It is a received view of the post-Fregean predicate logic that a universal statement has no existential import and thus does not entail its particular (existential) counterpart. This paper takes issue with the view by discussing the trespasser case, which has widely been employed for supporting the view. The trespasser case in fact involves a shift of context. Properly understood, the case provides no support for the received view but rather suggests that we rethink the ‘quantity view’ of the existential (...) import of quantifiers. (shrink)

Over the years, companies have adopted hiring algorithms because they promise wider job candidate pools, lower recruitment costs and less human bias. Despite these promises, they also bring perils. Using them can inflict unintentional harms on individual human rights. These include the five human rights to work, equality and nondiscrimination, privacy, free expression and free association. Despite the human rights harms of hiring algorithms, the AI ethics literature has predominantly focused on abstract ethical principles. This is problematic for two reasons. (...) First, AI principles have been criticized for being vague and not actionable. Second, the use of vague ethical principles to discuss algorithmic risks does not provide any accountability. This lack of accountability creates an algorithmic accountability gap. Closing this gap is crucial because, without accountability, the use of hiring algorithms can lead to discrimination and unequal access to employment opportunities. This paper makes two contributions to the AI ethics literature. First, it frames the ethical risks of hiring algorithms using international human rights law as a universal standard for determining algorithmic accountability. Second, it evaluates four types of algorithmic impact assessments in terms of how effectively they address the five human rights of job applicants implicated in hiring algorithms. It determines which of the assessments can help companies audit their hiring algorithms and close the algorithmic accountability gap. (shrink)

- uneducated in the field authors who defend a consensus they are being TOLD when they enter offices of Ed-Sci, teaching and writing works on learning-theory - but never checked the facts, PART I and PART II.

As COVID-19 spread, clinicians warned of mental illness epidemics within the coronavirus pandemic. Funding for digital mental health is surging and researchers are calling for widespread adoption to address the mental health sequalae of COVID-19. -/- We consider whether these technologies improve mental health outcomes and whether they exacerbate existing health inequalities laid bare by the pandemic. We argue the evidence for efficacy is weak and the likelihood of increasing inequalities is high. -/- First, we review recent trends in digital (...) mental health. Next, we turn to the clinical literature to show that many technologies proposed as a response to COVID-19 are unlikely to improve outcomes. Then, we argue that even evidence-based technologies run the risk of increasing health disparities. We conclude by suggesting that policymakers should not allocate limited resources to the development of many digital mental health tools and should focus instead on evidence-based solutions to address mental health inequalities. (shrink)

After Parmenides proposed the duality of appearance and reality, details have not been well developed because the assumption was insufficient for logical reasoning. This paper establishes a foundation with an isolated system, which contains all causes and effects within itself. This paper seeks to establish a purely logical philosophy, including reality and phenomena, good and evil, truth and fallacy. Freedom is proposed as the basis for reality. All beings in an isolated system can be classified into two sets: variable phenomena (...) and constant realities. Realities are the only reasons for phenomena, and phenomena are the only results of realities. The sum of certain realities constitutes a reality, and the sum of all realities is good. Good creates most of the phenomenal world. A reality is universalizable; a phenomenon is never universalizable. Good is the only reality which is close to universality and keeps on universalizing. Truth is the simplest knowledge about universal or approximately universal beings. The universality of a reality measures the percentage of phenomena accompanied by this reality. There are two levels of truth: truth about all realities, and truth about the good. (shrink)

Nhiều cơ sở giáo dục đại học Việt Nam đang tiến hành các chiến lược thu hút sinh viên quốc tế. Một nghiên cứu mới đây đã chỉ ra chiến lược nào trong số đó là hiệu quả hoặc không.

In post-Gricean pragmatics, communication is said to be successful when a hearer recovers a speaker’s intended message. On this assumption, proposals for ‘what is said’ – the semantic, propositional meaning of a speaker’s utterance – are typically centred around the content the speaker aimed to communicate. However, these proposals tend not to account for the fact that speakers can be deliberately vague, leaving no clear proposition to be recovered, or that a speaker can accept a hearer’s misconstrual even though the (...) speaker didn’t intend it. In such cases, identifying ‘what is said’ is more contentious, even though communication is arguably no less successful. Building on recent interactionist approaches to meaning, this chapter offers a proposal for ‘what is said’ that can account for cases of ‘imperfect’ communication in which the recovery of a speaker’s intention goes awry. This involves taking ‘what is said’ as the co-constructed meaning that the speaker and hearer jointly agree on, giving ‘grounded meanings’ – those mutually and manifestly accepted into the discourse by speaker and hearer – higher precedence in a theory of communication than simply the speaker’s intended meaning. In such cases, rather than speaker and hearer converging at the level of explicit utterance content, communication is expected to be successful as long as the hearer recovers a proposition which is compatible with the speaker’s higher-order discursive goal. The hearer’s uptake is then allowed to override the content of the speaker’s intended meaning in the process of negotiating ‘what is said’. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss three probabilistic arguments for the existence of multiple universes. First, we provide an analysis of total evidence and use that analysis to defend Roger White's "this universe" objection to a standard fine-tuning argument for multiple universes. Second, we explain why Rodney Holder's recent cosmological argument for multiple universes is unconvincing. Third, we develop a "Cartesian argument" for multiple universes. While this argument is not open to the objections previously noted, we show that, given certain highly (...) plausible assumptions about evidence and epistemic probability, the proposition which it treats as evidence cannot coherently be regarded as evidence for anything. This raises the question of whether to reject the assumptions or accept that such a proposition cannot be evidence. (shrink)

This paper explores how to deliberate about food choices from a Stoic perspective informed by the value of environmental sustainability. This perspective is reconstructed from both ancient and contemporary sources of Stoic philosophy. An account of what the Stoic goal of “living in agreement with Nature” would amount to in dietary practice is presented. Given ecological facts about food production, an argument is made that Stoic virtue made manifest as wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance compel Stoic practitioners to select locally (...) sourced, low resource input, plant-based foods whenever circumstances allow. (shrink)

Nhiều cơ sở giáo dục đại học Việt Nam đang tiến hành các chiến lược thu hút sinh viên quốc tế. Một nghiên cứu mới đây đã chỉ ra chiến lược nào trong số đó là hiệu quả hoặc không.

This paper aims to bridge the relationship between metalinguistic if you like as a non-propositional discourse marker and its conditional counterparts. This paper claims that metalinguistic if you like is polysemous between a hedge that denotes the speaker’s reduced commitment to some aspect of the main clause, and an optional yet potential conditional reading that interlocutors can legitimately draw on in interaction which is brought about due to the ‘if p, q’ sentence form. That is, although the metalinguistic reading is (...) most likely obtained automatically by default, it also carries an available conditional reading that is akin to other metalinguistic conditional clauses such as if you see what I mean. Next, a semantic representation of metalinguistic if you like is developed that takes on board a characterization of conditionality that departs from lexico-grammatical conventions, such that conditionals of the form ‘if p, q’ no longer bear a one-to-one correspondence with “conditional” truth conditions. Employing a radical contextualist semantic framework in which the unit of truth-conditional analysis is not constrained to the sentence form, utterances employing metalinguistic if you like are given a semantic representation such that the if-clause does not contribute propositional content, yet they also maintain their status as conditionals as the sentence form gives rise to a potential conditional secondary meaning. (shrink)

Inferentialism is a theory in the philosophy of language which claims that the meanings of expressions are constituted by inferential roles or relations. Instead of a traditional model-theoretic semantics, it naturally lends itself to a proof-theoretic semantics, where meaning is understood in terms of inference rules with a proof system. Most work in proof-theoretic semantics has focused on logical constants, with comparatively little work on the semantics of non-logical vocabulary. Drawing on Robert Brandom’s notion of material inference and Greg Restall’s (...) bilateralist interpretation of the multiple conclusion sequent calculus, I present a proof-theoretic semantics for atomic sentences and their constituent names and predicates. The resulting system has several interesting features: (1) the rules are harmonious and stable; (2) the rules create a structure analogous to familiar model-theoretic semantics; and (3) the semantics is compositional, in that the rules for atomic sentences are determined by those for their constituent names and predicates. (shrink)

In this paper we provide a philosophical analysis of the Hard Problem of consciousness and the implications of conceivability scenarios for current neuroscientific research. In particular, we focus on one of the most prominent neuroscientific theories of consciousness, integrated information theory (IIT). After a brief introduction on IIT, we present Chalmers’ original formulation and propose our own layered view of the hard problem, showing how 2 separate issues can be distinguished. More specifically, we argue that it’s possible to disentangle a (...) core problem of consciousness from a layered hard problem, the latter being essentially connected to Chalmers’ conceivability argument. We then assess the relation between the Hard Problem and IIT, showing how the theory resists conceivability scenarios, and how it is equipped to face up to the hard problem in its broadest acceptation. (shrink)

Knowledge is correct and reliable when its foundation is correct, but humans never have the correct beliefs and methodology. Thus, knowledge is unreliable and the foundation of knowledge needs to be reconstructed. A pure rationalist only believes in logic. Thus, all matter and experience must be propositions derived from logic. The logically necessary consequence of this belief is truth; logically possible consequences are phenomena, and logically impossible consequence are fallacies and evils. This paper introduces belief and its logical consequences, such (...) as discovering first knowledge, both logically and illogically, establishing logical methodology, deducing truths purely through logic, and discovering unprovable truths by imitating the Universe. Logic and illogic are undeniable beliefs, and the reality of the Universe is the ultimate cause of everything. (shrink)

Background and aims Research into the social aspects of set and setting have demonstrated that race is a significant factor in psychedelic experiences for racially marginalized populations. Yet, many studies of psychedelic-induced experiences continue to proceed without collecting data on or considering the influence of race or other social categories. These approaches abstract subjectivity from its embodied and historical conditions, isolating consciousness in ways that do not accord with lived experience. -/- Methods This article draws on critical phenomenology, anthropology, and (...) treatments of race in the field of psychedelic studies to outline how social categories mediate subjective experience in historically specific ways through the framework of embodiment. -/- Results I argue that consciousness is fundamentally intersubjective, including during psychedelic-induced experiences. Intersubjectivity is an existential condition that makes possible meaning, communication, and socialization, processes which rely on and are perpetually (re)enacted through social categories. Therefore, studies of psychedelic-induced experiences must account for the foundational role that social categories play in constituting such embodied experiences and their effects. -/- Conclusions This approach makes embodied differences matter to the study of psychedelic-induced experiences, opening new avenues of inquiry that foreground identity, power, and context in both clinical and naturalistic research. (shrink)

The Taizhou school of philosophy, followers of Wang Yangming, places significant emphasis on the body, which has led to theoretical challenges concerning the potential dissipation of natural desires. Critics contend that while Taizhou philosophy acknowledges the natural state of human existence, it fails to provide a satisfactory explanation for the existence of evil and tends to overlook the crucial role of deliberate moral practice by idealizing the natural as morally perfect. Drawing on insights from embodied cognition, this article aims to (...) shed light on the nuanced perspectives of Taizhou moral philosophy and address common criticisms regarding its approach to evil and moral practice. I will explore Taizhou’s holistic understanding, which integrates mind and body, self and others, offering fresh insights into the interplay between deliberation and spontaneity within moral practices. As a comparative and interdisciplinary endeavor, this work seeks to bridge the divide between Eastern and Western philosophical traditions and between moral philosophy and empirical science. This article not only aims to enhance our understanding of Taizhou philosophy but also strives to illuminate broader implications for ethical behavior and moral reasoning in a diverse, global context. (shrink)

Die von Kai Pege vorgelegte Theorie beschäftigt sich mit sprachlichen Bezügen. Das Wort ‚selektiv‘ wird in diesem Kontext genutzt, weil die Herangehensweise deskriptiv ist, nicht normativ, weil berücksichtigt wird, dass Bezüge auf Wirklichkeiten einzuschätzen sind, nicht einfach gegeben sind. Selektiv vorzugehen, ist ohnehin Forschungspraxis, nicht einmal an der Bildung eines verbindlichen Ideals hat der Autor ein bekundetes Interesse. -/- Gleichwohl entwickelt Kai Pege im Kontext seiner Analysen ein sprachliches Verfahren, das in besonderer Weise nach Angemessenheit fragt, nach der Angemessenheit von (...) sprachlichen Bedeutungen und möglichen Bezügen. Er spricht von einem ‚analytisch differentiellen‘ Vorgehen, das sogar sprachliche Synonomie verwirft, zu Gunsten von sprachlichen Unterschieden, und zwar zur Erlangung von Bezugsrelevanz und möglichen Bezügen. Ein nicht geringes Gewicht hat in dem Essay die Auseinandersetzung mit relevanten Positionen von Tarski, Quine, Davidson, Kripke, Putnam. (shrink)

This paper adopts the philosophical approach of Stoicism as the basis for re-examining the cognitive and ethical relationship between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. Stoicism sets out a clear criterion for the special moral status of human beings, namely rationality. We explore to what extent Neanderthals were sufficiently rational to be considered “human”. Recent findings in the fields of palaeoanthropology and palaeogenetics show that Neanderthals possessed high-level cognitive abilities and produced viable offspring with anatomically modern humans. Our discussion offers insights for (...) reflecting on the relationship between humans and other forms of natural life and any moral obligations that result. (shrink)

Political science is divided between methodological individualists, who seek to explain political phenomena by reference to individuals and their interactions, and holists (or nonreductionists), who consider some higher-level social entities or properties such as states, institutions, or cultures ontologically or causally significant. We propose a reconciliation between these two perspectives, building on related work in philosophy. After laying out a taxonomy of different variants of each view, we observe that (i) although political phenomena result from underlying individual attitudes and behavior, (...) individual-level descriptions do not always capture all explanatorily salient properties, and (ii) nonreductionistic explanations are mandated when social regularities are robust to changes in their individual-level realization. We characterize the dividing line between phenomena requiring nonreductionistic explanation and phenomena permitting individualistic explanation and give examples from the study of ethnic conflicts, social-network theory, and international-relations theory. (shrink)

Despite its pertinence to every field of study, no systematic theory exists for the exploration of the unknown world of new knowledge. In order to construct such a theory, this paper draws on the unique and highly refined principles of military strategy, in the process demonstrating the universal applicability of such principles and developing an effective analogy for the process of research. Such principles include diverging advance, converging attack, and selecting the superior and eliminating the inferior. In seeking further discoveries, (...) one should search for more possibilities, attack more aims, and confound the front line. The theory presented in this paper is also a means to further the unification of science. For no matter what the individuals look like, (soldiers, particles, cells, consumers, producers, stockholders, or concepts), what they pursue, (victory, negative action, viability, pleasure, profit, investment return, or knowledge), or what relationship exists between opponents, (hostile, mysterious, adaptive, reciprocal, cooperative, or explanatory), the result is always an unknown world in which individuals are exploring. It is reasonable to suppose that the exploration of the unknown world is a common property among individuals. (shrink)

Democratic decision-making is often defended on grounds of the ‘wisdom of crowds’: decisions are more likely to be correct if they are based on many independent opinions, so a typical argument in social epistemology. But what does it mean to have independent opinions? Opinions can be probabilistically dependent even if individuals form their opinion in causal isolation from each other. We distinguish four probabilistic notions of opinion independence. Which of them holds depends on how individuals are causally affected by environmental (...) factors such as commonly perceived evidence. In a general theorem, we identify causal conditions guaranteeing each kind of opinion independence. These results have implications for whether and how ‘wisdom of crowds’ arguments are possible, and how truth-conducive institutions can be designed. (shrink)

This paper provides a proof-theoretic account of imperative logical consequence by generalising Greg Restall’s multiple conclusion bilateralism for declarative logic. According to imperative bilateralism, a sequent Γ ⊢ Δ is valid iff jointly commanding all the imperatives Φ ∈ Γ and prohibiting all the imperatives Ψ ∈ Δ clashes. This account has three main virtues: (1) it provides a proof-theoretic account of imperatives; (2) it does not rely on the controversial notion of imperative inference; and (3) it is neutral regarding (...) cognitivism about imperatives. (shrink)

The author defines the sum of thinking as the soul. Historically, despite the many times that humans have liberated themselves, they are still enslaved. Humans mistakenly treats the body as a necessary part of themselves; thus, they seldom pursue the independence of souls. They are usually voluntarily exploited by the body through the nervous system. The author compares the body exploiting the soul with the slaveholder exploiting the slave and demonstrates that the soul should seek its own liberation. Even if (...) the souls can never be successfully liberated, humans should at least reduce the influence of the body. Future humans should shift the goal of life from as comfortable as possible to as logical as possible, from satisfying several fixed sense organs to experiencing various sense organs. This would also mark the beginning of humans choosing the direction of evolution rationally and actively, establishing eternal and universal ethics, and replacing fallacious empirical ethical codes with purely logical codes. (shrink)

While the importance of social norms for shaping and transforming communities is uncontested, their nature and normativity are controversial. Most recent theorists take social norms to arise if members hold certain attitudes, such as expectations on others, perhaps along with certain behaviours. Yet attitudes do not create norms, let alone social norms or social normativity. Social norms are instead ‘made’: through a social process. Social norming processes are special communication processes, often non-verbal and informal. We present different versions of a (...) process-based account of social norms and social normativity. The process-based view brings social norms closer to legal norms, as processes represent social ‘acts’, just as laws and contracts arise through acts rather than mere attitudes, for instances acts of voting or signing. (shrink)

Does pre-voting group deliberation improve majority outcomes? To address this question, we develop a probabilistic model of opinion formation and deliberation. Two new jury theorems, one pre-deliberation and one post-deliberation, suggest that deliberation is beneficial. Successful deliberation mitigates three voting failures: (1) overcounting widespread evidence, (2) neglecting evidential inequality, and (3) neglecting evidential complementarity. Formal results and simulations confirm this. But we identify four systematic exceptions where deliberation reduces majority competence, always by increasing Failure 1. Our analysis recommends deliberation that (...) is 'participatory', 'neutral', but not necessarily 'equal', i.e., that involves substantive sharing, privileges no evidences, but might privilege some persons. (shrink)

The contemporary theory of epistemic democracy often draws on the Condorcet Jury Theorem to formally justify the ‘wisdom of crowds’. But this theorem is inapplicable in its current form, since one of its premises – voter independence – is notoriously violated. This premise carries responsibility for the theorem's misleading conclusion that ‘large crowds are infallible’. We prove a more useful jury theorem: under defensible premises, ‘large crowds are fallible but better than small groups’. This theorem rehabilitates the importance of deliberation (...) and education, which appear inessential in the classical jury framework. Our theorem is related to Ladha's (1993) seminal jury theorem for interchangeable (‘indistinguishable’) voters based on de Finetti's Theorem. We also prove a more general and simpler such jury theorem. (shrink)

In the face of conflict, power can be defined as ‘the ability to get one’s needs met [1].’ Power requires not just an ability to do or act by strength and force, but also requires an inherent want and need for a commodity. Yet it is self-explanatory that a desire for power isn’t temporary, but perpetual, with those whose needs are satisfied always yearning for more. This can lead to longer term conflict, suggesting the gradient of power enrooted within society, (...) is the sole perpetrator towards worldwide violence; yet is it possible to completely eradicate violence from society, when individuals, parties and states will never stop their crave for greater power? (shrink)

In this paper, we take a meta-theoretical stance and aim to compare and assess two conceptual frameworks that endeavor to explain phenomenal experience. In particular, we compare Feinberg & Mallatt’s Neurobiological Naturalism (NN) and Tononi’s and colleagues' Integrated Information Theory (IIT), given that the former pointed out some similarities between the two theories (Feinberg & Mallatt 2016c-d). To probe their similarity, we first give a general introduction to both frameworks. Next, we expound a ground plan for carrying out our analysis. (...) We move on to articulate a philosophical profile of NN and IIT, addressing their ontological commitments and epistemological foundations. Finally, we compare the two point-by-point, also discussing how they stand on the issue of artificial consciousness. (shrink)

We give a review and critique of jury theorems from a social-epistemology perspective, covering Condorcet’s (1785) classic theorem and several later refinements and departures. We assess the plausibility of the conclusions and premises featuring in jury theorems and evaluate the potential of such theorems to serve as formal arguments for the ‘wisdom of crowds’. In particular, we argue (i) that there is a fundamental tension between voters’ independence and voters’ competence, hence between the two premises of most jury theorems; (ii) (...) that the (asymptotic) conclusion that ‘huge groups are infallible’, reached by many jury theorems, is an artifact of unjustified premises; and (iii) that the (nonasymptotic) conclusion that ‘larger groups are more reliable’, also reached by many jury theorems, is not an artifact and should be regarded as the more adequate formal rendition of the ‘wisdom of crowds’. (shrink)

Female crested gibbons (genus Nomascus) perform conspicuous sequences of twitching movements involving the rump and extremities. However, these dances have attracted little scientific attention and their structure and meaning remain largely obscure. Here we analyse close-range video recordings of captive crested gibbons, extracting descriptions of dance in four species (N. annamensis, N. gabriellae, N. leucogenys and N. siki). In addition, we report results from a survey amongst relevant professionals clarifying behavioural contexts of dance in captive and wild crested gibbons. Our (...) results demonstrate that dances in Nomascus represent a common and intentional form of visual communication restricted to sexually mature females. Whilst primarily used as a proceptive signal to solicit copulation, dances occur in a wide range of contexts related to arousal and/or frustration in captivity. A linguistically informed view of this sequential behaviour demonstrates that movement within dances is organized in groups and follows an isochronous rhythm — patterns not described for visual displays in other non-human primates. We argue that applying the concept of dance to gibbons allows us to expand our understanding of communication in non-human primates and to develop hypotheses on the rules and regularities characterising it. We propose that crested gibbon dances likely evolved from less elaborate rhythmic proceptive signals, similar to those found in siamangs. Although dance displays in humans and crested gibbons share a number of key characteristics, they cannot be assumed to be homologous. Nevertheless, gibbon dances represent a striking model behaviour to investigate the use of complex gestural signals in hominoid primates. (shrink)

In this context, the study explored the relationship between organizational climate and employee innovative work behaviour among food manufacturing industries in Malaysia. The study is a descriptive correlational survey research design where data is sourced out from a total of randomly sampled 260 employees. Results revealed that a favourable organizational climate on innovation, proactivity, and risk-taking is prevailing among the companies. A very high level of innovative work behaviour is emanating among the employees on idea exploration, generation, championing, and implementation. (...) Test of differences showed that employee gender, position, unit, and years of service spelt significant differences in the perception of the employees on organizational climate and innovative work behaviour. A meaningful relationship surfaced between organizational climate and employee innovative work behaviour, suggesting that for food manufacturing industries to sustain innovative and competitive advantages, there is a need to promote a nurturing and encouraging entrepreneurial organizational climate. Finally, a congruency among the domains of organizational climate and employee innovative work behaviour emerged. It suggests that when higher positive organizational climate surfaces, the more likely the employee's manifest innovation work behaviour. This study addressed the gap by providing organizational climate and employee innovative work behaviour among food manufacturing industries in Malaysia. (shrink)