There is a wide range of things we do out of emotion. For example, we smile with pleasure, our voices drop when we are sad, we recoil in shock or jump for joy, we apologize to others out of remorse. It is uncontroversial that some of these behaviors are actions. Clearly, apologizing is an action if anything is. Things seem less clear in the case of other emotional behaviors. Intuitively, the drop in a sad person’s voice is something that happens (...) to her, rather than something she actively performs. Perhaps more interestingly, even jumping for joy can seem a problematic case: although its execution involves the active performance of certain movements, it has been argued to contrast, e.g., with an act of apology, in that it is not performed in order to achieve some end, such as repairing a relationship. This can make this behavior seem considerably different from paradigm actions. Our central concern in this paper is with which emotional behaviors should be classed as actions and why... (shrink)

This commentary challenges Railton’s claim that the affective system is the key source of control of action. Whilst the affective system is important for understanding how acting for a reason is possible, we argue that there are many levels of control of action and adaptive behaviour and that the affective system is only one source of control. Such a model seems to be more in line with the emerging picture from affective and movement neuroscience.

Discussions in the philosophy of explanation involving scientific explanations often include a form of logical entailment, causal history, unification, and more. Strevens constructs the Kairetic account in an attempt to unify the entailment structure, causal relations, and the notion of difference-making in a manner that also offers high-level explanations. When dealing with quantum mechanics, Strevens then points toward Railton's account of probabilities, known as the DNP account. In this paper, I will introduce the preliminary accounts (D-N, causal, Unificationism) and the (...) Kairetic and DNP accounts and offer an extension of the Kairetic/DNP account to accommodate the view of complementarities. This will be done through a scheme that I call "context-dependent mapping." This will be illustrated in a couple of example cases. (shrink)

Depression is vastly heterogeneous in its symptoms, neuroimaging data, and treatment responses. As such, describing how it develops at the network level has been notoriously difficult. In an attempt to overcome this issue, a theoretical “negative prediction mechanism” is proposed. Here, eight key brain regions are connected in a transient, state-dependent, core network of pathological communication that could facilitate the development of depressive cognition. In the context of predictive processing, it is suggested that this mechanism is activated as a response (...) to negative/adverse stimuli in the external and/or internal environment that exceed a vulnerable individual’s capacity for cognitive appraisal. Specifically, repeated activation across this network is proposed to update an individual’s brain so that it increasingly predicts and reinforces negative experiences over time—pushing an individual at-risk for or suffering from depression deeper into mental illness. Within this, the negative prediction mechanism is poised to explain various aspects of prognostic outcome, describing how depression might ebb and flow over multiple timescales in a dynamically changing, complex environment. (shrink)

The need for gender recognition is widespread, even when hypervisibility and other effects of trans antagonism make that need dangerous for trans people. This reason partially accounts for why, in trans critique, recognition is a dirty word. As a political aim, and to some extent as a moral norm, trans critiques encourage dropping recognition. On the other hand, social philosophers often view recognition as a solution to misrecognition and take recognition to be a remedy for injustice. In my view, recognition (...) should neither be dropped nor held as a foundational norm for trans emancipation. First, I present three ways trans recognition is ambivalent. Second, evaluating Axel Honneth’s observations about the entwinement of recognition and domination, I argue that recognition is an ambivalent norm for trans critique and struggle. Third, I propose studying trans recognitive practices (rather than recognition in abstract) and I illuminate what might set trans/t4t recognition acts apart from their cis-grounded analogues, centering the roles of the body and space/place as resources of trans/t4t recognitive practices, and how such practices focus on the subject’s change and becoming over their identification. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzsche-Studien Jahrgang: 44 Heft: 1 Seiten: 231-266. -/- Abstract: In this essay I defend my interpretation of the unheard words that Zarathustra whispers into Life’s ear in “The Other Dance Song” and that have long kept commentators puzzled. I argue that what Zarathustra whispers is that he knows that Life is pregnant with his child. Zarathustra’s ability to make Life pregnant depends on his overcoming of Eternal Recurrence which threatens to strangle him with disgust of human beings (...) and all of existence, thereby making him into a spiritual eunuch whose will has turned into not-willing. The insemination of Life is a transfiguring act that raises Life from her blind animality (or materiality) into the level of a spiritually fertile existence, which is the condition of human freedom. This act is performed with the help of our capacity for theoretical knowledge, which is why it requires love of Wisdom. However, love of Wisdom can make us infertile, and thus unfree, when pursued for its own sake (knowledge can choke). I conclude by considering who might be the child of Zarathustra and Life. -/- Zusammenfassung: In diesem Aufsatz verteidige ich meine Interpretation der unhörbaren Wörter, die Zarathustra in „Das andere Tanzlied“ in das Ohr des Lebens flüstert und seit langem Kommentatoren ratlos machen. Was Zarathustra flüstert, ist, so meine These, dass er weiß, dass das Leben mit seinem Kind schwanger ist. Zarathustras Fähigkeit, das Leben zu schwängern, hängt von seiner Überwindung des Gedankens der ewigen Wiederkehr ab, der ihn durch den Überdruss am Menschen und an allem Dasein zu erwürgen bedroht und ihn dabei zu einem spirituellen Eunuchen macht, dessen Wollen zum Nicht-Wollen geworden ist. Die Befruchtung des Lebens ist eine umgestaltende Tat, die das Leben von seiner blinden Tiernatur (oder Stofflichkeit) auf die Ebene eines spirituell fruchtbaren Daseins erhebt, was die Voraussetzung menschlicher Freiheit ist. Dieser Akt wird mit Hilfe unserer Fähigkeit zu theoretischem Wissen ausgeführt, weshalb er Liebe zur Weisheit erfordert. Liebe zur Weisheit kann uns jedoch unfruchtbar und damit unfrei machen, wenn sie um ihrer selbst willen verfolgt wird (Wissen kann ersticken). Ich schließe mit der Überlegung ab, wer Zarathustras und des Lebens Kind sein könnte. (shrink)

The Salivaomics Knowledge Base (SKB) is designed to serve as a computational infrastructure that can permit global exploration and utilization of data and information relevant to salivaomics. SKB is created by aligning (1) the saliva biomarker discovery and validation resources at UCLA with (2) the ontology resources developed by the OBO (Open Biomedical Ontologies) Foundry, including a new Saliva Ontology (SALO). We define the Saliva Ontology (SALO; http://www.skb.ucla.edu/SALO/) as a consensus-based controlled vocabulary of terms and relations dedicated to the salivaomics (...) domain and to saliva-related diagnostics following the principles of the OBO (Open Biomedical Ontologies) Foundry. The Saliva Ontology is an ongoing exploratory initiative. The ontology will be used to facilitate salivaomics data retrieval and integration across multiple fields of research together with data analysis and data mining. The ontology will be tested through its ability to serve the annotation ('tagging') of a representative corpus of salivaomics research literature that is to be incorporated into the SKB. Background Saliva (oral fluid) is an emerging biofluid for non-invasive diagnostics used in the detection of human diseases. The need to advance saliva research is strongly emphasized by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), and is included in the NIDCR's 2004- 2009 expert panel long-term research agenda [1]. The ability to monitor health status, disease onset, progression, recurrence and treatment outcome through noninvasive means is highly important to advancing health care management. Saliva is a perfect medium to be explored for personalized individual medicine including diagnostics, offering a non-invasive, easy to obtain means for detecting and monitoring diseases. Saliva testing potentially allows the patient to collect their own saliva samples at home, yielding convenience for the patient and savings in health costs, and facilitating multiple sampling. Specimen collection is less objectionable to patients and easier in children and elderly individuals. Due to these advantages. (shrink)

The Preface Paradox is often discussed for its implications for rational belief. Much less discussed is a variant of the Preface Paradox for knowledge. In this paper, I argue that the most plausible closure-friendly resolution to the Preface Paradox for Knowledge is to say that in any given context, we do not know much. I call this view “Socraticism”. I argue that Socraticism is the most plausible view on two accounts—(1) this view is compatible with the claim that most of (...) our knowledge ascriptions are true, and (2) provided that (1) is true, the costs of accepting Socraticism are much less than the costs of accepting any other resolution to the Paradox. I argue for (1) in Section 2 by developing a question-sensitive contextualist model for knowledge that shows how Socraticism is compatible with the claim that most of our knowledge ascriptions are true. I also argue how this contextualist model can achieve this result where other contextualist models fail. I then consider other closure-friendly solutions to the paradox in Section 3 and show how accepting those solutions forces us to give up a number of plausible epistemic principles. (shrink)

It is common to distinguish two great families of representation. Symbolic representations include logical and mathematical symbols, words, and complex linguistic expressions. Iconic representations include dials, diagrams, maps, pictures, 3-dimensional models, and depictive gestures. This essay describes and motivates a new way of distinguishing iconic from symbolic representation. It locates the difference not in the signs themselves, nor in the contents they express, but in the semantic rules by which signs are associated with contents. The two kinds of rule have (...) divergent forms, occupying opposite poles on a spectrum of naturalness. Symbolic rules are composed entirely of primitive juxtapositions of sign types with contents, while iconic rules determine contents entirely by uniform natural relations with sign types. This distinction is marked explicitly in the formal semantics of familiar sign systems, both for atomic first-order representations, like words, pixel colors, and dials, and for complex second-order representations, like sentences, diagrams, and pictures. (shrink)

In this article, I link the empirical hypothesis that neural representations of sensory stimulation near the body involve a unique motor component to the idea that the perceptual field is structured by skillful bodily activity. The neurophenomenological view that emerges is illuminating in its own right, though it may also have practical consequences. I argue that recent experiments attempting to alter the scope of these near space sensorimotor representations are actually equivocal in what they show. I propose resolving this ambiguity (...) by treating these representations as responsive to the development or degeneration of know-how—which can be isolated as an appropriate object for scientific investigation. (shrink)

The puzzle of material constitution can be expressed in at least two ways. First, how can the constituting object and the constituted object, which are materially and spatially coincident, be regarded as different objects? Second, how can the constituting object and the constituted object, which are qualitatively distinct, be regarded as identical objects? Monists argue that the constituting and constituted objects are identical since they are materially and spatially coincident and the property differences between then are simply differences in description, (...) perspective or context. In contrast, pluralists argue that the constituting and constituted objects are not identical even if they are materially and spatially coincident since they are qualitatively distinct. This paper proposes a solution to the puzzle of material constitution called ‘Fregean Monism’ (FM), and shows that it can better account for the property differences between the constituting and constituted objects without the need to regard them as two distinct objects. On the FM view, the puzzle of material constitution is partly a semantic puzzle and partly a metaphysical puzzle, and shows how a solution to the semantic part of the puzzle, based on the Fregean distinction between sense and reference, can yield a satisfactory solution to the metaphysical part of the puzzle. The key idea is that while the reference of a term picks out both the referent object and referent properties, the sense of the term determine which referent properties are picked out. (shrink)

I develop an interpretation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concept of motor intentionality, one that emerges out of a reading of his presentation of a now classic case study in neuropathology—patient Johann Schneider—in Phenomenology of Perception. I begin with Merleau-Ponty's prescriptions for how we should use the pathological as a guide to the normal, a method I call triangulation. I then turn to his presentation of Schneider's unusual case. I argue that we should treat all of Schneider's behaviors as pathological, not only (...) his abstract movements, as is commonly acknowledged in the secondary literature, but also crucially his concrete movements. Using these facts of Schneider's illness, I reconstruct a ‘fundamental function’ of consciousness, as Merleau-Ponty called it, in which there are two kinds of bodily agency: the power of the body to be solicited by a situation and the power of the body to project a situation. I propose that these powers became dissociated in Schneider's case, as evidenced by his abstract and concrete movements, while in the normal case, these powers comprise a dynamic unity, enacted as motor intentionality. I also discuss how my interpretation complements Merleau-Ponty's assertion that motor intentions exist between mind and matter. (shrink)

This chapter develops a semantic theory for maps and situates it within the broader geography of meaning and semiotic significance. The discussion focuses on three central aspects of map semantics: the use of space, line marking, and linguistic tags. It is argued that the treatment of space in maps must be based on geometrical projection from a viewpoint rather than the traditional analysis in terms of spatial isomorphism. The chapter then shows how to integrate the projection-based semantics of maps and (...) the symbolic semantics of markers and tags, within the framework of possible-world semantics. The resulting account addresses issues of accuracy, viewpoint, orientation, and exhaustivity. (shrink)

Algorithms can now identify patterns and correlations in the (big) datasets, and predict outcomes based on those identified patterns and correlations with the use of machine learning techniques and big data, decisions can then be made by algorithms themselves in accordance with the predicted outcomes. Yet, algorithms can inherit questionable values from the datasets and acquire biases in the course of (machine) learning, and automated algorithmic decision-making makes it more difficult for people to see algorithms as biased. While researchers have (...) taken the problem of algorithmic bias seriously, but the current discussion on algorithmic fairness tends to conceptualize ‘fairness’ in algorithmic fairness primarily as a technical issue and attempts to implement pre-existing ideas of ‘fairness’ into algorithms. In this paper, I show that such a view of algorithmic fairness as technical issue is unsatisfactory for the type of problem algorithmic fairness presents. Since decisions on fairness measure and the related techniques for algorithms essentially involve choices between competing values, ‘fairness’ in algorithmic fairness should be conceptualized first and foremost as a political issue, and it should be (re)solved by democratic communication. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to explicitly reconceptualize algorithmic fairness as a political question and suggest the current discussion of algorithmic fairness can be strengthened by adopting the accountability for reasonableness framework. (shrink)

Researchers have explored questions concerning public participation and consent in geoengineering governance. Yet, the notion of consent has received little attention from researchers, and it is rarely discussed explicitly, despite being prescribed as a normative requirement for geoengineering research and being used in rejecting some geoengineering options. As it is noted in the leading geoengineering governance principles, i.e. the Oxford Principles, there are different conceptions of consent; the idea of consent ought to be unpacked more carefully if, and when, we (...) invoke it in the discussion. This article offers a theoretical reflection on different conceptions of consent and their place in geoengineering governance. More specifically, I discuss three models of consent, i.e. explicit consent, implied consent and hypothetical consent, and assess their applicability to geoengineering governance. Although there are different models of consent, much discussion of geoengineering governance has committed only to explicit consent. I note that such a commitment springs from a specific ideal political order. Accordingly, we should be wary of any naïve commitment to it so long as the political order we hope for remains open to debate. Finally, I illustrate two approaches to introduce consent into a geoengineering governance framework. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have argued that it is hard for finite agents like us to reason and make decisions relying solely on our credences and preferences. They hold that for us to cope with our cognitive limitations, we need binary beliefs as well. For they think that such beliefs, by disposing us to treat certain propositions as true, help us cut down on the number of possibilities we need to consider when we reason. But using Ross and Schroeder as (...) my stalking horse, I argue that such an appeal to binary beliefs does not work. I begin by explaining why there’s supposedly a problem for an account of reasoning that invokes only credences and preferences. I then argue that Ross and Schroeder’s account of belief—as well as other similar accounts—does not help solve the problem. Finally, I consider an alternative approach to solving the problem. This approach, unlike the accounts I criticise, does not hold that having a disposition to treat a proposition as true is necessary for believing it. (shrink)

There are infinitely many ways the world might be, and there may well be infinitely many people in it. These facts raise moral paradoxes. We explore a conflict between two highly attractive principles: a Pareto principle that says that what is better for everyone is better overall, and a statewise dominance principle that says that what is sure to turn out better is better on balance. We refine and generalize this paradox, showing that the problem is faced by many theories (...) of interpersonal aggregation besides utilitarianism, and by many decision theories besides expected value theory. Considering the range of consistent responses, we find all of them to be quite radical. (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish three general approaches to public trust in science, which I call the individual approach, the semi-social approach, and the social approach, and critically examine their proposed solutions to what I call the problem of harmful distrust. I argue that, despite their differences, the individual and the semi-social approaches see the solution to the problem of harmful distrust as consisting primarily in trying to persuade individual citizens to trust science and that both approaches face two general (...) problems, which I call the problem of overidealizing science and the problem of overburdening citizens. I then argue that in order to avoid these problems we need to embrace a (thoroughly) social approach to public trust in science, which emphasizes the social dimensions of the reception, transmission, and uptake of scientific knowledge in society and the ways in which social forces influence both positively and negatively the trustworthiness of science. (shrink)

This article examines the evolution of the vocabulary “feudal (fengjian)” in early twentieth-century China. Despite having served as a symbol of local autonomy and countervailing against imperial authority as emphasized in the Confucian tradition, the term had descended into an object of scorn, oppression, and retrogression in the latter half of the twentieth century until today. An alternative interpretation toward the modern misuse of fengjian may be found by focusing and comparing the two seemingly unrelated and radically different portrayals of (...) fengjian by: political thinker Zhang Taiyan’s federalist ideology; and Marxist historian Guo Moruo’s manipulation of Chinese classics. Under the historical context surrounding the turmoil of 1920s China, this article argues that much more than a mistranslation, the redefinition of fengjian was an intentional slander to, through the ambiguity surrounding its definition, destroy the Chinese tradition of liberty and local autonomy, further justifying a unified, highly centralized Chinese nation-state. (shrink)

Perceptual learning is characterized by long-term changes in perception as a result of practice or experience. In this paper, I argue that through perceptual learning we can become newly sensitive to basic perceptual features. First, I provide a novel account of basic perceptual features. Then, I argue that evidence from experience-based plasticity suggests that basic perceptual features can be learned. Lastly, I discuss the common scientific and philosophical view that perceptual learning comes in at least four varieties: differentiation, unitization, attentional (...) weighting and stimulus imprinting (Goldstone 1998, Connolly 2019). Becoming newly sensitive to basic perceptual features, I argue, does not fit into any of these categories. This paper’s contribution to the literature is twofold. First, I present a novel view of basic perceptual features which can be used in subsequent theorizing. Second, I show that learning basic perceptual features, since it does not fit into this standardized taxonomy, constitutes an underappreciated form of perceptual learning. This result has important implications for recent discussions in the philosophy of perception and epistemology. (shrink)

My two daughters would love to go tobogganing down the hill by themselves, but they are just toddlers and I am an apprehensive parent, so, before letting them do so, I want to ensure that the toboggan won’t go too fast. But how fast will it go? One way to try to answer this question would be to tackle the problem head on. Since my daughters and their toboggan are initially at rest, according to classical mechanics, their final velocity will (...) be determined by the forces they will be subjected to between the moment the toboggan will be released at the top of the hill and the moment it will reach its highest speed. The problem is that, throughout their downhill journey, my daughters and the toboggan will be subjected to an incredibly large number of forces—from the gravitational pull of any massive object in the universe to the weight of the snowflake that is sitting on the tip of one of my youngest daughter’s hairs—so that any attempt to apply the theory directly to the real-world system in all its complexity seems to be doomed to failure. (shrink)

This paper presents a new version of the democratic argument for the freedom of expression that has the resources to give a plausible reply to the perennial objection—ordinarily considered fatal—that such accounts fail to deliver protections for abstract art, instrumental music, and lots of other deserving nonpolitical speech. The argument begins with the observation that there are different things that a free speech theory might aim to accomplish. It will hope to justify a right to free speech, of course, with (...) a particular scope and shape, but that right might be a moral right, an ordinary legal right, or a specifically constitutional right. The new version of the argument—the refined argument from democracy—aims to justify a specifically constitutional right to political speech, administered by strong-form judicial review. The democracy theorist can accommodate the intuition that abstract art deserves protection by agreeing that we have a moral right, and probably ought to have an ordinary legal right, to produce and view abstract art. She must only insist that abstract art should not be protected by a specifically constitutional right administered by strong-form judicial review. Not because abstract art does not deserve constitutional protection, but because, on this view, whether a particular right ought to be enshrined in the constitution and administered by judicial review is not solely a matter of the importance of the right or the value of the interests it protects. (shrink)

A semantics of pictorial representation should provide an account of how pictorial signs are associated with the contents they express. Unlike the familiar semantics of spoken languages, this problem has a distinctively spatial cast for depiction. Pictures themselves are two-dimensional artifacts, and their contents take the form of pictorial spaces, perspectival arrangements of objects and properties in three dimensions. A basic challenge is to explain how pictures are associated with the particular pictorial spaces they express. Inspiration here comes from recent (...) proposals that analyze depiction in terms of geometrical projection. In this essay, I will argue that, for a central class of pictures, the projection-based theory of depiction provides the best explanation for how pictures express pictorial spaces, while rival perceptual and resemblance theories fall short. Since the composition of pictorial space is itself the basis for all other aspects of pictorial content, the proposal provides a natural foundation for further pictorial semantics. (shrink)

Although most Asian states are signatories to UNCLOS, which offers options for dispute resolution by either voluntary or compulsory processes, in reality fewer than a dozen Asian states have taken advantage of such an approach. The decision to adopt third-party mechanisms comes under great scrutiny and deliberation, not least because of the entailing legal procedures and the politically sensitive nature of disputes. Vietnam claims the second-largest maritime area in the South China Sea dispute after China. A comparison of two recent (...) cases—the arbitration between the Philippines and China and the conciliation between Timor-Leste and Australia—highlights the importance of selecting between binding and nonbinding decisions and framing a complaint. In particular, any legal action under UNCLOS should specify China’s claims and actions in areas that encroach on Vietnam’s claimed exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and violate international law. (shrink)

In this essay we provide (1) an argument for why ethics should be naturalized, (2) an analysis of why it is not yet naturalized, (3) a defense of ethical naturalism against two fallacies—Hume’s and Moore’s—that ethical naturalism allegedly commits, and (4) a proposal that normative ethics is best conceived as part of human ecology committed to pluralistic relativism. We explain why naturalizing ethics both entails relativism and also constrains it, and why nihilism about value is not an especially worrisome for (...) ethical naturalists. The substantive view we put forth constitutes the essence of Duke Naturalism. (shrink)

Some have defended a Fregean view of perceptual content. On this view, the constituents of perceptual contents are Fregean modes of presentation (MOPs). In this paper, I propose that perceptual MOPs are best understood in terms of object files. Object files are episodic representations that store perceptual information about objects. This information is updated when sensory conditions change. On the proposed view, when a subject perceptually represents some object a under two distinct MOPs, then the subject initiates two object files (...) that both refer to a. My defense of this view appeals to its satisfaction of four constraints that I argue theories of perceptual MOPs should satisfy. Furthermore, I show that some existent accounts of perceptual MOPs fail to satisfy them. The defended constraints also indicate what is unique about perceptual, as opposed to linguistic or cognitive, MOPs. (shrink)

The discussion of ethics, corporate responsibility and its educational dimensions focuses primarily on CSR, corporate citizenship and philanthropic theory and practise. The partnership between Microsoft Corporation and UNHCR was launched to help the victims of the Kosovo crisis, at the same time as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gained momentum, and in particular, at the same time as Microsoft experienced a decrease in stock value. This case study sheds light on a decade of Microsoft Corp. efforts to align business (...) objectives with refugee aid, by use of corporate expertise and company revenues. As a leader in technology and corporate citizenship, can Microsoft bridge the digital divide for the disadvantaged and arouse the unlimited potential of tomorrow’s leaders, as the company claims in its communications? Is the partnership beneficial to UNHCR, in line with corporate objectives of “doing big things” and “doing good”? (shrink)

Patient-centered care (PCC) is an approach to healthcare that values patients’ preference, need, and autonomy. The estimation of healthcare partly depends on how well PCC is implemented. In addition, the result of clinical research can inform the assessment of the implementation of PCC. In clinical research, health-related quality of life (HRQL) theoretical models offer a conceptual toolbox that informs clinical research and guides the hypotheses generation. Wilson and Cleary (1995) developed the most widely used HRQL theoretical model (Bakas et al., (...) 2012). Ontological assumptions about causation in Wilson and Cleary’s model will influence which kind of hypotheses will be generated. I will argue that Wilson and Cleary’s model instilled a kind of causal bias into hypothesis generation in clinical research on HRQL. Causation from biomedical factors to non-biomedical factors is frequently hypothesized while causation from non-biomedical factors to biomedical factors is rarely hypothesized. It leads to that the interdependence and interaction between constituent parts of patients are ignored, which is an obstacle to the implementation of PCC. In addition, I will propose a revised HRQL theoretical model which avoids the causal bias brought by Wilson and Cleary’s model. By doing so, I leave room for the improvement of the practice of healthcare by analyzing the ontological assumptions about causation. (shrink)

When does a model explain? When does it promote understanding? A dominant approach to scientific explanation is the interventionist view. According to this view, when X explains Y, intervening on X can produce, prevent or alter Y in some predictable way. In this paper, I argue for two claims. First, I reject a position that many interventionist theorists endorse. This position is that to explain some phenomenon by providing a model is also to understand that phenomenon. While endorsing the interventionist (...) view, I argue that explaining and understanding are distinct scientific achievements. Second, I defend a novel theory of scientific understanding. According to this view, when some model M promotes understanding, M makes available a distinctive mental state. This state is of the same psychological kind as when we grasp events in a narrative as bearing on some ultimate conclusion. To conclude, I show that, given this view, mechanistic explanations often provide a powerful source of understanding that many causal-historical models lack. This paper will be of interest to both philosophers of science and epistemologists engaged in the topics of explanation and understanding. (shrink)

「不動心」的本質是甚麼？ ─《孟子》〈知言養氣章〉的文理與義理 / 漢學研究 39.2 (2021): 1-37. Scholars have tended to focus on the implications of such philosophical terms as “flood-like qi” 浩然之氣 and “unperturbed mind-heart” 不動心 in Mencius 2A:2, but have failed to identify the common thread of this rather long chapter. This article argues that Mencius 2A:2 frequently alludes to Analects 2.4, and that this allusion is precisely the common thread holding 2A:2 together. According to Mencius’s interpretation, Confucius’s achievements in different ages as stated in Analects 2.4 are (...) all related to the political consideration of whether one ought to remain in a state and serve as its minister. In light of this, and with the support of other evidence from within the Mencius, it is argued that the question “would your mind-heart be perturbed?” at the beginning of the chapter can only mean “would your intention of leaving Qi 齊 be shaken by the fact that you had been appointed as its minister?” but not “would your intention of putting the Way into practice be shaken,” as suggested by Zhao Qi 趙岐 (?-210). Furthermore, it is shown that after the death of Mencius, his act of valor, namely leaving Qi despite having already been appointed as a Qi minister, had become a shared cultural memory of early Chinese intellectuals. Whenever mentioning “unperturbed mind-heart” in their works, early intellectuals consistently evoked Mencius’s unmoved determination to reject any inappropriate political appointment even though the position could bring them fame and material comfort. The rise of Zhao Qi’s misreading in his commentary to Mencius, however, has led to the loss of this cultural memory. -/- . (shrink)

Public reason liberalism is defined by the idea that laws and policies should be justifiable to each person who is subject to them. But what does it mean for reasons to be public or, in other words, suitable for this process of justification? In response to this question, Kevin Vallier has recently developed the traditional distinction between consensus and convergence public reason into a classification distinguishing three main approaches: shareability, accessibility and intelligibility. The goal of this paper is to defend (...) the accessibility approach by demonstrating its ability to strike an appealing middle course in terms of inclusivity between shareability and intelligibility. We first argue against Vallier that accessibility can exclude religious reasons from public justification. Second, we use scientific reasons as a case study to show that accessibility excludes considerably fewer reasons than shareability. Throughout the paper, we connect our discussion of accessibility to John Rawls’s model of public reason, so as to give substance to the accessibility approach and to further our understanding of Rawls’s influential model. (shrink)

Ground offers the hope of vindicating and illuminating an classic philosophical idea: the layered conception, according to which reality is structured by relations of dependence, with physical phenomena on the bottom, upon which chemistry, then biology, and psychology reside. However, ground can only make good on this promise if it is appropriately formally behaved. The paradigm of good formal behavior can be found in the currently dominant grounding orthodoxy, which holds that ground is transitive, antisymmetric, irreflexive, and foundational. However, heretics (...) have recently challenged the orthodoxy. In this paper, I examine ground’s ability to vindicate the layered conception upon various relaxations of the orthodox assumptions. I argue that highly unorthodox views of ground can still vindicate the layered conception and that, in some ways, the heretical views enable ground to better serve as a guide to reality’s layering than do orthodox views of ground. (shrink)

The standard model of precedential constraint holds that a court is equally free to modify a precedent of its own and a precedent of a superior court—overruling aside, it does not differentiate horizontal and vertical precedents. This paper shows that no model can capture the U.S. doctrine of precedent without making that distinction. A precise model is then developed that does just that. This requires situating precedent cases in a formal representation of a hierarchical legal structure, and adjusting the constraint (...) that a precedent imposes based on the relationship of the precedent court and the instant court. The paper closes with suggestions for further improvements of the model. (shrink)

• A number of reasons have been offered for Vietnam’s success in containing the COVID-19 pandemic during the first four months of 2020, including Vietnam’s experience in fighting epidemics and its single-party system which allows for timely and aggressive infection control. • Contentions that Vietnam’s measures, being dependent on its particular political and social structures, are not replicable elsewhere is incomplete, if not outright wrong. • Vietnam’s successful pandemic control required a high level of preparedness and a host of coordinated (...) efforts to provide accurate and credible information to the public about epidemic risks and ongoing infection control measures. • A proactive communication strategy was in place from the very beginning, utilizing various platforms such as online news sites, low-cost text messaging, user-friendly apps, local community loudspeakers, and pandemic awareness campaigns. • Open communication ensured public understanding of and support for the government response, thereby facilitating effective government-citizen cooperation. This is a lesson for other countries as much as for Vietnam in the post-pandemic period. (shrink)

In light of recent criticisms by Woodward (2017) and Rescorla (2018), we examine the relationship between mechanistic explanation and phenomenological laws. We disambiguate several uses of the phrase “phenomenological law” and show how a mechanistic theory of explanation sorts them into those that are and are not explanatory. We also distinguish the problem of phenomenological laws from arguments about the explanatory power of purely phenomenal models, showing that Woodward and Rescorla conflate these problems. Finally, we argue that the temptation to (...) pit mechanistic and interventionist theories of explanation against one another occludes important and scientifically relevant research questions. (shrink)

Political liberals assume an accessibility requirement, which means that, for ensuring civic respect and non-manipulation, public officials should offer accessible reasons during political advocacy. Recently, critics have offered two arguments to show that the accessibility requirement is unnecessary. The first is the pluralism argument: Given the pluralism in evaluative standards, when officials offer non-accessible reasons, they are not disrespectful because they may merely try to reveal their strongest reason. The second is the honesty argument: As long as officials honestly confess (...) their beliefs after offering non-accessible reasons, disrespect and non-manipulation do not occur. This paper defends the accessibility requirement and asserts that these two arguments overlook a unique feature of the political domain. While all citizens collectively own political power as a corporate body, an official does not privately own her political power. Instead, she is a trustee who has a duty to act on behalf of the corporate body, that is, she has to make decisions on grounds that are accessible to others. This duty explains why, despite pluralism, the accessibility requirement is necessary. Moreover, given that political decisions are profoundly influential to each person, requiring people to be honest is ineffective in discouraging disrespectful and manipulative acts. (shrink)

In this chapter, I investigate a problem for Kant’s claim that metaphysics can reach the status of science. The problem arises when one considers Kant’s account of the “architectonic unity” of metaphysics in the Architectonic of Pure Reason. Attaining architectonic unity is a condition for becoming a science for any body of cognitions that purports to be such. This is achieved when the cognitions belonging to a science are systematically organized according to the “idea of reason” which lies at the (...) basis of that science. However, Kant suggests that nobody can ever legitimately claim to have matched the idea of the philosopher, where this appears to imply that nobody can justifiably claim that she has fully grasped the idea of metaphysics. This generates a problem. I suggest that when Kant claims that the idea of the philosopher must remain an ideal or an archetype, he has a particular conception of philosophy in mind, that is, philosophy as a doctrine of wisdom. According to this understanding, philosophy must provide an example of how one can become virtuous. However, this is only a partial solution to our problem, for reasons that will be illustrated. (shrink)

Norman Daniels’s theory of ‘accountability for reasonableness’ is an influential conception of fairness in healthcare resource allocation. Although it is widely thought that this theory provides a consistent extension of John Rawls’s general conception of justice, this paper shows that accountability for reasonableness has important points of contact with both utilitarianism and intuitionism, the main targets of Rawls’s argument. My aim is to demonstrate that its overlap with utilitarianism and intuitionism leaves accountability for reasonableness open to damaging critiques. The important (...) role that utilitarian-like cost-effectiveness calculations are allowed to play in resource allocation processes disregards the separateness of persons and is seriously unfair towards individuals whose interests are sacrificed for the sake of groups. Furthermore, the function played by intuitions in settling frequent value conflicts opens the door for sheer custom and vested interests to steer decision-making. (shrink)

The victims of severe injustice are allowed to employ disruption and violence to seek political change. This article argues for this conclusion from within Rawlsian political liberalism, which, however, has been criticised for allegedly imposing public reason’s suffocating norms of civility on the oppressed. It develops a novel view of the applicability of public reason in non-ideal circumstances – the “no self-sacrifice view” – that focuses on the excessive costs of following public reason when suffering from severe injustice. On this (...) view, those treated in what Rawls describes as less than a reasonably just way are relieved of the duty of public reason and therefore entitled to employ disruption and violence. In contrast, their privileged fellow citizens must still obey public reason’s civility unless they have been authorised by the oppressed to join their fight. This article also starts exploring from within political liberalism the normative principles governing disruptive and violent protest. (shrink)

Tagging is the phenomenon in which regions of a picture, map, or diagram are annotated with words or other symbols, to provide descriptive information about a depicted object. The interpretive principles that govern tagged images are not well understood, due in part to the difficulty of integrating pictorial and linguistic semantic rules. Rather than directly combining these rules, I propose to use the framework of perspectival feature maps as an intermediary representation of content, in which the outputs of pictorial and (...) linguistic interpretation may be assimilated. The result is a simple and compositional semantics for tagged images. (shrink)

Recent epidemiological research on the social determinants of health has been used to attack an important framework, associated with Norman Daniels, that depicts healthcare as special. My aim is to rescue the idea that healthcare has special importance in society, although specialness will turn out to be mainly limited to clinical care. I build upon the link between Daniels's theory and the work of John Rawls to develop a conception of public justification liberalism that is suitable to the field of (...) justice and health. I argue that, from the perspective of public justification liberalism, (clinical) healthcare deserves special status. (shrink)

COVID-19 often manifests with different outcomes in different patients, highlighting the complexity of the host-pathogen interactions involved in manifestations of the disease at the molecular and cellular levels. In this paper, we propose a set of postulates and a framework for systematically understanding complex molecular host-pathogen interaction networks. Specifically, we first propose four host-pathogen interaction (HPI) postulates as the basis for understanding molecular and cellular host-pathogen interactions and their relations to disease outcomes. These four postulates cover the evolutionary dispositions involved (...) in HPIs, the dynamic nature of HPI outcomes, roles that HPI components may occupy leading to such outcomes, and HPI checkpoints that are critical for specific disease outcomes. Based on these postulates, an HPI Postulate and Ontology (HPIPO) framework is proposed to apply interoperable ontologies to systematically model and represent various granular details and knowledge within the scope of the HPI postulates, in a way that will support AI-ready data standardization, sharing, integration, and analysis. As a demonstration, the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework were applied to study COVID-19 with the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO), leading to a novel approach to rational design of drug/vaccine cocktails aimed at interrupting processes occurring at critical host-coronavirus interaction checkpoints. Furthermore, the host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) relevant to COVID-19 were predicted and evaluated based on prior knowledge of curated PPIs and domain-domain interactions, and how such studies can be further explored with the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework is discussed. (shrink)

This article proposes that oral performance was, in some cases, a philosophical activity in early China. The focus is on the Huainanzi, a densely rhymed philosophical treatise compiled by Liu An in the second century b.c.e. I show that the tome contains various sound-correlated poetic forms that are intended not only to enable textual performance but also, by means of aural mimesis, to encourage the intuitive understanding of its philosophical messages. Thus scholars of ancient poetry, philosophy, or intellectual history, despite (...) being habituated to reading silently and observing disciplinary boundaries, should be attentive to these sonic patterns in order to do justice to the poetic-cum-philosophical richness and originality of this text. More importantly, I argue that these poetic forms enable readers and audiences to experience, embody, and, above all, enact the Way through textual performance. Thanks to the sound patterns of the Huainanzi, the somatic processes of aural reading and philosophical praxis can occur simultaneously. Vocalization becomes an actionable and repeatable spiritual exercise, which facilitates the intuitive understanding and internalization of philosophical values. In other words, the perennial knowing–doing gap is heroically closed by the Huainanzi. / 淮南子的文本聲景：早期中國的詩歌、表演、哲學與實踐 / 王棕琦 / 本文論證早期中國的文本表演可以是一種具創造性的哲學活動，而非只是以聲音演繹書寫文本的朗讀活動。文中首先指出《淮南子》裏跟聲音有關的詩歌形式不但有助朗誦表演，更能讓讀者直觀感悟書中哲學思想而不落言筌。而 且，這些詩歌形式更讓讀者通過朗讀而實踐、內化書中所述之大道。可以說，《淮南子》對中國哲學的一大貢獻在於它將「知道」、「傳道」和「行道」三者合而為一。. (shrink)

It is very natural to think that if two people, x and y, are qualitatively identical and have committed qualitatively identical actions, then it cannot be the case that one has committed something wrong whereas the other did not. That is to say, if x and y differ in their moral status, then it must be because x and y are qualitatively different, and not simply because x is identical to x and not identical to y. In this fictional dialogue (...) between Socrates and Cantor involving infinitely many qualitatively identical agents, this assumption is challenged. (shrink)

This paper explores the socio-epistemic practice of shopping for experts. I argue that expert shopping is particularly likely to occur on what Thi Nguyen calls cognitive islands. To support my argument, I focus on macroeconomics. First, I make a prima-facie case for thinking that macroeconomics is a cognitive island. Then, I argue that ordinary people are particularly likely to engage in expert shopping when it comes to macroeconomic matters. In particular, I distinguish between two kinds of expert shopping, which I (...) call cynical and wishful, and introduce the notion of assisted expert shopping, which occurs when people or organizations shop for experts on behalf of other people. I argue that assisted expert shopping can sometime result in what I call a propagandistic use of expertise. Finally, I critically examine some possible reasons for optimism and find them wanting. I conclude by suggesting that that much of what I said about shopping for macroeconomic experts might also apply mutatis mutandis to other policy-relevant domains of expertise. (shrink)

Recent discourse in the philosophy of scientific explanation involves an account known as the Kairetic account. I proposed implementing a complementarity view involving a mapping scheme to the Kairetic account and similar models. There are two natural concerns related to this mapping. The first concern is the treatment of multiple mappings required for an explanation: phenomena may involve two complementarity features. The second concern is regarding the acquisition of understanding and whether context-dependence facilitates understanding. This article aims to address the (...) first thought through an example involving interference and photon detectors in a telescope. I claim that context-dependent mapping is on a particle basis, accommodating the wave-particle duality for every single particle without generalization. I further introduce the implications of mathematical developments of a complementarity relation grounded in the uncertainty principle. In addition, I will offer the stance that context-dependence facilitates understanding because it ensures that explanations are logically consistent, precise, relevant, and comprehensive. (shrink)

Clayton and Stevens argue that political liberals should engage with the religiously unreasonable by offering religious responses and showing that their religious views are mistaken, instead of refusing to engage with them. Yet they recognize that political liberals will face a dilemma due to such religious responses: either their responses will alienate certain reasonable citizens, or their engagements will appear disingenuous. Thus, there should be a division of justificatory labour. The duty of engagement should be delegated to religious citizens. In (...) this comment, I will argue that the division of justificatory labour is indefensible. This dilemma can be avoided if politicians and political philosophers correctly use conjecture, a form of discourse that involves non-public reason. As a conditional response, conjecture avoids alienating any reasonable citizens. Also, if conjecture is given in a sincere and open-minded manner, then the problem of disingenuousness can be overcome. My comment concludes that while the engagement of politicians and political philosophers does not necessarily jeopardize overlapping consensus, they should be permitted, or perhaps even required, to engage with the religiously unreasonable due to the natural duty of justice. (shrink)

This paper presents a human-computer interaction model with a three layers learning mechanism in a pervasive environment. We begin with a discussion around a number of important issues related to human-computer interaction followed by a description of the architecture for a multi-agent cooperative design system for pervasive computing environment. We present our proposed three- layer HCI model and introduce the group formation algorithm, which is predicated on a dynamic sharing niche technology. Finally, we explore the cooperative reinforcement learning and fusion (...) algorithms; the paper closes with concluding observations and a summary of the principal work and contributions of this paper. (shrink)

Interpretations of Kant’s account of the forms of “taking-to-be-true” (Fürwahrhalten) have generally focused on three such forms: opinion (Meinung), belief (Glaube), and knowledge (Wissen). A second distinction that has received comparatively less attention is that between conviction (Überzeugung) and persuasion (Überredung). Kant appears to use the distinction between the subjective and the objective sufficiency of a taking-to-be-true to characterize all of these forms. However, it is impossible to account for the differences between them by relying on this latter distinction alone. (...) In turn, this makes it difficult to fit all of these forms into a single classification of taking-to-be-true. In this chapter, I propose a new approach to conviction and persuasion that dissolves these problems. Conviction and persuasion are not single forms of taking-to-be-true with distinctive characteristics, yet it is not useful to treat them as “classes” of taking-to-be-true either. Rather, they are “operators” that determine whether a taking-to-be-true is apt or inapt, depending on whether it rests on a correct evaluation of the grounds we have. (shrink)