The major competing statistical paradigms share a common remarkable but unremarked thread: in many of their inferential applications, different probability interpretations are combined. How this plays out in different theories of inference depends on the type of question asked. We distinguish four question types: confirmation, evidence, decision, and prediction. We show that Bayesian confirmation theory mixes what are intuitively “subjective” and “objective” interpretations of probability, whereas the likelihood-based account of evidence melds three conceptions of what constitutes an “objective” probability.

There are three questions associated with Simpson’s paradox (SP): (i) Why is SP paradoxical? (ii) What conditions generate SP? and (iii) How to proceed when confronted with SP? An adequate analysis of the paradox starts by distinguishing these three questions. Then, by developing a formal account of SP, and substantiating it with a counterexample to causal accounts, we argue that there are no causal factors at play in answering questions (i) and (ii). Causality enters only in connection with action.

Kant's reasoning in his special metaphysics of nature is often opaque, and the character of his a priori foundation for Newtonian science is the subject of some controversy. Recent literature on the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science has fallen well short of consensus on the aims and reasoning in the work. Various of the doctrines and even the character of the reasoning in the Metaphysical Foundations have been taken to present insuperable obstacles to accepting Kant's claim to ground Newtonian science. (...) Gordon Brittan and Gerd Buchdahl, amongst others, have argued that Kant's stated aims in this case are not to be taken at face value, and that prior ontological commitments play a hidden but central role in Kant's special metaphysics. ;Michael Friedman has shown how Kant's stated aims can be taken seriously with his ingenious reconstruction of the Metaphysical Foundations as a demonstration of the a priori basis for our thinking bodies to be in true motion and in absolute space. However, Friedman does not address the issue of matter theory--despite the importance of the issue to Kant. I argue that a strict reading of both the stated aims and doctrines of the Metaphysical Foundations is possible, since much of Kant's reasoning about the empirical concept of matter can be explained by his views on how the construction of empirical concepts is possible. ;Kant's quasi-mathematical constructions are pivotal in Friedman's interpretation. Constructibility is Kant's criterion of acceptability for the concepts of natural science. Yet Kant notoriously fails to construct the dynamical concept of matter, and accepts this failure with an equally notorious complacency. I argue that Kant's criteria of empirical concept construction, apart from any prior ontological commitments, are enough to generate his views on matter. Kant's failure to construct the requisite concept of matter can be ascribed to a missing law of nature, a law of the relation of forces the discovery of which Kant thought imminent. I conclude that matter theory is central to the Metaphysical Foundations, but that this does not undermine Kant's stated aim of giving the a priori ground of Newtonian science. (shrink)

The paper by Monteiro, Musten and Compson (2014) is to be commended for providing a comprehensive discussion of the compatibility issues arising from the integration of mindfulness – a 2,500-year-old Buddhist practice – into research and applied psychological domains. Consistent with the observations of various others (e.g., Dunne, 2011; Kang & Whittingham, 2010), Monteiro and colleagues have not only highlighted that there are differences in how Buddhism and contemporary mindfulness interventional approaches interpret and contextualize mindfulness, but there are also differing (...) interpretations of mindfulness within Buddhism. These apparent differences within Buddhism are arguably more noticeable when making comparisons across Buddhist vehicles (i.e., Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana), but to a lesser extent intra-vehicular differences can also be said to exist (i.e., differences between Buddhist traditions of the same vehicle). This commentary investigates the validity of some of these different Buddhist constructions of mindfulness, and then discusses how a better understanding of their scriptural and conceptual soundness (or lack thereof) may help to reconcile some of the actual and perceived incompatibility between Buddhist practice and contemporary secular mindfulness-based approaches. (shrink)

Psychological approaches to treating mental illness or improving psychological wellbeing are invariably based on the explicit or implicit understanding that there is an intrinsically existing ‘self’ or ‘I’ entity. In other words, regardless of whether a cognitive-behavioural, psychodynamic, or humanistic psychotherapy treatment model is employed, these approaches are ultimately concerned with changing how the ‘I’ relates to its thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, and/or to its physical, social, and spiritual environment. Although each of these psychotherapeutic modalities have been shown to have (...) utility for improving psychological health, there are inevitably limitations to their effectiveness and there will always be those individuals for whom they are incompatible. Given such limitations, research continuously attempts to identify and empirically validate more effective, acceptable and/or diverse treatment approaches. One such approach gaining momentum is the use of techniques that derive from Buddhist contemplative practice. Although mindfulness is arguably the most popular and empirically researched example, there is also growing interest into the psychotherapeutic applications of Buddhism’s ‘non-self’ ontological standpoint (in which ontology is basically the philosophical study of the nature or essence of being, existence, or reality). (shrink)

Objectives. The purpose of this study was to conduct the first randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the effectiveness of a second-generation mindfulness-based intervention (SG-MBI) for treating fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS). Compared to first generation mindfulness-based interventions, SG-MBIs are more acknowledging of the spiritual aspect of mindfulness. Design. A RCT employing intent-to-treat analysis. Methods. Adults with FMS received an 8-week SG-MBI known as meditation awareness training (MAT; n = 74) or an active control intervention known as cognitive behaviour theory for groups (...) (n = 74). Assessments were performed at pre-, post-, and 6-month follow-up phases. Results. Meditation awareness training participants demonstrated significant and sustained improvements over control group participants in FMS symptomatology, pain perception, sleep quality, psychological distress, non-attachment (to self, symptoms, and environment), and civic engagement. A mediation analysis found that (1) civic engagement partially mediated treatment effects for all outcome variables, (2) non-attachment partially mediated treatment effects for psychological distress and sleep quality, and (3) non-attachment almost fully mediated treatment effects for FMS symptomatology and pain perception. Average daily time spent in meditation was found to be a significant predictor of changes in all outcome variables. Conclusions. Meditation awareness training may be a suitable treatment for adults with FMS and appears to ameliorate FMS symptomatology and pain perception by reducing attachment to self. (shrink)

Mindfulness is a form of meditation that derives from Buddhist practice and is one of the fastest growing areas of psychological research. Studies investigating the role of mindfulness in the treatment of behavioural addictions have – to date – primarily focused on gambling disorder. Recent pilot studies and clinical case studies have demonstrated that weekly mindfulness therapy sessions can lead to clinically significant change among individuals with gambling problems. Although preliminary findings indicate that there are applications for mindfulness approaches in (...) the treatment of gambling disorder, further empirical and clinical research utilizing larger-sample controlled study designs is clearly needed. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger devotes extensive discussion to medieval philosophers, particularly to their treatment of Truth and Being. On both these topics, Heidegger accuses them of forgetting the question of Being and of being responsible for subjugating truth to the modern crusade for certainty: ‘truth is denied its own mode of being’ and is subordinated ‘to an intellect that judges correctly’. Though there are some studies that discuss Heidegger’s debt to and criticism of medieval thought, particularly that of Thomas Aquinas, there is (...) no constructive reply to his assertions. As a result, Heidegger’s critique had an unprecedented effect on the credibility of medieval philosophy, whereby great portions of the philosophical community dismiss it altogether as an illegitimate Onto‐Theology. It is the aim of this study to offer a constructive reply that will fundamentally grapple with these allegations. By constructive reply we mean not only a reply that avoids the problems Heidegger raises regarding existence, essence and truth, but more importantly, one that uses Heidegger’s criticism in order to present a more insightful account of these notions. The present study is composed of two parts where the second serves as a sort of addendum. The first part, the core of this study, is an attempt to develop an understanding of the distinction between essence and existence that, on the one hand, accords with Heidegger’s criticism while on the other hand advances our understanding of how we think and understand reality. After presenting Heidegger’s depiction of Aquinas’s distinction between essence and existence (esse) as a real distinction, the study will present several views propounded by scholars of Aquinas regarding the status of this distinction. It will be argued that it is not clear whether the distinction is real, formal or conceptual, and that different types of distinction are applied in different places, particularly in regard to the phantasm that Aquinas considers essential to the human act of thinking. The second part diverges from the first part and focuses on Heidegger’s criticism of Aquinas’s conception of truth as adequation, i.e., what it is that grounds the possibility of truth as adequation. This divergence is necessary in order to present a full metaphysical response to Heidegger’s criticism. Since the aim of the present study is to argue that Aquinas’s philosophical system can contend with Heidegger’s criticism, a partial reply would greatly diminish its effectiveness. (shrink)

In her Dinny Gordon series (1958–1965), junior novelist Anne Emery’s heroine manifests intellectual desire, a passionate engagement in the life of the mind along with the desire to connect with like-minded others. Within a genre which focused on socialization and dating, in Dinny, Emery normalizes a studious, inner-directed, yet feminine heroine, passionate about ancient history rather than football captains. Emery’s endorsement of the pleasure Dinny takes in intellectual work, and the friends and boyfriends Dinny collects, challenge stereotypes of intellectual (...) girls as dateless isolates while suggesting an alternative model of girlhood operating within apparent conformism to postwar “good girl” standards. (shrink)

In this paper we show how a realistic normative democratic theory can work within the constraints set by the most pessimistic empirical results about voting behaviour and elite capture of the policy process. After setting out the empirical evidence and discussing some extant responses by political theorists, we argue that the evidence produces a two-pronged challenge for democracy: an epistemic challenge concerning the quality and focus of decision-making and an oligarchic challenge concerning power concentration. To address the challenges we then (...) put forward three main normative claims, each of which is compatible with the evidence. We start with a critique of the epistocratic position commonly thought to be supported by the evidence. We then introduce a qualified critique of referenda and other forms of plebiscite, and an outline of a tribune-based system of popular control over oligarchic influence on the policy process. Our discussion points towards a renewal of democracy in a plebeian but not plebiscitarian direction: Attention to the relative power of social classes matters more than formal dispersal of power through voting. We close with some methodological reflections about the compatibility between our normative claims and the realist program in political philosophy. (shrink)

Can there be knowledge and rational belief in the absence of a rational degree of confidence? Yes, and cases of "mistuned knowledge" demonstrate this. In this paper we leverage this normative possibility in support of advancing our understanding of the metaphysical relation between belief and credence. It is generally assumed that a Lockean metaphysics of belief that reduces outright belief to degrees of confidence would immediately effect a unification of coarse-grained epistemology of belief with fine-grained epistemology of confidence. Scott Sturgeon (...) has suggested that the unification is effected by understanding the relation between outright belief and confidence as an instance of the determinable-determinate relation. But determination of belief by confidence would not by itself yield the result that norms for confidence carry over to norms for outright belief unless belief and high confidence are token identical. We argue that this token-identity thesis is incompatible with the neglected phenomenon of “mistuned knowledge”—knowledge and rational belief in the absence of rational confidence. We contend that there are genuine cases of mistuned knowledge and that, therefore, epistemological unification must forego token identity of belief and high confidence. We show how partial epistemological unification can be secured given determination of outright belief by degrees of confidence even without token-identity. Finally, we suggest a direction for the pursuit of thoroughgoing epistemological unification. (shrink)

Under so-called primitive ontology approaches, in fully describing the history of a quantum system, one thereby attributes interesting properties to regions of spacetime. Primitive ontology approaches, which include some varieties of Bohmian mechanics and spontaneous collapse theories, are interesting in part because they hold out the hope that it should not be too difficult to make a connection between models of quantum mechanics and descriptions of histories of ordinary macroscopic bodies. But such approaches are dualistic, positing a quantum state as (...) well as ordinary material degrees of freedom. This paper lays out and compares some options that primitive ontologists have for making sense of the quantum state. (shrink)

When a belief is self-fulfilling, having it guarantees its truth. When a belief is self-defeating, having it guarantees its falsity. These are the cases of “self-impacting” beliefs to be examined below. Scenarios of self-defeating beliefs can yield apparently dilemmatic situations in which we seem to lack sufficient reason to have any belief whatsoever. Scenarios of self-fulfilling beliefs can yield apparently dilemmatic situations in which we seem to lack reason to have any one belief over another. Both scenarios have been used (...) independently to challenge Evidentialism, on which what we may rationally believe is all and only what fits our current evidence. Here we tie the two scenarios together and explore what a knowledge-sensitive evidentialist approach to one implies for the other. (shrink)

It is widely thought that chance should be understood in reductionist terms: claims about chance should be understood as claims that certain patterns of events are instantiated. There are many possible reductionist theories of chance, differing as to which possible pattern of events they take to be chance-making. It is also widely taken to be a norm of rationality that credence should defer to chance: special cases aside, rationality requires that one's credence function, when conditionalized on the chance-making facts, should (...) coincide with the objective chance function. It is a shortcoming of a theory of chance if implies that this norm of rationality is unsatisfiable. The primary goal of this paper is to show, on the basis of considerations concerning computability and inductive learning, that this shortcoming is more common than one would have hoped. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the relation between two notions: that of two solutions or models of a theory being related by a symmetry of the theory and that of solutions or models being physically equivalent. A number of authors have recently discussed this relation, some taking an optimistic view, on which there is a suitable concept of the symmetry of a theory relative to which these two notions coincide, others taking a pessimistic view, on which there is no such (...) concept. The present paper arrives at a cautiously pessimistic conclusion. (shrink)

The basing demand on doxastic justification is a widely held and highly intuitive dogma of contemporary epistemology. In Silva [2015, AJP], I argued that the dialectical significance of this dogma is severely limited by our lack of independent grounds for endorsing it. Oliveira [2015, AJP] sought to defend the basing demand on doxastic justification. Here I explain why Oliveira’s attempted defense of the basing demand misses its mark. I also briefly suggest that there is an alternative way of defending the (...) basing demand. The alternative way is reconciliatory: it shows that most epistemologists may have been right to insist on such a demand, but perhaps still wrong to treat it as a dialectically powerful tool in the assessment of certain substantive epistemological theories. (shrink)

Various philosophers discuss perlocutionary silencing, but none defend an account of perlocutionary silencing. This gap may exist because perlocutionary success depends on extralinguistic effects, whereas silencing interrupts speech, leaving theorists to rely on extemporary accounts when they discuss perlocutionary silencing. Consequently, scholars assume perlocutionary silencing occurs but neglect to explain how perlocutionary silencing harms speakers as speakers. In relation to that shortcoming, I defend a novel account of perlocutionary silencing. I argue that speakers experience perlocutionary silencing when they are illegitimately (...) deprived of perlocutionary influence on a conversation in which they are active participants, where perlocutionary influence on the conversation relates to speech-related perlocutionary goals meant to influence the conversation or conversational direction. Thus, this account grounds perlocutionary silencing in linguistic phenomena and characterizes perlocutionary silencing in a way that explains why those who experience perlocutionary silencing are harmed as speakers. Moreover, this account explains how perlocutionary silencing harms speakers as conversational participants in a way that cannot be captured by illocutionary or locutionary silencing, for a speaker may be perlocutionarily silenced despite illocutionary success. Consequently, the account explains why “All Lives Matter” silences Black Lives Matter and “Not All Men” silences women sharing experiences of sexual harassment. (shrink)

My argument proceeds in two stages. In §I, I sum up the intuitions of a popular argument for 'satisfaction accounts' of Purgatory that I label, TAP. I then offer an argument, taken from a few standard orthodox Christian beliefs and one axiom of Christian theology, to so show that TAP is unsound. In the same section, I entertain some plausible responses to my argument that are prima facie consistent with these beliefs and axiom. I find these responses wanting. In §II, (...) I offer a sorites problem for TAP, given the orthodox Christian understanding of Christ’s parousia, showing that TAP and the intuitions driving it are faulty. To attempt something of a corrective, I end by offering some modest theological suggestions for thinking through “the logic of total transformation.”. (shrink)

A piece of folklore enjoys some currency among philosophical Bayesians, according to which Bayesian agents that, intuitively speaking, spread their credence over the entire space of available hypotheses are certain to converge to the truth. The goals of the present discussion are to show that kernel of truth in this folklore is in some ways fairly small and to argue that Bayesian convergence-to-the-truth results are a liability for Bayesianism as an account of rationality, since they render a certain sort of (...) arrogance rationally mandatory. (shrink)

Contemporary theories of consciousness are based on widely different concepts of its nature, most or all of which probably embody aspects of the truth about it. Starting with a concept of consciousness indicated by the phrase “the feeling of what happens” (the title of a book by Antonio Damásio), we attempt to build a framework capable of supporting and resolving divergent views. We picture consciousness in terms of Reality experiencing itself from the perspective of cognitive agents. Each conscious experience is (...) regarded as composed of momentary feeling events that are combined by recognition and evaluation into extended conscious episodes that bind cognitive contents with a wide range of apparent durations (0.1 secs to 2 or more secs, for us humans, depending on circumstances and context). Three necessary conditions for the existence of consciousness are identified: a) a ground of Reality, envisaged as an universal field of potentiality encompassing all possible manifestations, whether material or 'mental'; b) a transitional zone, leading to; c) a manifest world with its fundamental divisions into material, 'informational' and quale-endowed aspects. We explore ideas about the nature of these necessary conditions, how they may relate to one another and whether our suggestions have empirical implications. (shrink)

Intuitively, a classical field theory is background-in- dependent if the structure required to make sense of its equations is itself subject to dynamical evolution, rather than being imposed ab initio. The aim of this paper is to provide an explication of this intuitive notion. Background-independence is not a not formal property of theories: the question whether a theory is background-independent depends upon how the theory is interpreted. Under the approach proposed here, a theory is fully background-independent relative to an interpretation (...) if each physical possibility corresponds to a distinct spacetime geometry; and it falls short of full background-independence to the extent that this condition fails. (shrink)

Many naive realists endorse a negative disjunctivist strategy in order to deal with the challenge presented by the possibility of phenomenologically indistinguishable halucination. In the first part of this paper I argue that this approach is methodologically inconsistent because it undercuts the phenomenological motivation that underlies the the appeal of naive realism. In the second part of the paper I develop an alternative to the negative disjunctivist account along broadly Meinongian lines. In the last section of this paper I consider (...) and evaluate a somewhat similar but rival view of hallucination developed by Mark Johnston. (shrink)

The twin goals of this essay are: to investigate a family of cases in which the goal of guaranteed convergence to the truth is beyond our reach; and to argue that each of three strands prominent in contemporary epistemological thought has undesirable consequences when confronted with the existence of such problems. Approaches that follow Reichenbach in taking guaranteed convergence to the truth to be the characteristic virtue of good methods face a vicious closure problem. Approaches on which there is a (...) unique rational doxastic response to any given body of evidence can avoid incoherence only by rendering epistemology a curiously limited enterprise. Bayesian approaches rule out humility about one’s prospects of success in certain situations in which failure is typical. (shrink)

I explain why, from the perspective of knowledge-centric anti-luck epistemology, objective act consequentialist theories of ethics imply skepticism about the moral status of our prospective actions and also tend to be self-defeating, undermining the justification of consequentialist theories themselves. For according to knowledge-centric anti-luck epistemology there are modal anti-luck demands on both knowledge and justification, and it turns out that our beliefs about the moral status of our prospective actions are almost never able to satisfy these demands if objective act (...) consequentialism is true. This kind of applied moral skepticism introduces problematic limits on our ability to use objective act consequentialism’s explanatory power as evidence for its truth. This is, in part, a product of higher-order defeat as I explain in the final section. There is, however, a silver lining for objective act consequentialists. For there is at least one type of objective act consequentialism, prior existence consequentialism, that is poised to avoid at least some of the epistemic problems discussed in this paper. (shrink)

Epistemic luck is a generic notion used to describe any of a number of ways in which it can be accidental, coincidental, or fortuitous that a person has a true belief. For example, one can form a true belief as a result of a lucky guess, as when one believes through guesswork that “C” is the right answer to a multiple-choice question and one’s belief just happens to be correct. One can form a true belief via wishful thinking; for example, (...) an optimist’s belief that it will not rain may luckily turn out to be correct, despite forecasts for heavy rain all day. One can reason from false premises to a belief that coincidentally happens to be true. One can accidentally arrive at a true belief through invalid or fallacious reasoning. And one can fortuitously arrive at a true belief from testimony that was intended to mislead but unwittingly reported the truth. In all of these cases, it is just a matter of luck that the person has a true belief. -/- Until the twenty-first century, there was nearly universal agreement among epistemologists that epistemic luck is incompatible with knowledge. Call this view “the incompatibility thesis.” In light of the incompatibility thesis, epistemic luck presents epistemologists with three distinct but related challenges. The first is that of providing an accurate analysis of knowledge (in terms of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for “S knows that p,” where ‘S’ represents the knower and ‘p’ represents the proposition known). An adequate analysis of knowledge must succeed in specifying conditions that rule out all instances of knowledge-destroying epistemic luck. The second challenge is to resolve the skeptical paradox that the ubiquity of epistemic luck generates: As will become clear in section 2c, epistemic luck is an all-pervasive phenomenon. Coupling this fact with the incompatibility thesis entails that we have no propositional knowledge. The non-skeptical epistemologist must somehow reconcile the strong intuition that epistemic luck is not compatible with knowledge with the equally evident observation that it must be. The third challenge concerns the special skeptical threat that epistemic luck seems to pose for more reflective forms of knowledge, such as knowing that one knows. Each of these challenges will be explored in the present article. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with learners who aim to learn patterns in infinite binary sequences: shown longer and longer initial segments of a binary sequence, they either attempt to predict whether the next bit will be a 0 or will be a 1 or they issue forecast probabilities for these events. Several variants of this problem are considered. In each case, a no-free-lunch result of the following form is established: the problem of learning is a formidably difficult one, in that (...) no matter what method is pursued, failure is incomparably more common that success; and difficult choices must be faced in choosing a method of learning, since no approach dominates all others in its range of success. In the simplest case, the comparison of the set of situations in which a method fails and the set of situations in which it succeeds is a matter of cardinality (countable vs. uncountable); in other cases, it is a topological matter (meagre vs. co-meagre) or a hybrid computational-topological matter (effectively meagre vs. effectively co-meagre). (shrink)

In contrast to the most common view, I argue that one can consistently affirm that fundamental moral principles are objective and invariable, and yet are dependent on God. I explore and reject appealing to divine simplicity as a basis for affirming this conjunction. Rather, I develop the thesis that God is identical to the Good (the Identity View or IV) and argue that the IV does not fall to the criticisms of simplicity. I then consider a divine will theory (DWT) (...) that claims moral principles are grounded in God’s will. When the IV is conjoined with a DWT, there is reason to affirm an objective, theistically based ethics. The IV and DWT proposed here are models and while I attempt to increase their plausibility, I do not argue for their truth. The IV conjoined with a moral theory such as DWT explains the dependence of moral principles on God, while allowing for objectivity since morality is rooted in the eternal unchanging standard of the Good. (shrink)

There are many parts of science in which a certain sort of underdetermination of theory by evidence is known to be common. It is argued that reflection on this fact should serve to shift the burden of proof from scientific anti-realists to scientific realists at a crucial point in the debate between them.

The orgulity objection of Belot (2013) is recast in the form of a decision problem.

Recent work in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science (e.g., Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 2010a; Clark 2010b; Palermos 2014) can help to explain why certain kinds of assertions—made on the basis of information stored in our gadgets rather than in biological memory—are properly criticisable in light of misleading implicatures, while others are not.

This paper revisits Derrida’s and Deleuze’s early discussions of “Platonism” in order to challenge the common claim that there is a fundamental divergence in their thought and to challenge one standard narrative about the history of deconstruction. According to that narrative, deconstruction should be understood as the successor to phenomenology. To complicate this story, I read Derrida’s “Plato’s Pharmacy” alongside Deleuze’s discussion of Platonism and simulacra at the end of Logic of Sense. Both discussions present Platonism as the effort to (...) establish a representative order (of original ideas and authorized reproductions of them) with no excess or outside (simulacra, or ideas that cannot be tied to an eidos). Since such pure representation is impossible, Platonism functions by means of the violent suppression of the simulacra and pharamakoi that exceed its eidetic structures. To overcome Platonism is thus not to reverse it, but to establish something like a practice of counter-memorials: detecting, exhuming, and writing back textual traces of what Platonism excludes. I then briefly apply this practice to narratives about the history of deconstruction, and suggest that they tend to occlude precisely the materialist elements of that history, as (for example) the importance of Spinoza as an interlocutor. In other words, the emerging canonical narrative about deconstruction runs the risk of repeating the Platonic gesture that Derrida spent his career writing against. (shrink)

A discussion of the sense in which reality is mind-dependent for Kant and for David Lewis. Plus a lot about space-aliens (and a bit about pimple-worms).

This paper finds out whether a higher degree matters in school performance, and in demonstrating leadership and core behavioral competencies among school heads. This was conducted to support the existing and future policies of the Department of Education and interested funders for the scholarship and advanced studies of school heads. Using a cross-sectional method, it involved 192 randomly selected participants. Data on school performance was obtained at the office of Surigao del Sur Division, while data on competencies were gathered through (...) the self-administered assessment tools developed by the Department of Education. These data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and analysis of variance. Results revealed that there was no significant difference in the school performance of school heads. This implies that the highest degree obtained is not a guarantee for better school performance. As found, those with doctorate degrees had a very high and consistent demonstration in all dimensions of leadership and core behavioral competencies. As unveiled, there were significant differences in the demonstrated competencies based on the highest educational qualifications. These imply that obtaining the highest degrees can allow school heads to acquire, develop, and demonstrate the competencies consistently better than their counterparts. Results have implications for DepEd officials, funders, and policy-makers. (shrink)

Like Lewis, many philosophers hold reductionist accounts of chance (on which claims about chance are to be understood as claims that certain patterns of events are instantiated) and maintain that rationality requires that credence should defer to chance (in the sense that under certain circumstances one's credence in an event must coincide with the chance of that event). It is a shortcoming of an account of chance if it implies that this norm of rationality is unsatisfiable by computable agents. This (...) shortcoming is more common than one might have hoped. (shrink)

This paper examines how metaphors can play a key role in triggering individual emergence. Metaphor is referenced in two main ways: the enthalpy metaphor is used to provide understanding of, and guide, the process of effective conversation. Metaphor is also interpreted very broadly to define those images, analogies, concepts, models, and theories that define our understanding of the world and our perception. It is our perception that must change if we are to improve the future. The paper examines how sharing (...) of appropriate metaphor through conversation can lead to collective emergence; and similarly, how integral conversation-with-self triggered by metaphors in (1) conversation with others, (2) other external stimuli, and (3) internal thought processes, can trigger individual emergence. The paper examines which of the three sources of trigger may be singly/jointly or sequentially the most powerful in their effect of triggering individual emergence, and under what context. The model presented is evaluated for the process of emergence of the paper. The reader is invited to participate in furthering the evaluation process. The author's own individual emergence is recognized as stemming from ongoing association with, and inspiration of, Bela Banathy, to whom the work is dedicated. (shrink)

Singer and Regan predicate their arguments -- for ethical vegetarianism, against animal experimentation, and for an end to animal exploitation generally -- on the equal considerability premise (EC). According to (EC), we owe humans and sentient nonhumans exactly the same degree of moral considerability. While Singer's and Regan's conclusions follow from (EC), many philosophers reject their arguments because they find (EC)'s implications morally repugnant and intuitively unacceptable. Like most people, you probably reject (EC). Never the less, you're already committed to (...) the mere considerability premise -- the premise that sentient nonhuman animals deserve some moral consideration, although not as much consideration as that owed humans. I argue that the mere considerability premise entails that vegetarianism is morally obligatory in most contexts and that animal experimentation is almost always wrong. Since you accept the mere considerability premise, you are already rationally committed to the immorality of eating meat and the wrongfulness of most animal experimentation. Hence, moral consistency requires that you stop eating meat and stop purchasing products tested on animals. (shrink)

Schervish (1985b) showed that every forecasting system is noncalibrated for uncountably many data sequences that it might see. This result is strengthened here: from a topological point of view, failure of calibration is typical and calibration rare. Meanwhile, Bayesian forecasters are certain that they are calibrated---this invites worries about the connection between Bayesianism and rationality.

Idealist philosophers have traditionally tried to defend their views by appealing to the claim that nonmental reality is inconceivable. A standard response to this inconceivability claim is to try to show that it is only plausible if one blurs the fundamental distinction between consciousness and its object. I try to rehabilitate the idealistic argument by presenting an alternative formulation of the idealist’s basic inconceivability claim. Rather than suggesting that all objects are inconceivable apart from consciousness, I suggest that it is (...) impossible to conceive of any such object as genuinely existent. This thesis is lent credence by the fact that only in reflective self-consciousness is existence a phenomenological datum. Not only is it the case that we are not ever aware of an object as existing, we do not have a clear understanding of what it would be like to have such an awareness. If this is true, then we have reason to believe that while consciousness exists, the objects of consciousness cannot exist. (shrink)

Bayesians often assume, suppose, or conjecture that for any reasonable explication of the notion of simplicity a prior can be designed that will enforce a preference for hypotheses simpler in just that sense. But it is shown here that there are simplicity-driven approaches to curve-fitting problems that cannot be captured within the orthodox Bayesian framework.

Any modern reader of Aristotle’s Politics confronts the question of what a treatise on 4th century BCE political institutions can say to a contemporary audience. Some authors, confronted with such a question, choose to examine Aristotle’s Politics as a work in the history of political philosophy or classics worthy of careful study because of its place in the Aristotelian corpus, because of the light it sheds on ancient Greek history and political institutions, or because of its relation to other works (...) in the history of political thought. Alternatively, other authors examine the Politics as a work which can shed light on contemporary political problems precisely because Aristotle’s pre-modern perspective provides a useful contrast to modern assumptions about concepts like law, rights, or the relationship between a citizen and a political communities. Both approaches to the Politics—the first, which emphasizes philological and exegetical understanding of the arguments and context of the work, and the second, which seeks to philosophize with Aristotle’s aid—are legitimate and respected approaches to the text. But insofar as the two different approaches have different goals—the former seeks to understand Aristotle’s text in all its historical and exegetical details, the later seeks to derive Aristotelian philosophical insights relevant to contemporary debates—evaluating the success of a study of the Politics requires measuring it against the appropriate aim. (shrink)

Current events force upon Americans not only the duties of a citizen of a nation at war but also the conceptual challenge of understanding the nature of citizenship. In Aristotle and the Rediscovery of Citizenship Susan Collins argues that contemporary liberal political theory, based on presuppositions about the priority of the individual to the state, is incapable of responding to such an intellectual challenge. At least since the publication of John Rawls’ Political Liberalism (1993), contemporary liberal political theory has struggled (...) to articulate an account of liberal citizenship which captures the obligations inherent in citizenship consistent with the individual freedom inherent in liberalism. But Collins argues that it is only through a return to Aristotle, who does not share liberal presuppositions, that we can understand the limitations of the liberal notion of citizenship adequately. To understand two crucial issues—the relationship of the right to the good and the nature of civic education—Collins claims we “must begin from Aristotle’s treatment of law and the education to moral virtue in his Nicomachean Ethics. This treatment opens the way to his direct investigation of the meaning and limits of citizenship in the Politics” (3). (shrink)

In his Metaphysics of Morals, Kant famously wrote “The distinction between virtue and vice can never be sought in the degree to which one follows certain maxims…In other words, the well-known principle (Aristotle’s) that locates virtue in the mean between two vices is false.” Kant is not the first (or the last) thinker to take to task Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean, but he is representative of a line of criticism of Aristotle’s doctrine which argues that ethics is the realm (...) of determinate necessary principles and Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean only supplies an indeterminate difference between virtue and vice. In response to such critics (among others), Gottlieb’s Virtue of Aristotle’s Ethics provides a defense of Aristotle’s ethical philosophy which is grounded in a reexamination of Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean and what Gottlieb claims are it concomitant doctrines, viz. that for Aristotle virtues are non-remedial and their unity results in an integration of the parts of the soul. She divides her book into two parts—one on ethical virtue and one on ethical reasoning (a subsection of intellectual virtue)—and touches upon additional topics such as the status of Aristotle’s nameless virtues, the notion of the fine (kalon), the nature of the practical syllogism, and the relationship between virtue and the political community. (shrink)

In Confucius: the Man and the Way of Gongfu, Peimin Ni offers an overview of the historical Confucius and his organic vision of how to live. Ni's motivation is that many comparable introductions are "simply repeating his life story and listing his main ideas". Ni insists that, "we have to get to the depth required by Confucius' thought", which will then explain why Confucius' influence has endured. The book is structured as six chapters, each focusing on one aspect of Confucius: (...) as historical figure, as spiritual leader, as philosopher, as political reformer, as educator and as a person. A full understanding of Confucius, Ni states, requires seeing how the different aspects inform each other, like a... (shrink)

Cognitive neuroscience is an interdisciplinary enterprise aimed at explaining cognition and behavior. It appears to be succeeding. What accounts for this apparent explanatory success? According to one prominent philosophical thesis, cognitive neuroscience explains by discovering and describing mechanisms. This "mechanist thesis" is open to at least two interpretations: a strong metaphysical thesis that Carl Craver and David Kaplan defend, and a weaker methodological thesis that William Bechtel defends. I argue that the metaphysical thesis is false and that the methodological thesis (...) is too weak to account for the explanatory promise of cognitive neuroscience. My argument draws support from a representative example of research in this field, namely, the neuroscience of decision-making. The example shows that cognitive neuroscience explains in a variety of ways and that the discovery of mechanisms functions primarily as a way of marshaling evidence in support of the models of cognition that are its principle unit of explanatory significance. -/- The inadequacy of the mechanist program is symptomatic of an implausible but prominent view of scientific understanding. On this view, scientific understanding consists in an accurate and complete description of certain "objective" explanatory relations, that is, relations that hold independently of facts about human psychology. I trace this view to Carl Hempel's logical empiricist reconceptualization of scientific understanding, which then gets extended in Wesley Salmon's causal-mechanistic approach. I argue that the twin objectivist ideals of accuracy and completeness are neither ends we actually value nor ends we ought to value where scientific understanding is concerned. -/- The case against objectivism motivates psychologism about understanding, the view that understanding depends on human psychology. I propose and defend a normative psychologistic framework for investigating the nature of understanding in the mind sciences along three empirically-informed dimensions: 1) What are the ends of understanding? 2) What is the nature of the cognitive strategy that we deploy to achieve those ends; and 3) Under what conditions is our deployment of this strategy effective toward achieving those ends? To articulate and defend this view, I build on the work of Elliot Sober to develop a taxonomy of psychologisms about understanding. Epistemological psychologism, a species of naturalism, is the view that justifying claims about understanding requires appealing to what scientists actually do when they seek understanding. Metaphysical psychologism is the view that the truth-makers for claims about understanding include facts about human psychology. I defend both views against objections. (shrink)

The phenomenal concept strategy (PCS) is widely regarded as the most promising physicalist defence against the so-called epistemic arguments—the anti-physicalist arguments that establish an ontological gap between physical and phenomenal facts on the basis of the occurrence of epistemic gaps in our descriptions of these facts. The PCS tries to undercut the force of the epistemic arguments by attributing the occurrence of the epistemic gaps to the special character of phenomenal concepts—the concepts by means of which we think about our (...) phenomenal experiences. In this essay, the author examines David Chalmers' master argument against the PCS and the objections raised against this argument by Peter Carruthers, Bénédicte Veillet and Katalin Balog in defending the PCS. While the author finds these objections to be successful defences of the PCS, the author shares Balog's belief that in this regard, the debate between the physicalists and anti-physicalists is a stalemate. (shrink)

This paper revisits the bearing of underdetermination arguments on scientific realism. First it argues that underdetermination considerations provide good reason to doubt that science is objective in the strong sense that anyone following the its methods will be led closer and closer to the truth about any given question within the purview of those methods, as more relevant data are considered. Then it argues that scientific realism is difficult to maintain in the absence of this sort of objectivity.

Critical in the computationalist account of the mind is the phenomenon called computational or computer simulation of human thinking, which is used to establish the theses that human thinking is a computational process and that computing machines are thinking systems. Accordingly, if human thinking can be simulated computationally then human thinking is a computational process; and if human thinking is a computational process then its computational simulation is itself a thinking process. This paper shows that the said phenomenon—the computational simulation (...) of human thinking—is ill-conceived, and that, as a consequence, the theses that it intends to establish are problematic. It is argued that what is simulated computationally is not human thinking as such but merely its behavioral manifestations; and that a computational simulation of these behavioral manifestations does not necessarily establish that human thinking is computational, as it is logically possible for a non-computational system to exhibit behaviors that lend themselves to a computational simulation. (shrink)