A community, for ecologists, is a unit for discussing collections of organisms. It refers to collections of populations, which consist (by definition) of individuals of a single species. This is straightforward. But communities are unusual kinds of objects, if they are objects at all. They are collections consisting of other diverse, scattered, partly-autonomous, dynamic entities (that is, animals, plants, and other organisms). They often lack obvious boundaries or stable memberships, as their constituent populations not only change but also move in (...) and out of areas, and in and out of relationships with other populations. Familiar objects have identifiable boundaries, for example, and if communities do not, maybe they are not objects. Maybe they do not exist at all. The question this possibility suggests, of what criteria there might be for identifying communities, and for determining whether such communities exist at all, has long been discussed by ecologists. This essay addresses this question as it has recently been taken up by philosophers of science, by examining answers to it which appeared a century ago and which have framed the continuing discussion. (shrink)

The complexity and heterogeneity of causes influencing ecology’s domain challenge its capacity to generate a general theory without exceptions, raising the question of whether ecology is capable, even in principle, of achieving the sort of theoretical success enjoyed by physics. Weber has argued that competition theory built around the Competitive Exclusion Principle (especially Tilman’s resource-competition model) offers an example of ecology identifying a law-like causal regularity. However, I suggest that as Weber presents it, the CEP is not yet a causal (...) regularity. Instead, I argue that the scientific understanding in Tilman’s theory takes a different form. The theory explains through a structure I call “channeling explanation” which does not depend on deduction from general laws, but rather builds on constraints and trade-offs represented in state-space. Recognizing this structure supports the more general point that ecology and other so-called special sciences can reveal novel theoretical approaches to philosophy of science when approached with openness to their uniqueness. (shrink)

It is unfashionable to suggest that enactive processes - including some that involve the mirror neuron system - might contribute to the comprehension of sign language. The present essay formulates and defends a version of that unfashionable suggestion, as it applies to certain forms of syntactic processing. There is evidence that has been thought to weigh against any such suggestion, coming from neuroimaging experiments and from the study of Deaf aphasics. In both cases it is shown to be unpersuasive.

Aworkshop was held August 26–28, 2015, by the Earth- Life Science Institute (ELSI) Origins Network (EON, see Appendix I) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. This meeting gathered a diverse group of around 40 scholars researching the origins of life (OoL) from various perspectives with the intent to find common ground, identify key questions and investigations for progress, and guide EON by suggesting a roadmap of activities. Specific challenges that the attendees were encouraged to address included the following: What key (...) questions, ideas, and investigations should the OoL research community address in the near and long term? How can this community better organize itself and prioritize its efforts? What roles can particular subfields play, and what can ELSI and EON do to facilitate research progress? (See also Appendix II.) The present document is a product of that workshop; a white paper that serves as a record of the discussion that took place and a guide and stimulus to the solution of the most urgent and important issues in the study of the OoL. This paper is not intended to be comprehensive or a balanced representation of the opinions of the entire OoL research community. It is intended to present a number of important position statements that contain many aspirational goals and suggestions as to how progress can be made in understanding the OoL. The key role played in the field by current societies and recurring meetings over the past many decades is fully acknowledged, including the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL) and its official journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, as well as the International Society for Artificial Life (ISAL). (shrink)

Das spezifische Ziel von Argumentationen ist nicht einfach, den Adressaten etwas glauben zu machen - dies wäre bloße Rhetorik ﷓, sondern: den Adressaten beim Erkennen der Akzeptabilität (insbesondere der Wahrheit) der These anzuleiten und ihn so zu begründetem Glauben, zu Erkenntnis zu führen. Argumentationen leiten das Erkennen an, indem sie in ihren Argumenten hinreichende Akzeptabilitätsbedingungen der These als erfüllt beurteilen und so den Adressaten implizit auffordern, diese Bedingungen zu überprüfen. Argumentationen sind gültig, wenn sie prinzipiell das Erkennen anleiten können; d. (...) h. wenn die genannten Akzeptabilitätsbedingungen hinreichend sind, wenn sie tatsächlich erfüllt (die Argumente also wahr) sind und wenn es irgendjemanden gibt, der zwar die Akzeptabilität der Argumente, nicht aber die der These erkannt hat. Eine gültige Argumentation ist adäquat, um einen bestimmten Adressaten rational zu überzeugen, wenn dieser u. a. die Akzeptabilität der Argumente, nicht aber die der These erkannt hat. Die in gültigen Argumentationen als erfüllt beurteilten Akzeptabilitätsbedingungen sind Konkretisierungen allgemeiner Erkenntnisprinzipien für die spezifische These, z. B. des deduktiven Erkenntnisprinzips: 'Eine Proposition ist wahr, wenn sie von wahren Propositionen logisch impliziert wird.' oder des erkenntnisgenetischen Erkenntnisprinzips: 'Eine Proposition ist wahr, wenn sie korrekt verifiziert worden ist.' Eine Konkretisierung des deduktiven Prinzips für eine These p wäre z. B.: 'p ist wahr, 1. wenn q und r wahr sind und 2. wenn q und r zusammen p logisch implizieren.' Sind beide Bedingungen erfüllt, so könnte 'q; r; also p.' eine gültige deduktive Argumentation sein. Die verschiedenen Argumentationstypen unterscheiden sich danach, auf welchem Erkenntnisprinzip sie basieren. Das argumentativ angeleitete Erkennen der Akzeptabilität der These funktioniert so: Der Adressat benutzt das von ihm (zumindest implizit) gewußte allgemeine Erkenntnisprinzip als Checkliste, auf der er nach dem Vorbringen der Argumente abhakt, welche Akzeptabilitätsbedingung des Erkenntnisprinzips durch das Zutreffen des Arguments jeweils erfüllt wird. Auf der Basis dieser Funktionsbestimmung werden in der "Praktischen Argumentationstheorie" (erstmalig) präzise Gültigkeitskriterien für Argumentationen allgemein und für mehrere spezielle Argumentationstypen entwickelt, erkenntnistheoretisch begründet und auf komplexe Argumentationsbeispiele aus Philosophie, Wissenschaft, Technik und Kultur angewendet. Die Analyse der erkenntnistheoretischen Grundlagen - der zugrundeliegenden Erkenntnisprinzipien - vor allem der interpretierenden und praktischen Argumentationen ist zudem von erheblicher Bedeutung weit über die Argumentationstheorie hinaus: für die Interpretationstheorie, die Handlungstheorie und die praktische Philosophie. (shrink)

Der Download enthält die penultimative Fassung (noch unter dem vorläufigen Titel "Molina über Vorsehung und Freiheit"). Diese ausführliche Einleitung zu dem Band "Luis de Molina: Göttlicher Plan und menschliche Freiheit", hg. und übersetzt von C. Jäger, H. Kraml und G. Leibold, Hamburg: Meiner 2018, rekonstruiert auf 165 S. Molinas berühmte Theorie der Willensfreiheit und die Frage ihrer Vereinbarkeit mit göttlichem Vorherwissen und göttlicher Vorsehung. Sie zeichnet wesentliche Stationen der Debatte um den theologischen Determinismus nach, wie sie sich von Augustinus und (...) Boethius über Anselm, Thomas von Aquin, Scotus, Ockham und andere bis zu Molina und von dort bis in die jüngste, vor allem analytische Religionsphilosophie hinein entwickelt. (shrink)

In (Weaver 2021), I showed that Boltzmann’s H-theorem does not face a significant threat from the reversibility paradox. I argue that my defense of the H-theorem against that paradox can be used yet again for the purposes of resolving the recurrence paradox without having to endorse heavy-duty statistical assumptions outside of the hypothesis of molecular chaos. As in (Weaver 2021), lessons from the history and foundations of physics reveal precisely how such resolution is achieved.

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology is now in its seventh year. The goals of this National Center for Biomedical Computing are to: create and maintain a repository of biomedical ontologies and terminologies; build tools and web services to enable the use of ontologies and terminologies in clinical and translational research; educate their trainees and the scientific community broadly about biomedical ontology and ontology-based technology and best practices; and collaborate with a variety of groups who develop and use ontologies and (...) terminologies in biomedicine. The centerpiece of the National Center for Biomedical Ontology is a web-based resource known as BioPortal. BioPortal makes available for research in computationally useful forms more than 270 of the world's biomedical ontologies and terminologies, and supports a wide range of web services that enable investigators to use the ontologies to annotate and retrieve data, to generate value sets and special-purpose lexicons, and to perform advanced analytics on a wide range of biomedical data. (shrink)

Similarly to other accounts of disease, Christopher Boorse’s Biostatistical Theory (BST) is generally presented and considered as conceptual analysis, that is, as making claims about the meaning of currently used concepts. But conceptual analysis has been convincingly critiqued as relying on problematic assumptions about the existence, meaning, and use of concepts. Because of these problems, accounts of disease and health should be evaluated not as claims about current meaning, I argue, but instead as proposals about how to define and (...) use these terms in the future, a methodology suggested by Quine and Carnap. I begin this article by describing problems with conceptual analysis and advantages of “philosophical explication,” my favored approach. I then describe two attacks on the BST that also question the entire project of defining “disease.” Finally, I defend the BST as a philosophical explication by showing how it could define useful terms for medical science and ethics. (shrink)

I argue that ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), the tumor most commonly diagnosed by breast mammography, cannot be confidently classified as cancer, that is, as pathological. This is because there may not be dysfunction present in DCIS—as I argue based on its high prevalence and the small amount of risk it conveys—and thus DCIS may not count as a disease by dysfunction-requiring approaches, such as Boorse’s biostatistical theory and Wakefield’s harmful dysfunction account. Patients should decide about treatment for DCIS based (...) on the risks it poses and the risks and benefits of treatment, not on its disease status. (shrink)

Background The purpose of this study was to examine whether extended use of a variety of screen-based devices, in addition to television, was associated with poor dietary habits and other health-related characteristics and behaviors among US adults. The recent phenomenon of binge-watching was also explored. -/- Methods A survey to assess screen time across multiple devices, dietary habits, sleep duration and quality, perceived stress, self-rated health, physical activity, and body mass index, was administered to a sample of US adults using (...) the Qualtrics platform and distributed via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Participants were adults 18 years of age and older, English speakers, current US residents, and owners of a television and at least one other device with a screen. Three different screen time categories (heavy, moderate, and light) were created for total screen time, and separately for screen time by type of screen, based on distribution tertiles. Kruskal-Wallis tests were conducted to examine differences in dietary habits and health-related characteristics between screen time categories. -/- Results Aggregate screen time across all devices totaled 17.5 h per day for heavy users. Heavy users reported the least healthful dietary patterns and the poorest health-related characteristics – including self-rated health – compared to moderate and light users. Moreover, unique dietary habits emerged when examining dietary patterns by type of screen separately, such that heavy users of TV and smartphone displayed the least healthful dietary patterns compared to heavy users of TV-connected devices, laptop, and tablet. Binge-watching was also significantly associated with less healthy dietary patterns, including frequency of fast-food consumption as well as eating family meals in front of a television, and perceived stress. -/- Conclusions The present study found that poorer dietary choices, as well as other negative health-related impacts, occurred more often as the viewing time of a variety of different screen-based devices increased in a sample of US adults. Future research is needed to better understand what factors among different screen-based devices might affect health behaviors and in turn health-related outcomes. Research is also required to better understand how binge-watching behavior contributes impacts health-related behaviors and characteristics. (shrink)

Das Wiskott-Aldrich-Syndrom (WAS), ein genetisch bedingter Immundefekt mit klinischer Manifestation im Kleinkindalter, wird voraussichtlich in näherer Zukunft erstmals versuchsweise durch eine somatische Gentherapie behandelt werden. Im vor- liegenden Beitrag werden die wichtigsten medizinisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Fakten dieses Krankheitsbildes sowie die bisherigen Erfahrungen mit somatischen Gentherapien bei anderen Immunmangelsyndromen ausführlich dargestellt. Sodann erfolgt eine ethische Analyse eines möglichen gentherapeutischen Eingriffs bei WAS-Patienten, bei der die spezifischen Aspekte des Wiskott-Aldrich-Syndroms – insbesondere die fast ausschließliche Betroffenheit von Kindern sowie die unterschiedlich aussichtsreiche Alter- nativoption einer (...) allogenen Knochenmarktransplantation–wesentliche Aspekte der Beurteilung sind. Im Ergebnis zeigt sich, dass ein gentherapeutischer Eingriff im vorliegenden Fall nicht im Rahmen einer Forschungsstudie, d.h. als Humanexperiment, gerechtfertigt werden kann, sondern allein als individueller Heilversuch. Gleichwohl las- sen die besonderen Risiken und die Innovativität eines solchen Eingriffs es notwendig erscheinen, diesen Heilversuch – anders als andere Heilbehandlungen mit bislang unerprobten Mitteln – in streng kontrollierter Form durchzuführen. Der neuartige Gedanke eines kontrollierten individuellen Heilversuchs zeichnet sich daher für den vorliegenden Fall, und womöglich auch für vergleichbare risikoreiche Behandlungsansätze namentlich im Bereich der Gentherapie, als geeignetes Instrument der Konzeption und Beurteilung ab. (shrink)

‘Greek Ethics’, an undergraduate class taught by the British moral philosopher N. J. H. Dent, introduced this reviewer to the ethical philosophy of ancient Greece. The class had a modest purview—a sequence of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—but it proved no less effective, in retrospect, than more synoptic classes for having taken this apparently limited and (for its students and academic level) appropriate focus. This excellent Companion will now serve any such class extremely well, allowing students a broader exposure than that (...) traditional sequence, without sacrificing the class’s circumscribed focus. The eighteen chapters encompass some of what went before, and surprisingly much of what came after, those three central philosophers—including, for instance, a discussion of Plotinus and his successors, as well as a discussion of Horace. The book will therefore be useful in many different types of class on ethical philosophy in the ancient world. This Companion will be useful not only to students, but also to at least three further groups: specialists in ancient Greek philosophy (since some contributors advance significant new positions, e.g. R. Kamtekar on Plato’s ethical psychology and D. Charles on Aristotle’s ‘ergon argument’ as already implicitly invoking ‘to kalon’); scholars working in academic subjects adjacent to ancient Greek philosophy; and contemporary moral philosophers. (shrink)

Deceased organ donation is widely considered as a case of easy rescue―that is, a case in which A may bestow considerable benefits on B while incurring negligent costs herself. Yet, the policy implications of this observation remain unclear. Drawing on Christopher H. Wellman’s samaritan account of political obligations, the paper develops a case for a so-called opt-out system, i.e., a scheme in which people are defaulted into being donors. The proposal’s key idea is that we may arrange people’s options (...) in specific ways for the sake of others. (shrink)

This twelfth volume of Collected Papers includes 86 papers comprising 976 pages on Neutrosophics Theory and Applications, published between 2013-2021 in the international journal and book series “Neutrosophic Sets and Systems” by the author alone or in collaboration with the following 112 co-authors (alphabetically ordered) from 21 countries: Abdel Nasser H. Zaied, Muhammad Akram, Bobin Albert, S. A. Alblowi, S. Anitha, Guennoun Asmae, Assia Bakali, Ayman M. Manie, Abdul Sami Awan, Azeddine Elhassouny, Erick González-Caballero, D. Dafik, Mithun Datta, Arindam Dey, (...) Mamouni Dhar, Christopher Dyer, Nur Ain Ebas, Mohamed Eisa, Ahmed K. Essa, Faruk Karaaslan, João Alcione Sganderla Figueiredo, Jorge Fernando Goyes García, N. Ramila Gandhi, Sudipta Gayen, Gustavo Alvarez Gómez, Sharon Dinarza Álvarez Gómez, Haitham A. El-Ghareeb, Hamiden Abd El-Wahed Khalifa, Masooma Raza Hashmi, Ibrahim M. Hezam, German Acurio Hidalgo, Le Hoang Son, R. Jahir Hussain, S. Satham Hussain, Ali Hussein Mahmood Al-Obaidi, Hays Hatem Imran, Nabeela Ishfaq, Saeid Jafari, R. Jansi, V. Jeyanthi, M. Jeyaraman, Sripati Jha, Jun Ye, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, Abdullah Kargın, J. Kavikumar, Kawther Fawzi Hamza Alhasan, Huda E. Khalid, Neha Andalleb Khalid, Mohsin Khalid, Madad Khan, D. Koley, Valeri Kroumov, Manoranjan Kumar Singh, Pavan Kumar, Prem Kumar Singh, Ranjan Kumar, Malayalan Lathamaheswari, A.N. Mangayarkkarasi, Carlos Rosero Martínez, Marvelio Alfaro Matos, Mai Mohamed, Nivetha Martin, Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Mohamed Talea, K. Mohana, Muhammad Irfan Ahamad, Rana Muhammad Zulqarnain, Muhammad Riaz, Muhammad Saeed, Muhammad Saqlain, Muhammad Shabir, Muhammad Zeeshan, Anjan Mukherjee, Mumtaz Ali, Deivanayagampillai Nagarajan, Iqra Nawaz, Munazza Naz, Roan Thi Ngan, Necati Olgun, Rodolfo González Ortega, P. Pandiammal, I. Pradeepa, R. Princy, Marcos David Oviedo Rodríguez, Jesús Estupiñán Ricardo, A. Rohini, Sabu Sebastian, Abhijit Saha, Mehmet Șahin, Said Broumi, Saima Anis, A.A. Salama, Ganeshsree Selvachandran, Seyed Ahmad Edalatpanah, Sajana Shaik, Soufiane Idbrahim, S. Sowndrarajan, Mohamed Talea, Ruipu Tan, Chalapathi Tekuri, Selçuk Topal, S. P. Tiwari, Vakkas Uluçay, Maikel Leyva Vázquez, Chinnadurai Veerappan, M. Venkatachalam, Luige Vlădăreanu, Ştefan Vlăduţescu, Young Bae Jun, Wadei F. Al-Omeri, Xiao Long Xin.‬‬‬‬‬‬. (shrink)

§1.1 What m otivated the perpetrators of the holocaust? Christopher Browning and Daniel Goldhagen differ in their analysis of Reserve Police Battalion 101 (Browning 1992, Goldhagen 1996). The battalion consisted of around 500 ‘ordinary’ Germ ans who, during the period 1942-44, killed around 40,000 Jews and who deported as m any to the death cam ps. Browning and Goldhagen differ over the m otivation wit h which the m en killed. I want to com m ent on a central (...) aspect of this debate. (shrink)

Through modern driver assistant systems, algorithmic decisions already have a significant impact on the behavior of vehicles in everyday traffic. This will become even more prominent in the near future considering the development of autonomous driving functionality. The need to consider ethical principles in the design of such systems is generally acknowledged. However, scope, principles and strategies for their implementations are not yet clear. Most of the current discussions concentrate on situations of unavoidable crashes in which the life of human (...) beings is existentially affected. In this paper, we argue that ethical considerations should be mandatory for any algorithmic decision of autonomous vehicles, instead of a limitation to hazard situations. Such an ethically aligned behavior is relevant because autonomous vehicles, like any other traffic participants, operate in a shared public space, where every behavioral decision impacts the operational possibilities of others. These possibilities concern the fulfillment of a road-user’s safety, utility and comfort needs. We propose that, to operate ethically in such space, an autonomous vehicle will have to take its behavior decisions according to a just distribution of operational possibilities among all traffic participants. Using an application on a partially-autonomous prototype vehicle, we describe how to apply and implement concepts of distributive justice to the driving environment and demonstrate the impact on its behavior in comparison to an advanced but egoistic decision maker. (shrink)

This article examines two questions about scientists’ search for knowledge. First, which search strategies generate discoveries effectively? Second, is it advantageous to diversify search strategies? We argue pace Weisberg and Muldoon, “Epistemic Landscapes and the Division of Cognitive Labor”, that, on the first question, a search strategy that deliberately seeks novel research approaches need not be optimal. On the second question, we argue they have not shown epistemic reasons exist for the division of cognitive labor, identifying the errors that led (...) to their conclusions. Furthermore, we generalize the epistemic landscape model, showing that one should be skeptical about the benefits of social learning in epistemically complex environments. (shrink)

In Tulving’s initial characterization, episodic memory was one of multiple memory systems. It was postulated, in pursuit of explanatory depth, as displaying proprietary operations, representations, and substrates such as to explain a range of cognitive, behavioural, and experiential phenomena. Yet the subsequent development of this research program has, paradoxically, introduced surprising doubts about the nature, and indeed existence, of episodic memory. On dominant versions of the ‘common system’ view, on which a single simulation system underlies both remembering and imagining, there (...) are no processes unique to memory to support robust generalizations with inductive potential. Eliminativism about episodic memory seems to follow from the claim that it has no dedicated neurocognitive system of its own. After identifying this under-noticed threat, we push back against modern eliminativists by surveying recent evidence that still indicates specialized mechanisms, computations, and representations that are distinctly mnemic in character. We argue that contemporary realists about episodic memory can retain lessons of the common system approach while resisting the further move to eliminativism. (shrink)

Bayesian classifiers perform well when each of the features is completely independent of the other which is not always valid in real world applications. The aim of this study is to implement and compare the performances of each variant of the Bayesian classifier (Multinomial, Bernoulli, and Gaussian) on anomaly detection in network intrusion, and to investigate whether there is any association between each variant’s assumption and their performance. Our investigation showed that each variant of the Bayesian algorithm blindly follows its (...) assumption regardless of feature property, and that the assumption is the single most important factor that influences their accuracy. Experimental results show that Bernoulli has accuracy of 69.9% test (71% train), Multinomial has accuracy of 31.2% test (31.2% train), while Gaussian has an accuracy of 81.69% test (82.84% train). Going deeper, we investigated and found that each Naïve Bayes variants performances and accuracy is largely due to each classifier assumption, Gaussian classifier performed best on anomaly detection due to its assumption that features follow normal distributions which are continuous, while multinomial classifier have a dismal performance as it simply assumes discreet and multinomial distribution. (shrink)

-/- Species lists play an important role in biology and practical domains like conservation, legislation, biosecurity and trade regulation. However, their effective use by non-specialist scientific and societal users is sometimes hindered by disagreements between competing lists. While it is well-known that such disagreements exist, it remains unclear how prevalent they are, what their nature is, and what causes them. In this study, we argue that these questions should be investigated using methods based on taxon concept rather than methods based (...) on Linnaean names, and use such a concept-based method to quantify disagreement about bird classification and investigate its relation to research effort. We found that there was disagreement about 38% of all groups of birds recognized as a species, more than three times as much as indicated by previous measures. Disagreement about the delimitation of bird groups was the most common kind of conflict, outnumbering disagreement about nomenclature and disagreement about rank. While high levels of conflict about rank were associated with lower levels of research effort, this was not the case for conflict about the delimitation of bird groups. This suggests that taxonomic disagreement cannot be resolved simply by increasing research effort. (shrink)

I offer a new argument for the elimination of ‘beliefs’ from cognitive science based on Wimsatt’s concept of robustness and a related concept of fragility. Theoretical entities are robust if multiple independent means of measurement produce invariant results in detecting them. Theoretical entities are fragile when multiple independent means of detecting them produce highly variant results. I argue that sufficiently fragile theoretical entities do not exist. Recent studies in psychology show radical variance between what self-report and non-verbal behaviour indicate about (...) participants’ beliefs. This is evidence that ‘belief’ is fragile, and is thus a strong candidate for elimination. 1 Introduction2 Robustness and Fragility2.1 A historical example of robustness2.2 Fragility and elimination3 The Received View4 Evidence for the Fragility of Belief4.1 Contamination and fragility4.2 Implicit association tests and fragility5 Attempts to Preserve the Belief Category for Cognitive Science5.1 Beliefs and aliefs5.2 Contradictory beliefs5.3 In-between beliefs and the unity assumption5.4 Belief sub-classes5.5 Self-deception6 Alternative Mental States7 Conclusion. (shrink)

In this article, we propose the Fair Priority Model for COVID-19 vaccine distribution, and emphasize three fundamental values we believe should be considered when distributing a COVID-19 vaccine among countries: Benefiting people and limiting harm, prioritizing the disadvantaged, and equal moral concern for all individuals. The Priority Model addresses these values by focusing on mitigating three types of harms caused by COVID-19: death and permanent organ damage, indirect health consequences, such as health care system strain and stress, as well as (...) economic destruction. It proposes proceeding in three phases: the first addresses premature death, the second long-term health issues and economic harms, and the third aims to contain viral transmission fully and restore pre-pandemic activity. -/- To those who may deem an ethical framework irrelevant because of the belief that many countries will pursue "vaccine nationalism," we argue such a framework still has broad relevance. Reasonable national partiality would permit countries to focus on vaccine distribution within their borders up until the rate of transmission is below 1, at which point there would not be sufficient vaccine-preventable harm to justify retaining a vaccine. When a government reaches the limit of national partiality, it should release vaccines for other countries. -/- We also argue against two other recent proposals. Distributing a vaccine proportional to a country's population mistakenly assumes that equality requires treating differently situated countries identically. Prioritizing countries according to the number of front-line health care workers, the proportion of the population over 65, and the number of people with comorbidities within each country may exacerbate disadvantage and end up giving the vaccine in large part to wealthy nations. (shrink)

Background: Broccoli is an edible green plant in the cabbage family (family Brassicaceae, genus Brassica) whose large flowering head, stalk and small associated leaves are eaten as a vegetable. A leaf of Broccoli might be affected of Several Diseases descriped in this paper . When symptoms is encountered, it requires some kind of medical care. If appropriate Survival of Broccoli Diseases is not taken quickly, it can lead to Broccoli to die . Objectives: The main goal of this expert system (...) is to get the appropriate diagnosis of disease and the correct treatment. Methods: In this paper the design of the proposed Expert System which was produced to help Farmers in diagnosing many of the broccoli diseases such as : Damping Off,Club root of crucifers or Finger and toe disease,Alternaria leaf spot,Black rot,Downy mildew, and White rust. (shrink)

Many philosophers are impressed by the progress achieved by physical sciences. This has had an especially deep effect on their ontological views: it has made many of them physicalists. Physicalists believe that everything is physical: more precisely, that all entities, properties, relations, and facts are those which are studied by physics or other physical sciences. They may not all agree with the spirit of Rutherford's quoted remark that 'there is physics; and there is stamp-collecting',' but they all grant physical science (...) a unique ontological authority: the authority to tell us what there is. Physicalism is now almost orthodox in much philosophy, notably in much recent philosophy of mind. But although often invoked, it is rarely explicitly defined. It should be. The claim that everything is physical is not as clear as it seems. In this paper, we examine a number of proposed definitions of physicalism and reasons for being a physicalist. We will argue both that physicalism lacks a clear and credible definition, and that in no non-vacuous interpretation is it true. We are concerned here only with physicalism as a doctrine about the empirical world. In particular, it should not be confused with nominalism, the doctrine that there are no universals.2 Nominalism and physicalism are quite independent doctrines. Believers in universals may as consistently assert as deny that the only properties and relations are those studied by physical science. And nominalists may with equal consistency assert or deny that physical science could provide enough predicates to describe the world. That is the question which concerns physicalists, not whether physical predicates name real universals. (We will for brevity write as if they do, but we do not need that assumption.). (shrink)

I defend the thesis that most or all perceptual experiences are infused with imaginative contributions. While the idea is not new, it has few supporters. I begin by developing a framework for the underlying debate. Central to that framework is the claim that a perceptual experience is infused with imagination if and only if there are self-generated contributions to that experience that have ampliative effect on its phenomenal and directed elements. Self-generated ingredients to experience are produced by the subject as (...) opposed to being received from the world. Some form of stored content is an obvious starting point. Ampliative effects are aspects of perceptual experience that outstrip the content the senses get from the world. This conceptual framework is applied to three case studies: object-sameness and object-kind recognition (section 2), memory colour (section 3), and perceptual constancy and amodal completion (section 4). If the three cases and my overall analysis are accepted (a substantive if), then we have a forceful inductive argument for perception being infused with imagination. (shrink)

All parties involved in researching, developing, manufacturing, and distributing COVID-19 vaccines need guidance on their ethical obligations. We focus on pharmaceutical companies' obligations because their capacities to research, develop, manufacture, and distribute vaccines make them uniquely placed for stemming the pandemic. We argue that an ethical approach to COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution should satisfy four uncontroversial principles: optimising vaccine production, including development, testing, and manufacturing; fair distribution; sustainability; and accountability. All parties' obligations should be coordinated and mutually consistent. For (...) instance, companies should not be obligated to provide host countries with additional booster shots at the expense of fulfilling bilateral contracts with countries in which there are surges. Finally, any satisfactory approach should include mechanisms for assurance that all parties are honouring their obligations. This assurance enables countries, pharmaceutical companies, global organisations, and others to verify compliance with the chosen approach and protect ethically compliant stakeholders from being unfairly exploited by unethical behaviour of others. (shrink)

This paper presents a new kind of problem in the ethics of distribution. The problem takes the form of several “calibration dilemmas,” in which intuitively reasonable aversion to small-stakes inequalities requires leading theories of distribution to recommend intuitively unreasonable aversion to large-stakes inequalities. We first lay out a series of such dilemmas for prioritarian theories. We then consider a widely endorsed family of egalitarian views and show that they are subject to even more forceful calibration dilemmas than prioritarian theories. Finally, (...) we show that our results challenge common utilitarian accounts of the badness of inequalities in resources. (shrink)

The ever-evolving ways attacker continues to improve their phishing techniques to bypass existing state-of-the-art phishing detection methods pose a mountain of challenges to researchers in both industry and academia research due to the inability of current approaches to detect complex phishing attack. Thus, current anti-phishing methods remain vulnerable to complex phishing because of the increasingly sophistication tactics adopted by attacker coupled with the rate at which new tactics are being developed to evade detection. In this research, we proposed an adaptable (...) framework that combines Deep learning and Randon Forest to read images, synthesize speech from deep-fake videos, and natural language processing at various predictions layered to significantly increase the performance of machine learning models for phishing attack detection. (shrink)

The propensity interpretation of fitness (PIF) is commonly taken to be subject to a set of simple counterexamples. We argue that three of the most important of these are not counterexamples to the PIF itself, but only to the traditional mathematical model of this propensity: fitness as expected number of offspring. They fail to demonstrate that a new mathematical model of the PIF could not succeed where this older model fails. We then propose a new formalization of the PIF that (...) avoids these (and other) counterexamples. By producing a counterexample-free model of the PIF, we call into question one of the primary motivations for adopting the statisticalist interpretation of fitness. In addition, this new model has the benefit of being more closely allied with contemporary mathematical biology than the traditional model of the PIF. (shrink)

Philosophy of science is expanding via the introduction of new digital data and tools for their analysis. The data comprise digitized published books and journal articles, as well as heretofore unpublished material such as images, archival text, notebooks, meeting notes, and programs. The growth in available data is matched by the extensive development of automated analysis tools. The variety of data sources and tools can be overwhelming. In this article, we survey the state of digital work in the philosophy of (...) science, showing what kinds of questions can be answered and how one can go about answering them. (shrink)

The Bayesian maxim for rational learning could be described as conservative change from one probabilistic belief or credence function to another in response to newinformation. Roughly: ‘Hold fixed any credences that are not directly affected by the learning experience.’ This is precisely articulated for the case when we learn that some proposition that we had previously entertained is indeed true (the rule of conditionalisation). But can this conservative-change maxim be extended to revising one’s credences in response to entertaining propositions or (...) concepts of which one was previously unaware? The economists Karni and Vierø (2013, 2015) make a proposal in this spirit. Philosophers have adopted effectively the same rule: revision in response to growing awareness should not affect the relative probabilities of propositions in one’s ‘old’ epistemic state. The rule is compelling, but only under the assumptions that its advocates introduce. It is not a general requirement of rationality, or so we argue. We provide informal counterexamples. And we show that, when awareness grows, the boundary between one’s ‘old’ and ‘new’ epistemic commitments is blurred. Accordingly, there is no general notion of conservative change in this setting. (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.

In the world according to Hume, people are complicated creatures, with convoluted, often contradictory characters. Consider, for example, Hume's controversial assessment of Charles I: "The character of this prince, as that of most men, if not of all men, was mixed .... To consider him in the most favourable light, it may be affirmed, that his dignity was free from pride, his humanity from weakness, his bravery from rashness, his temperance from austerity, his frugality from avarice .... To speak the (...) most harshly of him, we may affirm, that many of his good qualities were attended with some latent frailty, which, though seemingly inconsiderable, was able, when seconded by the extreme malevolence of his fortune, to disappoint them of all their influence: His beneficent disposition was clouded by a manner not very gracious; his virtue was tinctured with superstition; his good sense was disfigured by a deference to persons of a capacity inferior to his own; and his moderate temper exempted him not from hasty and precipitate resolutions." This sketch shows Charles in all his complexities, with his virtues, near virtues, and contradicting virtues. I have quoted it at length because it is hard to summarize without losing the subtleties that lie within it. Hume's moral theory is based fundamentally on judgments of character, 2 so those subtleties are important to his view. The character sketches that pervade the.. (shrink)

The main aim of this book is to introduce the topic of limited awareness, and changes in awareness, to those interested in the philosophy of decision-making and uncertain reasoning.

In real-time, Twitter strongly imprints world events, popular culture, and the day-to-day; Twitter records an ever growing compendium of language use and change; and Twitter has been shown to enable certain kinds of prediction. Vitally, and absent from many standard corpora such as books and news archives, Twitter also encodes popularity and spreading through retweets. Here, we describe Storywrangler, an ongoing, day-scale curation of over 100 billion tweets containing around 1 trillion 1-grams from 2008 to 2020. For each day, we (...) break tweets into 1-, 2-, and 3-grams across 150+ languages, record usage frequencies, and generate Zipf distributions. We make the data set available through an interactive time series viewer, and as downloadable time series and daily distributions. We showcase a few examples of the many possible avenues of study we aim to enable including how social amplification can be visualized through ‘contagiograms’. (shrink)

The ecosystem services argument is a highly publicised instrumental argument for protecting biodiversity. I develop a new objection to this argument based on the lack of a causal connection from global species losses to local ecosystem changes. I survey some alternative formulations of services arguments, including ones incorporating option value or a precautionary principle, and show that they do not fare much better than the standard version. I conclude that environmental thinkers should rely less on ecosystem services as a means (...) to defend biodiversity, and that attention should be focused on additional types of value which might be attributed to global biodiversity. (shrink)

The paper looks at the semantics and ontology of dispositions in the light of recent work on the subject. Objections to the simple conditionals apparently entailed by disposition statements are met by replacing them with so-called 'reduction sentences' and some implications of this are explored. The usual distinction between categorical and dispositional properties is criticised and the relation between dispositions and their bases examined. Applying this discussion to two typical cases leads to the conclusion that fragility is not a real (...) property and that, while both temperature and its bases are, this does not generate any problem of overdetermination. (shrink)

Current state-of-the-art out-of-distribution algorithm does not address the variation in dynamic and static behavior between malware variants from the same family as evidence in their poor performance against an out-of-distribution malware attack. We aims to address this limitation by: 1) exploitation of the in-dimensional embedding space between variants from the same malware family to account for all variations 2) exploitation of the inter-dimensional space between different malware family 3) building a deep learning-based model with a shallow neural network with maximum (...) of two connected layers to overcome overfitting from the scratch 4) building a Bayesian inference based computation algorithm that intertwine with connected network and is able to create new and adjust existing data points in response to an exposure to new out-of-distribution variants of existing or new malware family which determines the extent at which model weight is adjusted which in turn triggers update on the gradient. Preliminary result of our proposed framework gave an accuracy of 81\% in the successful classification of a novel out-of-distribution malware attack, something that could not be achieve by any of the state-of-the-art algorithms on novel malware classification. (shrink)

This paper seeks to clarify and defend the proposition that moral realism is best elaborated as a moral doctrine. I begin by upholding Ronald Dworkin’s anti-Archimedean critique of the error theory against some strictures by Michael Smith, and I then briefly suggest how a proponent of moral realism as a moral doctrine would respond to Smith’s defense of the Archimedeanism of expressivism. Thereafter, this paper moves to its chief endeavor. By differentiating clearly between expressivism and quasi-realism, the paper highlights both (...) their distinctness and their compatibility. In so doing, it underscores the affinities between Blackburnian quasi-realism and moral realism as a moral doctrine. Finally, this paper contends—in line with my earlier work on these matters—that moral realism as a moral doctrine points to the need for some reorienting of meta-ethical enquiries rather than for the abandoning of them. (shrink)

The current study is a pilot trial to examine the effects of a nonelective, classroom-based, teacher-implemented, mindfulness meditation intervention on standard clinical measures of mental health and affect in middle school children. A total of 101 healthy sixth-grade students (55 boys, 46 girls) were randomized to either an Asian history course with daily mindfulness meditation practice (intervention group) or an African history course with a matched experiential activity (active control group). Self-reported measures included the Youth Self Report (YSR), a modified (...) Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and the Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Measure –Revised. Both groups decreased significantly on clinical syndrome subscales and affect but did not differ in the extent of their improvements. Meditators were significantly less likely to develop suicidal ideation or thoughts of self-harm than controls. These results suggest that mindfulness training may yield both unique and non-specific benefits that are shared by other novel activities. (shrink)

The desirability of what actually occurs is often influenced by what could have been. Preferences based on such value dependencies between actual and counterfactual outcomes generate a class of problems for orthodox decision theory, the best-known perhaps being the so-called Allais Paradox. In this paper we solve these problems by extending Richard Jeffrey's decision theory to counterfactual prospects, using a multidimensional possible-world semantics for conditionals, and showing that preferences that are sensitive to counterfactual considerations can still be desirability maximising. We (...) end the paper by investigating the conditions necessary and sufficient for a desirability function to be an expected utility. It turns out that the additional conditions imply highly implausible epistemic principles. (shrink)

Berkeley argues that claims about divine predication (e.g., God is wise or exists) should be understood literally rather than analogically, because like all spirits (i.e., causes), God is intelligible only in terms of the extent of his effects. By focusing on the harmony and order of nature, Berkeley thus unites his view of God with his doctrines of mind, force, grace, and power, and avoids challenges to religious claims that are raised by appeals to analogy. The essay concludes by showing (...) how a letter, supposedly by Berkeley, to Peter Browne ("discovered" in 1969 by Berman and Pittion) is, in fact, by John Jackson (1686-1763), controversial theologian and friend of Samuel Clarke. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the structure and the defeasibility conditions of argument from analogy, addressing the issues of determining the nature of the comparison underlying the analogy and the types of inferences justifying the conclusion. In the dialectical tradition, different forms of similarity were distinguished and related to the possible inferences that can be drawn from them. The kinds of similarity can be divided into four categories, depending on whether they represent fundamental semantic features of the (...) terms of the comparison or non-semantic ones, indicating possible characteristics of the referents. Such distinct types of similarity characterize different kinds of analogical arguments, all based on a similar general structure, in which a common genus is abstracted. Depending on the nature of the abstracted common feature, different rules of inference will apply, guaranteeing the attribution of the analogical predicate to the genus and to the primary subject. This analysis of similarity and the relationship thereof with the rules of inference allows a deeper investigation of the defeasibility conditions. (shrink)

No presente trabalho, com vistas para uma análise conceitual e crítica acerca do modelo de democracia representativa, bem como uma proposta de mudança sistemática e ordenada, iremos nos debruçar sobre os conceitos e perspectivas elencadas por Arendt e Bobbio no cerne da questão participativa. Hannah Arendt (1941-1975), ilustre teórica política, compreende a sociedade consolidada pós revoluções americana e francesa como fortemente apolitizada, visto o afastamento dos cidadãos dos assuntos públicos na atual democracia indireta. Norberto Bobbio (1909-2004), renomado jusfilósofo, define com (...) rigor analítico a categoria representativa da participação popular nas questões coletivas, indicando suas limitações e possibilidades. Em vista disso, faz-se necessário o estudo conjunto de ambas personalidades para o entendimento da disposição comum no que diz respeito à representatividade política que, segundo a autora alemã, impede a efetiva realização da vida cívica e atomiza os sujeitos, suscitando o desinteresse pela coisa pública e facilitando a oligarquização da mesma. A partir da inferência no que se refere ao foco central deste artigo, e da investigação complementar sobre os próprios riscos da implementação excessiva dos cânones reverberados pela tradição antiga — a qual pressupõe o envolvimento direto dos cidadãos no governo —, perpassaremos pela alternativa proposta por Arendt, a saber: a criação de conselhos deliberativos nos diversos níveis subnacionais a fim de fomentar o maior interesse e atuação popular na tomada de decisões, salvaguardando, assim, parte significativa do espírito revolucionário mas, sem retirar a centralidade de um governo bem estabelecido. Dessa maneira, a relação entre Arendt e Bobbio se designará no exame do sistema democrático representativo com respeito às limitações impostas pelo próprio sistema que impede a plena participação popular qualitativa, juntamente com a orientação arendtiana para rarear essa problemática — embora sem buscar a completa aniquilação do mecanismo de partidos, mas a união deste com o modelo de conselhos. (shrink)