Ever since Darwin people have worried about the sceptical implications of evolution. If our minds are products of evolution like those of other animals, why suppose that the beliefs they produce are true, rather than merely useful? In this chapter we apply this argument to beliefs in three different domains: morality, religion, and science. We identify replies to evolutionary scepticism that work in some domains but not in others. The simplest reply to evolutionary scepticism is that the truth of beliefs (...) in a certain domain is, in fact, connected to evolutionary success, so that evolution can be expected to design systems that produce true beliefs in that domain. We call a connection between truth and evolutionary success a ‘Milvian bridge’, after the tradition which ascribes the triumph of Christianity at the battle of the Milvian bridge to the truth of Christianity. We argue that a Milvian bridge can be constructed for commonsense beliefs, and extended to scientific beliefs, but not to moral and religious beliefs. An alternative reply to evolutionary scepticism, which has been used defend moral beliefs, is to argue that their truth does not depend on their tracking some external state of affairs. We ask if this reply could be used to defend religious beliefs. (shrink)

Searle’s Chinese Room Argument (CRA) has been the object of great interest in the philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence and cognitive science since its initial presentation in ‘Minds, Brains and Programs’ in 1980. It is by no means an overstatement to assert that it has been a main focus of attention for philosophers and computer scientists of many stripes. It is then especially interesting to note that relatively little has been said about the detailed logic of the argument, whatever significance (...) Searle intended CRA to have. The problem with the CRA is that it involves a very strong modal claim, the truth of which is both unproved and highly questionable. So it will be argued here that the CRA does not prove what it was intended to prove. (shrink)

We present Backward Clock, an original counterexample to Robert Nozick’s truth-tracking analysis of propositional knowledge, which works differently from other putative counterexamples and avoids objections to which they are vulnerable. We then argue that four ways of analysing knowledge in terms of safety, including Duncan Pritchard’s, cannot withstand Backward Clock either.

This paper proposes a novel experimental approach that would help to determine whether perspectival shapes, such as the elliptical profile of a tilted plate or coin, are part of perceptual experience. If they are part of perceptual experience, then it should be possible to identify these shapes simply by attending appropriately to them. Otherwise, in order to identify perspectival shapes they must first be constructed in the visual imagination. We propose that these accounts of perspectival identification can be tested by (...) measuring the interference between visual and verbal working memory load, respectively, and the identification of perspectival shapes in the appearance of a 3D object. (shrink)

I argue that the most promising approach to understanding J.J. Gibson's "affordances" takes affordances themselves as ontological primitives, instead of treating them as dispositional properties of more primitive things, events, surfaces, or substances. These latter are best treated as coalescences of affordances present in the environment (or "coalescences of use-potential," as in Sanders (1994) and Hilditch (1995)). On this view, even the ecological approach's stress on the complementary organism/environment pair is seen as expressing a particular affordance relation between the world (...) and the analyst. That the world is parsed in any way among events and objects, perceivers and worlds, etc., reflects equally features of certain real or possible perspectives on the world and features of the world itself. In section 1, I begin by contending that, contrary to the apparent expectations of some in the field, the bare existence of affordances is surely quite uncontroversial. In section 2, I argue that the most reasonable approach to foundational ontology is a relativistic one. In section 3, I address the claim that affordances must be ontologically complemented by effectivities for the sake of completeness, and I shall argue against that claim on grounds that I take to reflect some of Gibson's most important insights. This work will help to clarify the way affordances are to be used in the fourth and final section, where I argue that ontological work, even within special sciences, should not be merely "regional," and that the most attractive general approach to ontological questions is one that is based on affordances, rather than upon things, events, surfaces, and the like. (shrink)

This chapter presents a series of experiments that elicit causal judgments using statements that do not include the verb "to cause". In particular, our interest is in exploring the extent to which previously observed effects of normative considerations on agreement with what we call "cause"-statements, i.e. those of the form "X caused ..." extend as well to those of the form "X V-ed Y", where V is a lexical causative. Our principal finding is that in many cases the effects do (...) not extend in this way, and moreover that the cases where we do find the same pattern are those where the causal verb used has a negative valence of its own. We draw two main conclusions from this finding. First, it reveals how the almost exclusive focus on "cause"-statements in the experimental study of causal judgment has led to findings that are unrepresentative of the full range of ordinary causal thinking, and provides a proof of concept as to how this thinking can be studied in its full variety. Second, the results of our experiments provide significant indirect support for the contention that the effect of moral considerations on agreement with "cause"-statements reflect the fact that these statements are most often used to assign responsibility for an event, and not just to describe the causal structure of what happened. It is not causal judgments in general that result from a process in which normative considerations play a role, but perhaps only those judgments that express a determination of moral responsibility. (shrink)

I show that Kavka's toxin puzzle raises a problem for the “Responsibility Theodicy,” which holds that the reason God typically does not intervene to stop the evil effects of our actions is that such intervention would undermine the possibility of our being significantly responsible for overcoming and averting evil. This prominent theodicy seems to require that God be able to do what the agent in Kavka's toxin story cannot do: stick by a plan to do some action at a future (...) time even though when that time comes, there will be no good reason for performing that action. I assess various approaches to solving this problem. Along the way, I develop an iterated variant of Kavka's toxin case and argue that the case is not adequately handled by standard causal decision theory. (shrink)

This thesis sets out an argument in defence of moral objectivism. It takes Mackie as the critic of objectivism and it ends by proposing that the best defence of objectivism may be found in what I shall call Kantian intuitionism, which brings together elements of the intuitionism of Ross and a Kantian epistemology. The argument is fundamentally transcendental in form and it proceeds by first setting out what we intuitively believe, rejecting the sceptical attacks on those beliefs, and by then (...) proposing a theory that can legitimize what we already do believe. Chapter One sets out our intuitive understanding of morality: that morality is cognitive, moral beliefs can be true or false; that morality is real, we do not construct it; that morality is rational, we can learn about it by rational investigation; and that morality places us under an absolute constraint. The chapter ends by clarifying the nature of that absolute demand and by arguing that the critical idea within morality is the idea of duty. In Chapter Two Mackie’s sceptical attack on objectivism is examined. Four key arguments are identified: that moral beliefs are relative to bfferent agents; that morality is based upon on non-rational causes; that the idea of moral properties or entities is too queer to be sustainable; and that moral objectivism involves queer epistemological commitments. Essentially all of these arguments are shown to be ambiguous; however it is proposed that Mackie has an underlying epistemological and metaphysical theory, scientific empiricism, which is hostile to objectivism and a theory that many find attractive for reasons that are independent of morality. Chapter Three explores the nature of moral rationality and whether scientific empiricism can use the idea of reflective equilibrium to offer a reasonable account of moral rationality. It concludes that, while reflective equilibrium is a useful account of moral rationality, it cannot be effectively reconciled with scientific empiricism. In order to function effectively as a rational process, reflective equilibrium must be rationally constrained by our moral judgements and our moral principles. Chapter Four begins the process of exploring some alternative epistemologies and argues that the only account that remains true to objectivism and the needs of reflective equilibrium is the account of intuitionism proposed by Ross. However this account can be developed further by drawing upon number of Kantian ideas and using them to supplement Ross’s intuitionism. So Chapter Five draws upon a number of Kant's ideas, most notably some key notions from the Critique of Judgement. These ideas are: that we possess a rational will that is subject to the Moral law and determined by practical reason; that we possess a faculty of judgement which enables us to become aware of moral properties and that these two faculties together with the third faculty of thought can function to constitute the moral understanding. Using these ideas the thesis explores whether they can serve to explain how intuitions can be rational and how objectivism can be justified. (shrink)

There is a great deal that might be said about justice in property claims. The strategy that I shall employ focuses attention upon the initial acquisition of property -- the most sensitive and most interesting area of property theory. Every theory that discusses property claims favorably assumes that there is some justification for transforming previously unowned resources into property. It is often this assumption which has seemed, to one extent or another, to be vulnerable to attack by critics of particular (...) justifications of property. Nevertheless, this assumption is frequently left undefended by property theorists, and where it is defended, the defense is often remarkably weak. That some initial claim to property be defensible is required by any theory which holds that certain present distributions may be justified, that certain transfers of property are justified, or that restitution ought to be made for previous injustice in transfer or acquisition. The initial acquisition of property, and its justification, is crucial to the remainder of property theory. (shrink)

I try in this essay to accomplish two things. First I offer some first thoughts toward a clarification of the ethical foundations of private property rights that avoids pitfalls common to more strictly Lockean theories, and is thus better prepared to address arguments posed by critics of standard private property arrangements. Second, I'll address one critical argument that has become pretty common over the years. While versions of the argument can be traced back at least to Pierre Joseph Proudhon, I'll (...) focus on a formulation given it by Jeremy Waldron. The basic idea is that the only sound arguments for private property rights lead to the conclusion that society has an obligation to insure that every citizen possess private property. In Waldron's formulation, what is justifiable is a general, rather than a special, right to private property. I shall try to suggest that this conclusion is unwarranted. (shrink)

As complicated an affair as it may be to give a fully acceptable general characterization of professional codes of ethics that will capture every nuance, one theme that has attracted widespread attention portrays them as contrivances whose primary function is to secure certain obligations of professionals to clients, or to the external community. In contrast to such an "externalist" characterization of professional codes, it has occasionally been contended that, first and foremost, they should be understood as internal conventions, adopted among (...) professionals as a device for securing the "interests" of the professionals themselves. In what follows, I will argue that both of these lines are incomplete. As important as service to the community and the interests of professionals may be in the full understanding of the multiple role that "codes of ethics" play in many professions, it is equally important to see them as expressive of the romance of a profession. Professional codes should be understood not only in terms of their utility to the community, or in terms of their utility to practitioners, but as expressions of callings. Analyses of professional codes of ethics that do not take into consideration their role in evoking the romance of a professional calling are thus not entirely adequate. Professional standards and codes can be fully understood only if one appreciates that they are designed to contribute to and evoke feelings of dignity, self-worth-and, for better or for worse, even the superiority--of the professionals themselves; the code may seem to them to express essential features of what the profession really is. (shrink)

In Anarchy, State and Utopia, Robert Nozick argues, first, that free-market anarchism is unstable -that it will inevitably lead back to the state; and, second, that without a certain "redistributive" proviso, the model is unjust. If either of these things is the case, the model defeats itself, for its justification purports to be that it provides a morally acceptable alternative to government (and therefore to the state). I argue, against Nozick's contention, that his "dominant protection agency" neither meets his monopoly (...) condition for statehood nor need run afowl of his redistributive requirement. This being the case, his argument against free market anarchism fails. (shrink)

This review article critiques Stephen Davies' The Artful Species: Aesthetics, Art, and Evolution.

Gwen Bradford has plausibly argued that one attains achievement only if one does something one finds difficult. It is also plausible that one must attain achievement to be worthy of “agential” praise, praise that is appropriately directed to someone on the basis of things that redound to their credit. These claims pose a challenge to classical theists who direct agential praise to God, since classical theism arguably entails that none of God’s actions are difficult for God. I consider responses to (...) this challenge and commend a view accord- ing to which God’s loving character is not necessitated by God’s nature but is a contingent and difficult achievement. I argue that this view can still satisfy the explanatory ambitions of natural theology. (shrink)

My objective in this paper is to address a handful of issues that typically get raised in discussions of philosophical anarchism. Some of these issues arise in discussions among partisans of anarchism, and some are more likely to be raised in efforts to defend the state against its opponents. My hope is to focus the argument in such a way as to make clearer the main issues that are at stake from the point of view of at least one version (...) of philosophical anarchism. (shrink)

This conference paper contests the validity of some traditional concepts of gardens. It introduces the possibility of considering the passage of time in gardens as a musical, rhythmic phenomonen.

Against David Schenck's interpretation, I argue that it is not absolutely clear that Merleau-Ponty ever meant to replace what Schenck refers to as the "unity of meanings" interpretation of "structure" with a "material meanings" interpretation. A particular problem-setting -- for example, an attempt to understand the "truth in naturalism" or the "truth in dualism" -- may very well require a particular mode of expression. I argue that the mode of expression chosen by Merleau-Ponty for these purposes, while unfortunate in some (...) of its apparent implications, need not be interpreted as recommitting him to the doctrine he spent his life working to renounce. I have argued that this would have been clearer had he been able to avail himself of James J. Gibson's notion of affordances, which capture perfectly what he was reaching for. (shrink)

Editor's Intro to the journal issue. Wittgenstein's methods are more important than his solutions or views on particular problems. He also attacks processes which give rise to philosophical problems, such as Cartesian dualism and Platonism and other more narrow pictures or assumptions. His recommendations that progress be based on what we get from juxtaposing examples with philosophical temptations are still being absorbed by the discipline. This is more the case now, fifteen years aftr I wrote this introduction.

Interest in "embodiment", and over how one may best express the implications of embodiment, is no parochial question, of interest only to a small number of effete philosophers. It confronts perceptual psychologists, developmental psychologists, and psychotherapists, of course. It may not be surprising, either, that it has become an important issue to some students of history and sociology, and to linguists, literary theorists and aestheticians. But that's not all. As physicists -- working within the very bastion of "objective" analysis -- (...) have tried to find expression for what seems to be going on in the domain of sub-atomic nature, they have begun to suggest that physical description itself is inevitably situated. And within the study of artificial intelligence, support is growing for the contention that intelligence cannot be understood entirely formalistically. Intelligence must at least be embodied -- it must somehow display "engaged agency" -- if it is to be recognizable as intelligence. It is within this context that the contribution offered by this essay must be understood. I shall contend that a particular conception -- that of "affordances" -- can, when suitably qualified, offer a conceptual tool of quite exceptional value in the construction of a positive theory of embodied agency, and of its philosophical consequences. (shrink)

Cognitive science is ready for a major reconceptualization. This is not at all because efforts by its practitioners have failed, but rather because so much progress has been made. The need for reconceptualization arises from the fact that this progress has come at greater cost than necessary, largely because of more or less philosophical (at least metatheoretical) straightjackets still worn - whether wittingly or not - by those doing the work. These bonds are extremely hard to break. Even some of (...) those who have directed powerful arguments against them have failed entirely to shake them off. The bonds are often attributed to the work of René Descartes, but they are really much older than that. If even in the present effort, I fail entirely to remove the straightjacket myself (even though I am making every attempt to get it off), this will testify to its tight grip. The straightjacket I am thinking about, of course, is the vague picture of the human situation that imagines centralized, internal minds in control of bodily machines. While almost no one in the contemporary cognitive science arena imagines minds to be the kind of thing Descartes took them to be - instantiations of a unique, fully non-material substance - there is nevertheless a deep resistance, even among the most fervent professed "materialists," to giving up this picture. In what follows, I shall try to offer an approach which on the one hand capitalizes on the excellent progress that has been made in cognitive science in the last few decades, and which on the other hand offers a general approach that may help at some level in the attempt to shake "Cartesian" bonds. The approach, as the alert reader already knows from the title of the essay, is an "ecological" approach. (shrink)

George Berkeley's apparently strange view – that nothing exists without a mind except for minds themselves – is notorious. Also well known, and equally perplexing at a superficial level, is his insistence that his doctrine is no more than what is consistent with common sense. It was every bit as crucial for Berkeley that it be demonstrated that the colors are really in the tulip, as that there is nothing that is neither a mind nor something perceived by a mind. (...) In what follows, I shall attempt to re-examine Berkeley's argument in terms of what it appears to have meant to him. I am especially interested in the connection between Berkeley's thought concerning the relation between perception and metaphysics and that of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, with whom, perhaps surprisingly, Berkeley shared a great many intuitions and concerns. Thus part of my objective is to compare and contrast the work of two thinkers who had many common interests, and whose thought frequently led them down similar paths. I shall be especially interested in apparent points of departure, both those that turn out to reflect real divergences and those which reflect confusions of one kind or another. My main objective, however, is not mere textual analysis. Like both Berkeley and Merleau-Ponty, my main hope is to make progress in clarifying how things are. As odd as some of Berkeley's pronouncements may sound to contemporary ears – concerning especially the metaphysical consequences of what he regarded as perceptual facts – I shall argue that, in substance, he was often not far wrong at all – at least as measured by important strands of more contemporary work on the subject. More particularly, I shall contend that for going a long way down an extraordinarily fruitful path which has been subsequently explored more fully by (especially) Martin Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Nelson Goodman and Hilary Putnam, Berkeley deserves considerably more credit than he is usually accorded as a progenitor of contemporary approaches to metaphysical issues. (shrink)

What characterizes most technical or theoretical accounts of memory is their reliance upon an internal storage model. Psychologists and neurophysiologists have suggested neural traces (either dynamic or static) as the mechanism for this storage, and designers of artificial intelligence have relied upon the same general model, instantiated magnetically or electronically instead of neurally, to do the same job. Both psychology and artificial intelligence design have heretofore relied, without much question, upon the idea that memory is to be understood as a (...) matter of internal storage. In what follows, I shall first sketch the most important reasons for skepticism about this model, and I shall then propose an outline of an alternative way of talking about memory. This will provide an appropriate framework for suggesting a few implications for future work in artificial intelligence. (shrink)

The thesis explores the adequacy of five well-known conceptions of art to the case of gardens. It concludes that, of those conceptions, the cluster theory is best suited to the case of gardens.

My objective is to offer at least a rough sketch of a new model for understanding time. Since many people are quite content with the model they have, I will try to show why a new model might be desirable or necessary. The exposition will be broken down into three parts. In the first part, I’ll try to show that no one has ever experienced time as such. In the second part, I shall argue that one good reason for this (...) is that there is no such thing as time as such. Finally, in the third part, I’ll try to reassemble what’s left of the conception of time after all this demolition, and I’ll offer a positive model (albeit rather vague) of what I prefer to call “temporality”. The exposition will follow lines familiar to contemporary students of time, but will, I hope, lead to conclusions that are at least modestly novel. (shrink)

In The Libertarian Idea, Jan Narveson explains his interpretation of social contract theory this way: "The general idea of this theory is that the principles of morality are (or should be) those principles for directing everyone's conduct which it is reasonable for everyone to accept. They are the rules that everyone has good reason for wanting everyone to act on, and thus to internalize in himself or herself, and thus to reinforce in the case of everyone." It is plain, here, (...) that Narveson believes that social contract is to provide justification -- a foundation, in fact -- for 'the principles of morality'. The burden assumed in this essay is to examine how far Narveson has succeeded in making this foundational claim plausible. (shrink)

Benjamin Franklin's social and political thought was shaped by contacts with and knowledge of ancient aboriginal traditions. Indeed, a strong case can be made that key features of the social structure eventually outlined in the United States Constitution arose not from European sources, and not full-grown from the foreheads of European-American "founding fathers", but from aboriginal sources, communicated to the authors of the Constitution to a significant extent through Franklin. A brief sketch of the main argument to this effect is (...) offered in this essay. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to explain the philosophical problems that Niels Bohr felt had been exposed by the discovery of the "quantum of action," and by the emergence of the quantum theory that arose in large part as a result of his efforts. I won't have space to make the case adequately here, but my own view is that we have not yet fully digested the message brought to us by Bohr's "Copenhagen Interpretation" of Quantum Mechanics, and I suspect (...) that it will finally prove to be every bit as revolutionary as Bohr thought it was. (shrink)

I examine the claim that the underlying importance given to freedom within a society's scheme of values varies with historical circumstance and social context (I shall sometimes call this the "relativist claim"). The point of the examination will be to attempt to determine the manner in which, and the extent to which, this claim really endangers the liberal argument, which seems to suggest that freedom is valuable everywhere and always. It will be seen that several apparent challenges may be dismissed, (...) since for one reason or another they do not really threaten traditional liberalism. When these apparent (but non-threatening) challenges are pared away from the relativist claim, it will be seen that the remaining threat is on the one hand weaker, and on the other hand more dubious, than might have been supposed at first. This rather formal work will then set the stage for a proffered definition of the sort of "freedom" that is at stake in this discussion, and for my own attempt to offer answers to the questions about the value of freedom that I raise. (shrink)

In the midst of even the most tragic circumstances attending the aftermath of disaster, and co-existing with a host of complex emotions, arises a practical consideration: how might similar tragedies be prevented in the future? The complexity of such situations must not be neglected. More than mere prevention must usually be taken into consideration. But the practical question is of considerable importance. In what follows, I will offer some reasons for being concerned that efforts to fix the problem -- efforts, (...) that is, directed toward insuring that similar tragedies do not occur in the future -- can easily be obstructed by attempts to fix blame -- that is, efforts directed toward determining which agent among those involved is guilty of wrong-doing. This is the case, I shall contend, even where some agent or another really is guilty of wrong-doing. The problem is further complicated by a pervasive human tendency to imagine that some agent or another must be responsible in some way for any tragedy that occurs -- even when this is not really true -- but its influence is not at all limited to such cases. As I shall suggest, philosophical attitudes toward issues of determinism and free will may be implicated in the different approaches people take to the problem of assessing what has gone wrong in a particular case and how to fix it, but such deep philosophical problems need not be resolved here. The point is not that humans are never guilty of wrong-doing (since their actions, the argument might go, are all products of outside forces), but rather that whatever the case may be about guilt, tracking down guilty persons is a different business from fixing institutionally-embedded problems so as to lessen the likelihood of their recurrence. (shrink)

I begin this essay with a notion of "authority" that makes a sharp distinction between authority and power, and grant that such authority is not only legitimate, but perhaps even necessary in human affairs. I then trace the devaluation of this idea through varying degrees of institutionalization, culminating in its political cooptation. I argue, finally, that what goes by the name of political authority is the very antithesis of the legitimate and necessary element that we began with.

Progress in the last few decades in what is widely known as “Chaos Theory” has plainly advanced understanding in the several sciences it has been applied to. But the manner in which such progress has been achieved raises important questions about scientific method and, indeed, about the very objectives and character of science. In this presentation, I hope to engage my audience in a discussion of several of these important new topics.

Analyzing three key cases that arose in 1993, I argue that the practice of sending in "testers" -- persons posing as job applicants -- to ferret out workplace discrimination is easier to defend from an ethical standpoint in an agency's investigation stems from an actual complaint. By contrast, defendants may rightfully challenge the legitimacy of the procedures used for "test" subjects when an investigation is based solely on the general goals of an antidiscrimination agency.

Harry Heft's Ecological Psychology in Context is an important book in many ways. For one thing, it adds considerably to our understanding of the historical background of J.J. Gibson's thought. But more than that, Heft aims to place ecological psychology not just historically, but philosophically. He says "This volume shows that radical empiricism stands at the heart of Gibson's ecological program, and it can usefully be employed as the conceptual centerpiece for ecological psychology more broadly construed" (p. xvi). While I (...) was impressed with Harry's argument to this effect, I'm not yet entirely persuaded. In these brief remarks I'll try to explain why. (shrink)

Sensation should be understood globally: some infant behaviors do not make sense on the model of separate senses; neonates of all species lack time to learn about the world by triangulating among different senses. Considerations of natural selection favor a global understanding; and the global interpretation is not as opposed to traditional work on sensation as might seem.

In response to Professor Rorty’s reaction to Professor Habermas’s paper in this symposium, I confess that I am still not sure I understand Rorty’s hostility to ideals such as the ideal of truth. Such ideals as the ideal of truth -- and ideals like those of reason and morality surely stand and fall with the ideal of truth -- seem plainly to have an enormous pragmatic value. They lure us out of our too-constrained, too-limited ethnocentric or idiosyncratic frames of reference. (...) It is always possible, of course, that such ideals may be abused; they have frequently been deployed, in particular, as clubs used to beat down views and modes of behavior that are threatening or otherwise disliked. But they need not be abused. Their proven and potential value is quite extraordinary. They offer us standards which pay explicit respect to the principle that the criteria we use for evaluating ideas and modes of behavior should be nonethnocentric and nonidiosyncratic. They offer us standards that we can appeal to in luring ourselves or others to step outside of our relatively narrow present points of view here and now and toward a broader perspective that can serve us better tomorrow and elsewhere. (shrink)

Risk is not always nasty. Risk can be the cost of opportunity, of course; but sometimes risk is regarded not as a cost at all, but as a close attendant of pleasure. Many things that people invest considerable time and resources in would not be pursued at all if not for the attendant risk. Attempting to offer clarification of the role that risk plays in human affairs is thus itself a risky business. People largely want to avoid unnecessary risk except (...) when they deliberately seek it out. One might be tempted to say that people are funny that way. In what follows, I shall attempt to undermine the temptation to say this. I shall argue that there is nothing at all odd or funny about the fact that people are sometimes drawn to and sometimes repelled by risk. I would contend, further, that a clear understanding of the way value enters human affairs not only allows but requires this. (shrink)

Ksiazka Roberta Paula Wolfa Apologia anarchizmu, ktora ukazala sie w roku 1970, stala sie niezwyklym wydarzeniem w rozwoju dwudziestowiecznej filozofii zachodniej: oto bowiem szacowny filozof, reprezentujacy (mniej wiecej) glowny nurt swej dziedziny, przedstawial argumenty zyczliwe wobec anarchizmu.

Pragmatists, as I understand them, have their own view of what truth and progress are. William James, quite famously, offered a straightforward pragmatic definition of truth. In rejecting in general the idea of truth, Richard Rorty indicates thereby a rejection of this part of the pragmatic tradition. Perhaps Professor Rorty can clarify, in his response, what stops a pragmatist -- armed with the pragmatic definition of truth -- from saying that progress toward the truth was made (for example) through the (...) Copernican revolution in astronomy. (shrink)

People have been arguing about natural law for at least a couple of thousand years now. During that time, a number of substantially different sorts of theory have been identified as falling within the natural law tradition. Even within each sort of natural law theory, there has been a variety of quite different arguments proposed, both in behalf of and in opposition to the theory. These facts about the natural law tradition serve to confound its critics. It's extremely tough to (...) get a tidy formulation of just what natural law theory is, and such a formulation is needed if the theory is to be analyzed as to its adequacy, truth, value, or whatever. I am going to try to perform such an analysis nonetheless, and to do it as neatly as possible within a fairly short space. (shrink)

The author has extensive law enforcement experience and the paper is intended to provoke thought on the use of technology as it pertains to information sharing between the police and the private sector. -/- As the world edges closer and closer to the convergence of man and machine, the human capacity to retrieve information is increasing by leaps and bounds. We are on the verge of knowing everything and anything there is to know, and literally in the blink of an (...) eye! -/- This means that police will have the capacity to learn everything about everyone with the only restriction being privacy legislation. But it also means that those involved in immoral, unlawful or illegal activity will have that same capacity and with no such restriction. ‘Bad Brother’ may be far more dangerous than ‘Big Brother!' -/- The global community requires a secure and credible system to retrieve and assess all of the information ‘generally available to the public.' A system that will strive to keep ‘Big Brother’ in check and ‘Bad Brother’ out, all the while providing a means of alerting citizens to genuine risks or to dangerous people. Such as system would help diffuse the systemic inaccurate and harmful profiling that is often based on rumours and innuendo. -/- There is an identified public-private partnership opportunity. A chance to work with privacy advocate groups and background checking private companies to define, design and deliver on something that will be of immense benefit to citizens around the globe. -/- We have an opportunity to create something that will work to ensure that only the best information gets used and in a moralistic, lawful and legal way! Technology continues to move forward at incomprehensible speeds – failure to act could have serious consequences. (shrink)

Paper was presented at the 29th Annual Symposium on Economic Crime in Cambridge, England. -/- Regardless of our concern for privacy, real-time criminal activity information is being disseminated throughout cyberspace by the private sector. This information is growing very quickly while being archived for search and retrieval on a long term basis. This is inevitable and could not, nor should not, be stopped. -/- Law enforcement and government policy makers should consider the risk of sharing with the risk of not (...) sharing and allow the private sector to participate in the management of this risk in an informed way. The private sector has the right to be as well informed as law enforcement – they often have as much, if not more, to lose. -/- Law enforcement should also not be afraid of true partnership with the private sector - meet with privacy experts within government and reconsider the level of secrecy attached to the criminal records and crime reports that have been carefully guarded for all of these years. Whenever and wherever possible, secrecy levels should be abandoned, particularly when one can make a reasonable argument for a 'duty to warn'. There is an opportunity to use valid substantiated information to clarify, correct and override some of the misinformation that is available openly on the Internet. -/- Fully transparent reported crime along with fully transparent end-results (i.e. criminal records) could be a wondrous thing for the safety of our citizens. It is time that the private sector received more on their side of the private sector law enforcement partnerships. This would undoubtedly go a long ways in preventing much crime before it happens as more and more business people and safety-minded members of each community become better informed about who they are dealing with. The risks associated with being uninformed are very high. (shrink)

The focus of this paper will be on a specific type of risk – within the context of sharing of information, or the lack there of - the risk of being uninformed.

This is an excellent book that deserves careful attention from anyone whose work touches on issues in the philosophy of mind and action. In it, Marcus challenges the dominant philosophical conception of the mind’s place in nature, according to which mentalistic explanations hold true only when mental states or events cause things to happen in the same way as physical states and events do. Against this conception, Marcus argues that mental causation is utterly dissimilar to most of the causation we (...) find in the physical realm, and that psychological achievements like believing and acting for reasons should be understood as manifestations of the rational ability self-consciously to represent good-making relations as holding between propositions and actions. (shrink)

In this paper, I transcend the abstract engagement of J. L. Austin's Speech Acts theory and explore their sociopolitical advantages, using the Nigerian social space as my primary experimental field. Nigerian social space is quite hierarchical and progresses along apparently asymmetrical lines of social relationship (in most cases). This in turn, accentuates some sort of power dynamics. In every communication, there is an implicit reinforcement of the social fabric as well as the power dynamic, either through one person's percep6of the (...) social status of the other or, of one's emphasis of power dynamic over the other. Austin's theory comes to the fore as a very laudable framework to map this interesting sociological facts. This work then, offers a philosophical contribution to an otherwise, sociological/anthropological fact. My job in this paper, is to explore a sociopolitical negotiation of Austin's theory in a multiethnic nation-state as Nigeria where hierarchy and power dynamics are heavily emphasized. This paper thus highlights the importance of the perlocutionary acts and the felicity conditions, and also accentuates their implications for social interactions and power dynamics in the Nigerian social space. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted immense work on the investigation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Rapid, accurate, and consistent interpretation of generated data is thereby of fundamental concern. Ontologies––structured, controlled, vocabularies––are designed to support consistency of interpretation, and thereby to prevent the development of data silos. This paper describes how ontologies are serving this purpose in the COVID-19 research domain, by following principles of the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology (OBO) Foundry and by reusing existing ontologies such as the Infectious Disease Ontology (...) (IDO) Core, which provides terminological content common to investigations of all infectious diseases. We report here on the development of an IDO extension, the Virus Infectious Disease Ontology (VIDO), a reference ontology covering viral infectious diseases. We motivate term and definition choices, showcase reuse of terms from existing OBO ontologies, illustrate how ontological decisions were motivated by relevant life science research, and connect VIDO to the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO). We next use terms from these ontologies to annotate selections from life science research on SARS-CoV-2, highlighting how ontologies employing a common upper-level vocabulary may be seamlessly interwoven. Finally, we outline future work, including bacteria and fungus infectious disease reference ontologies currently under development, then cite uses of VIDO and CIDO in host-pathogen data analytics, electronic health record annotation, and ontology conflict-resolution projects. (shrink)