The present narrative review seeks to unravel where we are now, and where we need to go to delineate the active ingredients in psychotherapy delivered by conversational agents (e.g., chatbots). While psychotherapy delivered by conversational agents has shown promising effectiveness for depression, anxiety, and psychological distress across several randomized controlled trials, little emphasis has been placed on the therapeutic processes in these interventions. The theoretical framework of this narrative review is grounded in prominent perspectives on the active ingredients in psychotherapy. (...) Based on search terms derived from various theoretical perspectives, we conducted a systematic literature search of four scientific databases and identified 17 studies. Across the selected studies, three themes emerged: relationship variables, emotional venting, and cognitive factors. While methodological issues compromise the epistemic value of this evidence base, core questions also remain to be answered. Such questions include, but are not limited to, whether humans can form affectionate bonds to inanimate beings and whether these kind of mental health treatments should be understood as psychotherapy or something else. Researchers should therefore be cautious when applying theories of psychotherapy in the realm of conversational agents. We conclude the paper by introducing recommendations for future research, which we hope will help instigate methodologically sound studies in this field. (shrink)

We suggest that the emerging field of the conservation humanities can play a valuable role in biodiversity protection in Papua New Guinea (PNG), where most land remains under collective customary clan ownership. As a first step to mobilising this scholarly field in PNG and to support capacity development for PNG humanities academics, we conducted a landscape review of PNG humanities teaching and research relating to biodiversity conservation and customary land rights. We conducted a systematic literature review, a PNG teaching programme (...) review, and a series of online workshops between the authors (10 PNG-based, 7 UK-based). We found a small but notable amount of PNG research and teaching focused on biodiversity conservation or customary land rights. This included explicit discussion of these topics in 8 of 156 PNG-authored humanities texts published 2010-2020 and related teaching content in the curricula of several different humanities-based programmes. We discuss current barriers to PNG academic development. The growth of fully fledged in-country conservation humanities will require a joint collaborative effort by PNG researchers, who are best placed to carry out such work, and researchers from abroad who can access resources to support the process. (shrink)

The Pessimistic Induction over the history of science argues that because most past theories considered empirically successful in their time turn out to be not even approximately true, most present ones probably aren’t approximately true either. But why did past scientists accept those incorrect theories? Kyle Stanford’s ‘Problem of Unconceived Alternatives’ is one answer to that question: scientists are bad at exhausting the space of plausible hypotheses to explain the evidence available to them. Here, I offer another answer, which I (...) call the ‘Problem of Misleading Evidence.’ I argue that this proposal is, in important respects, superior to Stanford’s. (shrink)

Determinism is established in quantum mechanics by tracing the probabilities in the Born rules back to the absolute (overall) phase constants of the wave functions and recognizing these phase constants as pseudorandom numbers. The reduction process (collapse) is independent of measurement. It occurs when two wavepackets overlap in ordinary space and satisfy a certain criterion, which depends on the phase constants of both wavepackets. Reduction means contraction of the wavepackets to the place of overlap. The measurement apparatus fans out the (...) incoming wavepacket into spatially separated eigenpackets of the chosen observable. When one of these eigenpackets together with a wavepacket located in the apparatus satisfy the criterion, the reduction associates the place of contraction with an eigenvalue of the observable. The theory is nonlocal and contextual. Keywords:. (shrink)

Suppose one believes that the historical record of discarded scientific theories provides good evidence against scientific realism. Should one adopt Kyle Stanford’s specific version of this view, based on the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives? I present reasons for answering this question in the negative. In particular, Stanford’s challenge cannot use many of the prima facie strongest pieces of historical evidence against realism, namely: superseded theories whose successors were explicitly conceived, and superseded theories that were not the result of elimination-of-alternatives inferences. (...) Attempts to accommodate and within Stanford’s framework are incompatible with other commitments Stanford holds, such as anti-realism being piecemeal instead of global. As separate lines of criticism, I argue that there are problems with Stanford’s claim that the PUA is the most important challenge to realism, and with his view of instrumentalist theory endorsement. (shrink)

I argue that a certain type of naturalist should not accept a prominent version of the no-miracles argument (NMA). First, scientists (usually) do not accept explanations whose explanans-statements neither generate novel predictions nor unify apparently disparate established claims. Second, scientific realism (as it appears in the NMA) is an explanans that makes no new predictions and fails to unify disparate established claims. Third, many proponents of the NMA explicitly adopt a naturalism that forbids philosophy of science from using any methods (...) not employed by science itself. Therefore, such naturalistic philosophers of science should not accept the version of scientific realism that appears in the NMA. (shrink)

Many have begun to despair that climate justice will prevail even in a minimal form. The affective dimensions of such despair, we suggest, threaten to make climate action appear too demanding. Thus, despair constitutes a moral challenge to individual climate action that has not yet received adequate attention. In response, we defend a duty to act in hope for a more just (climate) future. However, as we see it, this duty falls differentially upon the shoulders of more and less advantaged (...) agents in society. From arguments by Black thinkers like Derrick Bell, we draw a set of distinctions between two types of hope: one for ideal justice, and one for more modest change; and between two types of hopeful actions, those undertaken through formal political channels and those we call 'extra-political' actions; and between two sites of differential moral burdens, those of the privileged and those of the oppressed. Ours is a case for facing even bleak realities, demanding otherwise, and acting in hope to achieve a better future. (shrink)

In this paper, I first present an overview of Asay’s _A Theory of Truthmaking_, highlighting what I take to be some of its most attractive features, especially his re-invigoration of the ontological understanding of truthmaking and his defence of ontology-first truthmaking over explanation-first truthmaking. Then, I articulate what I take to be a puzzling potential inconsistency: (a) he appeals to considerations to do with aboutness in criticising how well ontological views account for truth while (b) ruling out aboutness from the (...) right account of truthmaking. He argues, instead, that necessitation is both necessary and sufficient for truthmaking (§3.3). I suggest that adding aboutness to one’s account in the right way is not just compatible with but important for ontology-first truthmaking. I do all this to invite Asay to clarify his position on these matters. Overall, Asay’s worldview displays the fruitfulness of an ontologically serious approach to metaphysics that puts truthmaking centre-stage. (shrink)

The underdetermination of theory by data obtains when, inescapably, evidence is insufficient to allow scientists to decide responsibly between rival theories. One response to would-be underdetermination is to deny that the rival theories are distinct theories at all, insisting instead that they are just different formulations of the same underlying theory; we call this the identical rivals response. An argument adapted from John Norton suggests that the response is presumptively always appropriate, while another from Larry Laudan and Jarrett Leplin suggests (...) that the response is never appropriate. Arguments from Einstein for the special and general theories of relativity may fruitfully be seen as instances of the identical rivals response; since Einstein’s arguments are generally accepted, the response is at least sometimes appropriate. But when is it appropriate? We attempt to steer a middle course between Norton’s view and that of Laudan and Leplin: the identical rivals response is appropriate when there is good reason for adopting a parsimonious ontology. Although in simple cases the identical rivals response need not involve any ontological difference between the theories, in actual scientific cases it typically requires treating apparent posits of the various theories as mere verbal ornaments or computational conveniences. Since these would-be posits are not now detectable, there is no perfectly reliable way to decide whether we should eliminate them or not. As such, there is no rule for deciding whether the identical rivals response is appropriate or not. Nevertheless, there are considerations that suggest for and against the response; we conclude by suggesting two of them. (shrink)

These comments, which take the form of criticism and response, were the basis of a zoom conversation at the Eastern APA, January 2021. Josh is putting them up on philpapers (with permission from all involved) in case they are helpful to people interested in the themes of this book.

Since anonymous agents can spread misinformation with impunity, many people advocate for greater accountability for internet speech. This paper provides a veritistic argument that accountability mechanisms can cause significant epistemic problems for internet encyclopedias and social media communities. I show that accountability mechanisms can undermine both the dissemination of true beliefs and the detection of error. Drawing on social psychology and behavioral economics, I suggest alternative mechanisms for increasing the trustworthiness of internet communication.

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) calls for medical practitioners to “integrate” our best available evidence into clinical practice. A significant amount of the literature on EBM takes this integration to be unproblematic, focusing on questions like how to interpret evidence and engage with patient values, rather than critically looking at how these features of EBM can be implemented together. Other authors have also commented on this gap in the literature, for example, identifying the lack of clarity about how patient preferences and evidence (...) from trials is supposed to be integrated in practice. In this paper, I look at this issue from an epistemological perspective, (looking at how different types of knowledge in EBM can be used to make sounds judgements). In particular, I introduce an epistemological issue for this integration problem, which I call the epistemic integration problem. This is essentially the problem of how we can use information that is both general (eg, about a population sample) and descriptive (eg, about what expected outcomes are) to reach clinical judgements that are individualized (applying to a particular patient) and normative (about what is best for their health). (shrink)

Confused terms appear to signify more than one entity. Carnap maintained that any putative name that is associated with more than one object in a relevant universe of discourse fails to be a genuine name. Although many philosophers have agreed with Carnap, they have not always agreed among themselves about the truth-values of atomic sentences containing such terms. Some hold that such atomic sentences are always false, and others claim they are always truth-valueless. Field maintained that confused terms can still (...) refer, albeit partially, and offered a supervaluational account of their semantic properties on which some atomic sentences with confused terms can be true. After outlining many of the most important theoretical considerations for and against various semantic theories for such terms, we report the results of a study designed to investigate which of these accounts best accords with the truth-value judgments of ordinary language users about sentences containing these terms. We found that naïve participants view confused names as capable of successfully referring to one or more objects. Thus, semantic theories that judge them to involve total reference failure do not comport well with patterns of ordinary usage. (shrink)

Many have tackled the question ‘What (if anything) is analytic philosophy?’ I will not attempt to answer this vexed question. Rather, I address a smaller, more manageable set of interrelated questions: first, when and how did people begin using the label ‘analytic philosophy’? Second, how did those who used this label understand it? Third, why did many philosophers we today classify as analytic initially resist being grouped together under the single category of ‘analytic philosophy’? Finally, for the first generation who (...) described themselves as analytic philosophers, what was their intended contrast class? Relatedly, when did ‘continental philosophy’ become the standard opposition? Some evidence I present justifies received answers to these questions; other evidence supports surprising and unorthodox answers to these questions. (shrink)

Scientific anti-realists who appeal to the pessimistic induction (PI) claim that the theoretical terms of past scientific theories often fail to refer to anything. But on standard views in philosophy of language, such reference failures prima facie lead to certain sentences being neither true nor false. Thus, if these standard views are correct, then the conclusion of the PI should be that significant chunks of current theories are truth-valueless. But that is semantic anti-realism about scientific discourse—a position most philosophers of (...) science, anti-realists included, consider anathema today. Therefore, proponents of the PI confront a dilemma: either accept semantic anti-realism or reject common semantic views. I examine strategies (with particular emphasis on supervaluations) for the PI proponent to either lessen the sting of this argument, or learn to live with it. 1 Introduction2 Designation Failure 2.1 Designation failure leads to truth-valueless sentences2.1.1 Direct reference theory2.1.2 Fregeanism2.1.3 Accounts of reference-fixing: why ‘phlogiston’ fails to designate 2.2 Objection: sentences exhibiting designation failure are false not truth-valueless 2.3 Avoiding truth-valuelessness via controversial semantic positions3 What to do? Closing the Gaps4 Conclusion. (shrink)

Recent scholarship indicates that Quine’s “Truth by Convention” does not present the radical critiques of analytic truth found fifteen years later in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.” This prompts a historical question: what caused Quine’s radicalization? I argue that two crucial components of Quine’s development can be traced to the academic year 1940–1941, when he, Russell, Carnap, Tarski, Hempel, and Goodman were all at Harvard together. First, during those meetings, Quine recognizes that Carnap has abandoned the extensional, syntactic approach to philosophical (...) analysis, an approach espoused in Carnap’s 1934 Logical Syntax of Language, and which Quine endorsed his entire career. Second, Tarski presents Quine with a philosophically well-motivated reason to think that an apparently analytic discipline, arithmetic, could be synthetic; this reflects one of the central assertions found in “Two Dogmas” but not in “Truth by Convention.” I use this account of Quine’s development to resolve a dispute between Creath and Mancosu concerning the timeline for Quine’s evolving critiques of analyticity. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch was a philosopher and novelist who wrote extensively on the themes of love, goodness, religion, and morality. In this article, we explore her notion of ‘moral vision’; the idea that morality is not just about how we act and make choices, but how we see the world in a much broader sense.

The computational paradigm, which has dominated psychology and artificial intelligence since the cognitive revolution, has been a source of intense debate. Recently, several cognitive scientists have argued against this paradigm, not by objecting to computation, but rather by objecting to the notion of representation. Our analysis of these objections reveals that it is not the notion of representation per se that is causing the problem, but rather specific properties of representations as they are used in various psychological theories. Our analysis (...) suggests that all theorists accept the idea that cognitive processing involves internal information-carrying states that mediate cognitive processing. These mediating states are a superordinate category of representations. We discuss five properties that can be added to mediating states and examine their importance in various cognitive models. Finally, three methodological lessons are drawn from our analysis and discussion. (shrink)

While scholarly attention has focused on reconstructing the tradition history of Jesus's temple prophecy in Mark 14:58, comparable analyses of its traditional Aramaic structure are harder to locate. This article uses form, redaction, literary, and structural criticism to uncover the tradition history of the prophecy and reconstruct its original Aramaic formulation. Our analysis supports the historicity of the prophecy and identifies a four-two beat kīnā metre (poetic meter) typical of laments, warnings, and threats.

The problem of cancer is examined from the metaphysical standpoint of essence and ground. An essentialist definition of cancer is assumed that would be valid in all possible worlds in which cancer could logically exist. The grounds of cancer are then examined and elucidated. Two grounding cancer properties are identified and discussed: symmetry- breaking and computational intelligence. Each examination leads to concrete conclusions for novel therapeutic approaches and a more fundamental understanding of what cancer is at bottom. Other possible cancer (...) grounding properties related to evolution, adaptability and stochastic features are identified for future work. This approach is novel and offers new solutions to the problem of cancer. (shrink)

Alfred Tarski was a nominalist. But he published almost nothing on his nominalist views, and until recently the only sources scholars had for studying Tarski’s nominalism were conversational reports from his friends and colleagues. However, a recently-discovered archival resource provides the most detailed information yet about Tarski’s nominalism. Tarski spent the academic year 1940-41 at Harvard, along with many of the leading lights of scientific philosophy: Carnap, Quine, Hempel, Goodman, and (for the fall semester) Russell. This group met frequently to (...) discuss logical and philosophical topics of shared interest. At these meetings, Carnap took dictation notes, which are now stored in the Archives of Scientific Philosophy. Interestingly, and somewhat surprisingly, the plurality of notes covers a proposal Tarski presents for a nominalist language of unified science. This chapter addresses the following questions about this project. What, precisely, is Tarski’s nominalist position? What rationales are given for Tarski’s nominalist stance—and are these rationales defensible? Finally, how is Tarskian nominalism of 1941 related to current nominalist projects? (shrink)

A characterization result of dilation in terms of positive and negative association admits an extremal counterexample, which we present together with a minor repair of the result. Dilation may be asymmetric whereas covariation itself is symmetric. Dilation is still characterized in terms of positive and negative covariation, however, once the event to be dilated has been specified.

A scholar of Hellenistic and Prussian history, Droysen developed a historical theory that at the time was unprecedented in range and depth, and which remains to the present day a valuable key for understanding history as both an idea and a professional practice. Arthur Alfaix Assis interprets Droysen’s theoretical project as an attempt to redefine the function of historiography within the context of a rising criticism of exemplar theories of history, and focuses on Droysen’s claim that the goal underlying (...) historical writing and reading should be the development of the subjective capacity to think historically. In addition, Assis examines the connections and disconnections between Droysen’s theory of historical thinking, his practice of historical thought, and his political activism. Ultimately, Assis not only shows how Droysen helped reinvent the relationship between historical knowledge and human agency, but also traces some of the contradictions and limitations inherent to that project. (shrink)

Trata-se de um trabalho de natureza didática cujo propósito é introduzir o leitor à teoria da história de Jörn Rüsen. O texto inicia-se com uma introdução que situa este autor no contexto do desenvolvimento histórico da disciplina “teoria da história. Está dividido em três capítulos, nos quais os cinco componentes da sua “matriz disciplinar da ciência histórica são apresentados e discutidos, a saber (1) as carências de orientação e funções orientativas; (2) perspectivas diretoras da interpretação histórica e métodos de pesquisa (...) empírica; e (3) as formas de apresentação histórica. O trabalho finaliza-se com uma lista bibliográfica, da qual constam os títulos mais importantes de Rüsen, bem como uma série de comentários à sua teoria da história. (shrink)

Dilation occurs when an interval probability estimate of some event E is properly included in the interval probability estimate of E conditional on every event F of some partition, which means that one’s initial estimate of E becomes less precise no matter how an experiment turns out. Critics maintain that dilation is a pathological feature of imprecise probability models, while others have thought the problem is with Bayesian updating. However, two points are often overlooked: (1) knowing that E is stochastically (...) independent of F (for all F in a partition of the underlying state space) is sufficient to avoid dilation, but (2) stochastic independence is not the only independence concept at play within imprecise probability models. In this paper we give a simple characterization of dilation formulated in terms of deviation from stochastic independence, propose a measure of dilation, and distinguish between proper and improper dilation. Through this we revisit the most sensational examples of dilation, which play up independence between dilator and dilatee, and find the sensationalism undermined by either fallacious reasoning with imprecise probabilities or improperly constructed imprecise probability models. (shrink)

Since W. B. Gallie introduced the notion of essentially contested concepts (ECCs) in 1956, social science scholars have increasingly used his framework to analyze key concepts drawing “endless disputes” from contestant users. Despite its merits, the ECC framework has been limited by a neglect of social, cultural, and political contexts, the invisibility of actors, and its ahistorical character. To understand how ECCs evolve and change over time, I use a conceptual history approach to study the concept of philanthropy, recently labeled (...) as an ECC. Using France during classical modernity as a case study, I analyze key events and actors from the concept’s inception in 1712 as a virtue of the Enlightenment to its triumph after 1789 as a secular alternative to Catholic charity, until its decline at the end of the nineteenth century as a new consensus emerged around the concept of solidarity. By introducing the notion of historically contested concepts, I make several contributions to research on ECCs, conceptual contestation, and conceptual change. (shrink)

O presente texto oferece uma interpretação de Do Império à República, o livro de Sérgio Buarque de Holanda que reconta a história política brasileira da segunda metade do século XIX. Baseando-se em conceitos desenvolvidos pelo teórico da história Jörn Rüsen, o artigo detém-se particularmente em três aspectos do referido livro: os artefatos teóricos que presidem a interpretação da crise da Monarquia brasileira, os padrões narrativos que dão suporte à constituição de sentido sobre essa experiência do passado, bem como o contexto (...) atual de orientação que serviu de parâmetro de significado/sentido à interpretação e à representação. Esta análise pretende ilustrar que a teoria da história é não só um meio para explorar abstratamente as complexas questões ligadas à produção do conhecimento histórico, mas também uma ferramenta para a obtenção de imagens concretas acerca da prática intelectual dos historiadores profissionais. (shrink)

Withdrawal involves emotional pain that motivates much addictive behavior. In this paper, I argue that the emotional pain of withdrawal compels much addictive behavior. Researchers have noticed this possibility but it is widely underappreciated. Among philosophers, only Hanna Pickard has discussed emotional compulsion in addiction, and the emotional aspect of withdrawal has been almost completely neglected. Accounts of emotional compulsion in the philosophical literature (from Tappolet, Elster, and Furrow) probably do not capture how the distress of withdrawal compels, so I (...) propose a more suitable account of “pathodoxastic” compulsion in addiction. On this account, the emotional pain of withdrawal compels when it undermines the ability to believe that one can continue to endure it, and therefore the ability to intend abstinence. (shrink)

Although a safe, effective, and licensed coronavirus vaccine does not yet exist, there is already controversy over how it ought to be allocated. Justice is clearly at stake, but it is unclear what justice requires in the international distribution of a scarce vaccine during a pandemic. Many are condemning ‘vaccine nationalism’ as an obstacle to equitable global distribution. We argue that limited national partiality in allocating vaccines will be a component of justice rather than an obstacle to it. For there (...) are role-based and community-embedded responsibilities to take care of one’s own, which constitute legitimate moral reasons for some identity-related prioritisation. Furthermore, a good form of vaccine nationalism prioritises one’s own without denying or ignoring duties derived from a principle of equal worth, according to which all persons, regardless of citizenship or identity, equally deserve vaccine-induced protection from COVID-19. Rather than dismissing nationalism as a tragic obstacle, it is necessary to acknowledge that a limited form of it is valuable and expresses moral commitments. Only then can one understand our world of competing obligations, a world where cosmopolitan duties of benevolence sometimes conflict with special obligations of community membership. Once these competing obligations are recognised as such, we can begin the work of designing sound ethical frameworks for achieving justice in the global distribution of a coronavirus vaccine and developing practical strategies for avoiding, mitigating or resolving conflicts of duty. (shrink)

Throughout Alexandre Herculano’s historical oeuvre claims of impartiality are mingled with the partiality of the beliefs, ideals, and interests that give shape to the author’s point of view. One can trace in it both the commitment to the disinterested search for truth and the pragmatic intention to remodel the relations of Portuguese society with its past and with the effects of this past on the present. This text revisits Herculano’s major historical writings with the aim of understanding how it is (...) possible for historical texts to be or claim to be at the same time true and useful, objective and engaged, impartial and partial. I intend to show that those oppositions not necessarily entail paralyzing contradictions, and that good historians such as Herculano are usually capable of drawing from them a great amount of intellectual energy. Focusing on the tension between impartiality and partiality, and supported by close readings and contextual analyses, I will try to demonstrate that such tension configures itself in at least two different modes, which in turn depend on the positive or negative significance the studied past turns out to have for the person who studies it. (shrink)

A central tenet of truthmaker theory is that necessitation is necessary for truthmaking (NEC). This paper defends NEC in a novel, piecemeal way, namely by responding to a potential counterexample involving a changing past. If Carter won a race at t1 but is later disqualified at t2, then Carter no longer won at t1. A wholly past event seems to have changed in the future. The event makes ‘Carter won the race at t1’ (RACE) true between t1‐2 but fails to (...) make it true at t2. So, we have a potential counterexample to necessitation: a truthmaker of RACE fails in another context to make the same truthbearer RACE true. I argue that the best solution to this challenge is not that there are different truthbearers at t1‐2 and t2 (the semantic response), or that RACE was never true because of the future disqualification or will always be true despite the future disqualification. The best solution is to accept that the past can change: past events can change based on what happens in the future (e.g., via their effects). This paper's novel defence of necessitation will illustrate the importance of utilising explicitly ontological and commonsensical tools in accounting for truth. (shrink)

In "De l’Allemagne", Mme de Staël develops a sophisticated philosophical psychology that centers not on reason, but imagination. She does this by bringing French Enlightenment philosophy, particularly Rousseau and Diderot, into dialogue with German thinkers, including Kant and Herder. For Mme de Staël, imagination transcends the epistemic limits of sensibility and reason by incorporating sentiment.

There is no paradox with Schrödinger’s cat in a realist interpretation. In particular, a closer look at the temporal aspect shows that the two macroscopic wave functions (alive and dead) of Schrödinger’s cat are not to be compared with two superposed parts of a microscopic quantum wave function.

O presente trabalho versa sobre a medicina das universidades européias no século XIII. Reconstrói, por meio de um estudo de caso, a experiência de uma revolução intelectual: uma revolução na qual a medicina se renovou sob a influência da filosofia natural aristotélica, que marcava muito fortemente o currículo das nascentes instituições universitárias. O caso analisado é o do médico/físico Pedro Hispano, autor de tratados médicos, comentários e receituários, que muito provavelmente pode ser identificado como o português Pedro Julião (+-1215 - (...) 1277), que viria a ser o Papa João XXI. O texto está dividido em dois capítulos. No primeiro deles apresenta-se Pedro Hispano, sua obra e alguns problemas relativos à autoria dos textos que lhe são atribuídos. Busca-se enquadrar os seus textos médicos no interior de uma tradição intelectual que naquela época se afirmava, aquela que resulta da aproximação entre a medicina e a filosofia natural. Ao final, extrai-se da análise das possibilidades de filiação de Pedro a essa tradição pontos para uma reflexão acerca dos novos padrões de interação entre as formas de exercício da medicina e a sociedade do século XIII. O segundo capítulo tem por fio condutor um texto de Pedro Hispano intitulado 'Liber de Conservanda Sanitate' (Livro sobre a Conservação da Saúde). A partir dele, procurar-se-á dar melhores e mais concretos contornos à nova medicina produzida pelas universidades através de dois caminhos. Um deles conduz a um aprofundamento do tema da filosofia natural e de sua conexão com o pensamento médico. O outro revela a mudança no plano das relações entre medicina e sociedade, aproveitando o campo de questões construído no primeiro capítulo. [Trata-se da minha monografia de final de curso, defendida em 2002, na Universidade Federal de Goiás]. (shrink)

A book review of Amie Thomasson's defense of Neo-Carnapianism in her "Ontology Made Easy" (2015, Oxford UP).

There is a remarkable trend in contemporary environmentalism that emphasizes ‘accepting responsibility’ for the natural world in contrast to outdated preservationist thinking that shirks such responsibility. This approach is often explained and justified by reference to the anthropocene: this fundamentally new epoch—defined by human domination—requires active human intervention to avert planetary catastrophe. However, in this paper, I suggest this rhetoric encourages a flight from history. This often jubilant, sometimes anxious, yearning for unprecedented human innovation and—ultimately—control in our new millennia mirrors (...) the Futurist movement that took off near the beginning of the last century. Despite the significant differences in the details of how academics have defended this twenty-first-century environmental outlook, they all represent the true flight from history; they too quickly jettison the ideas of historical environmentalists and so misunderstand the environmental values at the heart of preservation that are more salient than ever. (shrink)

We expound an alternative to the Copenhagen interpretation of the formalism of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. The basic difference is that the new interpretation is formulated in the language of epistemological realism. It involves a change in some basic physical concepts. The ψ function is no longer interpreted as a probability amplitude of the observed behaviour of elementary particles but as an objective physical field representing the particles themselves. The particles are thus extended objects whose extension varies in time according to (...) the variation of ψ. They are considered as fundamental regions of space with some kind of nonlocality. Special consideration is given to the Heisenberg relations, the Einstein-Podolsky- Rosen correlations, the reduction process, the problem of measurement, and the quantum-statistical distributions. (shrink)

We present a game mechanic called pseudo-visibility for games inhabited by non-player characters (NPCs) driven by reinforcement learning (RL). NPCs are incentivized to pretend they cannot see pseudo-visible players: the training environment simulates an NPC to determine how the NPC would act if the pseudo-visible player were invisible, and penalizes the NPC for acting differently. NPCs are thereby trained to selectively ignore pseudo-visible players, except when they judge that the reaction penalty is an acceptable tradeoff (e.g., a guard might accept (...) the penalty in order to protect a treasure because losing the treasure would hurt even more). We describe an RL agent transformation which allows RL agents that would not otherwise do so to perform some limited self-reflection to learn the training environments in question. (shrink)

The text addresses conceptions of human selfhood and humankind as developed by two major nineteenth-century German-speaking historians, Johann Gustav Droysen and Jacob Burckhardt. It aims at ascertaining to what extent the historical anthropologies proposed by both authors can be considered to be humanistic. We will attempt to provide an answer to this question while locating and discussing both humanistic and anti-humanistic features in their texts. Humanism is understood here as a perspective that emerged within the framework of the philosophy of (...) the Enlightenment, for example, in Immanuel Kant's ethics and in Friedrich Niethammer's pedagogy. On the one hand, we will define Droysen's and Burckhardt's anthropologies as humanistic, stressing their intellectual connection to the universalistic notions of humankind and human nature developed in the late eighteenth-century. On the other, we will relativize this predicament by exploring their main anti-humanistic traits, i.e. nationalism, with regard to Droysen, and aestheticism, in the case of Burckhardt. (shrink)

Kompensation is the keyword for an influential answer to the problem of the function of the human sciences in the contemporary world. It emerged in the second half of the twentieth-century in the field of German philosophy, and its chief message is that the human sciences have the task of compensating modern societies and individuals for cultural losses generated within the course of modernization (for instance, by the spread social relations of a new, abstract, non-traditional kind; or by the accelerating (...) progress of technology). The compensation-theory can be stressed as one of the main ideational sets against which Jörn Rüsen developed his own theory of history. This paper focuses on the agonistic relationship between these two theories that attempt to elucidate what is the value and the use of historical studies. My interpretative bet is that by doing so we will better understand important aspects of Rüsen’s theoretical reflections on history and historiography that have not yet received sufficient attention. I will show that Rüsen rejects the compensation-theory not only because he disagrees with the scientific division of labor it entails – which ascribes to the human sciences the relatively modest role of attempting to preserve some of what modernity needs to destroy. I will try to explain how that rejection is also due to more fundamental differences between Rüsen and the compensation-theorists, more specifically their differing understandings of modernity, and their dissent regarding how should the complex interrelationship between knowledge, politics, and the future be configured. -/- “Compensação” é a palavra-chave que sintetiza uma influente resposta ao problema da função das ciências humanas no mundo contemporâneo. Originária do universo da filosofia alemã da segunda metade do século 20, tal resposta sustenta, em linhas gerais, que as ciências humanas servem como uma espécie de indenização espiritual por prejuízos culturais causados pela modernização a sociedades e indivíduos (no bojo, por exemplo, da disseminação de novas relações sociais abstratas e não-tradicionais, ou do acelerado progresso dos meios técnicos). A teoria da compensação pode ser apontada como um dos principais conjuntos de ideias a que se contrapõe a teoria da história de Jörn Rüsen. O presente texto enfoca a relação agonística entre essas duas teorias, no centro das quais está o problema do valor e da utilidade dos estudos históricos. Lançar luz sobre tal relação – esta é a minha aposta interpretativa – é uma maneira de compreender melhor aspectos importantes das reflexões de Rüsen sobre história e historiografia que até agora ainda não receberam a atenção que lhes é devida. Quero mostrar que Rüsen rejeita a teoria da compensação não só porque discorda da divisão do trabalho científico nela apregoada, a qual atribui às ciências humanas o papel relativamente modesto de tentar conservar alguma parte daquilo que a modernização ameaça destruir. Procurarei explicar como tal rejeição também se deve a diferenças mais fundamentais existentes entre Rüsen e os teóricos da compensação, mais especificamente, às suas divergências de entendimento quanto à natureza da modernidade e quanto ao modo de configurar a complexa inter-relação entre conhecimento, política e futuro. (shrink)

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)

For a long time philosophers have struggled to reach a definition of knowledge that is fully satisfactory from an intuitive standard. However, what could be so fuzzy about the concept of knowledge that it makes our intuitions to not obviously support a single analysis? One particular approach from a naturalistic perspective treats this question from the point of view of the psychology of concepts. According to it, this failure is explained by the structure of our folk concept of knowledge, which (...) organizes its constitutive information in a much looser way than we assume when we rely on intuitive knowledge ascriptions. I will adopt the same starting point here, but argue against the proposed answer and defend the view that this difficulty is explained not by something related to the specific structure of our concept of knowledge but, on the contrary, by its lack of structure. I claim that our folk concept of knowledge should be understood as a primitive mental state concept. (shrink)

Why microscopic objects exhibit wave properties (are delocalized), but macroscopic do not (are localized)? Traditional quantum mechanics attributes wave properties to all objects. When complemented with a deterministic collapse model (Quantum Stud.: Math. Found. 3, 279 (2016)) quantum mechanics can dissolve the discrepancy. Collapse in this model means contraction and occurs when the object gets in touch with other objects and satisfies a certain criterion. One single collapse usually does not suffice for localization. But the object rapidly gets in touch (...) with other objects in a short time, leading to rapid localization. Decoherence is not involved. (shrink)

At the end of the 19th century, most professional historians – wherever they existed – deemed history to be a form of knowledge ruled by a method that bears no resemblance with those most commonly traceable in the natural sciences. The bulk of the historian’s task was then frequently regarded as being the application of procedures frequently referred to as ‘historical method’. In the context of such an emerging interest on historical methods and methodology, at least three textbooks stand out: (...) Johann Gustav Droysen’s Grundriss der Historik (Outline of the Theory of History), Ernst Bernheim’s Lehrbuch der historischen Methode (Handbook of Historical Method), and Charles Langlois and Charles Seignobos’s Introduction aux études historiques (Introduction to the Study of History). These books were quite influential in Germany, France, and elsewhere, and they very much helped promote a general idea of historical method that would become relatively consensual among historians of many nationalities by the early 20th century. Such a relative agreement on historical method sponsored both the communication and the development of a sense of disciplinary identity among historians trained within different and sometimes conflicting national traditions. It was then partially extended, partially challenged, and surely made more complex when, from the 1920s on, social and economic historians became a good part of the historiographical establishment in many countries. -/- The three books by Droysen, Bernheim, and Langlois and Seignobos were already pieced together by Rolf Torstendahl, who studied them as a group of texts that, despite their differences, contributed to shape the developments outlined above. However, Torstendahl’s primary aim was to show how Droysen, Bernheim, and Seignobos all resorted to ‘method’ as a way to circumvent skepticism against the possibility of historical knowledge, rather than investigate the internal interrelationships between the three texts. In this chapter I follow precisely this latter, not yet taken, road, focusing on crucial cross-references between the Grundriss, the Lehrbuch, and the Introduction. I intend to show that, at a general level, the schemes of historical method found in these texts are largely convergent, and that this convergence is due to Bernheim’s reading of Droysen and to Langlois and Seignobos’s reading of Bernheim. I will attempt to do it through a regressive approach that starts with an analysis of the Introduction. Aspects of the editorial history and circulation of the three texts will also be briefly addressed, as a way to illustrate their special importance within the framework of early 20th century historical theory. Because my argument calls for a focus on the most general lines of Droysen’s, Bernheim’s, and Langlois and Seignobos’s schemes of historical method, I will, for the sake of consistency, refrain from analysing in-depth the complex epistemological and ontological arguments in which those schemes are nested. (shrink)

Advocates of dynamic systems have suggested that higher mental processes are based on continuous representations. In order to evaluate this claim, we first define the concept of representation, and rigorously distinguish between discrete representations and continuous representations. We also explore two important bases of representational content. Then, we present seven arguments that discrete representations are necessary for any system that must discriminate between two or more states. It follows that higher mental processes require discrete representations. We also argue that discrete (...) representations are more influenced by conceptual role than continuous representations. We end by arguing that the presence of discrete representations in cognitive systems entails that computationalism (i.e., the view that the mind is a computational device) is true, and that cognitive science should embrace representational pluralism. (shrink)

A fundamental question asked in modal logic is whether a given theory is consistent. But consistent with what? A typical way to address this question identifies a choice of background knowledge axioms (say, S4, D, etc.) and then shows the assumptions codified by the theory in question to be consistent with those background axioms. But determining the specific choice and division of background axioms is, at least sometimes, little more than tradition. This paper introduces generic theories for propositional modal logic (...) to address consistency results in a more robust way. As building blocks for background knowledge, generic theories provide a standard for categorical determinations of consistency. We argue that the results and methods of this paper help to elucidate problems in epistemology and enjoy sufficient scope and power to have purchase on problems bearing on modalities in judgement, inference, and decision making. (shrink)