Biological ontologies are used to organize, curate, and interpret the vast quantities of data arising from biological experiments. While this works well when using a single ontology, integrating multiple ontologies can be problematic, as they are developed independently, which can lead to incompatibilities. The Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies Foundry was created to address this by facilitating the development, harmonization, application, and sharing of ontologies, guided by a set of overarching principles. One challenge in reaching these goals was that the (...) OBO principles were not originally encoded in a precise fashion, and interpretation was subjective. Here we show how we have addressed this by formally encoding the OBO principles as operational rules and implementing a suite of automated validation checks and a dashboard for objectively evaluating each ontology’s compliance with each principle. This entailed a substantial effort to curate metadata across all ontologies and to coordinate with individual stakeholders. We have applied these checks across the full OBO suite of ontologies, revealing areas where individual ontologies require changes to conform to our principles. Our work demonstrates how a sizable federated community can be organized and evaluated on objective criteria that help improve overall quality and interoperability, which is vital for the sustenance of the OBO project and towards the overall goals of making data FAIR. Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. (shrink)

The current COVID-19 pandemic and the previous SARS/MERS outbreaks of 2003 and 2012 have resulted in a series of major global public health crises. We argue that in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs and to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechenisms it is necessary to integrate the large and exponentially growing body of heterogeneous coronavirus data. Ontologies play an important role in standard-based knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. Accordingly, we initiated the (...) development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology in early 2020. -/- As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. CIDO is aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology and Viral Infectious Disease Ontology. CIDO has imported terms from over 30 OBO ontologies. For example, CIDO imports all SARS-CoV-2 protein terms from the Protein Ontology, COVID-19-related phenotype terms from the Human Phenotype Ontology, and over 100 COVID-19 terms for vaccines (both authorized and in clinical trial) from the Vaccine Ontology. CIDO systematically represents variants of SARS-CoV-2 viruses and over 300 amino acid substitutions therein, along with over 300 diagnostic kits and methods. CIDO also describes hundreds of host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the drugs that target proteins in these PPIs. CIDO has been used to model COVID-19 related phenomena in areas such as epidemiology. The scope of CIDO was evaluated by visual analysis supported by a summarization network method. CIDO has been used in various applications such as term standardization, inference, natural language processing (NLP) and clinical data integration. We have applied the amino acid variant knowledge present in CIDO to analyze differences between SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants. CIDO's integrative host-coronavirus PPIs and drug-target knowledge has also been used to support drug repurposing for COVID-19 treatment. -/- CIDO represents entities and relations in the domain of coronavirus diseases with a special focus on COVID-19. It supports shared knowledge representation, data and metadata standardization and integration, and has been used in a range of applications. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Epistemic Leaks and Epistemic Meltdowns: A Response to William Morris on Scepticism with Regard to Reason Mikael M. Karlsson I. In an excellent paper which appeared in the April, 1989 issue of this journal,2 William Morris attemptsto demonstrate thatthe arguments which make up Hume's notorious chapter, "Of scepticism with regard to reason, are, in the first place, coherent—both internally and with the overall strategy of the Treatise—and, (...) in the second place, successful. Morris' paper is an exercise in the noble art of what I style constructive exegesis, an enterprise to which many readers of Hume Studies, and myself as much as any, are committed. It is a guiding principle ofthis art that we donotunderstandaphilosophical textuntil we can interpret it in such a way as to render it both coherent and correct. From this point ofview, coherence and correctness are not as independent of one another as they may seem to be to others who are differently committed. Some texts, such as Hume's chapter, "Ofscepticism with regard to reason," are notoriously resistant to constructive exegesis, despite the formidable bag of tricks which scholars and interpreters have developed; so resistant, that in gloomier moments we may be brought to wonder about our interpretative enterprise itself. Constructive exegesis is indeed a strange, and peculiarly optimistic, enterprise. Someday, I imagine, in a leisurely moment, I will think more reflectively about the principles ofour art. But not now.6 As a fellow practitioner of constructive exegesis, I am in full sympathy with what Morris tries to do in his paper; and I think that he does contribute substantially to our understanding of what Hume is up to in the chapter, "Ofscepticism with regard to reason." The third section of Morris' paper is, in my judgement, particularly successful in showing how Hume's chapter fits into the larger framework of the Treatise: Hume is, we see, attacking both what Morris labels "intellectualist rationalism" and its counterpart, which we may call 'unmitigated scepticism', although the chapter's two main arguments go primarily to the former. I also think that Morris gives very helpful, Volume XVI Number 2 121 MIKAEL M. KARLSSON and to my mind accurate, accounts of these two arguments, which I dub, respectively, the epistemic leak argument, and the epistemic meltdown argument. However, I have personally never found either of these arguments remotely convincing; and I still do not, despite Morris' clarification and defense. In what follows, I shall indicate some ofthe reasons for my dissatisfaction.?. Theepistemicleakargumentpurportsto"prove"(in Hume's sense)that reason or demonstration cannot support knowledge. Morris rightlyreminds us that whatHume meansby knowledge is perfect assurance or conviction: Knowledge is, in short, subjective certainty. This has caused confusion, for this is not what we usually mean nowadays by knowledge; nor was it what people, philosophers included, generally meant prior to Descartes. In Hume itis the product ofthe attempttoresolve all epistemic statesintomental eventsorwhat he calls "perceptions." In any case, we must—as Morris rightly explains—be clear that the epistemic leak argument is aimed at showing that demonstration cannot supportperfect conviction. Inoutline, the argumentissimple: Itworks, asMorrismakes clear, by shifting attention away from the subject-matter or "objects" of demonstration, that is, relations of ideas, to the exercise of demonstrative reason by human agents. The necessity of relations of ideas may suggest to us that we can be certain about them. Against this, one may point out that people do err in the conclusions arrived at by demonstration; this presumably shows that our (rational) understandingis fallible. And once we recognize this, our confidence in any conclusion produced by exercising this facultyislessened—thus do we move from knowledge, or subjective certainty, toprobability: belief, or imperfect conviction. Arguments ofthis general type (we can call them, using Descartes' famous figure, Totten-apple arguments ) were around long before Hume, although they were more commonly directed against the senses than against reason. We find them in antiquity—in Plato and Sextus Empiricus, for instance —and in Descartes, in parallel passages in the Discourse on Method, the First Meditation and the Principles of Philosophy, wherein one can discern a version directed precisely against reason and demonstration.12 To find out what, if anything, Hume has... (shrink)

This article aims to provide a new philosophical explication of the doctrine of the Incarnation. A compositional model of the doctrine is formulated within the Dispositional Personhood account of Lynne Rudder Baker and the Composition as Identity framework of Donald L.M. Baxter. Formulating the doctrine of the Incarnation within this account and framework will enable it to be explicated in a clear and consistent manner, and the oft‐raised objections against this type of model can be answered.

Punishment involves the intentional infliction of harm and suffering. Both of the most prominent families of justifications of punishment – retributivism and consequentialism – face several moral concerns that are hard to overcome. Moreover, the effectiveness of current criminal punishment methods in ensuring society’s safety is seriously undermined by empirical research. Thus, it appears to be a moral imperative for a modern and humane society to seek alternative means of administering justice. The special issue of Diametros “The Abolition of Punishment: (...) Is a Non-Punitive Criminal Justice System Ethically Justified?” was brought into life precisely to give the authors a platform for such progressive inquiries. And it is now safe to say that this platform has been put to excellent use, since Valerij Zisman, Alexander Stachurski, Giorgia Brucato, Perica Jovchevski, Sofia M. I. Jeppsson, Stephen G. Morris, Benjamin Vilhauer, John Lemos, Saul Smilansky, Elizabeth Shaw, Mirko Farina, Andrea Lavazza and Sergei Levin have presented such thought-provoking texts that they are bound to set the stage for debate in the years to come. This article is an introduction to this special issue and to the authors’ papers. (shrink)

An antinaturalist defense of causality of mental states. The argument is based on the properties of causal models in cognitive research. Bibliografia prac przywołanych w tekście -/- Damasio A., 1994/1999, Błąd Kartezjusza. Emocje, rozum i ludzki mózg, tłum. M. Karpiński, Poznań: Rebis. Davidson D., 1963/2001, „Actions, reasons, and causes”, w: (Davidson 2001), s. 3-19. Davidson D., 1967/2001, „Causal relations”, w: (Davidson 2001), s. 149-62. Davidson D., 1970/2001, „Mental events”, w: (Davidson 2001), s. 207-25. Davidson D., 1976/2001, „Hempel on explaining action”, (...) w: (Davidson 2001), s. 261-75. Davidson D., 2001, Essays on actions and events, Oxford: Clarendon. Farmer A., McGuffin P., Williams J., 2002, Measuring psychopathology, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Freedman D. A., Petitti D. B., 2002, „Salt, blood pressure, and public policy”, International Journal of Epidemiology, t. 31, s. 319–320. Greyson B., 2000, „Near-death experiences”, w: Varieties of anomalous experience. Examining the scientific evidence, red. E. Cardeña, S. J. Lynn i S. Krippner, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, s. 315-52. Judycki S., 1995, Umysł i synteza, Lublin: RW KUL. Judycki S., 2000, „Transkauzalność a determinizm”, Kognitywistyka i media w edukacji, t. 3, s. 73-86. Kawalec P. 2005, „Understanding science of the new millennium”, http://philsci archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002558/ Kawalec P., 2006, Jak odkryć przyczynę? Studium z ogólnej metodologii i filozofii nauki, Lublin 2006, w przygotowaniu. Kim J., 1998/2002, Umysł w świecie fizycznym, tłum. R. Poczobut, Warszawa: IFiS PAN. Lauritzen S., 1996, Graphical models, Oxford: Clarendon. Menzies P., 2003, „The causal efficacy of mental states”, w: Physicalism and mental causation. The metaphysics of mind and action, red. S. Walter i H.-D. Heckmann, w druku. Pearl J., 2000, Causality. Models, reasoning, and inference, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Piłat R., 1999, Umysł jako model świata, Warszawa: IFiS PAN. Rosenbaum P., 2002, Observational studies, Nowy Jork: Springer. Sabom M., 1998, Life and death. One doctors’s fascinating account of near-death experiences, Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Spirtes P., Glymour C., Scheines R., 2000, Causation, prediction, and search, Cambridge, MA.: MIT. van Fraassen B., 1980, The scientific image, Oxford: Clarendon. van Fraassen B., 2002, The empirical stance, New Haven: Yale University Press. Woodward J., 2003, Making things happen: a theory of causal explanation, Nowy Jork: Oxford University Press. Żegleń U., 2003, Filozofia umysłu, Toruń: A. Marszałek. (shrink)

Totalism is the view that one distribution of well-being is better than another just in case the one contains a greater sum of well-being than the other. Many philosophers, following Parfit, reject totalism on the grounds that it entails the repugnant conclusion: that, for any number of excellent lives, there is some number of lives that are barely worth living whose existence would be better. This paper develops a theory of welfare aggregation—the lexical-threshold view—that allows totalism to avoid the repugnant (...) conclusion, as well as its analogues involving suffering populations and the lengths of individual lives. The theory is grounded in some independently plausible views about the structure of well-being, identifies a new source of incommensurability in population ethics, and avoids some of the implausibly extreme consequences of other lexical views, without violating the intuitive separability of lives. (shrink)

Lara Buchak argues for a version of rank-weighted utilitarianism that assigns greater weight to the interests of the worse off. She argues that our distributive principles should be derived from the preferences of rational individuals behind a veil of ignorance, who ought to be risk averse. I argue that Buchak’s appeal to the veil of ignorance leads to a particular way of extending rank-weighted utilitarianism to the evaluation of uncertain prospects. This method recommends choices that violate the unanimous preferences of (...) rational individuals and choices that guarantee worse distributions. These results, I suggest, undermine Buchak’s argument for rank-weighted utilitarianism. (shrink)

According to asymmetric comparativism, it is worse for a person to exist with a miserable life than not to exist, but it is not better for a person to exist with a happy life than not to exist. My aim in this paper is to explain how asymmetric comparativism could possibly be true. My account of asymmetric comparativism begins with a different asymmetry, regarding the (dis)value of early death. I offer an account of this early death asymmetry, appealing to the (...) idea of conditional goods, and generalize it to explain how asymmetric comparativism could possibly be true. I also address the objection that asymmetric comparativism has unacceptably antinatalist implications. (shrink)

3rd ed, 2021. A circumscription of the classical theory of computation building up from the Chomsky hierarchy. With the usual topics in formal language and automata theory.

Two attitudes are possible: one, that the world is an absolute jungle and that the exercise of coercive power by rulers is only a manifestation of this; and the other, that it is both necessary and right that there should be this exercise of power, that through it the world is much less of a jungle than it could possibly be without it, so that one should in principle be glad of the existence of such power, and only take exception (...) to its unjust exercise. (shrink)

This paper takes as its point of departure recent research into the possibility that human beings can perceive single photons. In order to appreciate what quantum perception may entail, we first explore several of the leading interpretations of quantum mechanics, then consider an alternative view based on the ontological phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger. Next, the philosophical analysis is brought into sharper focus by employing a perceptual model, the Necker cube, augmented by the topology of the Klein bottle. (...) This paves the way for addressing in greater depth the paper’s central question: Just what would it take to observe the quantum reality of the photon? In formulating an answer, we examine the nature of scientific objectivity itself, along with the paradoxical properties of light. The conclusion reached is that quantum perception requires a new kind of observation, one in which the observer of the photon adopts a concretely self-reflexive observational posture that brings her into close ontological relationship with the observed. (shrink)

According to Rainer Forst, (i) moral and political claims must meet a requirement of reciprocal and general acceptability (RGA) while (ii) we are under a duty in engaged discursive practice to justify such claims to others, or be able to do so, on grounds that meet RGA. The paper critically engages this view. I argue that Forst builds a key component of RGA, i.e., reciprocity of reasons, on an idea of the reasonable that undermines both (i) and (ii): if RGA (...) builds on this idea, RGA is viciously regressive and a duty of justification to meet RGA fails to be agent transparent. This negative result opens the door for alternative conceptions of reciprocity and generality. I then suggest that a more promising conception of reciprocity and generality needs to build on an idea of the reasonable that helps to reconcile the emancipatory or protective aspirations of reciprocal and general justification with its egalitarian commitments. But this requires to downgrade RGA in the order of justification and to determine on prior, substantive grounds what level of discursive influence in reciprocal and general justification relevant agents ought to have. (shrink)

Much discussion about experimental philosophy and philosophical methodology has been framed in terms of the reliability of intuitions, and even when it has not been about reliability per se, it has been focused on whether intuitions meet whatever conditions they need to meet to be trustworthy as evidence. But really that question cannot be answered independently from the questions, evidence for what theories arrived at by what sorts of inferences? I will contend here that not just philosophy's sources of evidence, (...) but also its inferential resources, are in great need of closer examination. (shrink)

PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, vol. 52, number 1, pp.44-63. R.M. Nugayev, Kazan State |University, USSR. -/- THE HISTORY OF QUANTUM THEORY AS A DECISIVE ARGUMENT FAVORING EINSTEIN OVER LJRENTZ. -/- Abstract. Einstein’s papers on relativity, quantum theory and statistical mechanics were all part of a single research programme ; the aim was to unify mechanics and electrodynamics. It was this broader program – which eventually split into relativistic physics and quantummmechanics – that superseded Lorentz’s theory. The argument of this paper is (...) partly historical and partly methodological. A notion of “crossbred objects” – theoretical objects with contradictory properties which are part of the domain of application of two different research programs – is developed that explains the dynamics of revolutionary theory change. (shrink)

Van Inwagen proposes that besides simples only living organisms exist as composite objects. This paper suggests expanding van Inwagen’s ontology by also accepting composite objects in the case that physical bonding occurs (plus some extra conditions). Such objects are not living organ-isms but rather physical bodies. They include (approximately) the complete realm of inanimate ordinary objects, like rocks and tables, as well as inanimate scientific objects, like atoms and mol-ecules, the latter filling the ontological gap between simples and organisms in (...) van Inwagen’s origi-nal picture. We thus propose a compositional pluralism claiming that composition arises if and on-ly if bonding or life occurs. (shrink)

While the image of the slave as the antithesis of the freeman is central to republican freedom, it is striking to note that slaves themselves have not contributed to how this condition is understood. The result is a one-sided conception of both freedom and slavery, which leaves republicanism unable to provide an equal and robust protection for historically outcast people. I draw on the work of Frederick Douglass – long overlooked as a significant contributor to republican theory – to show (...) one way why this is so. Focusing the American Revolution, the subsequent republican government established new political institutions to maintain the collective interests of the whole population. The political revolution was held in place by processes of public reason that reflected the values and ideas of the people that had rebelled. The black population, however, had not been part of this revolution. After emancipation, black Americans were required to accept terms of citizenship that had already been defined, leaving them socially dominated, subject to the prejudices and biases within the prevailing ideas of public discourse. Douglass argued that republican freedom under law is always dependent on a more fundamental revolution, that he calls a ‘radical revolution in thought’, in which the entire system of social norms and practices are reworked together by members of all constituent social groups – women and men, black and white, rich and poor – so that it reflects a genuinely collaborative achievement. Only then can we begin the republican project of contestatory freedom as independence or non-domination that today’s republicans take for granted. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim argued that nonreductive physicalism faces the “exclusion problem” for higher-level causation, mental causation in particular. Roughly, the charge is that given the presumptive ubiquity of physical causation, there cannot be irreducible mental causes for physical effects. Since there are mental causes, Kim concluded that nonreductive physicalism should be rejected in favor of a more reductionist alternative according to which mental causes are just physical causes differently described. But why should mental causes be “excluded” in this way? Unfortunately, Kim (...) had less to say about this than one might expect. After reviewing some of Kim’s proposals, I suggest that the exclusion problem should be premised on nothing more or less than Occamist, simplicity-based considerations. I apply this conception of the exclusion problem to some prominent responses to Kim’s critique of nonreductive physicalism and argue that this conception mandates reconsidering the success of these responses. (shrink)

Derogatory terms (racist, sexist, ethnic, and homophobic epithets) are bully words with ontological force: they serve to establish and maintain a corrupt social system fuelled by distinctions designed to justify relations of dominance and subordination. No wonder they have occasioned public outcry and legal response. The inferential role analysis developed here helps move us away from thinking of the harms as being located in connotation (representing mere speaker bias) or denotation (holding that the terms fail to refer due to inaccurate (...) descriptive content). The issue is not bad attitudes or referential misfires. An inferential role semantic analysis of derogatory terms shows exactly what is at stake between those who argue that the terms should be eliminated (Absolutists) and those who claim they can be successfully rehabilitated (Reclaimers). The Reclaimer maintains, and the Absolutist denies, that certain contexts can detach the derogatory force from deeply derogatory terms. The article looks at these claims with respect to ‘nigger’ and ‘dyke,’ setting out the inferential role of each term and examining detachability potential. Explaining detachability in terms of linguistic commitments, this article also addresses the issue of whether such terms count as political discourse, and examines the implications of that issue. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a new account of mind/body interaction that shows how it is possible for an immaterial mind or soul to influence a physical system without entering the horizontal system of efficient causes studied by natural science.

According to phenomenal transparency, phenomenal concepts are transparent where a transparent concept is one that reveals the nature of that to which it refers. What is the connection between phenomenal transparency and our concept of a subject of experience? This paper focuses on a recent argument, due to Philip Goff, for thinking that phenomenal transparency entails transparency about subjecthood. The argument is premissed on the idea that subjecthood is related to specific phenomenal properties as a determinable of more specific determinates. (...) I argue that the argument fails, which opens the door for one to endorse phenomenal transparency while denying transparency about the concept of a subject of experience. I draw out the consequences of this for certain versions of the combination problem for panpsychist metaphysics and moreover argue that rejecting the transparency of subjecthood does not undermine anti-physicalist arguments premissed on considerations relating to phenomenal transparency. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Consciousness and Fundamental Reality, Philip Goff argues that the case against physicalist views of consciousness turns on ‘Phenomenal Transparency’, roughly the thesis that phenomenal concepts reveal the essential nature of phenomenal properties. This paper considers the argument that Goff offers for Phenomenal Transparency. The key premise is that our introspective judgments about current conscious experience are ‘Super Justified’, in that these judgments enjoy an epistemic status comparable to that of simple mathematical judgments, and a better epistemic status than (...) run of the mill perceptual judgments. After presenting the key ideas in the ‘Super Justification Argument’, I distinguish two Super Justification theses, which vary according to the kind of introspective judgments that they take to be Super Justified. I argue that Goff’s case requires ‘Strong Super Justification’, according to which a wide range of introspective judgments about conscious experience are Super Justified. Unfortunately, it turns out that Strong Super Justification is implausible and not well-supported by examples. In contrast, a weaker Super Justification thesis does not require anything like Phenomenal Transparency and, indeed, can be explained by physicalistic accounts of phenomenal concepts. (shrink)

After discussing the manifest inconveniences of Galilean physicalism for both science and common sense, I propose an alternate, Aristotelian ontology of material things and show how it solves the epistemological problems engendered by the New Science. Read at the annual POH Symposium in Lake Wenatchee, WA, May 2011.

This is the final paper in the Possibilities that Matter series and attempts to complete the project of constructing a material interpretation of modal logic.

I agree with about 95% of what Paul Moser has written in his book The Elusive God. However, I have three main points of disagreement with Moser, two of which I ventilate in this paper. The third I discuss in my paper "What's Love Got to Do with It?" also on this website.

I examine the notion of the authoritative command of divine love developed by Paul Moser in his book The Elusive God. Using a Calvinist objection to Moser's contention that God must love every one, including His enemies, I conclude that the notion of an authoritative command of divine love is paradoxical. I then offer a resolution of this paradox on terms that I judge to be in line with Moser's intentions.

I will begin this comparative analysis with Quine, focusing on the front matter and first chapter of Word and Object (alongside From a Logical Point of View and two other short pieces), attempting to illuminate there a (1) basis of excessive, yet familiar, chaos, (2) method of improvised, dramatic distortion, and (3) consequent neo-Pragmatist metaphysics. Having elaborated this Quinian basis, method and metaphysics, I will then show that they can be productively translated into James Mercer’s poetic lyrics for The Shins, (...) with an emphasis on the first song, entitled “Caring is Creepy,” from their debut studio album, Oh, Inverted World! Finally, I will explain why Quine and Mercer are particularly suited to this translation (in contrast to other philosophically-rich pop lyricists such as Bob Dylan, and other pragmatist philosophers like Robert Brandom), in the course of which important implications will emerge for our globalized world today. (shrink)

In his recent The Parmenidean Ascent, Michael Della Rocca develops a regress-theoretic case, reminiscent of F.H. Bradley’s famous argument in Appearance and Reality, against the intelligibility of relations and in favor of a monistic conception of reality. I argue that Della Rocca illicitly supposes that “internal” relations – in one sense of that word – lead to a “chain” regress, a regress of relations relating relations and relata. In contrast, I contend that if “internal” or grounded relations lead to a (...) regress at all, it is a kind of “fission” regress within the relata themselves, and that a chain regress for relations only arises, if at all, for so-called “external” relations, relations not grounded in their relata. In this way, I contend that Della Rocca pursues a regress for so-called “internal” or grounded relations that only arises, if at all, for so-called “external” relations, relations not grounded in their relata. I compare Della Rocca’s case against relations with Bradley’s reasoning in Appearance and Reality, and suggest in this context that Bradley may, perhaps, have the upper hand. (shrink)

(Expected) adverse effects of the ‘ICT Revolution’ on work and opportunities for individuals to use and develop their capacities give a new impetus to the debate on the societal implications of technology and raise questions regarding the ‘responsibility’ of research and innovation (RRI) and the possibility of achieving ‘inclusive and sustainable society’. However, missing in this debate is an examination of a possible conflict between the quest for ‘inclusive and sustainable society’ and conventional economic principles guiding capital allocation (including the (...) funding of research and innovation). We propose that such conflict can be resolved by re-examining the nature and purpose of capital, and by recognising mainstream economics’ utilitarian foundations as an unduly restrictive subset of a wider Aristotelian understanding of choice. (shrink)

I defend the epistemic thesis that evaluations of people in terms of their moral character as good, bad, or intermediate are almost always epistemically unjustified. (1) Because most people are fragmented (they would behave deplorably in many and admirably in many other situations), one's prior probability that any given person is fragmented should be high. (2) Because one's information about specific people does not reliably distinguish those who are fragmented from those who are not, one's posterior probability that any given (...) person is fragmented should be close to one's prior—and thus should also be high. (3) Because being fragmented entails being indeterminate (neither good nor bad nor intermediate), one's posterior probability that any given person is indeterminate should also be high—and the epistemic thesis follows. (1) and (3) rely on previous work; here I support (2) by using a mathematical result together with empirical evidence from personality psychology. (shrink)

If time travel is possible, presumably so is my shooting my younger self ; then apparently I can kill him – I can commit retrosuicide. But if I were to kill him I would not exist to shoot him, so how can I kill him? The standard solution to this paradox understands ability as compossibility with the relevant facts and points to an equivocation about which facts are relevant: my killing YS is compossible with his proximity but not with his (...) survival, so I can kill him if facts like his survival are irrelevant but I cannot if they are relevant. I identify a lacuna in this solution, namely its reliance without argument on the hidden assumption that my killing YS is possible: if it is impossible, it is not compossible with anything. I argue that this lacuna is important, and I sketch a different solution to the paradox. (shrink)

The developing body of empirical work on the "Gettier effect" indicates that, in general, the presence of a Gettier-type structure in a case makes participants less likely to attribute knowledge in that case. But is that a sufficient reason to diverge from a JTB theory of knowledge? I argue that considerations of good model selection, and worries about noise and overfitting, should lead us to consider that a live, open question. The Gettier effect is perhaps so transient, and so sensitive (...) to other, epistemologically-inappropriate factors, that it raises the question of whether it ought to be counted as something to include in our theories -- or as a piece of noise to be excluded from them. (shrink)

The author examines the problem of motivation about future generations. He argues that though many philosophers think that direct motivations are problematic for future generations only, they are not unproblematic for the current generations too, and that the motivation problem can be solved if we consider the idea of “leaving the earth no worse.” He also shows why such an idea should be promoted and can motivate us to work in the best interests of current and future generations. The author (...) also contends that prioritizing the idea of “leaving the earth no worse” is not exclusively anthropocentric. (shrink)

A case could be made that the practice of philosophy demands a certain humility, or at least intellectual humility, requiring such traits as inquisitiveness, openness to new ideas, and a shared interest in pursuing truth. In the positive psychology movement, the study of both humility and intellectual humility has been grounded in the methods and approach of personality psychology, specifically the examination of these virtues as traits. Consistent with this approach, the chapter begins with a discussion of the examination of (...) intellectual humility as a “character trait,” comparing intellectual humility to various well-known traits in the personality psychology literature (e.g the “Big 5” and the “Big 2”) as well as other key traits such as the need for cognition and the need for closure. The chapter then turns to the proverbial issue of whether virtues in general, and intellectual humility in particular, are a matter of “nature”- that is, an innate trait determined by heritability, or “nurture” – a trait mostly shaped by situation and environment. While the chapter does not resolve the issue, it provides occasion for an examination of the role of situations in the expression of intellectual humility, and for the interaction of “situation” and “trait.” The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the interaction of trait with situation provides the most robust understanding of the psychology of any character virtue, including humility and intellectual humility. (shrink)

In this exploratory paper, I consider how intellectual humility and epistemic injustice might contribute to the failure of testimonial exchanges. In §1, I will briefly highlight four broad ways a testimonial exchange might fail. In §2, I will very briefly review the nature of epistemic injustice. In §3, I will explore how both epistemic injustice and intellectual humility can lead to failures in testimonial exchange, and I’ll conclude by suggesting how intellectual humility and epistemic injustice might be related.

One of the deepest assumptions of Judaism and its offspring, Christianity, is that there is an important difference between human persons and everything else that exists in Creation. We alone are made in God’s image. We alone are the stewards of the earth. It is said in Genesis that we have “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps (...) upon the earth.” It is difficult to see how a traditional theist could deny the significance of the difference between human persons and the rest of Creation. We human persons are morally and ontologically special. (shrink)

Minimal Negation is defined within the basic positive relevance logic in the relational ternary semantics: B+. Thus, by defining a number of subminimal negations in the B+ context, principles of weak negation are shown to be isolable. Complete ternary semantics are offered for minimal negation in B+. Certain forms of reductio are conjectured to be undefinable (in ternary frames) without extending the positive logic. Complete semantics for such kinds of reductio in a properly extended positive logic are offered.

The model of scientific revolution genesis and structure, extracted from Einstein’s revolution and described in author’s previous publications, is applied to the Copernican one . In the case of Einstein’s revolution I had argued that its cause consisted in the clash between the main classical physics scientific programmes: newtonian mechanics, maxwellian electrodynamics, classical thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Analogously in the present paper it is argued that the Copernican revolution took place due to realization of the dualism between mathematical astronomy and (...) Aristotelian qualitative physics in Ptolemy’s cosmology and the corresponding efforts to eliminate it. The works of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton were all the stages of the mathematics descendance from skies to earth and reciprocal extrapolation of earth physics on divine phenomena. (shrink)

Truth is a locus of guilt for the Christian, according to Jacques Lacan. The religious person, he argues, punitively defers truth eschatologically. Yet Lacan’s own view dissolves eschatological deferral to the world, as the “Real”. The metaphysics of Erich Przywara SJ helps highlight that this mirrors Lacan’s view of the religious person. Przywara’s Christian metaphysics and Lacanian psychoanalysis converge on the immanence of truth to history. But Przywaran analogy corrects Lacan’s position on the religious person, which by implication calls for (...) an adjustment to Lacan’s worldview. In the final analysis, Lacan’s dialectical nihilism should yield to a Christian’s hopeful relation to the truth. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to discover the object of Aristotle’s God’s νόησις in Metαphysics Λ.9. In Section I, I catalogue existing interpretations and mention the two key concepts of (i) God’s substancehood and (ii) his metaphysical simplicity. In Section II, I explore the first two aporiae of Λ.9 – namely (1) what God’s οὐσία is and (2) what God intelligizes. In Section III, I show how Aristotle solves these aporiae by contending that God’s οὐσία is actually intelligizing, and being (...) determined to do so by himself, and that the object of his νόησις is himself, such that he intelligizes his own οὐσία, and I explain what this means. In Section IV, I present the second pair of aporiae in Λ.9 and show how, by solving these, Aristotle clarifies the position arrived at in Section III. Lastly, in Section V, I present the final aporia and its solution, and conclude that Aristotle’s God is a radically-unified Narcissus-God who intelligizes his own οὐσία. (shrink)

This paper aims to study the impact of Crowdfunding financial attributes on entrepreneurship risk taking. This study was applied on Arabic Crowdfunding platforms from all crowdfunding models. The population of the study consists of individuals, entrepreneurs, investors, employees at electronic-crowd funding Arabic platforms. According to last statics at (2018), there are (12) legit Arabic platforms working in this field. Several statistical tools were used for data analysis and hypotheses testing, including reliability Correlation using Cronbach’s alpha, “ANOVA”, Simple Linear Regression. The (...) overall findings of the current paper show that there is a significant statistical impact for financial properties on entrepreneurship and this effect around (25%). Furthermore, the current paper is unique by topic and population as it is the first study on Arabic crowdfunding platforms. (shrink)

DOI: 10.1080/00031305.2018.1564697 When the editors of Basic and Applied Social Psychology effectively banned the use of null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) from articles published in their journal, it set off a fire-storm of discussions both supporting the decision and defending the utility of NHST in scientific research. At the heart of NHST is the p-value which is the probability of obtaining an effect equal to or more extreme than the one observed in the sample data, given the null hypothesis and (...) other model assumptions. Although this is conceptually different from the probability of the null hypothesis being true, given the sample, p-values nonetheless can provide evidential information, toward making an inference about a parameter. Applying a 10,000-case simulation described in this article, the authors found that p-values’ inferential signals to either reject or not reject a null hypothesis about the mean (α = 0.05) were consistent for almost 70% of the cases with the parameter’s true location for the sampled-from population. Success increases if a hybrid decision criterion, minimum effect size plus p-value (MESP), is used. Here, rejecting the null also requires the difference of the observed statistic from the exact null to be meaningfully large or practically significant, in the researcher’s judgment and experience. The simulation compares performances of several methods: from p-value and/or effect size-based, to confidence-interval based, under various conditions of true location of the mean, test power, and comparative sizes of the meaningful distance and population variability. For any inference procedure that outputs a binary indicator, like flagging whether a p-value is significant, the output of one single experiment is not sufficient evidence for a definitive conclusion. Yet, if a tool like MESP generates a relatively reliable signal and is used knowledgeably as part of a research process, it can provide useful information. (shrink)

Management involves change. The aim of this paper is to introduce a threefold classification of change with the purpose of making clear how the third type, creational change, is distinctive compared to the other two types. Four types of management situation are introduced, based on the type of change involved in the managed domain and in the management system. The role of creational change in management is discussed and a number of guidelines or suggestions relevant to this sort of management (...) are outlined. One feature of the notion of creational change is the conjecture that such change is not amenable to scientific investigation and understanding. Once creational change has produced whatever it does produce then the product may be amenable to scientific investigation and understanding but the actual unique and open process of its production will not be. One of the aims of this paper is to heighten our general awareness of creational change as different from other sorts of change. (shrink)

Aristotle’s political theory is often dismissed as undemocratic due to his treatment of natural slavery and women and to his conception of political rule as rule by turns. The second reason presents no less serious challenges than the first for finding democracy in Aristotle’s political theory. This article argues that Aristotle’s account of ruling in turns hinges on a critique of master rule and an affirmation of political rule, which involves both the rulers and the ruled in the project of (...) ruling. Ruling in turns makes the rule shared, not merely an exchange of opportunities to rule as a despot. (shrink)

This essay takes a first step in comparative ethics by looking to Aristotle and the Aztec's conceptions of the good life. It argues that the Aztec conception of a rooted life, neltiliztli, functions for ethical purposes in a way that is like Aristotle's eudaimonia. To develop this claim, it not only shows just in what their conceptions of the good consist, but also in what way the Aztecs conceived of the virtues (in qualli, in yectli).