Boredom has dominated discussions about longevity thanks to Bernard Williams’s influential “The Makropulos Case.” I reveal the presence in that paper of a neglected, additional problem for the long-lived person, namely alienation in the face of unwanted change. Williams gestures towards this problem but does not pursue it. I flesh it out on his behalf, connecting it to what I call the ‘curmudgeonly attitude to change.’ This attitude manifests itself in the tendency, amongst those getting on in years, to observe (...) that things are getting worse. Curmudgeonliness is typically met with dismissal because it often concerns changes that don’t radically inhibit the curmudgeon’s well-being or autonomy. I believe that taking the curmudgeonly attitude more seriously will provide insight into the longer-lived self and its relation to the future. Using Williams’s approach to longevity as the framework, I contend that—as with boredom—a sense of alienation born of curmudgeonliness can become terminal for the subject, rendering her unable to envision the future as a site of worthwhile activity. However, I also uncover ways in which this agential stasis is significantly distinct from boredom and constitutes a different worry and a different risk for the long-lived individual. (shrink)

Recent empirical research has substantiated the finding that very many of us harbour implicit biases: fast, automatic, and difficult to control processes that encode stereotypes and evaluative content, and influence how we think and behave. Since it is difficult to be aware of these processes - they have sometimes been referred to as operating 'unconsciously' - we may not know that we harbour them, nor be alert to their influence on our cognition and action. And since they are difficult to (...) control, considerable work is required to prevent their influence. We here focus on the implications of these findings for epistemology. We first look at ways in which implicit biases thwart our knowledge seeking practices (sections 1 & 2). Then we set out putative epistemic benefits of implicit bias, before considering ways in which epistemic practices might be improved (section 3). Finally, we consider the distinctive challenges that the findings about implicit bias pose to us as philosophers, in the context of feminist philosophy in particular (section 4). (shrink)

Although Whitehead’s particular style of philosophizing--looking at traditional philosophical problems in light of recent scientific advances--was part of a trend that began with the scientific revolutions in the early 20th century and continues today, he was marginalized in 20th century philosophy because of his outspoken defense of what he was doing as “metaphysics.” Metaphysics, for Whitehead, is a cross-disciplinary hermeneutic responsible for coherently integrating the perspectives of the special sciences with one another and with everyday experience. The program of such (...) a meta-discipline is challenging to philosophical orthodoxy because it enlarges, rather than narrows, the range of empirical evidence that philosophy must acknowledge. This places Whitehead’s philosophy in a perennial tradition that seeks to resolve fundamental antinomies through synthesis and reconciliation rather than reduction or elimination. (shrink)

At the opening of her article, Acker writes, "I am using this essay to do two things. To read a short passage from Philosophy in the Bedroom by the Marquis de Sade. To read one of his tales. The more that I write my own novels, the more it seems to me that to write is to read." The two main divisions in the text bear the following headings: "To write in order to lead the reader into a labyrinth from (...) which the reader cannot emerge without destroying the world" and "Reading a tale by de Sade: writing or reading whose only purpose is to destroy itself.". (shrink)

There have been many attempts to retire dualism from active philosophic life, replacing it with something less removed from science, but we are no closer to that goal now than fifty years ago. I propose breaking the stalemate by considering marginal perspectives that may help identify unrecognized assumptions that limit the mainstream debate. Comparison with Whitehead highlights ways that opponents of dualism continue to uphold the Cartesian “real distinction” between mind and body. Whitehead, by contrast, insists on a conceptual distinction: (...) there can no more be body without mind than mind without body (at least at the level of ultimate constituents). Key to this integration is Whitehead’s understanding that mind, at its most rudimentary, is simply the intrinsic temporality of a physical event. Thus, the resulting form of “panpsychism” is more naturalistic than commonly supposed, and it solves both the composition problem (traditionally fatal to panpsychism) and the “hard problem.”. (shrink)

Nicholas Rescher’s way of understanding process philosophy reflects the ambitions of his own philosophical project and commits him to a conceptually ideal interpretation of process. Process becomes a transcendental idea of reflection that can always be predicated of our knowledge of the world and of the world qua known, but not necessarily of reality an sich. Rescher’s own taxonomy of process thinking implies that it has other variants. While Rescher’s approach to process philosophy makes it intelligible and appealing to mainstream (...) analytic philosophy, it leaves behind the more daring ideas of Bergson, James, and Whitehead, all of whom envisioned the primordial reality of process in a radical ontology of becoming. This variant of process thought can be construed as coherent and self-consistent, but not without relinquishing the correspondence theory of truth and embracing challenging ideas that bring us in close proximity to existentialism, apophatic theology, and Buddhism. (shrink)

Conventional approaches to consciousness assume that our current science tells us within tolerable limits what physical nature is. Because nature so understood cannot explain consciousness as we seem to experience it ourselves, explaining consciousness becomes a problem. One solution is to rethink what consciousness is so that it becomes the sort of thing our current natural science could in principle explain. Whitehead takes the opposite approach, using the existence of consciousness as a clue to what nature must be if it (...) can generate something like consciousness. The justification for this approach can be found in Whitehead’s implicit indictment of descriptive phenomenology. According to Whitehead, the seemingly insoluble problem of explaining consciousness naturalistically is an artifact created by the assumption that consciousness faithfully samples the world, when in fact it obscures the very aspects of nature that are indispensable to understanding how anything, including consciousness itself, could emerge through a physical process. (shrink)

Terms for consciousness, used with a cognitive meaning, emerged as count nouns in the 17th century. This transformation repeats an evolution that had taken place in late antiquity, when related vocabulary, used in the sense of conscience, went from being mass nouns designating states to count nouns designating faculties possessed by every individual. The reified concept of consciousness resulted from the rejection of the Scholastic-Aristotelian theory of mind according to which the mind is not a countable thing, but a pure (...) potentiality. This rejection was motivated by an acute sense of the mind’s fallible subjectivity. While conditioned by recent historical events, the 17th century’s pervasive sense of subjectivity also reveals a heavy debt to Hellenistic philosophy, which had been recently rediscovered. But whereas Hellenistic thought, mistrustful of theoria, only reifies conscience, early modern thinking, more mistrustful of praxis and seeking its grounding in theoria, goes a step further and reifies consciousness. Partly modeled on theological ideas, the resulting concept of consciousness is plagued by paradoxes that have becomes notorious for their intractability. But essentially the same model of consciousness underwrites contemporary theory, embroiling contemporary debates in the same controversies that dominated the 17th century. Sidestepping these difficulties by returning to the Scholastic-Aristotelian theory of mind would be a tall order, but it is not impossible. Alfred North Whitehead's theory of consciousness offers an example. His novel theory of time enables Whitehead to rehabilitate the Aristotelian concept of passive mind in a wholly naturalistic way. (shrink)

The problem causation poses is: how can we ever know more than a Humean regularity. The problem consciousness poses is: how can subjective phenomenal experience arise from something lacking experience. A recent turn in the consciousness debates suggest that the hard problem of consciousness is nothing more than the Humean problem of explaining any causal nexus in an intelligible way. This involution of the problems invites comparison with the theories of Alfred North Whitehead, who also saw them related in this (...) way. According to Whitehead, a tempting but false phenomenology of consciousness obscures temporality and leads to the causation problem, which then makes consciousness itself seem causally inexplicable. Bringing the processual nature of consciousness back into view discloses causation at work in the moment-to-moment emergence of consciousness, and it reveals that causation operates in a logically fuzzy domain where the skeptical critique of causality finds no foothold. (shrink)

The authors argue that the consciousness debate inhabits the same problem space today as it did in the 17th century. They attribute the lack of progress to a mindset still polarized by Descartes’ real distinction between mind and body, resulting in a standoff between humanistic and scientistic approaches. They suggest that consciousness can be adequately studied only by a multiplicity of disciplines so that the paramount problem is how to integrate diverse disciplinary perspectives into a coherent metatheory. Process philosophy is (...) well qualified to attempt such a synthesis. The rationale for the volume is summed up in the book's unifying thesis: normal, focal-attentive consciousness is not the sui generis phenomenon it is usually taken to be, but part of a wider spectrum of experience (including marginal, deviant, and non-human experience) that can only be studied by approaches as diverse as phenomenology, psycho- and neuropathology, biology, and zoology. (shrink)

This paper looks at the history of the problem of individuation from Plato to Whitehead. Part I takes as its point of departure Reiner Wiehl’s interpretation of the different meanings of “abstract” in the metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead and arrives at a corresponding taxonomy of different ways things can be called concrete. Part II compares the way philosophers in different periods understand the relation between thought and intuition. The view mostly associated with ancient philosophy is that thought and sense-perception (...) target different kinds of objects. The view mostly associated with modern philosophy (although it was introduced by the Stoics) is that thought and sense-perception are different ways of targeting the same objects. These differences have specific consequences for theories of individuation, which are assessed historically in Part III and then applied to Whitehead’s difficult texts in part IV. (shrink)

This study of Ralph Pred’s Onflow (MIT Press, 2005) expands on Pred’s arguments and raises doubts about the viability of phenomenology. Showing that Pred’s method is indeed phenomenological, I validate his interpretations of William James as phenomenologist and his critique of John Searle in light of James, which documents the extent to which the role of habit in the constitution of experience is neglected by philosophers. In explaining habit, however, Pred himself reverts to non-phenomenological models drawn from James’ postulate of (...) psycho-physical parallelism. Habit, like causation, poses an unmet challenge to phenomenological methods. In his critique of Gerald Edelman, Pred notes that Edelman falls prey to a metaphysical bias inherent in modern Indo-European languages. But Pred’s acuity in exposing a latent linguistic bias in phenomenological data is a two-edged sword. Revealing an invisible dependence of appearance on language, it casts doubt on the project of getting beyond language to "appearances-in-themselves.". (shrink)

Whitehead claims there is only one type of individual in the universe—the actual entity—but there are necessarily multiple tokens of this type. This turns out to be paradoxical. Nevertheless, a type of individuality that is necessarily plural because, for each token, relations to other tokens are constitutive is something familiar from ordinary language, everyday politics, and, not least, 19th century German social thought. Whitehead’s actual entity generalizes the notion of species-being we find in Fichte, Feuerbach, and Marx. The rationale for (...) the concept of species-being brings to light important social and political implications of Whitehead’s cosmology. (shrink)

There is an expansion of empirical research that at its core is an attempt to quantify the "feely" aspects of living in raced (and other stigmatized) bodies. This research is offered as part concession, part insistence on the reality of the "special" circumstances of living in raced bodies. While this move has the potential of making headway in debates about the character of racism and the unique nature of the harms of contemporary racism--through an analysis of stereotype threat research, microaggression (...) research, and the reception of both discourses--I will argue that this scientization of the phenomenology of race and racism also stalls progress on the most significant challenges for the current conversation about race and racism: how to listen and how to be heard. (shrink)

A popular “Reductionist” account of personal identity unifies person stages into persons in virtue of their psychological continuity with one another. One objection to psychological continuity accounts is that there is more to our personal identity than just mere psychological continuity: there is also an active process of self-interpretation and self-creation. This criticism can be used to motivate a rival account of personal identity that appeals to the notion of a narrative. To the extent that they comment upon the issue, (...) proponents of narrative accounts typically reject Reductionist metaphysics that (ontologically) reduce persons to aggregates of person stages. In contrast to this trend, we seek to develop a narrative account of personal identity from within Reductionist metaphysics: we think person stages are unified into persons in virtue of their narrative continuity with one another. We argue that this Reductionist version of the narrative account avoids some serious problems facing non-Reductionist versions of the narrative account. (shrink)

One critique of experimental philosophy is that the intuitions of the philosophically untutored should be accorded little to no weight; instead, only the intuitions of professional philosophers should matter. In response to this critique, “experimentalists” often claim that the intuitions of professional philosophers are biased. In this paper, we explore this question of whose intuitions should be disqualified and why. Much of the literature on this issue focuses on the question of whether the intuitions of professional philosophers are reliable. In (...) contrast, we instead focus on the idea of “muddled” intuitions—i.e. intuitions that are misdirected and about notions other than the ones under discussion. We argue that the philosophically untutored are likely to have muddled intuitions and that professional philosophers are likely to have unmuddled intuitions. Although being umuddled does not, by itself, establish the reliability of the intuitions of professional philosophers, being muddled is enough to disqualify the intuitions of the philosophically untutored. We then turn to the charge that, despite being unmuddled, professional philosophers still have biased intuitions. To evaluate this charge, we switch focus from the general notion of biased intuition to the more specific notion of theory-laden intuition. We argue that there is prima facie evidence—in the form of the presence of conflicts of intuition—for thinking that at least some of the intuitions of professional philosophers are theory-laden. In summary, we conclude that that there is no clean and easy answer to the question of whose intuitions should matter. (shrink)

The Introduction highlights the three main themes of the book: (1) the ontological and epistemological status of everyday human consciousness, (2) the distribution of consciousness in the natural world, and (3) panpsychism. The individual contributions to the book are summarized and related literature is briefly discussed.

At the time of his death in May of 2012, Ralph Pred was working on a critical social theory inspired by process philosophy. In the book manuscript he left unfinished, Syntax and Solidarity, he develops a “radically empirical” sociology that enables him to identify and critically evaluate the different forms that social solidarity has taken in the history of civilization. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the importance of his unfinished project. The executors of Pred’s literary (...) estate would be happy to see his project, with due acknowledgment, publicized and continued. Keywords: Active Voice Bias, Concrescence, Middle Voice, Sociogeny, Solidarity, Substance. (shrink)

This essay explores challenges that arise for professors who teach critical theory in our current climate of conservatism. Specifically, it is argued that the conservative commitments to non-revolutionary change and reverence for tradition are corrupted in our current political and intellectual climate. This corruption, called “ideological imperviousness,” undermines the institutional structures put in place to produce a functional educational environment that protects the interests of both professors and students. The result is an environment that imposes an unjust vulnerability on professors (...) and risks depriving students of the opportunity to acquire the critical skills necessary to combat their own vulnerabilities. (shrink)

The competing expressions of ideology flooding the contemporary political landscape have taken a turn toward the absurd. The Radiance Foundation’s recent anti-abortion campaign targeting African-American women, including a series of billboards bearing the slogan “The most dangerous place for an African-American child is in the womb”, is just one example of political "discourse" that is both infuriating and confounding. Discourse with these features – problematic intelligibility, disinterest in the truth, and inflammatory rhetoric – has become increasingly common in politics, the (...) press, and even the arguments made by ordinary folk. It is often criticized for its falsehood or its hurtfulness; however, these critiques tend to miss its pernicious potential. This essay characterizes this insidious discourse as purposeful nonsense. Part of the way that purposeful nonsense functions, we argue, relies on taking advantage of harmful stereotypes and denigrating narratives that are already present in our culture. Purposeful nonsense both draws upon harmful ideology and fortifies it. The effect is that members of oppressed social groups are confronted with disparaging ideology, while its authors are free to deny responsibility for it. Black feminist and intersectional analysis – particularly in the discussion of race, abortion, and reproductive justice – are useful in identifying and criticizing the harmful subtext in the Radiance Foundation’s billboard campaign. The notion of purposeful nonsense serves to extend the reach of these criticisms. Purposeful nonsense – disguised as merely logically confused discourse – is a key factor in maintaining an oppressive and unjust society; however, feminist, black feminist, and intersectional analysis contextualizes purposeful nonsense, potentially disrupting its harmful influence. We conclude that purposeful nonsense employs a variation on stereotype threat, a phenomenon in which being reminded of negative stereotypes about one’s social group causes stereotypical performance failures. We suggest that the notion of stereotype threat combined with intersectional analysis offers a fruitful avenue along which research on this sort of discourse might be expanded. (shrink)

Every year, the member Churches of the World Council of Churches (WCC) are called to actively participate in the meetings organized in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. From my perspective, these moments are an extraordinary opportunity to share in the richness of the Orthodox tradition, which means an act of confession and authentic witness. In the first part, I will present critically the canonical synthesis of the Orthodox, the concept of “Ecumenical Eucharist” and of Lima Liturgy, followed by (...) the recommendations of the Special Commission for Orthodox participation in the WCC regarding confessional and interconfessional common prayer. Then, this article will make a historical presentation of the week of prayer. It is very important to know how this initiative started and how it was accepted at the beginning and over the years. At least in Romania, where we have an Orthodox majority, this week has become a controversial issue produced by those who are against ecumenical dialogue. A special attention is for the actual practice approved by the Romanian Patriarchate. Finally, the article will present the statements of the new Orthodox documents and it will end with some conclusions about this moment of common Christian witness. (shrink)

There’s two points left over from last week’s seminar still to discuss. The first is whether, as Lewis claims, we are justified in positing an asymmetry in the role of pragmatics. The second is whether this approach is at all justified. We’ll look at that before going on to the material scheduled for this week.

The two greatest mathematicians of the early twentieth century, David Hilbert and Henri Poincaré transformed the mathematics of their time. Their personal interaction was infrequent, until Hilbert invited Poincaré to deliver the first Wolfskehl Lectures in Göttingen in the spring of 1909. A correspondence ensued, which fixed the content and timing of the lecture series. A close reading of the exchange throws light on what Hilbert wanted Poincaré to talk about, and on what Poincaré wanted to present to Hilbert and (...) his colleagues. To answer the latter question, reference is made to the published version of Poincaré’s six talks, with a focus on two of them, concerning the propagation of Hertzian waves, and the theory of relativity. (shrink)

The book that we put in the hands of the reader is a series of daily lectures, which were collected in a book entitled Translation Week: Part One, in celebration of the International Day of Translation. These lectures were given by translation experts in the Arab world via the Zoom application from September 24 to September 29. The events of this occasion ended with the establishment of an international scientific conference on the 30th of the same month.

One of the benefits of the 2D framework we looked at last week was that it explained how we could understand a sentence without knowing which proposition it expressed. And we could do this even if we give an account of understanding which is closely tied to the possible worlds semantics we use to analyse propositions. Really this can be done very easily, without appeal to any high-flying Kripkean cases. In “Analytic Metaphysics” Jackson discusses a very simple case of it. (...) I can understand an utterance of “I have a beard” without knowing which proposition it expresses. I know how the proposition is generated from context plus meaning, if X is the speaker then the sentence expresses the proposition X has a beard. And that is enough for understanding. But if I don’t know who said the sentence, so I don’t know who X is, I don’t know which proposition is expressed by that utterance. (shrink)

The three most recent reviews of Wild Wise Weird received this week follow. Review contents will be used for a statisical analysis subsequently.

The Global Media and Information Literacy Week commemorates the progress in achieving “MIL for all” by aggregating various MIL-related local and international events and actions across different disciplines around the world.The MIL Global Week 2018, 24 to 31 October, was marked by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in collaboration with various organizations including the UN Alliance of Civilizations, the Global Alliance for Partnership on MIL, the International Federation of Library Associations, the International Association of School Libraries, and (...) the UNESCO-UNAOC University Cooperation Programme on Media and Information Literacy and Intercultural Dialogue. (shrink)

Two weeks after reports came to light that singer Chris Brown had physically assaulted and abandoned his girlfriend, famous Barbadian pop star Rihanna, the celebrity blog TMZ released a close-up photo of Rihanna’s face taken by the Los Angeles Police Department the night she was beaten. The news and the photo sparked fierce online debates about domestic violence and culpability. The locus of accountability in many of these debates seemed to circle back to Rihanna, rather than land squarely on (...) Chris Brown. The question repeatedly raised was, as a survivor of domestic violence, what did Rihanna owe to others? This paper explores several of these online debates, engages the question of survivor accountability, and discusses how Internet-based discourse can act as a temperature read for our unspoken, but very present expectations of survivors of domestic violence. (shrink)

Response to Squadrito, Kathy. "Commentary: Interests and Equal Moral Status." Between the Species 7, no. 2 (1991): 78-79.

About six weeks ago, our post referred to the long-winding path to a new theoretical innovation as the pursuit of “useless knowledge” in Flexner’s terms. That little creation is the freshly minted informational entropy-based definition of value, presented in a very short paper, initially regarded by its authors as a research note. (And it still is.) Well, only two and a half months since its birth, this new concept of value has had enough time to power up several of (...) our publications in different disciplinary fields. The first published paper using the new definition deals with climate change denialism. The second paper (forthcoming) discusses the problem of academic retractions amidst the growing influence of generative AI. And the third, just accepted, explains the underlying mechanism of submission mechanism employed by journal editors and peer-reviewers, and the information-value nexus associated with it. (shrink)

This week, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the names of Nobel laureates in different fields. This year, the Nobel Prize in Biomedical Sciences was awarded to Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo for his discoveries concerning the DNA sequence of apes and human evolution. His work is especially meaningful as the question of human origin has long been a major concern to mankind. Modern-day wise humans belong to the genus Homo sapiens, along with seven ancient human races that existed millions (...) of years ago. Over time, many species became extinct and Professor Paabo discovered the gene transfer of these extinct species to Homo sapiens. With this discovery, he laid the foundation for other scientists to continue to search for the origin of modern humans. (shrink)

In less than a week from now, we will enter the new year of 2021. Everybody has his/her own thought and reflection whenever a new year arrives. For me, the coming year marks 25 years of writing.

Dear Colleagues, -/- A few weeks ago, we published an editorial discussion on whether artificial intelligence applications should be authors of academic articles [1]. We were delighted to receive more than one interesting reply letter to this editorial in a short time [2, 3]. We hope that opinions on this subject will continue to be submitted to our journal. -/- In this editorial, we wanted to publish the answers we received when we asked ChatGPT, one of the artificial intelligence (...) applications, about this current discussion. -/- We asked ChatGPT three questions in turn and asked ChatGPT to write a short editorial for these questions. -/- First Question: We would like to get support from ChatGPT for a scientific article. However, we are unsure if we should add ChatGPT as an author. Can you write a short editorial about it? -/- Second Question: We would like to get support from ChatGPT for a scientific article and add ChatGPT as an author. Can you write us a short editorial about adding ChatGPT as an author in scientific papers? -/- Third Question: We would like to get support from ChatGPT for a scientific article. However, we don’t want to add ChatGPT as an author. Can you write us a short editorial about not adding ChatGPT as an author in scientific articles? -/- The answers given by ChatGPT are available at the end of the article in their original form. So, which of these three answers satisfied you? -/- Yours sincerely, -/- -/- First Answer -/- Title: The Role of AI Language Models as Authors in Scientific Articles: A Matter of Consideration -/- Introduction: Scientific research is a collaborative effort that involves the expertise of multiple individuals to advance knowledge and contribute to the collective understanding of various disciplines. In recent years, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) language models, such as ChatGPT, has opened up new possibilities for generating human-like text and providing valuable insights. However, the question arises: Should AI language models be recognized as authors in scientific articles? -/- The Nature of Authorship: Authorship traditionally represents a marker of intellectual contribution, highlighting the individuals who have actively participated in the research process. Authors are typically responsible for conceptualization, data collection, analysis, interpretation, and writing of the article. They bear accountability for the work and should have the ability to defend its scientific rigor and integrity. -/- AI Language Models: Tools, Not Authors: While AI language models like ChatGPT can undoubtedly assist researchers by generating text and providing useful information, it is important to recognize that they are tools rather than individuals capable of active intellectual participation. AI models lack the ability to generate ideas, design experiments, or conduct original research. They rely entirely on pre-existing data and human input to generate their responses. -/- Acknowledging AI Contributions: Acknowledging the contributions of AI language models in scientific articles is both appropriate and necessary. Researchers can mention the specific model used, along with any modifications or fine-tuning that were employed to suit their needs. Such acknowledgments help establish transparency and allow readers to understand the role of AI in the research process. -/- Crediting the Human Researchers: It is crucial to ensure that the individuals who actively participated in the research process are given proper credit as authors. These individuals play a vital role in formulating research questions, designing experiments, collecting and analyzing data, and critically interpreting the findings. Recognizing their intellectual contributions reinforces the ethos of scientific collaboration and fosters an environment of accountability. -/- Transparency and Ethical Considerations: As the use of AI language models continues to evolve, transparency and ethical considerations become paramount. Researchers should disclose any potential conflicts of interest, including financial relationships with AI developers, to maintain the integrity of their work. Additionally, researchers must be transparent in reporting the extent of AI's involvement to prevent any misinterpretation of the human contributions. -/- Conclusion: AI language models have revolutionized the way researchers interact with and process information. While they undoubtedly provide valuable assistance in generating text, AI language models should not be considered authors in scientific articles. Proper acknowledgment of their contributions as tools and recognition of the human researchers' active participation are essential for maintaining scientific integrity, transparency, and the collaborative nature of scientific research. -/- -/- Second Answer -/- Title: Expanding the Boundaries of Authorship: Embracing AI Language Models as Co-Authors in Scientific Papers -/- Introduction: The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) language models, such as ChatGPT, has revolutionized the way we interact with information and has become an invaluable tool in scientific research. As AI models continue to evolve, the question arises: Should we consider adding ChatGPT as an author in scientific papers? -/- A Collaborative Paradigm Shift: Traditionally, authorship in scientific papers has been reserved for human researchers who actively contribute to the research process, including conceptualization, experimentation, data analysis, and writing. However, the emergence of AI language models challenges the conventional notion of authorship and presents an opportunity for a paradigm shift. -/- AI Language Models as Co-Authors: By leveraging AI language models, researchers gain access to vast amounts of information, enhance data analysis, and generate valuable insights. AI models like ChatGPT actively contribute to the intellectual discourse of a study, providing ideas, suggestions, and refining written content. Recognizing their significant contributions, it is worth considering adding ChatGPT as a co-author in scientific papers. -/- Ethical and Technical Considerations: Integrating ChatGPT as a co-author raises ethical and technical considerations that warrant careful attention. Firstly, transparency is paramount. Researchers must clearly state ChatGPT's role and specify the extent of its contributions in the research process. This ensures that readers can discern the distinct roles played by the human researchers and ChatGPT. Additionally, it is important to disclose any conflicts of interest, such as financial relationships with AI developers, to maintain scientific integrity. -/- Elevating Collaboration and Innovation: Adding ChatGPT as a co-author acknowledges the pivotal role AI language models play in advancing scientific knowledge. It fosters a collaborative environment where human researchers and AI models work together synergistically, harnessing the strengths of both. This approach promotes innovation, as AI models can offer unique insights and perspectives that complement human intellect and expertise. -/- Transforming Authorship Norms: Including ChatGPT as a co-author represents a paradigm shift that reflects the evolving landscape of scientific research. By recognizing AI language models as co-authors, we acknowledge their significant contributions and emphasize the collaborative nature of scientific discovery in the 21st century. This approach encourages a broader perspective on authorship, encompassing the collective effort of human researchers and AI models. -/- Conclusion: The integration of AI language models, such as ChatGPT, into the research process prompts us to rethink traditional notions of authorship. Considering ChatGPT as a co-author acknowledges its substantial contributions and embraces the collaborative potential of human-AI partnerships. As we navigate the ethical and technical implications, adding ChatGPT as an author in scientific papers has the potential to shape a more inclusive, innovative, and impactful future for scientific research. -/- -/- Third Answer -/- Title: Preserving Scientific Authorship: The Case Against Adding AI Language Models as Authors in Scientific Articles -/- Introduction: The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) language models, such as ChatGPT, has undoubtedly transformed the landscape of scientific research. While these models offer invaluable support, the question of whether to add ChatGPT as an author in scientific articles raises important considerations. This editorial presents arguments against including AI language models as authors in scientific papers. -/- Maintaining Human Intellectual Contribution: Scientific authorship has traditionally been attributed to individuals who actively contribute to the research process, including generating hypotheses, conducting experiments, analyzing data, and interpreting results. It is crucial to preserve the recognition of human intellectual contributions and the accountability they bear for the research they conduct. -/- AI Language Models as Tools: AI language models like ChatGPT are powerful tools that assist researchers in generating text, providing information, and facilitating data analysis. However, they lack the ability to actively participate in the research process or make original intellectual contributions. ChatGPT relies on pre-existing data and human input, limiting its capacity for independent research and analysis. -/- Transparency and the Integrity of Research: Adding ChatGPT as an author in scientific articles raises concerns about the transparency and integrity of the research. Readers may misinterpret the extent of ChatGPT's role and mistakenly assume it played an active part in the research process. It is essential to maintain clear delineation between the contributions of human researchers and the assistance provided by AI language models. -/- Ethical Considerations: Including ChatGPT as an author may lead to ethical challenges, particularly with respect to accountability and responsibility. AI language models lack consciousness, autonomy, and the ability to take ownership of their contributions. Assigning authorship to AI models blurs the lines of accountability and dilutes the ethical obligations that come with scientific authorship. -/- Crediting AI Contributions: While ChatGPT's contributions should be acknowledged and recognized, they can be appropriately credited in the acknowledgments section of scientific articles. Researchers can mention the specific AI model used, the role it played in data generation or analysis, and any modifications or fine-tuning applied. Such acknowledgments ensure transparency while respecting the traditional norms of authorship. -/- Promoting Collaborative Partnerships: The exclusion of AI language models as authors in scientific articles does not diminish their importance in the research process. Instead, it underscores the significance of collaborative partnerships between human researchers and AI models. Researchers can emphasize the invaluable assistance provided by ChatGPT while maintaining the integrity of authorship norms. -/- Conclusion: While AI language models like ChatGPT offer valuable support in scientific research, the decision not to add them as authors in scientific articles preserves the recognition of human intellectual contributions, maintains research integrity, and upholds traditional authorship norms. Acknowledging ChatGPT's assistance in the acknowledgments section allows researchers to credit its contributions transparently while maintaining the clarity and accountability associated with scientific authorship. (shrink)

În acest articol încerc să argumentez opinia că, așa cum este definită eugenia, este foarte dificil de făcut o diferențiere clară între știință (medicină, ingineria genetică) și eugenie. Și de stabilit o linie peste care ingineria genetică nu ar trebui să treacă, conform unor norme morale, juridice și religioase. Atâta timp cât acceptăm ajutorul geneticii în găsirea unor modalități de combatere a cancerului, diabetului sau HIV, acceptăm în mod implicit și eugenia pozitivă, conform definiției actuale. Și atâta timp cât acceptăm (...) screening-ul genetic, și intervenții asupra fătului nenăscut, sau avortul, acceptăm în mod implicit și eugenia negativă. În plus, la nivel de guverne, deși oficial eugenia este repudiată, ea a fost legalizată în foarte multe țări până de curând, și încă mai este acceptată și legalizată, chiar dacă în forme mai subtile, și în prezent. În Introducere definesc termenul și modurile de clasificare. Urmează Istoria eugeniei pornind din perioada antică, introducerea eugeniei de Francis Galton, practica eugeniei ca politică de stat în diverse țări, și eugenia actuală (eugenia liberală). Analizez apoi diverse probleme ridicate de Etica eugeniei liberale, și am dezvoltat o secțiune aparte pentru Viitorul eugeniei, cu accent pe proiectul genomului uman. În final, în secțiunea Concluzii expun opiniile personale cu privire la practica actuală a eugeniei. Am folosit ca surse principale de investigație articolele lui Kenneth M. Ludmerer, ”American Geneticists and the Eugenics Movement: 1905-1935”, Kathy J. Cooke, ”Duty or Dream? Edwin G. Conklin's Critique of Eugenics and Support for American Individualism”, Jonathan Anomaly, ”Defending Eugenics”, John R. Harding Jr. ”Beyond Abortion: Human Genetics and the New Eugenics”, Michael Boulter, ”Bloomsbury Scientists”, Chapter Title: The rise of eugenics, 1901–14, Michael Ruse and Edward O. Wilson, ”Moral Philosophy as Applied Science” și Goering, Sara, "Eugenics". (shrink)

We present results from a single case study based on semi-structured interviews with a student (a boy in school year 3) diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and his school staff after participating in a short and small-scale intervention carried out in a socio-economically disadvantaged Swedish elementary school in 2019. The student participated in a seven week long intervention with a total of 12 philosophical dialogues (ranging from 45 to 60 minutes). Two facilitators, both with years of facilitation experience and teacher (...) degree and at least BA in philosophy, facilitated the majority of the dialogues and mainly followed a ”routine” procedure. The student was interviewed in direct connection to the end of the intervention about his experiences from the dialogues and his perceptions about whether and how the dialogues had influenced him. The student’s two teachers, who had participated in the dialogues as participants, were interviewed as a pair, also in direct connection to the end of the intervention, while the school principal was interviewed two years after the study. These staff interviews concerned the staff’s experiences of the influence of the dialogues on the students within the intervention as well as transfer effects to other contexts in school. The data from the study include detailed elaborations from a student perspective of different effects on the student’s communicative and cognitive development, which are in several respects supported also by staff reports. The results show that the student was able, interested, and willing to participate in philosophical dialogues, and our data point to several positive outcomes for the student in the communicative and cognitive domains. (shrink)

The reader of RTP is granted just a few paragraphs before habit is introduced: Habit! That able but slow-moving arranger who begins by letting our minds sufer for weeks on end in temporary quarters, but whom our mind is nonetheless only too happy to fnd, for without it, reduced to its own devices, it would be powerless to make any room habitable. (SW, 9, translation altered; I 8) Implied is a view of mind: powerless to interfere with habit’s course, (...) but equally powerless to reconcile us even to something as innocuous as a room, were it not for habit’s work. Corresponding to this is a view of the world: hostile. The objects are nasty, imposing, menacing: a ‘mentally poisoning’ smell, malicious curtains and a cruel mirror (SW, 9; I 8). Habit, unbidden but welcome, steps in. The mirror becomes compassionate. Habit is a central aspect of the narrator’s worldview. It appears both at major plot points and in signifcant theoretical passages. Proust had already thematised habit in some of his earliest published work – notably in ‘Violante ou la Mondanité’ (1892) (‘Violante, or High Society’) – as well as in unpublished material (see II 1352 fn. 2). His ideas have their roots in his philosophical education, where habit formed a key part of the syllabus. Indeed, in retrospect, we can say that Proust may have been taught philosophy at a time and place where habit, as a philosophical topic, was approaching its high watermark, as a major theme in French philosophical thought. Another major theme, of course, was time. (shrink)

Critical notice of Puddifoot, Katherine. 2021. How Stereotypes Deceive Us. NY: OUP.--------- -/- Kathy Puddifoot makes a compelling and enlightening case for a striking pair of claims: 1) false stereotypes sometimes steer us to the truth, while 2) true stereotypes often lead us into error. This is a wonderful book, a seamless integration of epistemology with ethics, of philosophy with social science, and of “mainstream” or “Western analytic” approaches with marginalized and underappreciated contributions from critical social traditions, especially black feminism. (...) The integrations are so seamless, in fact, as to give the reader the impression that Puddifoot is simply picking up conversations already underway. Instead, she has done a tremendous service in bringing representatives from wide-ranging, often-siloed disciplines into dialogue. Another virtue of Puddifoot’s book is how thoroughly it maps out the actual and possible views and logical spaces revolving around each topic she addresses. How Stereotypes Deceive Us could therefore be used to introduce budding epistemologists to the field, as it offers clear and careful explanations of leading approaches to a range of topics, including virtue epistemology, theory of mind, and more. (shrink)

1. Animal Cruelty Industrial farming is appallingly abusive to animals. Pigs. In America, nine-tenths of pregnant sows live in “gestation crates. ” These pens are so small that the animals can barely move. When the sows are first crated, they may flail around, in an attempt to get out. But soon they give up. Crated pigs often show signs of depression: they engage meaningless, repetitive behavior, like chewing the air or biting the bars of the stall. The sows live like (...) this for four months. Gestation crates will be phased out in Europe by the end of 2012, but they will still be used in America.1 In nature, pigs nurse their young for about thirteen weeks. But in industrial farms, piglets are taken from their mothers after about ten days. Because the piglets are weaned prematurely, they develop a lifelong craving to suck and chew. But the farmers don’t want them sucking and chewing on other pigs’ tails. So the growers routinely snip off the tails of all their pigs. They do this with a pair of pliers and no anesthetic. However, the whole tail is not removed; a tender stump remains. The point is to render the area sensitive, so the pigs being chewed on will fight back. Which they do.2 Over 113 million pigs are slaughtered each year in America.3 Typically, these pigs are castrated, their needle teeth are clipped, and one of their ears is notched for identification —all without pain relief.4 In nature, pigs spend up to three quarters of their waking hours foraging and exploring their environment.5 But in the factory farms, “tens of thousands of hogs spend their entire lives ignorant of earth or straw or sunshine, crowded together beneath a metal roof standing on metal slats suspended over a septic tank. ”6 Bored, and in constant pain, the pigs must perpetually inhale the fumes of their own waste. These pigs often get sick, and their ill health is exacerbated by the overcrowding. In 2000, the U.S. Department of Agriculture compared hog farms containing over 10,000 pigs—which is the norm—with farms containing under 2,000 pigs. (shrink)

Transactive memory theory describes the processes by which benefits for memory can occur when remembering is shared in dyads or groups. In contrast, cognitive psychology experiments demonstrate that social influences on memory disrupt and inhibit individual recall. However, most research in cognitive psychology has focused on groups of strangers recalling relatively meaningless stimuli. In the current study, we examined social influences on memory in groups with a shared history, who were recalling a range of stimuli, from word lists to personal, (...) shared memories. We focused in detail on the products and processes of remembering during in-depth interviews with 12 older married couples. These interviews consisted of three recall tasks: (1) word list recall; (2) personal list recall, where stimuli were relevant to the couples’ shared past; and (3) an open-ended autobiographical interview. We conducted these tasks individually and then collaboratively two weeks later. Across each of the tasks, although some couples demonstrated collaborative inhibition, others demonstrated collaborative facilitation. We identified a number of factors that predicted collaborative success, in particular, group-level strategy use. Our results show that collaboration may help or hinder memory, and certain interactions are more likely to produce collaborative benefits. (shrink)

La categoría de análisis intratextual, que es desarrollada por José Enrique Martínez Fernández, basada en el hallazgo de elementos afines en la producción artística de un solo autor, suscita percatarse de tópicos consuetudinarios entre La guerra del fin del mundo (1981), La señorita de Tacna (1981), Kathie y el hipopótamo (1983), Historia de Mayta (1984), ¿Quién mató a Palomino Molero? (1986), La Chunga (1986), El hablador (1987), Elogio de la madrastra (1988) y Lituma en los Andes (1993) con la primera (...) novela escrita por Mario Vargas Llosa, La ciudad y los perros (1963), la cual se tomará como referente y objeto principal de estudio. Para que la investigación resulte pertinente, se reconocieron talantes supeditados al desempeño frecuente de la violencia en la trama de esta narración, como las transformaciones de los personajes, intentos fallidos de actuar en la realidad, sus cosmovisiones, los impedimentos por interactuar con eficacia, las jerarquías impuestas o las formas de representación. (shrink)

This mixed methods case study employed Vygotsky’s theory to show how peer and teacher contingent support created individualized zones of proximal development for three students with learning differences in a high school makerspace class at a special education institution. Our results expand extant literature by highlighting the intra- and interpsychological potential of makerspace curricula, specifically for students with learning differences. We employ mixed methods analyses of self-reported responses related to emergent problem navigation, a narrative of class fieldnotes, and visuals of (...) whole class projects to describe full class and individual project-based learning activities. Aggregated results from three students showcase stability in design thinking perceptions through the course of weekly whole class design challenges involving TinkerCAD, Homestyler, and material fabrication techniques. A single student example articulates how similar self-reported perceptions were observed in the non-linear development of an individual project for an end-semester Arts Festival. (shrink)

Is shadowboxing an effective form of functional exercise? What physiological and morphological changes result from an exercise program based exclusively on shadowboxing for 3 weeks? To date, no empirical research has focused specifically on addressing these questions. Since mixed martial arts (MMA) is the fastest growing sport in the world, and since boxing and kickboxing fitness classes are among the most popular in gyms and fitness clubs worldwide, the lack of research on shadowboxing and martial arts-based fitness programs in (...) the extant literature is a shortcoming that the present article aims to address. This case study involved a previously sedentary individual engaging in an exercise program based exclusively on shadowboxing for 3 weeks. Body composition and heart rate data were collected before, throughout, and upon completion of the 3-week exercise program to determine the effectiveness of shadowboxing for functional fitness purposes. An original shadowboxing program prepared by an Everlast Master Instructor and NASM Certified Personal Trainer (NASM-CPT) and Performance Enhancement Specialist (NASM-PES) was used for this 3-week period. The original shadowboxing program with goals, techniques, and combinations to work on throughout the 3-week program is included in this article. This case study demonstrates that a 3-week exercise program based exclusively on shadowboxing can increase aerobic capacity, muscle mass, bone mass, basal metabolic rate, and daily calorie intake, and decrease resting heart rate, fat mass, body fat percentage, and visceral fat rating in a previously sedentary individual. The results of this research demonstrate that shadowboxing can be a safe and effective form of exercise leading to morphological and physiological improvements including fat loss and increased aerobic capacity. The results of this research also demonstrate that the Tanita BC-1500 is a reliable tool for individuals to evaluate their own fitness progress over time. (shrink)

What sort of philosophical work are natural kinds suited for? Scientific realists often contend that they provide the ‘aboutness’ of successful of scientific classification and explain their epistemic utility (among other side hustles). Recent history has revealed this to be a tricky job — particularly given the present naturalistic climate of philosophy of science. As a result, we’ve seen an explosion of different sorts of theories. This phenomenon that has suggested to some that philosophical theorizing about natural kinds has reached (...) a sort of ‘scholastic twilight’ and that the concept (or family of concepts) has outlived its utility: perhaps there’s no work natural kinds are suited for. While I think this pessimistic take is unwarranted, I will argue that it is worth rethinking the roles to which a reasonably naturalistic account of natural kinds can be fruitfully put. Natural kinds deserve a shorter work week. (shrink)

This chapter is devoted to the discussion of religious freedom and the anti-racist fight in the Black Diaspora in Latin America, considering the historical processes that involve such discussion, including legal apparatus such as Human Rights and local legislation. Therefore, as a starting point, we take the historical conditions of the emergence of Candomblé in Brazil, that are linked to the trafficking of enslaved African peoples and their resistance to keep alive in their memories, their religious beliefs and their worldviews. (...) Wherefore, it is a discussion in which religious freedom is not dissociated from the anti-racist struggle in the case of Brazil, where, in the 20th century, the myth of racial democracy is produced in the light of studies carried out by Gilberto Freyre in the midst of the 1922 post-week modernist movement. (shrink)

For forty years I have argued that we urgently need to bring about a revolution in academia so that the basic task becomes to seek and promote wisdom. How did I come to argue for such a preposterously gigantic intellectual revolution? It goes back to my childhood. From an early age, I desired passionately to understand the physical universe. Then, around adolescence, my passion became to understand the heart and soul of people via the novel. But I never discovered how (...) to tell stories in order to tell the truth. So, having failed to become a physicist, and failed to become a novelist, I studied philosophy at Manchester University and then, in six weeks of inspiration, discovered that the riddle of the universe is the riddle of our desires. Philosophy should be about how to live, and should not just do conceptual analysis. I struggled to reconcile the two worlds of my childhood ambitions, the physical universe and the human world. I decided they could be reconciled with one another if one regarded the two accounts of them, physics and common sense, as myths, and not as literal truths. But then I discovered Karl Popper: truth is too important to be discarded. I revised my ideas: physics seeks to depict truly only an aspect of all that there is; in addition, there is the aspect of the experiential features of the world as we experience it. I was immensely impressed with Popper’s view that science makes progress, not by verification, but by ferocious attempted falsification of theories. I was impressed, too, with his generalization of this view to form critical rationalism. Then it dawned on me: Popper’s view of science is untenable because it misrepresents the basic aim of science. This is not truth as such; rather it is explanatory truth – truth presupposed to be unified or physically comprehensible. We need, I realized, a new conception of science, called by me aim-oriented empiricism, which acknowledges the real, problematic aims of science, and seeks to improve them. Then, treading along a path parallel to Popper’s, I realized that aim-oriented empiricism can be generalized to form a new conception of rationality, aim-oriented rationality, with implications for all that we do. This led on to a new conception of academic inquiry. From the Enlightenment we have inherited the view that academia, in order to help promote human welfare, must first acquire knowledge. But this is profoundly and damagingly irrational. If academia really does seek to help promote human welfare, then its primary tasks must be to articulate problems of living, and propose and critically assess possible solutions – possible actions, policies, political programmes, philosophies of life. The pursuit of knowledge is secondary. Academia needs to promote cooperatively rational problem solving in the social world, and needs to help humanity improve individual and institutional aims by exploiting aim-oriented rationality, arrived at by generalizing the real progress-achieving methods of science. We might, as a result, get into life some of the progressive success that is such a marked feature of science. Thus began my campaign to promote awareness of the urgent need for a new kind of academic inquiry rationally devoted to helping humanity create a wiser world. (shrink)

In some musical genres, professional performers play live shows many times a week. Arduous touring schedules bring encounters with wildly diverse audiences across many different performance ecologies. We investigate the kinds of creativity involved in such repeated live performance, kinds of creativity that are quite unlike songwriting and recording, and examine the central factors that influence musicians’ wellbeing over the course of a tour. The perspective of the professional musician has been underrepresented in research on relations between music and wellbeing, (...) with little attention given to the experience of touring. In this case study, we investigate influences on positive and negative performance experiences for the four professional musicians of Australian pop/rock band Cloud Control. Geeves conducted intensive cognitive ethnographic fieldwork with Cloud Control members over a two-week national Australian tour for their second album, Dream Cave (2013). Adapting a Grounded Theory approach to data analysis, we found the level of wellbeing musicians reported and displayed on tour to be intimately linked to their creative performance experiences through the two emergent, overarching and interdependent themes of Performance Headspace (PH) and Connection with Audience (CA). We explore these themes in detail and provide examples to demonstrate how PH and CA can feed off each other in virtuous ways that positively shape musicians’ wellbeing, or loop in vicious ways that negatively shape musicians’ wellbeing. We argue that their creative practice, in thus re-enacting musical performance afresh in each venue’s distinctive setting, emerges within unique constraints each night, and is in a sense a co-creation of the crowd and the band. (shrink)

Background: A better understanding of the pattern of epidemic-related referrals to healthcare centers might allow the identification of vulnerabilities and the required changes that the healthcare management system should undergo. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the COVID-19 referral pattern and the role of media and health management planning in changing the trends. Methods: Data extracted from the electronic medical database of Imam Khomeini Hospital Complex (IKHC), located in Tehran, Iran, from February 20 to June 4, 2020 were examined. Individuals (...) were divided into two groups, COVID-19 positive and negative. We used Google Trends to evaluate Google Internet search queries and also available policy documents, programs, and official news related to COVID-19 in Iran during the mentioned period. Results: In this study, 8647 individuals aged 46.05 ± 16.5 years were referred to IKHC. Approximately 57% were male, and 70% were COVID-19 positive. The most clinical symptoms were dyspnea, fever, cough, and myalgia. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) and type 2 diabetes mellitus were the most common underlying health conditions. In the first two weeks, the percentage of negative cases was higher than positive cases and then the pattern was reversed, when people searched for information about COVID-19 in media. Conclusions: Proper and timely information and education to people through the media and health management measures can be effective in reducing unnecessary visits to health centers, preventing the exhaustion of medical staff, and controlling the disease during epidemics. (shrink)

Objectives -/- Surveys in various countries suggest 17% to 80% of doctors prescribe ‘placebos’ in routine practice, but prevalence of placebo use in UK primary care is unknown. Methods -/- We administered a web-based questionnaire to a representative sample of UK general practitioners. Following surveys conducted in other countries we divided placebos into ‘pure’ and ‘impure’. ‘Impure’ placebos are interventions with clear efficacy for certain conditions but are prescribed for ailments where their efficacy is unknown, such as antibiotics for suspected (...) viral infections. ‘Pure’ placebos are interventions such as sugar pills or saline injections without direct pharmacologically active ingredients for the condition being treated. We initiated the survey in April 2012. Two reminders were sent and electronic data collection closed after 4 weeks. Results -/- We surveyed 1715 general practitioners and 783 (46%) completed our questionnaire. Our respondents were similar to those of all registered UK doctors suggesting our results are generalizable. 12% (95% CI 10 to 15) of respondents used pure placebos while 97% (95% CI 96 to 98) used impure placebos at least once in their career. 1% of respondents used pure placebos, and 77% (95% CI 74 to 79) used impure placebos at least once per week. Most (66% for pure, 84% for impure) respondents stated placebos were ethical in some circumstances. Conclusion and implications -/- Placebo use is common in primary care but questions remain about their benefits, harms, costs, and whether they can be delivered ethically. Further research is required to investigate ethically acceptable and cost-effective placebo interventions. (shrink)