Par risques majeurs, on entend ceux qui s’attachent à des événements dont les conséquences défavorables, pour l’humanité ou pour l’environnement, sont d’une gravité exceptionnelle. On n’ajoutera ni que ces événements sont d’une intensité physique extrême, ni qu’ils surviennent rarement, car ce n’est pas toujours le cas. Seuls des risques majeurs de nature civile seront considérés dans cet ouvrage, et il s'agira, plus limitativement, de risques naturels, comme ceux d’inondation et de submersion marine, illustrés par la tempête Xynthia en 2010, de (...) risques technologiques industriels, comme celui d’une explosion d'usine, illustré par la catastrophe AZF en 2001, et de risques nucléaires, pour autant qu’ils mettent en jeu les dangers de la radioactivité, et qu’illustrent, hors de France, les catastrophes de Three Miles Island (1979), Tchernobyl (1986) et Fukushima (2011), -/- Conçu comme un rapport destiné au Conseil d'analyse économique (CAE) du Premier Ministre français, l'ouvrage comporte une introduction traitant du risque majeur pris en général (section 1). Dans sa partie principale, il aborde les trois risques majeurs qu'il a sélectionnés à travers les prismes successifs de la géographie et de la technologie (section 2), de l’histoire institutionnelle et juridique (section 3), enfin d’un bilan normatif accompagné de recommandations pour l'action publique (section 4). -/- Neuf compléments spécialisés, dus à d'autres auteurs, complètent l'ouvrage. Ils portent sur des aspects technologiques (F. Ménage; A. Quantin et D. Moucoulon; P. Saint-Raymond), juridiques (V. Sanseverino-Godfrin), économiques généraux (C. Grislain-Letrémy et B. Villeneuve; R. Lahidji; J. Percebois; A. Schmitt et S. Spaeter) et financiers (M. Pappalardo) et ils concernent principalement le risque nucléaire. -/- Dans cet ensemble de vaste format, on espère avoir su proposer, non seulement des évaluations et des préconisations destinées aux pouvoirs publics, comme il convenait au projet initial de rapport, mais aussi une synthèse qui soit utilisable par tous ceux - décideurs, scientifiques ou simples observateurs - que préoccupent les questions de risques majeurs. (shrink)

In this article, I draw an important distinction between two kinds of inquiry. “Framed inquiries” take for granted and use a conceptual framework in order to ask and answer questions, while “framing inquiries” require the creation, revision, or expansion of the conceptual framework itself in order to address the problem at hand. This distinction has been largely ignored in epistemology, and collapsed by two radically opposed philosophical camps: representationalism and antirepresentationalism. While the former takes all inquiries to be in the (...) business of discovering mind-independent facts, the latter takes all inquiries to be primarily governed by pragmatic considerations. Against the objections raised by both camps, I defend a pragmatist and substantive distinction between framed and framing inquiry, inspired by Rudolf Carnap’s distinction between internal and external questions and reformulated in terms of John Dewey’s theory of inquiry. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering takes a distinctively normative and reconstructive approach to our conceptual repertoire. This approach is congenial to the ideas defended by philosophers belonging to the multifaceted tradition of American and Cambridge Pragmatism. This special issue is devoted to the investigation and development of these connections. Our introduction maps some of the historical and theoretical entanglements between the two fields and gives a short overview of the contributions to the special issue.

"What are you?" This question, whether explicitly raised by another or implied in his gaze, is one with which many persons perceived to be racially ambiguous struggle. This article centers on encounters with this question. Its aim is twofold: first, to describe the phenomenology of a particular type of racializing encounter, one in which one of the parties is perceived to be racially ambiguous; second, to investigate how these often alienating encounters can be better negotiated. In the course of this (...) investigation, this article examines the addressee's point of view and consider possible responses to the other's question. In addition, it discusses the addresser's perspective, both to probe the curiosity underlying the "What are you?" question and to explore alternatives to it. By describing the phenomenology of these encounters, this article hopes to show that racial ambiguity, as distinct from mixed-race, is a category of lived experience that calls for deeper philosophical scrutiny. (shrink)

Do physicists believe that general relativity is true, and that electrons and phonons exist, and if so, in what sense? To what extent does the spectrum of positions among physicists correspond to philosophical positions like scientific realism, instrumentalism, or perspectivism? Does agreement with these positions correlate with demographic factors, and are realist physicists more likely to support research projects purely aimed at increasing knowledge? We conducted a questionnaire study to scrutinize the philosophical stances of physicists. We received responses from 384 (...) physicists and 151 philosophers. Our main findings are (1) On average, physicists tend toward scientific realism, and slightly more so than philosophers of science. (2) Physicists can be clustered into five groups. Three show variants of scientific realism, one is instrumentalist, and one seems undecided or incoherent. (3) Agreement with realism weakly correlates with approval of building a bigger particle collider. (4) Agreement with realism weakly correlates with the seniority of physicists. (5) We did not find correlations with other factors, such as whether physicists focus on theoretical or experimental research and whether they engage with applied or basic research. (shrink)

In this paper, building on these previous works, we propose to go deeper into the understanding of crowd behavior by proposing an approach which integrates ontologi- cal models of crowd behavior and dedicated computer vision algorithms, with the aim of recognizing some targeted complex events happening in the playground from the observation of the spectator crowd behavior. In order to do that, we first propose an ontology encoding available knowledge on spectator crowd behavior, built as a spe- cialization of the (...) DOLCE foundational ontology, which allows the representation of categories belonging both to the physical and to the social realms. We then propose a simplified and tractable version of such ontology in a new temporal extension of a description logic, which is used for temporally coupling events happening on the play- ground and spectator crowd behavior. At last, computer vision algorithms provide the input information concerning what is observed on the stands and ontological reasoning delivers the output necessary to perform complex event recognition. (shrink)

A longish (12 page) discussion of Richard Sorabji's excellent book, with a further discussion of what it means for a theory of emotions to be a cognitive theory.

In discussing instrumentalism in philosophy of science, John Dewey is rarely studied, but rather mentioned in passing to credit him for coining the label. His instrumentalism is often interpreted as the view that science is an instrument designed to control the environment and satisfy our practical ends, or likened to the Duhemian view that scientific objects are useful fictions for organizing observable phenomena. Dewey was careful to qualify the first view and denied holding the second. Furthermore, the observable/unobservable distinction does (...) not play any significant role in Dewey’s instrumentalism. The question then arises: Was the inventor of instrumentalism himself an instrumentalist? I present the key aspects of Dewey’s instrumentalismand contrast his views with the instrumentalism of Mach, Duhem and Poincaré. Dewey’s epistemological instrumentalism is global and not local; nevertheless, it is fallibilist and optimistic, rather than skeptical and pessimistic. Dewey’s ontological instrumentalism concerns the nature of scientific objects, regardless of whether they are observable or unobservable, and is fully compatible with realism about atoms or electrons. Dewey’s practical instrumentalism holds that becausescience provides understanding of the workings of nature rather than an exhaustive picture of reality, it is thebest instrument we have for the enrichment of experience. (shrink)

This article examines the question of life's meaning in the Anthropocene, an era where the biosphere is significantly threatened by human activities. To introduce the existential dilemma posed by the Anthropocene, Leboeuf considers Samuel Scheffler's Death and the Afterlife. According to Scheffler, the existence of others after one's death shapes how one finds life meaningful. Thus, anyone who sees a connection between the meaning of life and the future of humanity should ask, why live in the Anthropocene? Leboeuf answers this (...) question via William James's lecture “Is Life Worth Living?” James, Leboeuf argues, would enjoin us not to waste time deliberating about life's worthwhileness. Instead, we must meet the challenges placed on us. Today we are summoned by our climate crisis to fight for our survival. Even if our collective future will have been shortened by our inaction, life is worth living in the Anthropocene. (shrink)

This reply to an ongoing debate between conspiracy theory researchers from different disciplines exposes the conceptual confusions that underlie some of the disagreements in conspiracy theory research. Reconciling these conceptual confusions is important because conspiracy theories are a multidisciplinary topic and a profound understanding of them requires integrative insights from different fields. Specifically, we distinguish research focussing on conspiracy *theories* (and theorizing) from research of conspiracy *belief* (and mindset, theorists) and explain how particularism with regards to conspiracy theories does not (...) mean we cannot define a problematic subclass of conspiracy beliefs, while avoiding the problems of generalism. We hope this reply helps conspiracy theory researchers recognize the differences between studying conspiracy theories and conspiracy beliefs and appreciate the possibilities for fruitful, integrative, and interdisciplinary research. (shrink)

Machine learning algorithms may radically improve our ability to diagnose and treat disease. For moral, legal, and scientific reasons, it is essential that doctors and patients be able to understand and explain the predictions of these models. Scalable, customisable, and ethical solutions can be achieved by working together with relevant stakeholders, including patients, data scientists, and policy makers.

Practical reason is the general human capacity for resolving, through reflection, the question of what one is to do. Deliberation of this kind is practical in at least two senses. First, it is practical in its subject matter, insofar as it is concerned with action. But it is also practical in its consequences or its issue, insofar as reflection about action itself directly moves people to act. Our capacity for deliberative self-determination raises two sets of philosophical problems. For one thing, (...) there are questions about how deliberation can succeed in being practical in its issue. What do we need to assume—both about agents and about the processes of reasoning they engage in—to make sense of the fact that deliberative reflection can directly give rise to action? Can we do justice to this dimension of practical reason while preserving the idea that practical deliberation is genuinely a form of reasoning? For another, there are large issues concerning the content of the standards that are brought to bear in practical reasoning. Which norms for the assessment of action are binding on us as deliberating agents? Do these norms provide resources for critical reflection about our ends, or are they exclusively instrumental? Under what conditions do moral norms yield valid standards for reasoning about action? The first set of issues is addressed in sections §§1–3 of the present article, while sections §§4–6 cover the second set of issues. (shrink)

Despite the ubiquity of inner speech in our mental lives, methods for objectively assessing inner speech capacities remain underdeveloped. The most common means of assessing inner speech is to present participants with tasks requiring them to silently judge whether two words rhyme. We developed a version of this task to assess the inner speech of a population of patients with aphasia and corresponding language production deficits. As expected, patients’ performance on the silent rhyming task was severely impaired relative to controls. (...) More surprisingly, however, patients’ performance on this task did not correlate with their performance on a variety of other standard tests of overt language abilities. In particular, patients who were generally unimpaired in their abilities to overtly name objects during confrontation naming tasks, and who could reliably judge when two words spoken to them rhymed, were still severely impaired (relative to controls) at completing the silent rhyme task. This seems to suggest that inner speech was more severely impaired in these patients than outer speech. However, these results should also cause us to critically reflect on the relation between inner speech and silent rhyme judgments more generally. (shrink)

In recent years, language has been shown to play a number of important cognitive roles over and above the communication of thoughts. One hypothesis gaining support is that language facilitates thought about abstract categories, such as democracy or prediction. To test this proposal, a novel set of semantic memory task trials, designed for assessing abstract thought non-linguistically, were normed for levels of abstractness. The trials were rated as more or less abstract to the degree that answering them required the participant (...) to abstract away from both perceptual features and common setting associations corresponding to the target image. The normed materials were then used with a population of people with aphasia to assess the relationship of abstract thought to language. While the language-impaired group with aphasia showed lower overall accuracy and longer response times than controls in general, of special note is that their response times were significantly longer as a function of a trial’s degree of abstractness. Further, the aphasia group’s response times in reporting their degree of confidence (a separate, metacognitive measure) were negatively correlated with their language production abilities, with lower language scores predicting longer metacognitive response times. These results provide some support for the hypothesis that language is an important aid to abstract thought and to metacognition about abstract thought. (shrink)

In the early part of the paper, I attempt to explain a dispute between two parties who endorse the compositionality of language but disagree about its implications: Paul Horwich, and Jerry Fodor and Ernest Lepore. In the remainder of the paper, I challenge the thesis on which they are agreed, that compositionality can be taken for granted. I suggest that it is not clear what compositionality involves nor whether it obtains. I consider some kinds of apparent counterexamples, and compositionalist responses (...) to them in terms of covert indexicality and unspecific meanings. I argue that the last option is the best for most of the cases I consider. I conclude by stressing, as against Horwich and Fodor and Lepore, that the appropriate question concerns the extent to which compositionality obtains in a natural language, rather than whether it obtains or not, so that the answer is essentially messy, requiring detailed consideration of a wide range of examples. (shrink)

The paper argues that intensional phenomena can be explained without appealing to "exotic" entities: one that don't exist, are merely possible, or are essentially abstract.

In Galileo's Error, Philip Goff sets out a manifesto for a post-Galilean science of consciousness. Article four of the manifesto reads: 'Anti-Dualism: Consciousness is not separate from the physical world; rather consciousness is located in the intrinsic nature of the physical world.' I argue that there is an important sense of ‘dualism’ in which Goff’s arguments are not only compatible with but entail dualism, and not only dualism but substance dualism. Substance dualism, in the sense I have in mind, is (...) the view that (i) there are two sides to reality, a fundamentally mental side and a fundamentally nonmental side; and (ii) the fundamentally mental side consists of mental substances resembling Cartesian souls. I do not suggest that this is bad news for post-Galilean science of consciousness. My aim is rather to push for a certain view about what a theory of consciousness motivated by Goff’s arguments must look like. (shrink)

The paper describes economic crises as a term with different kinds of meanings, a term which undergoes continuous development. The way of understanding this term is intimately connected with the role of state in the sphere of economy. Before the big economic crises nobody expected the state to interfere with the economy. However, after the crises in 1930's till the end of 1970's it was considered as one of the main tasks of the state. The role of state was to (...) prevent the crises or to reduce its negative consequences. Due to the dominant position of the economic thinking in the present-day world the meanings of the term economic crises influence also the meanings of term crises in other fields. (shrink)

En este artículo se examina de qué forma los investigadores de la Inteligencia Artificial han asumido un desafío propuesto por Descartes: la imposibilidad de construir máquinas programadas que, al entender lenguaje, evidencien que son pensantes. Tal desafío, que se enmarca en la filosofía metafísica cartesiana, distingue entre cosa pensante y extensa, siendo imposible la existencia de pensamiento en esta última. El lenguaje evidencia la imposibilidad de la inteligencia de máquina, de hecho. Como se examina, al enfrentar el desafío cartesiano, dichos (...) investigadores han debido suponer como verdadera parte de la teoría cartesiana, a saber, que el uso flexible de lenguaje implica la existencia de pensamiento. Por ello califico de ambivalente la relación que tiene la Inteligencia Artificial con el filósofo francés: por una parte, rechazan la imposibilidad en principio de la inteligencia de máquina; por otra, están de acuerdo con Descartes en que el uso flexible de lenguaje es suficiente para mostrar que alguien piensa. Si bien el carácter ambivalente entre la IA y Descartes parece anecdótico, no lo es. El hecho de que aún se considere el Test de Turing como una evaluación adecuada de la inteligencia corrobora la compleja relación entre la IA y el pensamiento cartesiano. (shrink)

The philosophy of science of Patrick Suppes is centered on two important notions that are part of the title of his recent book (Suppes 2002): Representation and Invariance. Representation is important because when we embrace a theory we implicitly choose a way to represent the phenomenon we are studying. Invariance is important because, since invariants are the only things that are constant in a theory, in a way they give the “objective” meaning of that theory. Every scientific theory gives a (...) representation of a class of structures and studies the invariant properties holding in that class of structures. In Suppes’ view, the best way to define this class of structures is via axiomatization. This is because a class of structures is given by a definition, and this same definition establishes which are the properties that a single structure must possess in order to belong to the class. These properties correspond to the axioms of a logical theory. In Suppes’ view, the best way to characterize a scientific structure is by giving a representation theorem for its models and singling out the invariants in the structure. Thus, we can say that the philosophy of science of Patrick Suppes consists in the application of the axiomatic method to scientific disciplines. What I want to argue in this paper is that this application of the axiomatic method is also at the basis of a new approach that is being increasingly applied to the study of computer science and information systems, namely the approach of formal ontologies. The main task of an ontology is that of making explicit the conceptual structure underlying a certain domain. By “making explicit the conceptual structure” we mean singling out the most basic entities populating the domain and writing axioms expressing the main properties of these primitives and the relations holding among them. So, in both cases, the axiomatization is the main tool used to characterize the object of inquiry, being this object scientific theories (in Suppes’ approach), or information systems (for formal ontologies). In the following section I will present the view of Patrick Suppes on the philosophy of science and the axiomatic method, in section 3 I will survey the theoretical issues underlying the work that is being done in formal ontologies and in section 4 I will draw a comparison of these two approaches and explore similarities and differences between them. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers track folk intuitions better than armchair reflection. Yet, many of them are stuck in a controversy: on the one hand they have vividly shown how untrustworthy intuition is. On the other, they depend all their theorising on the intuitions recorded. If intuition is unreliable, though, why does it make it bet- ter to rely on the intuitions of the many? A mistake is not less a mistake if made by many.

This essay explores the inherent blankness of life, describing it as devoid of fixed meaning, purpose, or morality. It discusses how humans struggle with this blankness, often attempting to avoid or fill it through various activities and pursuits. The essay distinguishes between natural biological activities and those driven by fear and anxiety, emphasizing how societal conditioning contributes to the latter. It delves into the role of rationality in avoiding blankness, the discomfort of silence, and the vibrancy that this blankness holds. (...) Ultimately, it advocates for embracing this blankness as a source of freedom, vitality, and profound insight into the nature of existence. (shrink)

The precautionary principle (PP) aims to anticipate and minimize potentially serious or irreversible risks under conditions of scientific uncertainty. Thus it preserves the potential for future developments. It has been incorporated into many international treaties and pieces of national legislation for environmental protection and sustainable development. In this article, we outline an interpretation of the PP as a framework of orientation for a sustainable information society. Since the risks induced by future information and communication technologies (ICT) are social risks for (...) the most part, we propose to extend the PP from mainly environmental to social subjects of protection. From an ethical point of view, the PP and sustainability share the principle of intergenerational justice, which can be used as an argument to preserve free space for the decisions of future generations. Applied to technical innovation and to ICT issues in particular, the extended PP can serve as a framework of orientation to avoid socio-economically irreversible developments. We conclude that the PP is a useful approach for: (i) policy makers to reconcile information society and sustainability policies and (ii) ICT companies to formulate sustainability strategies. (shrink)

Transitional justice theorizing has the tendency to smuggle in an over-reliance on dualities: one’s resentment can give rise to either vengeance or forgiveness, but not both; one can either be fueled by anger or by the hope of progress, but not both; and so on. This dualistic way of thinking replicates the kinds of false dichotomies that hamstring other societal movements, among them the struggle against racism. Drawing on Myisha Cherry’s case for so-called ‘Lordean rage’ within the context of the (...) anti-racist movement, I make the case that transitional justice in general would be well-served by centering the transformative power of emotion (even and especially when that emotion defies oversimplified and strict categorization). (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic and global climate change crisis remind us that widespread trust in the products of the scientific enterprise is vital to the health and safety of the global community. Insofar as appropriate responses to these crises require us to trust that enterprise, cultivating a healthier trust relationship between science and the public may be considered as a collective public good. While it might appear that scientists can contribute to this good by taking more initiative to communicate their work (...) to public audiences, we raise a concern about unintended consequences of an individualistic approach to such communication. (shrink)

The role of intuition in Kant’s account of experience receives perennial philosophical attention. In this essay, I present the textual case that Kant also makes extensive reference to what he terms “images” that are generated by the imagination. Beyond this, as I argue, images are fundamentally distinct from empirical and pure intuitions. Images and empirical intuitions differ in how they relate to sensation, and all images (even “pure images”) actually depend on pure intuitions. Moreover, all images differ from intuitions in (...) their structure or format. I then turn to a question that naturally arises on the resulting view: if the imagination produces images, and if images are fundamentally distinct from intuitions, then how do intuitions relate to the imagination? I outline reasons for thinking that intuitions and their essential features do not depend on the imagination at all. Though this essay does not decisively argue for this thesis, the resulting view provides a clear account of the distinction between the senses and the imagination in Kant’s theory of sensibility. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that ordinary conscious experience involves some form of sense of self or consciousness of oneself. Moreover, this claim is often restricted to a 'thin' or 'minimal' notion of self-consciousness, or even 'the simplest form of self-consciousness', as opposed to more sophisticated forms of self-consciousness which are not deemed ubiquitous in ordinary experience. These formulations suggest that self-consciousness comes in degrees, and that individual subjects may differ with respect to the degree of self-consciousness they exhibit at a (...) given time. In this article, I critically examine this assumption. I consider what the claim that self-consciousness comes in degrees may mean, raise some challenges against the different versions of the claim, and conclude that none of them is both coherent and particularly plausible. (shrink)

The present paper aims to validate our research on human–humanoid interaction (HHI) using the minimalist humanoid robot Telenoid. We conducted the human–robot interaction test with 142 young people who had no prior interaction experience with this robot. The main goal is the analysis of the two social dimensions (‘‘Perception’’ and ‘‘Believability’’) useful for increasing the natural behaviour between users and Telenoid.Weadministered our custom questionnaire to human subjects in association with a well defined experimental setting (‘‘ordinary and goal-guided task’’). A thorough (...) analysis of the questionnaires has been carried out and reliability and internal consistency in correlation between the multiple items has been calculated. Our experimental results show that the perceptual behaviour and believability, as implicit social competences, could improve the meaningfulness and the natural-like sense of human–humanoid interaction in everyday life task-driven activities. Telenoid is perceived as an autonomous cooperative agent for a shared environment by human beings. (shrink)

I should like to offer my greatest thanks to Paul Griffiths for providing the opportunity for this exchange, and to commentators Gillian Brown, Steven Fuller, Stefan Linquist, and Erika Milam for their generous and thought-provoking comments. I shall do my best in this space to respond to some of their concerns.

Political liberals ask citizens not to appeal to certain considerations, including religious and philosophical convictions, in political deliberation. We argue that political liberals must include a demanding requirement of intellectual modesty in their ideal of citizenship in order to motivate this deliberative restraint. The requirement calls on each citizen to believe that the best reasoners disagree about the considerations that she is barred from appealing to. Along the way, we clarify how requirements of intellectual modesty relate to moral reasons for (...) deliberative restraint. And we argue against attempts to weaken our requirement of intellectual modesty by emphasizing those moral reasons. (shrink)

Translated from: Searle, J. R. 'Social Ontology: some basic principles'. Anthopological Theory, 2006, Vol. 6, issue 1, pp.51-71.

This article is in a larger textbook of articles on Medical Ethics. It identifies a number of values that underlie professional commitments to confidentiality that are involved in protecting or promoting the client's (1) privacy, (2)social status, (3) economic advantages, (4) openness of communications, (5) seeking professional help, (6) trust in professionals, (7) autonomous control over personal information. The problem of making exceptions to confidentiality commitments is also examined.

We argue that least-developed countries (LDCs) should be treated as a distinct group from developing countries within theories of global justice generally, and theories of trade justice more specifically. While authors within the trade justice literature occasionally make passing reference to LDCs’ entitlement to special favourable treatment from other states, little is said about what form this treatment should take, and how such entitlements relate to the obligations and entitlements of both developed and developing countries. This oversight is untenable in (...) that it neglects the different character and urgency of LDCs’ needs with respect to the economic opportunities afforded to them in international markets. Moreover, by categorising trading states into binary categories of developed/developing or rich/poor, trade justice theorists have ended up obscuring and passing over unavoidable conflicts between least-developed and developing countries’ interests, the weighing of which should be central to any complete normative evaluation of the trade regime. We provide an example of such a conflict of interest and how it should be resolved by examining the structural barrier to LDC economic development presented by the current success of many developing countries in export manufacturing. We argue in favour of a trade policy intervention that would dismantle this structural barrier (by inducing export firms to move to LDCs), even though this means diverting valuable economic opportunities from developing countries. (shrink)

This paper critiques the new mechanistic explanatory program on grounds that, even when applied to the kinds of examples that it was originally designed to treat, it does not distinguish correct explanations from those that blunder. First, I offer a systematization of the explanatory account, one according to which explanations are mechanistic models that satisfy three desiderata: they must 1) represent causal relations, 2) describe the proper parts, and 3) depict the system at the right ‘level.’ Second, I argue that (...) even the most developed attempts to fulfill these desiderata fall short by failing to appropriately constrain explanatorily apt mechanistic models. -/- *This paper used to be called "The Emperor's New Mechanisms". (shrink)

Nihilism, Nietzsche and the Doppelganger Problem Was Nietzsche a nihilist? Yes, because, like J. L. Mackie, he was an error-theorist about morality, including the elitist morality to which he himself subscribed. But he was variously a diagnostician, an opponent and a survivor of certain other kinds of nihilism. Schacht argues that Nietzsche cannot have been an error theorist, since meta-ethical nihilism is inconsistent with the moral commitment that Nietzsche displayed. Schacht’s exegetical argument parallels the substantive argument (advocated in recent years (...) by Wright and Blackburn) that Mackie’s error theory can’t be true because if it were, we would have to give up morality or give up moralizing. I answer this argument with a little bit of help from Nietzsche. I then pose a problem, the Doppelganger Problem, for the meta-ethical nihilism that I attribute to Mackie and Nietzsche. (If A is a moral proposition then not-A is a moral proposition: hence not all moral propositions can be false.) I solve the problem by reformulating the error theory and also deal with a variant of the problem, the Reinforced Doppelganger, glancing at a famous paper of Ronald Dworkin’s. Thus, whatever its demerits, the error theory, is not self-refuting, nor does it require us to give up morality. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose RSI-LLM (Recursively Self-Improving Large Language Model), which recursively executes its inference and improves its parameters to fulfill the instrumental goals of superintelligence: G1: Self-preservation, G2: Goal-content integrity, G3: Intelligence enhancement, and G4: Resource acquisition. We empirically observed the behavior of the LLM that tries to design tools to achieve G1~G4, within the autonomous self-improvement and knowledge acquisition. During interventions in these LLMs' coding experiments to ensure safetyness, we have also discovered that, as the creator of (...) the LLM, we are able to change or edit any of those LLMs' cognitive information about the world in any modality, including time, vision, hearing, etc. We discuss the relationship between us humans and these LLMs in the context of the creator and the creation of the observable universe. (shrink)

The ancient Greeks already used to give ethnic names to their different scales, and observations on differences in music of the various nations always raised the interest of musicians and philosophers. Yet, it was only in the late nineteenth century that “comparative musicology” became an institutional science. An important role in this process was played by Carl Stumpf, a former pupil of Brentano’s who pioneered these researches in Berlin. Stumpf founded the Phonogrammarchiv to collect recordings of folk and extra-European music (...) and a dedicated journal, the Sammelbände für vergleichende Musikwissenschaft. Gifted in the field of science no less than in that of musicology, Stumpf developed an empirically-oriented approach to phenomenology, deeply divergent from Husserl’s and highly influential over the Berlin school of Gestalt psychology. A self-declared “outsider” among armchair philosophers, Stumpf experimentally investigated the perception of sounds and the origins of musical consonance. Developing the physiological studies of Ernst Weber on the sense of touch, Stumpf discovered that two sensations of tone, given at the same time, tend to mix in a certain degree. Musical consonance – he claimed – lays in this level of “tonal fusion”, not in the allegedly “natural” series of the harmonic partials of a vibrating chord, as suggested by the naturalists of all times from Pythagoras to Stumpf’s great contemporary Hermann Helmholtz. Accordingly, no musical system can claim for preponderance over the others: Stumpf’s researches in comparative musicology served to corroborate his theses on “tonal fusion” and the psychological foundations of consonance. Although Stumpf later revised and finally abandoned this theory, its permanent value lays in its opposition to dominant naturalistic approaches. The commitment for comparative musicology at the Berlin School is then no concession to a positivistic fashion for exoticism. The fundamentally Eurocentric stance of naturalistic theories of music is also fiercely contrasted by Stumpf’s pupil Erich Hornbostel, who suggests that music ought to be considered as culture, rather than as nature, and focuses attention on the eventually melting human cultures. The Berlin school flourished until the Nazis forced most of its exponents to emigration and, for tragically obvious reasons, heavily discouraged researches on these topics. (shrink)

Within contemporary philosophical theology the doctrine of divine simplicity has regained attention. There are several new defenses of simplicity in the literature. One of the more surprising, and troubling, aspects of the contemporary defenses amongst Christian philosophers and theologians is a seeming lack of understanding about how radical the doctrine of divine simplicity truly is. As such, I wish to do a few things in this paper. First, systematically articulate the doctrine of divine simplicity. Second, argue that divine simplicity is (...) not a possible perfection. Third, offer some concluding remarks and remaining issues that will need to be sorted out for the debate over simplicity to continue. (shrink)

Providing the most thorough coverage available in one volume, this comprehensive, broadly based collection offers a wide variety of selections in four major genres, and also includes a section on film. Each of the five sections contains a detailed critical introduction to each form, brief biographies of the authors, and a clear, concise editorial apparatus. Updated and revised throughout, the new Fourth Edition adds essays by Margaret Mead, Russell Baker, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, and Alice Walker; fiction by Nathaniel Hawthorne, (...) Ursula K. LeGuin, Anton Chekov, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Alice Walker, Louise Erdrich, Donald Barthelme, and James McPherson; poems by John Donne, Robert Browning, Walt Whitman, Edwin Arlington Robinson, e.e. cummings, Langston Hughes, W.H. Auden, Philip Levine, and Louise Gluck; and plays by August Wilson, Marsha Norman, Wendy Wasserstein, and Vaclav Havel. The chapter devoted to film examines the relation of film to literature and gives the complete screenplay for Citizen Kane plus close analysis of a scene from the film. With its innovative structure, comprehensive coverage, and insightful and stimulating presentation of all kinds of literature, this is an anthology readers will turn to again and again. (shrink)

Among the factors necessary for the occurrence of some event, which of these are selectively highlighted in its explanation and labeled as causes — and which are explanatorily omitted, or relegated to the status of background conditions? Following J. S. Mill, most have thought that only a pragmatic answer to this question was possible. In this paper I suggest we understand this ‘causal selection problem’ in causal-explanatory terms, and propose that explanatory trade-offs between abstraction and stability can provide a principled (...) solution to it. After sketching that solution, it is applied to a few biological examples, including to a debate concerning the ‘causal democracy’ of organismal development, with an anti-democratic (though not a gene-centric) moral. (shrink)

The exploration of the mind is a fundamental pursuit spanning philosophy and psychology, with implications reaching into diverse practical realms. This paper delves into the intricacies of mental states, examining historical perspectives from ancient philosophers to modern theorists. Philosophical inquiries into intentionality, consciousness, and the nature of mental phenomena are scrutinized, alongside empirical investigations by psychologists. The discourse navigates through contrasting theories such as dualism, materialism, and functionalism, shedding light on the challenges of reconciling subjective experiences with objective observations. The (...) problem of other minds and the tension between internalism and externalism are dissected, revealing the complex interplay between individual cognition and external influences. Ultimately, this analysis underscores the intricate nature of philosophical inquiries into consciousness and the mind. (shrink)

The concept of the mind in philosophy encompasses a diverse range of theories and perspectives, examining its immaterial nature, unitary function, self-activity, self-consciousness, and persistence despite bodily changes. This paper explores the attributes of the mind, addressing classical materialism, dualism, and behaviorism, along with contemporary theories like functionalism and computational functionalism. Key philosophical debates include the mind-body problem, the subjectivity of mental states, and the epistemological and conceptual challenges in understanding other minds. Contrasting views from Aristotle, Descartes, Wittgenstein, and modern (...) philosophers like U.T. Place, Gilbert Ryle, and Hilary Putnam are analyzed. The paper also discusses the implications of these theories on our understanding of mental phenomena, consciousness, and the nature of human experience. (shrink)

It is contended that to construct a social theory capable to comprehend the Russian Modernization one has to broaden first and foremost the conceptual basis of research. The basic element lacking in the orthodox Marxist conceptual scheme is the notion of ‘social unconsciousness’. It is demonstrated that Slavoj Zizek’s works represent the most ingenious fusion of post-structuralism, psychoanalysis and Marxism that treats the ability to disclose social contradictions. It is shown that the adequate comprehension of social contradictions system is possible (...) in the light of ideologies grounded on social equality values . They can reveal the main contradiction of Russian social life, i.e. the contradiction between Empire Ambitions of Russian bureaucracy and the interests and values of the ill-structured Civil Society. Key words : ideologies, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, S. Zizek, social contradictions. (shrink)

Библиогр.: с. 190-206.В настоящей книге мы стремились обрисовать контуры нормативной модели смены фундаментальных научных теорий продемонстрировать эффективность ее применения на примере перехода «Лоренц – Эйнштейн». Нелишне еще раз подчеркнуть, что ни сама модель, ни задаваемые ей теоретические реконструкции ни в коей мере не являются окончательными. Единственное, на что претендует автор, – это лишь на то, что они лучше – в определенных аспектах – предложенных к настоящему времени моделей и реконструкций. Поэтому не только нельзя констатировать, что все проблемы – методологического и (...) историко-научного характера (даже сформулированные в начале данного исследования) – полностью и окончательно решены. Напротив, предлагаемая концепция ставит (а иногда по-новому формулирует) ряд сложных и интеречных задач. Перечислим вкратце некоторые из них. Во-первых, желательно выяснить, насколько данная концепция является универсальной, уточнить область ее применимости. Может ли она претендовать на реконструкцию всех процессов смены в истории физики, и если не может, то каких именно? Ответ на последний вопрос представляет для модели исключительный интерес, поскольку он может указать на возможные направления ее дальнейшего совершенствования. Скажем, способна ли наша концепция дать достаточно адекватные описания переходов «Птолемей – Коперник» или «Аристотель – Галилей – Ньютон»? Далее, применима ли наша модель к развитию других естественных наук, скажем, к историям химии и биологии? Может ли она описать переходы «Пристли – Лавуазье» или «Ламарк – Дарвин»? Во-вторых, как «работает» модель в современной физике? Способна ли она указать определенные направления крайне актуального сейчас синтеза общей теории относительности и квантовой теории поля? Некоторые попытки (см., например, Нугаев, 1987) обнадеживают, но до реальных результатов еще далеко. В-третьих, реконструкция научной революциив физике в начале XX века также ставит не меньше проблем чем решает. Несмотря на то, она ориентирует исследователей на единое, целостное рассмотрение двух рассматривавшихся, как правило, изолированно, научных революций – квантовой и релятивистской – встает вопрос о более детальном рассмотрении взаимодействия «эйнштейновской» и «боровской» программ. Дальнейшее продвижение в этом направлении предполагает рассмотрение, возможно, под новым углом зрения, истории становления квантовой механики начиная с 20-х годов. И, наконец, последней (отнюдь не по важности) является проблема взаимодействия когнитивных и социальных факторов в процессе смены фундаментальных теорий. Иногда отказ от стандартной гипотетико-дедуктивной интерпретации естественнонауч-ной теории (см. подробнее введение) воспринимается как свидетельство в пользу так называемой «сильной программы» социологии науки, сформулированной Д. Блуром, с. Барнсом и др. (см., например, обзор «Современная западная социология науки», 1988). С точки зрения сторонников этой программы, движущие силы развития научного познания определяются не внутренними факторами развития науки, а ее социокультурным окружением. Именно последнее оказывает решающее влияние на смену фундаментальных теорий. Например, согласно работе американского историка науки П. Формана «Веймарская культура, причинность и квантовая теория», причиной перехода от классической механики к квантовой было распространение среди немецких физиков экзистенциалистской « философии жизни», характеризующейся антагонизмом к рациональности. Одним из каналов, через который индетерминистские настроения «проникали» в среду немецких ученых, была философия Шпенглера (см. подробнее Мамчур, 1987). Как справедливо (там же) отмечает Е. А. Мамчур, необходимо проводить различие между социальной природой познания, его социокультурной обусловленностью и социокультурной детермина-цией. Концепция социальной природы познания – важнейший принцип гносеологии: подлинным субъктом познания является все человеческое общество. Согласно тезису о социокультурной обусловленности познания, разделяемому подавляющим большинством исследователей (см., например, Бляхер и Волынская, 1976; Казютинский, 1979; Карпинская, 1980; Кузнецова, 1984; Пахомов, 1985 и др.), социокультурные факторы через философию, картину мира, идеалы научного познания оказывают определенное влияние на процесс научного познания. Но тезис о социокультурной детерминации требует, чтобы социокультурные факторы определяли саму внутреннюю логику развития науки и, как таковой, вызывает определенные трудности в интерпретации различных периодов развития науки (подробнее см. Мамчур, 1987). (shrink)

This essay focuses on realism in ontology and on the problem of defining reality. According to the definition given by many realists, reality is independent of our thoughts, conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, etc. Yet, this merely negative definition of reality has some disadvantages: it implies a dualistic view, and it is incompatible with scientific realism. As an alternative, I introduce and discuss the traditional definition of reality as effectiveness, or capability of acting. I then attempt to determine to what extent (...) this definition can be helpful in the debate concerning ontological realism. (shrink)