeting agents’ core needs. In addition to outlining and defending this account, I will show that we can utilise its basic conceptual components to make headway on questions that have received insufficient attention in the business ethics literature; specifically, we can say something substantive about the weighting of needy agents’ competing claims to assistance, and about the limits to the demands that can be lodged against corporations on the basis of others' unmet needs. Having integrated considerations of duties' grounding, their comparative weight, and the limits of their demandingness into a single account of corporate positive duty, I conclude by discussing a challenge to attributing to corporations duties owed to the worst-off amongst the global poor. (shrink)

To avoid difficulties facing intention-based accounts of indexicals, Cohen () recently defends a conventionalist account that focuses on the context of tokening. On this view, a token of ‘here’ or ‘now’ refers to the place or time at which it tokens. However, although promising, such an account faces a serious problem: in many speech acts, multiple apparent tokens are produced. If I call Alaska from Paris and say ‘I'm here now’, an apparent token of my utterance will be produced in (...) both Paris and Alaska. The token-contextual account seems to imply that in such cases I will refer to both places and contradict myself. Here I argue that to resolve this and similar puzzles we must realize that not all apparent semantic tokens really are semantic tokens, and that to decide which ones count we must appeal to speaker intentions. However, because this appeal is made at the level of the metaphysics of semantic tokens rather than to determine their meaning, it does not raise the problems associated with intentionalism that the conventionalist hopes to avoid. The metaphysics of semantic tokens uncovered is surprisingly complex, showing that shapes and sounds can transition in and out of being utterances. (shrink)

Just something I did on a whim a while ago when I saw a blog post about summarizing philosophers' works in words of one syllable. Revised since then as I spotted multisyllabic words. About 2 pages long, single-spaced.

China’s rise to global power status is set to be amongst the primary shapers of politics and life more broadly in the 21st century. Yet despite its immense significance, political philosophers have been surprisingly quiet on the normative implications of China’s rise. This, I will argue, is a mistake. Not only does China’s rise generate interesting normative questions in its own right; it also upends some basic assumptions that many of us have hitherto adopted in our thinking about international distributive (...) justice. In the philosophical literature, the international order is often characterised by two sorts of states – developed and developing – with the former owing demanding duties and the latter having expansive permissions to further their own development. China’s status as both a genuine superpower and a middle-income country facing significant development challenges calls into question the continued functionality of such simplifying assumptions. Against the backdrop of China’s rise – and, to a lesser extent, that of other large emerging economies – this paper develops a more fine-grained account of how to conceive of states’ differential levels of advantage, distinguishing between states that are incapable, precariously capable, and robustly capable of realizing a minimally decent standard of domestic justice. This account reaffirms the assignment of the most onerous international duties to developed states, but also assigns duties and claims to developing states in a scalar fashion, with the upshot that better-off developing states in particular bear positive duties of international justice, owed to least-developed countries (LDCs). (shrink)

Biologists and philosophers of biology have argued that learning rules that do not lead organisms to play evolutionarily stable strategies (ESSes) in games will not be stable and thus not evolutionarily successful. This claim, however, stands at odds with the fact that learning generalization---a behavior that cannot lead to ESSes when modeled in games---is observed throughout the animal kingdom. In this paper, I use learning generalization to illustrate how previous analyses of the evolution of learning have gone wrong. It has (...) been widely argued that the function of learning generalization is to allow for swift learning about novel stimuli. I show that in evolutionary game theoretic models learning generalization, despite leading to suboptimal behavior, can indeed speed learning. I further observe that previous analyses of the evolution of learning ignored the short term success of learning rules. If one drops this assumption, I argue, it can be shown that learning generalization will be expected to evolve in these models. I also use this analysis to show how ESS methodology can be misleading, and to reject previous justifications about ESS play derived from analyses of learning. (shrink)

This paper explains what an infinite regress argument is. Part 1 contains some examples of infinite regress arguments. Part 2 presents a schema for all such arguments an defines an infinite regress argument as one that approximates to the schema. Part 3 tests the schema on the examples. Part 4 contrasts my account of infinite regress arguments with that given by Passmore and shows that Passmore's theory succumbs to objections. Part 5 distinguishes an infinite regress argument from an infinite regress (...) and defines an infinite regress. Part 6 explains the dyslogistic force of 'infinite regress'. (shrink)

The textbook presents the problematic aspect of historical and modern representations of the phenomenology of religion in academic discourse. The most important topics of the course are presented in a form that is easy to understand, questions for self-assessment and problems for analysis are formulated, and recommendations for organizing independent work of students are given. The textbook's material is systematized according to the principle of a problem to a specific example of its installation in religion, culture, science, and philosophy. The (...) textbook explores the interdisciplinary connections between philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and religious studies. The publication is addressed to students studying in the field of training "Religious Studies", and recommended to students studying philosophy, as well as to anyone interested in issues of understanding religion taking into account the achievements of the phenomenology of religion. (shrink)

Overview of Epicurean physics and epistemology, ending with a critical discussion of Cicero's report on Epicurean theology.

Semantic deference is the apparent phenomenon whereby some of -/- our concepts have their content fixed by the minds of others. The -/- phenomenon is puzzling both in terms of how such concepts are -/- supposed to work, but also in terms of why we should have -/- concepts whose content is fixed by others. Here I argue that if we -/- rethink semantic deference in terms of extended mind reasoning -/- we find answers to both of these questions: the (...) minds of others -/- can be understood to play a role in storing the semantic knowledge -/- underpinning our concepts without undermining their -/- functionality, and this ‘outsourcing’ of semantic knowledge greatly -/- expands our overall knowledge-bearing capacity, both at the level -/- of the individual and the community. I conclude that deference in -/- fact affords stronger grounds for a social expansion of knowledge -/- than standard extended mind reasoning permits. (shrink)

Collaboration is increasingly popular across academia. Collaborative work raises certain ethical questions, however. How will the fruits of collaboration be divided? How will the work for the collaborative project be split? In this paper, we consider the following question in particular. Are there ways in which these divisions systematically disadvantage certain groups? -/- We use evolutionary game theoretic models to address this question. First, we discuss results from O'Connor and Bruner (unpublished). In this paper, we show that underrepresented groups in (...) academia can be disadvantaged in such situations by dint of their small numbers. Second, we present novel results exploring how the hierarchical structure of academia can lead to bargaining disadvantage. We investigate models where one actor has a higher baseline of academic success, less to lose if collaboration goes south, or greater rewards for non-collaborative work. We show that in these situations, the less powerful partner is disadvantaged in bargaining over collaboration. (shrink)

The main aim of this article is to reflect on the impact of biases related to artificial intelligence (AI) systems developed to tackle issues arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, with special focus on those developed for triage and risk prediction. A secondary aim is to review assessment tools that have been developed to prevent biases in AI systems. In addition, we provide a conceptual clarification for some terms related to biases in this particular context. We focus mainly on nonracial biases (...) that may be less considered when addressing biases in AI systems in the existing literature. In the manuscript, we found that the existence of bias in AI systems used for COVID-19 can result in algorithmic justice and that the legal frameworks and strategies developed to prevent the apparition of bias have failed to adequately consider social determinants of health. Finally, we make some recommendations on how to include more diverse professional profiles in order to develop AI systems that increase the epistemic diversity needed to tackle AI biases during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. (shrink)

Socialist republicans advocate public ownership and control of the means of production in order to achieve the republican goal of a society without endemic domination. While civic republicanism is often attacked for its conservatism, the relatively neglected radical history of the tradition shows how a republican form of socialism provides powerful conceptual resources to critique capitalism for leaving workers and citizens dominated. This analysis supports a programme of public ownership and economic democracy intended to reduce domination in the workplace and (...) wider society. I defend this socialist republicanism from both the Marxist objection that it overlooks the impersonal nature of domination under capitalism and the left-liberal objections that property-owning democracy or worker codetermination are sufficient to suppress dominating relationships. The resulting position identifies the need for more ambitious institutional grounds for republican liberty than is often supposed, while offering us a distinctive emancipatory justification for socialism. (shrink)

Bài viết đánh giá thực trạng hoạt động hệ thống ngân hàng Việt Nam trong bối cảnh thực hiện đề án cơ cấu lại hệ thống các tổ chức tín dụng (TCTD). Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, hoạt động tái cấu trúc ngân hàng đã diễn ra mạnh mẽ với chỉ đạo quyết liệt của Chính phủ và Ngân hàng nhà nước, đặc biệt trong phê duyệt chủ trương chuyển giao bắt buộc 4 ngân hàng diện kiểm soát đặc (...) biệt nhằm lành mạnh và ổn định hệ thống ngân hàng. Tuy nhiên, với thực trạng nền kinh tế suy thoái, những vấn đề về nợ xấu gia tăng vượt qua ngưỡng an toàn 3%, tỷ lệ bao phủ nợ xấu giảm xuống dưới 100%, tín dụng tăng trưởng chậm, biên lợi nhuận thu hẹp đang trở thành nguy cơ dẫn dến rủi ro hoạt động của hệ thống ngân hàng Việt Nam. Trước thực trạng đó, tác giả đưa ra một số khuyến nghị chính sách nhằm nâng cao hiệu quả tái cơ cấu hệ thống ngân hàng. (shrink)

In this chapter, we will offer a sketch of the state of the art as concerns existing accounts of virtue acquisition in relation to automaticity. In particular, we will focus on the so-called “skill model,” which we aim to improve by questioning its rather common underlying dualistic picture of the mind. Then we will propose an account of skillful emotions by identifying the features that make them both automatic and embedded in an intelligent practice. Finally, we will show how this (...) view can help the skill model by offering a better description of emotion shaping in virtue acquisition. By doing so, we will contend that emotions contribute autonomously and actively to the skillfulness of the habits in which they are embedded. (shrink)

Sản xuất tinh gọn (Lean) là phương pháp quản lý sản xuất được áp dụng rộng rãi trong các doanh nghiệp sản xuất hiện đại và đã trở thành một phần không thể thiếu của bối cảnh sản xuất trên thế giới. Bài viết đánh giá 5 nhân tố ảnh hưởng đến việc áp dụng sản xuất tinh gọn tại các doanh nghiệp sản xuất công nghệ phụ trợ nhựa đúc, gồm: (1) Văn hóa doanh nghiệp; (2) Sự cam kết (...) của ban lãnh đạo; (3) Đội ngũ nhân sự; (4) Trình độ công nghệ; (5) Áp lực từ các bên liên quan. Từ đó, nhóm tác giả đưa ra một số đề xuất nhằm cải thiện và nâng cao chất lượng sản xuất trong việc áp dụng sản xuất tinh gọn cho các doanh nghiệp nhựa đúc nói chung. (shrink)

This essay asks what it is about the practice of trade that grounds duties of justice between states as trade partners. The answer advanced is that such duties are grounded in the dependence that trade generates. The essay puts forward four conditions that a plausible account of grounding in trade must meet: it must admit of degrees, explain the distinctly international character of trade justice, ground both procedural and distributive duties, and it must be a necessary feature of all trade (...) relationships which generate duties of justice. A dependence account of grounding meets all four conditions, and does so in an intuitively compelling way. While other accounts of what grounds duties of trade justice can meet some of the conditions, none can meet all of them. Relative to rival candidates, then, the dependence account provides a firmer foundation for the ongoing attempts to develop a comprehensive theory of trade justice. (shrink)

The central concern of this paper is to explore the efforts of Schiller's post-Kantian idealism and Marcuse's critical theory to develop a new conception of free human experience. That conception is built on the notion of play. Play is said to combine the human capacities for physical pleasure and reason, capacities which the modern world has dualized. Analysis of their respective accounts of play reveals its ambivalent form in the work of both philosophers. Play supports the ideal of ‘freedom from (...) necessity’, understood as a release from all external constraint. But it also appears to serve as a model for ‘freedom as a higher necessity’. In the case of Schiller, the ambivalence encompasses idle play and an obligation to make ourselves worthy of freedom. For Marcuse, play represents a kind of libidinal idleness while also underpinning a non-alienated conception of labour. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two questions: (I) why do the Cyrenaics deny that we can gain knowledge concerning "external things," and (II) how wide-ranging is this denial? On the first question, I argue that the Cyrenaics are skeptical because of their contrast between the indubitable grasp we have of own affections, versus the inaccessibility of external things that cause these affections. Furthermore, this inaccessibility is due to our cognitive and perceptual limitations--it is an epistemological doctrine rooted in their psychology--and not (...) (pace Zilioli) due to any metaphysical theses regarding the external world. On the second question, I argue (pace Tsouna and Warren) that the scope of the Cyrenaics' skepticism is quite wide. Our reports on the Cyrenaics are inconsistent, but the most charitable and plausible reading results in attributing to the Cyrenaics skepticism not merely about the properties of external things (e.g., that the fire that warms me is really hot) of also of their nature and identity (e.g., that the object that warms me is a fire). However, it does not extend to skepticism regarding the existence of an external world. (shrink)

Overview of the Stoic position. Looks at the roots of their determinism in their theology, their response to the 'lazy argument' that believing that all things are fated makes action pointless, their analysis of human action and how it allows actions to be 'up to us,' their rejection of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities, their rejection of anger and other negative reactive attitudes, and their contention that submission to god's will brings true freedom.

The sensorimotor theory of perceptual consciousness offers a form of enactivism in that it stresses patterns of interaction instead of any alleged internal representations of the environment. But how does it relate to forms of enactivism stressing the continuity between life and mind? We shall distinguish sensorimotor enactivism, which stresses perceptual capacities themselves, from autopoietic enactivism, which claims an essential connection between experience and autopoietic processes or associated background capacities. We show how autopoiesis, autonomous agency, and affective dimensions of experience (...) may fit into sensorimotor enactivism, and we identify differences between this interpretation and autopoietic enactivism. By taking artificial consciousness as a case in point, we further sharpen the distinction between sensorimotor enactivism and autopoietic enactivism. We argue that sensorimotor enactivism forms a strong default position for an enactive account of perceptual consciousness. (shrink)

To hold an environmental ethic is to hold that non-human beings and states of affairs in the natural world have intrinsic value. This seemingly straightforward claim has been the focus of much recent philosophical discussion of environmental issues. Its clarity is, however, illusory. The term ‘intrinsic value’ has a variety of senses and many arguments on environmental ethics suffer from a conflation of these different senses: specimen hunters for the fallacy of equivocation will find rich pickings in the area. This (...) paper is largely the work of the underlabourer. I distinguish different senses of the concept of intrinsic value, and, relatedly, of the claim that non-human beings in the natural world have intrinsic value; I exhibit the logical relations between these claims and examine the distinct motivations for holding them. The paper is not however merely an exercise in conceptual underlabouring. It also defends one substantive thesis: that while it is the case that natural entities have intrinsic value in the strongest sense of the term, i.e., in the sense of value that exists independently of human valuations, such value does not as such entail any obligations on the part of human beings. The defender of nature’s intrinsic value still needs to show that such value contributes to the well-being of human agents. (shrink)

At the core of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was a decisive break with certain fundamental Cartesian assumptions or claims about consciousness and self-consciousness, claims that have nonetheless remained perennially tempting, from a phenomenological perspective, independently of any further questions concerning the metaphysics of mind and its place in nature. The core of this philosophical problem has recently been helpfully exposed and insightfully probed in Dan Zahavi’s book, Self and Other: Exploring Subjectivity, Empathy, and Shame. In these remarks I suggest (...) that Zahavi’s view of what he calls ‘The Experiential Self’ defends precisely the sorts of claims to which a Kantian account of consciousness is fundamentally opposed, and while assessing the overall merits of the two contrasting outlooks is no easy matter, I side with the Kantian view. (shrink)

How is it possible to perform more than is required? And yet, isn’t that precisely what is required, in order for an interlocking society of human beings to function, develop and evolve? If human beings only did what we were told to do, we would live in complete monotony and enslavement. If human beings did only what we were permitted to do, nothing interesting would ever happen. Although performance has often been limited to the study of isolated artistic forms of (...) expressions (music, visual arts, etc.), it is equally possible to analyze culture, on the whole, as a behaviour-encoding system of rules and regulations, wherein the individual actor’s performative appropriation and reinterpretation of these said (cultural, political, artistic) rules makes possible the culture’s very survival, against all odds and obstacles, over long periods of time, as a “tradition” upheld by a community of rule-followers / rule-breakers. Rules, in a very real sense, are meant to be broken. Rule-breaking, by the same token, is, as it were, legislated within the very law code itself, as its own guarantee of immortality. After all, what law could function for any period of time without undergoing reinterpretation? This is good news both for culture and for the avant garde (the creative individual or collective), because even the strictest of rules creates its own conditions of transgression, and vice versa. The performance of culture through the creative freedom of the transgressive individual – i.e. any individual qua his or her individuality – is the sine qua non for a democratic society of peers. Creativity depends upon structure, and structure depends upon that which breaks its shackles of normativity, by rebirthing structure transgressively. The whole point of interpreters is to make things alright for the reappearance of the “father” (the law code) again. Ironically, then, anarchy is the only guarantee of the rule of law. (shrink)

The Epicureans advocate a moderately ascetic lifestyle on instrumental grounds, as the most effective means to securing tranquility. The virtuous person will reduce his desires to what is natural and necessary in order to avoid the trouble and anxiety caused by excessive desire. So much is clear from Epicurus' general ethics. But the later Epicurean Philodemus fills in far more detail about the attitude a wise Epicurean will take toward wealth in his treatise On Property Management. This paper explores some (...) of Philodemus' distinctive doctrines and argues that Philodemus' position on crafts is an improvement on the Socratic and Aristotelian positions that he is reacting against. Philodemus rejects both constraints on what counts as a genuine craft proposed by Socrates in the Gorgias: that a craft aims at a genuine good, and that it is based on a grasp of the nature of its subject. Philodemus also rejects the attempts of Xenophon and Theophrastus to preserve an important place for the craft of property management, conceived of as aiming at maximizing your wealth, within the Socratic and Aristotelian ethical tradition that puts virtue and virtuous activity at the center of the happy life. According to Philodemus, cultivating and exercising the traditional technê of property management is actually incompatible with being a virtuous person and obtaining happiness. (shrink)