Results for 'Kenneth Thompson'

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  1. Legislating Taste.Kenneth Walden - 2023 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (4):1256-1280.
    My aesthetic judgements seem to make claims on you. While some popular accounts of aesthetic normativity say that the force of these claims is third-personal, I argue that it is actually second-personal. This point may sound like a bland technicality, but it points to a novel idea about what aesthetic judgements ultimately are and what they do. It suggests, in particular, that aesthetic judgements are motions in the collective legislation of the nature of aesthetic activity. This conception is recommended by (...)
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  2. Agency and aesthetic identity.Kenneth Walden - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (12):3253-3277.
    Schiller says that “it is only through beauty that man makes his way to freedom.” Here I attempt to defend a claim in the same spirit as Schiller’s but by different means. My thesis is that a person’s autonomous agency depends on their adopting an aesthetic identity. To act, we need to don contingent features of agency, things that structure our practical thought and explain what we do in very general terms but are neither universal nor necessary features of agency (...)
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  3. The Fine-Tuning Argument Against the Multiverse.Kenneth Boyce & Philip Swenson - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.
    It is commonly argued that the fact that our universe is fine-tuned for life favors both a design hypothesis as well as a non-teleological multiverse hypothesis. The claim that the fine-tuning of this universe supports a non-teleological multiverse hypothesis has been forcefully challenged however by Ian Hacking and Roger White. In this paper we take this challenge even further by arguing that if it succeeds, then not only does the fine-tuning of this universe fail to support a multiverse hypothesis, but (...)
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  4. The Poets of Our Lives.Kenneth Walden - 2024 - Journal of Philosophy 121 (5):277-297.
    This article proposes a role for aesthetic judgment in our practical thought. The role is related to those moments when practical reason seems to give out, when it fails to yield a judgment about what to do in the face of a choice we cannot avoid. I argue that these impasses require agents to create, but that not any creativity will do. For we cannot regard a response to one of these problems as arbitrary or capricious if we want to (...)
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  5. Group Epistemology and Structural Factors in Online Group Polarization.Kenneth Boyd - 2023 - Episteme 20 (1):57-72.
    There have been many discussions recently from philosophers, cognitive scientists, and psychologists about group polarization, with online and social media environments in particular receiving a lot of attention, both because of people's increasing reliance on such environments for receiving and exchanging information and because such environments often allow individuals to selectively interact with those who are like-minded. My goal here is to argue that the group epistemologist can facilitate understanding the kinds of factors that drive group polarization in a way (...)
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  6. Group Action Without Group Minds.Kenneth Silver - 2022 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (2):321-342.
    Groups behave in a variety of ways. To show that this behavior amounts to action, it would be best to fit it into a general account of action. However, nearly every account from the philosophy of action requires the agent to have mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions. Unfortunately, theorists are divided over whether groups can instantiate these states—typically depending on whether or not they are willing to accept functionalism about the mind. But we can avoid this debate. (...)
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  7. Cow Care in Hindu Animal Ethics.Kenneth R. Valpey - 2019 - Springer Verlag.
    This Open Access book provides both a broad perspective and a focused examination of cow care as a subject of widespread ethical concern in India, and increasingly in other parts of the world. In the face of what has persisted as a highly charged political issue over cow protection in India, intellectual space must be made to bring the wealth of Indian traditional ethical discourse to bear on the realities of current human-animal relationships, particularly those of humans with cows. Dharma, (...)
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  8. How to Think about the Astrology Research Program: An Essay Considering Emergent Effects.Kenneth Douglas McRitchie - 2023 - Journal of Scientific Exploration 36 (4):706-716.
    As it has been shaped by improvements in its tools and methods, and by its discourse with critics, I describe how the astrological research program has advanced through three stages of modelling and design limitations. Single-factor tests (for example, the many Sun-sign–only experiments that have been published) are typically underdeterministic. Multi-factor tests, unless they are very well designed, can easily become overdeterministic. Chart-matching tests have been vulnerable to confirmation bias errors until the development of a machine-based, whole-chart matching protocol that (...)
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  9. Intentions in Artifactual Understandings of Law.Kenneth M. Ehrenberg - 2022 - In Luka Burazin, Kenneth Einar Himma, Corrado Roversi & Paweł Banaś (eds.), The Artifactual Nature of Law. Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. pp. 16-36.
    The primary aim of this chapter is to show that several missteps made by others in in their thinking about law as an artefact are due to misconceptions about the role of intentions in understanding law as an artefact. I first briefly recap my own contention that law is a genre of institutionalized abstract artefacts (put forth in The Functions of Law (OUP 2016) and subsequent papers), mostly following Searle’s understanding of institutions and Thomasson’s understanding of public artefacts. I highlight (...)
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  10. Excusing Corporate Wrongdoing and the State of Nature.Kenneth Silver & Paul Garofalo - forthcoming - Academy of Management Review.
    Most business ethicists maintain that corporate actors are subject to a variety of moral obligations. However, there is a persistent and underappreciated concern that the competitive pressures of the market somehow provide corporate actors with a far-reaching excuse from meeting these obligations. Here, we assess this concern. Blending resources from the history of philosophy and strategic management, we demonstrate the assumptions required for and limits of this excuse. Applying the idea of ‘the state of nature’ from Thomas Hobbes, we suggest (...)
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  11. An Artefactual Theory of Precedent.Kenneth M. Ehrenberg - 2023 - In Timothy Endicott, Hafsteinn Dan Kristjánsson & Sebastian Lewis (eds.), Philosophical Foundations of Precedent. Oxford University Press. pp. 268-280. Translated by Timothy Endicott, Hafsteinn Dan Kristjánsson & Sebastian Lewis.
    This chapter provides an explanation of precedent as a kind of artefact, in keeping with broader accounts of law that do so, specifically the author’s account of law as a genre of institutionalized abstract artefact. The chapter develops its explanation by responding to an argument by Dan Priel against seeing the common law as an artefact when understood to be a form of custom. The chapter shows that customs can themselves be artefacts but also that the precedential elements of common (...)
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  12. Great Beyond All Comparison.Kenneth Walden - 2023 - In Sarah Buss & Nandi Theunissen (eds.), Rethinking the Value of Humanity. New York, US: OUP Usa. pp. 181-201.
    Many people find comparisons of the value of persons distasteful, even immoral. But what can be said in support of the claim that persons have incomparable worth? This chapter considers an argument purporting to show that the value of persons is incomparable because it is so great—because it is infinite. The argument rests on two claims: that the value of our capacity for valuing must equal or exceed the value of things valued and that our capacity for valuing is unbounded (...)
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  13. Metaphysical Interdependence.Naomi Thompson - 2016 - In Mark Jago (ed.), Reality Making. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press UK. pp. 38-56.
    It is commonly assumed that grounding relations are asymmetric. Here I develop and argue for a theory of metaphysical structure that takes grounding to be nonsymmetric rather than asymmetric. Even without infinite descending chains of dependence, it might be that every entity is grounded in some other entity. Having first addressed an immediate objection to the position under discussion, I introduce two examples of symmetric grounding. I give three arguments for the view that grounding is nonsymmetric (I call this view (...)
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  14. The marriage of astrology and AI: A model of alignment with human values and intentions.Kenneth McRitchie - 2024 - Correlation 36 (1):43-49.
    Astrology research has been using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the understanding of astrological properties and processes. Like the large language models of AI, astrology is also a language model with a similar underlying linguistic structure but with a distinctive layer of lifestyle contexts. Recent research in semantic proximities and planetary dominance models have helped to quantify effective astrological information. As AI learning and intelligence grows, a major concern is with maintaining its alignment with human values and intentions. Astrology has (...)
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  15. Grounding and Metaphysical Explanation.Naomi Thompson - 2016 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 116 (3):395-402.
    Attempts to elucidate grounding are often made by connecting grounding to metaphysical explanation, but the notion of metaphysical explanation is itself opaque, and has received little attention in the literature. We can appeal to theories of explanation in the philosophy of science to give us a characterization of metaphysical explanation, but this reveals a tension between three theses: that grounding relations are objective and mind-independent; that there are pragmatic elements to metaphysical explanation; and that grounding and metaphysical explanation share a (...)
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  16. Setting the story straight: fictionalism about grounding.Naomi Thompson - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (2):343-361.
    This paper explores a middle way between realism and eliminativism about grounding. Grounding-talk is intelligible and useful, but it fails to pick out grounding relations that exist or obtain in reality. Instead, grounding-talk allows us to convey facts about what metaphysically explains what, and about the worldly dependence relations that give rise to those explanations.
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  17. Daydreaming as spontaneous immersive imagination: A phenomenological analysis.Emily Lawson & Evan Thompson - 2024 - Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 5 (1):1-34.
    Research on the specific features of daydreaming compared with mind-wandering and night dreaming is a neglected topic in the philosophy of mind and the cognitive neuroscience of spontaneous thought. The extant research either conflates daydreaming with mind-wandering (whether understood as task-unrelated thought, unguided attention, or disunified thought), characterizes daydreaming as opposed to mind-wandering (Dorsch, 2015), or takes daydreaming to encompass any and all “imagined events” (Newby-Clark & Thavendran, 2018). These dueling definitions obstruct future research on spontaneous thought, and are insufficiently (...)
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  18. The (multiple) realization of psychological and other properties in the sciences.Kenneth Aizawa & Carl Gillett - 2009 - Mind and Language 24 (2):181-208.
    Abstract: There has recently been controversy over the existence of 'multiple realization' in addition to some confusion between different conceptions of its nature. To resolve these problems, we focus on concrete examples from the sciences to provide precise accounts of the scientific concepts of 'realization' and 'multiple realization' that have played key roles in recent debates in the philosophy of science and philosophy of psychology. We illustrate the advantages of our view over a prominent rival account ( Shapiro, 2000 and (...)
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  19. Virtual Consumption, Sustainability & Human Well-Being.Kenneth R. Pike & C. Tyler Desroches - 2020 - Environmental Values 29 (3):361-378.
    There is widespread consensus that present patterns of consumption could lead to the permanent impossibility of maintaining those patterns and, perhaps, the existence of the human race. While many patterns of consumption qualify as ‘sustainable’ there is one in particular that deserves greater attention: virtual consumption. We argue that virtual consumption — the experience of authentic consumptive experiences replicated by alternative means — has the potential to reduce the deleterious consequences of real consumption by redirecting some consumptive behavior from shifting (...)
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  20. Testimonial Epistemic Rights in Online Spaces.Kenneth Boyd - 2022 - Philosophical Topics 50 (2):105-126.
    According to many theories of testimony, acts of testimony confer certain epistemic rights upon recipients, e.g., the right for the recipient to complain or otherwise hold the testifier responsible should the content of that testimony turn out to be false, and the right to “pass the epistemic buck”, such that the recipient can redirect relevant challenges they may encounter back to the testifier. While these discussions do not explicitly exclude testimonial acts that occur online, they do not specifically address them, (...)
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  21. Determination from Above.Kenneth Silver - 2023 - Philosophical Issues 33 (1):237-251.
    There are many historical concerns about freedom that have come to be deemphasized in the free will literature itself—for instance, worries around the tyranny of government or the alienation of capitalism. It is hard to see how the current free will literature respects these, or indeed how they could even find expression. This paper seeks to show how these and other concerns can be reintegrated into the debate by appealing to a levels ontology. Recently, Christian List and others have considered (...)
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  22. Do men and women have different philosophical intuitions? Further data.Toni Adleberg, Morgan Thompson & Eddy Nahmias - 2015 - Philosophical Psychology 28 (5):615-641.
    To address the underrepresentation of women in philosophy effectively, we must understand the causes of the early loss of women. In this paper we challenge one of the few explanations that has focused on why women might leave philosophy at early stages. Wesley Buckwalter and Stephen Stich offer some evidence that women have different intuitions than men about philosophical thought experiments. We present some concerns about their evidence and we discuss our own study, in which we attempted to replicate their (...)
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  23.  56
    Organizations as Wrongdoers: From Ontology to Morality, by Stephanie Collins. [REVIEW]Kenneth Silver - 2024 - Ethics 134 (4):573-578.
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  24. Expert Judgment for Climate Change Adaptation.Erica Thompson, Roman Frigg & Casey Helgeson - 2016 - Philosophy of Science 83 (5):1110-1121.
    Climate change adaptation is largely a local matter, and adaptation planning can benefit from local climate change projections. Such projections are typically generated by accepting climate model outputs in a relatively uncritical way. We argue, based on the IPCC’s treatment of model outputs from the CMIP5 ensemble, that this approach is unwarranted and that subjective expert judgment should play a central role in the provision of local climate change projections intended to support decision-making.
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  25. Levels, Individual Variation and Massive Multiple Realization in Neurobiology.Kenneth Aizawa & Carl Gillett - 2009 - In John Bickle (ed.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy and neuroscience. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 539--582.
    Biologists seems to hold two fundamental beliefs: Organisms are organized into levels and the individuals at these levels differ in their properties. Together these suggest that there will be massive multiple realization, i.e. that many human psychological properties are multiply realized at many neurobiological levels. This paper provides some documentation in support of this suggestion.
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  26. Conventionalism and the Impoverishment of the Space of Reasons: Carnap, Quine and Sellars.Kenneth R. Westphal - 2015 - Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 3 (8).
    This article examines how Quine and Sellars develop informatively contrasting responses to a fundamental tension in Carnap’s semantics ca. 1950. Quine’s philosophy could well be styled ‘Essays in Radical Empiricism’; his assay of radical empiricism is invaluable for what it reveals about the inherent limits of empiricism. Careful examination shows that Quine’s criticism of Carnap’s semantics in ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ fails, that at its core Quine’s semantics is for two key reasons incoherent and that his hallmark Thesis of Extensionalism (...)
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  27. Defense of Emergent Effects in Astrology Research: Rebuttal of Dean and Kelly (2023).Kenneth McRitchie - 2023 - Journal of Scientific Exploration 37 (3):576-579.
    The article I wrote on the astrology research program (2022) has drawn criticism from G. Dean and I. Kelly (2023) that scarcely touches on my topics of effect sizes in single-factor, multi-factor, and automated whole-chart experimentation. They ignore the meta-analysis of current research and my explanation of emergent effects. Instead they try to impugn all of astrology by arguments that date from the time of Cicero and Augustine.
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  28. Is Naturalness Natural?Naomi Thompson - 2015 - American Philosophical Quarterly 53 (4):381-396.
    The perfectly natural properties and relations are special—they are all and only those that "carve nature at its joints." They act as reference magnets, form a minimal supervenience base, figure in fundamental physics and in the laws of nature, and never divide duplicates within or between worlds. If the perfectly natural properties are the (metaphysically) important ones, we should expect being a perfectly natural property to itself be one of the (perfectly) natural properties. This paper argues that being a perfectly (...)
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  29. Morality, Agency, and Other People.Kenneth Walden - 2018 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 5.
    Constitutivists believe that we can derive universally and unconditionally authoritative norms from the conditions of agency. Thus if c is a condition of agency, then you ought to live in conformity with c no matter what your particular ends, projects, or station. Much has been said about the validity of the inference, but that’s not my topic here. I want to assume it is valid and talk about what I take to be the highest ambition of constitutivism: the prospect of (...)
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  30. Emergence within social systems.Kenneth Silver - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):7865-7887.
    Emergence is typically discussed in the context of mental properties or the properties of the natural sciences, and accounts of emergence within these contexts tend to look a certain way. The emergent property is taken to emerge instantaneously out of, or to be proximately caused by, complex interaction of colocated entities. Here, however, I focus on the properties instantiated by the elements of certain systems discussed in social ontology, such as being a five-dollar bill or a pawn-movement, and I suggest (...)
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  31. The Many Meanings of Sustainability: A Competing Paradigms Approach.Paul B. Thompson - 2016 - In Steven A. Moore (ed.), Pragmatic Sustainability: Dispositions for Critical Adaptation. Routledge. pp. 16-28.
    Although the word 'sustainability' is used broadly, scientific approaches to sustainability fall into one of two competing paradigms. Following the influential Brundtland report of 1987. some theorists identify sustainability with some form of resource availability, and develop indicators for sustainability that stress capital depletion. This approach has spawned debates about the intersubstitutivity of capitals, with many environmental theorists arguing that at some point, depletion of natural capital cannot be offset by increases in human or social capital. The alternative approach is (...)
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  32. The Reliability of Epistemic Intuitions.Kenneth Boyd & Jennifer Nagel - 2014 - In Edouard Machery & Elizabeth O'Neill (eds.), Current Controversies in Experimental Philosophy. New York: Routledge. pp. 109-127.
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  33. When Should the Master Answer? Respondeat Superior and the Criminal Law.Kenneth Silver - 2024 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 18 (1):89-108.
    Respondeat superior is a legal doctrine conferring liability from one party onto another because the latter stands in some relationship of authority over the former. Though originally a doctrine of tort law, for the past century it has been used within the criminal law, especially to the end of securing criminal liability for corporations. Here, I argue that on at least one prominent conception of criminal responsibility, we are not justified in using this doctrine in this way. Firms are not (...)
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  34. "Creative Translation in Emerson's Idealism".Kenneth P. Winkler - 2023 - In Thomas Nolden (ed.), In the Face of Adversity: Translating Difference and Dissent. UCL Press. pp. 237-253.
    I consider Ralph Waldo Emerson’s creative appropriation of a philosophical doctrine that helps to make sense of an attitude towards life, its gifts and its burdens, that is often expressed in Puritan diaries. The doctrine, now known as the doctrine of continuous creation, holds that in conserving the world, God re-creates it at every moment, making the same creative effort at each ever-advancing now that God made at the very beginning. Continuous creation was explicitly endorsed by at least one Puritan (...)
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  35. Representations without Rules, Connectionism and the Syntactic Argument.Kenneth Aizawa - 1994 - Synthese 101 (3).
    This paper has a two-fold aim. First, it reinforces a version of the "syntactic argument" given in Aizawa (1994). This argument shows that connectionist networks do not provide a means of implementing representations without rules. Horgan and Tlenson have responded to the syntactic argument in their book and in another paper (Horgan & Tlenson, 1993), but their responses do not meet the challenge posed by my formulation of the syntactic argument. My second aim is to describe a kind of cognitive (...)
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  36. The social goals of agriculture.Paul B. Thompson - 1986 - Agriculture and Human Values 3 (4):32-42.
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  37. Behavioral Functions of Aesthetics: Science and Art, Reason, and Emotion.Travis Thompson - 2019 - The Psychological Record 68 (1).
    In his landmark article for this journal, Francis Mechner (2018) presents a novel analysis of the confluence of unique combinations of variables accounting for aesthetic experiences, a phenomenon he calls synergetics. He proposes that artists, musicians, and writers use novel devices to capitalize on those effects. In my response to Mechner's fascinating article, I question the generality of such synergetic experiences to a wide array of audience members. I also question whether the evolutionary basis for aesthetic creativity accounts for the (...)
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  38. Trusting scientific experts in an online world.Kenneth Boyd - 2022 - Synthese 200 (1):1-31.
    A perennial problem in social epistemology is the problem of expert testimony, specifically expert testimony regarding scientific issues: for example, while it is important for me to know information pertaining to anthropogenic climate change, vaccine safety, Covid-19, etc., I may lack the scientific background required to determine whether the information I come across is, in fact, true. Without being able to evaluate the science itself, then, I need to find trustworthy expert testifiers to listen to. A major project in social (...)
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  39. Irrealism about Grounding.Naomi Thompson - 2018 - In Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Metaphysics. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
    In this paper I explore irrealist alternatives to orthodox realism about grounding, and claim that at least some of these alternatives represent fertile areas for future discussion.
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  40. The Universe:a Philosophical derivation of a Final Theory.John F. Thompson - manuscript
    The reason for physics’ failure to find a final theory of the universe is examined. Problems identified are: the lack of unequivocal definitions for its fundamental elements (time, length, mass, electric charge, energy, work, matter-waves); the danger of relying too much on mathematics for solutions; especially as philosophical arguments conclude the universe cannot have a mathematical basis. It does not even need the concept of number to exist. Numbers and mathematics are human inventions arising from the human predilection for measurement. (...)
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  41. Christine Ladd-Franklin on the nature and unity of the proposition.Kenneth Boyd - 2021 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 30 (2):231-249.
    ABSTRACT Although in recent years Christine Ladd-Franklin has received recognition for her contributions to logic and psychology, her role in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century philosophy, as well as her relationship with American pragmatism, has yet to be fully appreciated. My goal here is to attempt to better understand Ladd-Franklin’s place in the pragmatist tradition by drawing attention to her work on the nature and unity of the proposition. The question concerning the unity of the proposition – namely, the problem (...)
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  42. Environmental Cosmology.Kenneth D. McRitchie - 2004 - Toronto: Cognizance Books.
    In answer to the question "why is there something rather than nothing?" this book is not like the cosmological theory you learned in school. It is not that there was a big bang in the beginning that resulted in every property from nothing. Rather, the question is examined as experience and phenomena. The "something" means the properties of the things and places that come to our conscious awareness of what it is like for each of us to observe something from (...)
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  43. An Explanationist Defense of Proper Functionalism.Kenneth Boyce & Andrew Moon - 2023 - In Luis R. G. Oliveira (ed.), Externalism about Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    In this chapter, we defend an explanationist version of proper functionalism. After explaining proper functionalism’s initial appeal, we note two major objections to proper functionalism: creatures with no design plan who appear to have knowledge (Swampman) and creatures with malfunctions that increase reliability. We then note how proper functionalism needs to be clarified because there are cases of what we call warrant-compatible malfunction. We then formulate our own view: explanationist proper functionalism, which explains the warrant-compatible malfunction cases and helps to (...)
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  44. How the Non-Physical Influences Physics and Physiology: a proposal.Ian J. Thompson - 2021 - Dualism Review 3:1-13.
    The causal closure of the physical world is assumed everywhere in physics but has little empirical support within living organisms. For the spiritual to have effects in nature, and make a difference there, the laws of physical nature would have to be modified or extended. I propose that the renormalized parameters of quantum field theory (masses and charges) are available to be varied locally in order to achieve ends in nature. This is not adding extra forces to nature but rescaling (...)
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  45. Reification as an Ontological Concept.Michael J. Thompson - forthcoming - Metodo.
    In this paper, I outline the ways that reification as a pathology of what I call “cybernetic society” shapes the fundamental structures of the self and our shared social reality. Whereas the classical theory of reification was a diagnostic attempt to understand the failure of class consciousness, I believe we must push this thesis further to show how is fundamentally an ontological and not a merely cognitive or epistemic concern. By this I mean that it is a pathology of consciousness (...)
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  46. Quantum mechanics and consciousness: Thoughts on a causal correspondence theory.Ian J. Thompson - 2017 - In S. Gosh, B. D. Mundhra, K. Vasudeva Rao & Varun Agarwal (eds.), Quantum Physics & Consciousness - Thoughts of Founding Fathers of Quantum Physics and other Renowned Scholars. Bhaktivedanta Institute. pp. 173-185.
    Which way does causation proceed? The pattern in the material world seems to be upward: particles to molecules to organisms to brains to mental processes. In contrast, the principles of quantum mechanics allow us to see a pattern of downward causation. These new ideas describe sets of multiple levels in which each level influences the levels below it through generation and selection. Top-down causation makes exciting sense of the world: we can find analogies in psychology, in the formation of our (...)
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  47. Origins of Objectivity.David L. Thompson - manuscript
    Tomasello offers an evolutionary, palaeoanthropological account of the human origin of objects and objectivity. Husserl gives a phenomenological account of the constitution of objects by intersubjectivity. Comparing the two, I claim that Tomasello’s “naturalized” approach closely parallels Husserl’s transcendental approach.
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  48. The Emergence of Food Ethics.Paul B. Thompson - 2016 - Food Ethics 1 (1):61-74.
    Philosophical food ethics or deliberative inquiry into the moral norms for production, distribution and consumption of food is contrasted with food ethics as an international social movement aimed at reforming the global food system. The latter yields an activist orientation that can become embroiled in self-defeating impotency when the complexity and internal contradictions of the food system are more fully appreciated. However, recent work in intersectionality offers resources that are useful to both philosophical and activist food ethics. For activists, intersectionality (...)
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  49. How Influx Into the Natural Shows Itself in Physics: A Hypothesis.Ian J. Thompson - 2018 - New Philosophy 121 (1-4):284-294.
    In order to link fine-tuning in physics with spiritual influx, I propose that the highest degree in physics is where ‘ends’ are received in physics. By ends, I refer to what it is that determines the means or causes in physics, and what it is that manages or influences to basis parameters (masses and charge values) of the quantum fields. This is fine-tuning, in the sense that it occurs not just for the whole universe (in the Big Bang, for example), (...)
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  50. Defining Language.David L. Thompson - manuscript
    Language defines human existence. Yet defining language is a fraught project. I use the term "language" to refer to a specific mode of information transfer. First, it is a communicative mode. By communication I mean the information transfer serves a function, that is, an activity that occurs because it has increased the evolutionary fitness of ancestors. Secondly, while all communication is governed by norms, human communication, as opposed to biological communication, is governed by norms that have evolved within the learned (...)
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