This project continues our interdisciplinary research into computational and cognitive aspects of narrative comprehension. Our ultimate goal is the development of a computational theory of how humans understand narrative texts. The theory will be informed by joint research from the viewpoints of linguistics, cognitive psychology, the study of language acquisition, literary theory, geography, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. The linguists, literary theorists, and geographers in our group are developing theories of narrative language and spatial understanding that are being tested by the (...) cognitive psychologists and language researchers in our group, and a computational model of a reader of narrative text is being developed by the AI researchers, based in part on these theories and results and in part on research on knowledge representation and reasoning. This proposal describes the knowledge-representation and natural-language-processing issues involved in the computational implementation of the theory; discusses a contrast between communicative and narrative uses of language and of the relation of the narrative text to the story world it describes; investigates linguistic, literary, and hermeneutic dimensions of our research; presents a computational investigation of subjective sentences and reference in narrative; studies children’s acquisition of the ability to take third-person perspective in their own storytelling; describes the psychological validation of various linguistic devices; and examines how readers develop an understanding of the geographical space of a story. This report is a longer version of a project description submitted to NSF. This document, produced in May 2007, is a L ATEX version of Technical Report 89-07 (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Department of Computer Science, August 1989), with slightly.. (shrink)

We have begun work on two separate but related ontologies for the study of neurological diseases. The first, the Neurological Disease Ontology (ND), is intended to provide a set of controlled, logically connected classes to describe the range of neurological diseases and their associated signs and symptoms, assessments, diagnoses, and interventions that are encountered in the course of clinical practice. ND is built as an extension of the Ontology for General Medical Sciences — a high-level candidate OBO Foundry ontology that (...) provides a set of general classes that can be used to describe general aspects of medical science. ND is being built with classes utilizing both textual and axiomatized definitions that describe and formalize the relations between instances of other classes within the ontology itself as well as to external ontologies such as the Gene Ontology, Cell Ontology, Protein Ontology, and Chemical Entities of Biological Interest. In addition, references to similar or associated terms in external ontologies, vocabularies and terminologies are included when possible. Initial work on ND is focused on the areas of Alzheimer’s and other diseases associated with dementia, multiple sclerosis, and stroke and cerebrovascular disease. Extensions to additional groups of neurological diseases are planned. The second ontology, the Neuro-Psychological Testing Ontology (NPT), is intended to provide a set of classes for the annotation of neuropsychological testing data. The intention of this ontology is to allow for the integration of results from a variety of neuropsychological tests that assay similar measures of cognitive functioning. Neuro-psychological testing is an important component in developing the clinical picture used in the diagnosis of patients with a range of neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis, and following stroke or traumatic brain injury. NPT is being developed as an extension to the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations. (shrink)

We are developing the Neurological Disease Ontology (ND) to provide a framework to enable representation of aspects of neurological diseases that are relevant to their treatment and study. ND is a representational tool that addresses the need for unambiguous annotation, storage, and retrieval of data associated with the treatment and study of neurological diseases. ND is being developed in compliance with the Open Biomedical Ontology Foundry principles and builds upon the paradigm established by the Ontology for General Medical Science (OGMS) (...) for the representation of entities in the domain of disease and medical practice. Initial applications of ND will include the annotation and analysis of large data sets and patient records for Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and stroke. (shrink)

Mindfulness is a form of meditation that derives from Buddhist practice and is one of the fastest growing areas of psychological research. Studies investigating the role of mindfulness in the treatment of behavioural addictions have – to date – primarily focused on gambling disorder. Recent pilot studies and clinical case studies have demonstrated that weekly mindfulness therapy sessions can lead to clinically significant change among individuals with gambling problems. Although preliminary findings indicate that there are applications for mindfulness approaches in (...) the treatment of gambling disorder, further empirical and clinical research utilizing larger-sample controlled study designs is clearly needed. (shrink)

The Repugnant Conclusion served an important purpose in catalyzing and inspiring the pioneering stage of population ethics research. We believe, however, that the Repugnant Conclusion now receives too much focus. Avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion should no longer be the central goal driving population ethics research, despite its importance to the fundamental accomplishments of the existing literature.

The paper by Monteiro, Musten and Compson (2014) is to be commended for providing a comprehensive discussion of the compatibility issues arising from the integration of mindfulness – a 2,500-year-old Buddhist practice – into research and applied psychological domains. Consistent with the observations of various others (e.g., Dunne, 2011; Kang & Whittingham, 2010), Monteiro and colleagues have not only highlighted that there are differences in how Buddhism and contemporary mindfulness interventional approaches interpret and contextualize mindfulness, but there are also differing (...) interpretations of mindfulness within Buddhism. These apparent differences within Buddhism are arguably more noticeable when making comparisons across Buddhist vehicles (i.e., Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana), but to a lesser extent intra-vehicular differences can also be said to exist (i.e., differences between Buddhist traditions of the same vehicle). This commentary investigates the validity of some of these different Buddhist constructions of mindfulness, and then discusses how a better understanding of their scriptural and conceptual soundness (or lack thereof) may help to reconcile some of the actual and perceived incompatibility between Buddhist practice and contemporary secular mindfulness-based approaches. (shrink)

Mindfulness-based interventions are reported as being efficacious treatments for a variety of psychological and somatic conditions. However, concerns have arisen relating to how mindfulness is operationalized in mindfulness-based interventions and whether its ‘spiritual essence’ and full potential treatment efficacy have remained intact. This qualitative study used interpretative phenomenological analysis to examine participant experiences regarding the acceptability and effectiveness of a newly designed secularized intervention called meditation awareness training (MAT) that follows a more traditional Buddhist approach to meditation. Participants (with issues (...) of stress and low mood) reported experiencing improvements in psychological well-being due to receiving MAT. The wider implications are discussed. (shrink)

The prevalence of workaholism in Western populations is approximately 10%,although estimates vary considerably according to how “workaholism” is defined.There is growing consensus that workaholism is a bona fide behavioral addiction that exists at the extreme end of the work-engagement continuum and causes similar negative consequences to other behavioral addictions such as salience, conflict, tolerance, withdrawal symptoms,and mood modification. Other more specific consequences include burnout, work compulsion,work–family conflict, impaired productivity, asociality,and psychological/somatic illness.

Psychological approaches to treating mental illness or improving psychological wellbeing are invariably based on the explicit or implicit understanding that there is an intrinsically existing ‘self’ or ‘I’ entity. In other words, regardless of whether a cognitive-behavioural, psychodynamic, or humanistic psychotherapy treatment model is employed, these approaches are ultimately concerned with changing how the ‘I’ relates to its thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, and/or to its physical, social, and spiritual environment. Although each of these psychotherapeutic modalities have been shown to have (...) utility for improving psychological health, there are inevitably limitations to their effectiveness and there will always be those individuals for whom they are incompatible. Given such limitations, research continuously attempts to identify and empirically validate more effective, acceptable and/or diverse treatment approaches. One such approach gaining momentum is the use of techniques that derive from Buddhist contemplative practice. Although mindfulness is arguably the most popular and empirically researched example, there is also growing interest into the psychotherapeutic applications of Buddhism’s ‘non-self’ ontological standpoint (in which ontology is basically the philosophical study of the nature or essence of being, existence, or reality). (shrink)

There is currently growing interest among occupational stakeholders in the applications of mindfulness in the workplace. In addition to discussing the potential role that mindfulness may have in improving psychological wellbeing inside and outside of work, previous Counselling at Work articles on mindfulness have explored the change management implications associated with rolling out mindfulness interventions at the organisational level.1,2 Following a brief explanation of what we mean by the term ‘mindfulness’, this article complements these earlier perspectives by providing: (i) an (...) up-to-date overview – with a focus on some of our own empirical work – of key developments and findings in occupation-focused mindfulness research, (ii) a discussion of the key mechanisms of action by which mindfulness may improve work-related wellbeing and job performance, and (iii) practical recommendations for the effective teaching of mindfulness in the workplace. (shrink)

Objectives. The purpose of this study was to conduct the first randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the effectiveness of a second-generation mindfulness-based intervention (SG-MBI) for treating fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS). Compared to first generation mindfulness-based interventions, SG-MBIs are more acknowledging of the spiritual aspect of mindfulness. Design. A RCT employing intent-to-treat analysis. Methods. Adults with FMS received an 8-week SG-MBI known as meditation awareness training (MAT; n = 74) or an active control intervention known as cognitive behaviour theory for groups (...) (n = 74). Assessments were performed at pre-, post-, and 6-month follow-up phases. Results. Meditation awareness training participants demonstrated significant and sustained improvements over control group participants in FMS symptomatology, pain perception, sleep quality, psychological distress, non-attachment (to self, symptoms, and environment), and civic engagement. A mediation analysis found that (1) civic engagement partially mediated treatment effects for all outcome variables, (2) non-attachment partially mediated treatment effects for psychological distress and sleep quality, and (3) non-attachment almost fully mediated treatment effects for FMS symptomatology and pain perception. Average daily time spent in meditation was found to be a significant predictor of changes in all outcome variables. Conclusions. Meditation awareness training may be a suitable treatment for adults with FMS and appears to ameliorate FMS symptomatology and pain perception by reducing attachment to self. (shrink)

The translational research community, in general, and the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) community, in particular, share the vision of repurposing EHRs for research that will improve the quality of clinical practice. Many members of these communities are also aware that electronic health records (EHRs) suffer limitations of data becoming poorly structured, biased, and unusable out of original context. This creates obstacles to the continuity of care, utility, quality improvement, and translational research. Analogous limitations to sharing objective data in (...) other areas of the natural sciences have been successfully overcome by developing and using common ontologies. This White Paper presents the authors’ rationale for the use of ontologies with computable semantics for the improvement of clinical data quality and EHR usability formulated for researchers with a stake in clinical and translational science and who are advocates for the use of information technology in medicine but at the same time are concerned by current major shortfalls. This White Paper outlines pitfalls, opportunities, and solutions and recommends increased investment in research and development of ontologies with computable semantics for a new generation of EHRs. (shrink)

According to a naïve view sometimes apparent in the writings of moral philosophers, ‘ought’ often expresses a relation between agents and actions – the relation that obtains between an agent and an action when that action is what that agent ought to do. It is not part of this naïve view that ‘ought’ always expresses this relation – on the contrary, adherents of the naïve view are happy to allow that ‘ought’ also has an epistemic sense, on which it means, (...) roughly, that some proposition is likely to be the case, and adherents of the naïve view are also typically happy to allow that ‘ought’ also has an evaluative sense, on which it means, roughly, that were things ideal, some proposition would be the case.1 What is important to the naïve view is not that these other senses of ‘ought’ do not exist, but rather that they are not exhaustive – for what they leave out, is the important deliberative sense of ‘ought’, which is the central subject of moral inquiry about what we ought to do and why – and it is this deliberative sense of ‘ought’ which the naïve view understands to express a relation between agents and actions.2 In contrast, logically and linguistically sophisticated philosophers – with a few notable exceptions3 – have rejected this naïve view. According to a dominant perspective in the interpretation of deontic logic and in linguistic semantics, for example, articulated by Roderick Chisholm (1964) and Bernard Williams (1981) in philosophy and in the dominant paradigm in linguistic semantics as articulated in particular by.. (shrink)

Augustine and William James both argue that religious faith can be both practical and rational even in the absence of knowledge. Augustine argues that religious faith is trust and that trust is a normal, proper, and even necessary way of believing. Beginning with faith, we then work towards knowledge by means of philosophical contemplation. James’ “The Will to Believe” makes pragmatic arguments for the rationality of faith. Although we do not know (yet) whether God exists, faith is a choice (...) between the risk of believing something false and the risk of not believing something true, and in the absence of convincing evidence we may decide for ourselves which risk we prefer. We may be able to experience God in the future and thereby gain knowledge, yet this may be contingent on our willingness to believe. There are key differences, however. Augustine is a Christian with a neo-Platonic bent, James an empiricist defending the religion of your choice. These differences may be less significant than they first appear. After explaining Augustine and then James I draw out the major points of comparison and contrast and suggest a few reasons their insights might be at least partially synthesized. -/- This is the accepted version of the following article: Mark J. Boone, “Augustine and William James on the Rationality of Faith,” The Heythrop Journal (online edition December 2018), which has been published in final form at [See First URL]. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with the Wiley Self-Archiving Policy [See Second URL]. (shrink)

American Pragmatist philosopher William James and subcontinent Islamic philosopher Allama Iqbal both believe that religious experiences are an important class of those experiences with which empiricism is concerned. They both explain and defend religious belief on empirical grounds and argue that the ultimate empirical justification of a religious belief must come by looking at its fruits. This is no accident, for James influenced Iqbal on this very point. -/- However, they diverge in some matters. James defends the right to (...) diverse religious belief and eventually articulates his own account based on religious experience—an account which is intentionally philosophical and not reliant on any religious authority. Iqbal, however, reconsiders and defends Islam understood along largely traditional lines. -/- I compare and contrast James’ and Iqbal’s religious epistemologies in order to understand both of them better and, hopefully, enrich contemporary reflection on faith and reason through a better awareness of the past dialogue on the subject. -/- This is the accepted version of the following article: “William James and Allama Iqbal on Empirical Faith;” The Heythrop Journal 61.5 (2020): 775-787, which has been published in final form at the URL provided. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with the Wiley Self-Archiving Policy [see second URL]. (shrink)

While some scholars neglect the theological component to William James’s ethical views in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” Michael Cantrell reads it as promoting a divine command theory (DCT) of the foundations of moral obligation. While Cantrell’s interpretation is to be commended for taking God seriously, he goes a little too far in the right direction. Although James’s view amounts to what could be called (and what Cantrell does call) a DCT because on it God’s demands are (...) necessary and sufficient for the highest obligations, this is a view with characteristics unusual for a DCT. It only holds for some obligations; on it moral obligation does not derive from God’s authority; it is not obvious that James believes the God required by it even exists; we do not know what God’s demands are; and, finally, since we do not know them, we cannot act on them. -/- (Lest there be any confusion, the titular phrase "taking God seriously, but not too seriously" describes William James' view of God and morality, not my own view.). (shrink)

Gone are the heady days when Bernard Williams (1993) could get away with saying that “Nietzsche is not a source of philosophical theories” (p. 4). The last two decades have witnessed a flowering of research that aims to interpret, elucidate, and defend Nietzsche’s theories about science, the mind, and morality. This paper is one more blossom in that efflorescence. What I want to argue is that Nietzsche theorized three important and surprising moral psychological insights that have been born out by (...) contemporary empirical psychology. The first Nietzschean insight is the disunity of the self. The second, connected, Nietzschean insight is the primacy of affect. This primacy is expressed by what I have called elsewhere (Alfano 2010, 2013a) the tenacity of the intentional, and what Nietzsche calls the Socratic equation (TI Socrates 4, 10; WP 2:432-3). The third major Nietzschean insight is the social construction of character, which presupposes a wild diversity within the extensions of trait-terms and the dual direction of fit of character trait attributions. This last point is somewhat in tension with the only other published defense of the empirical credentials of Nietzsche’s moral psychology (Knobe & Leiter 2007), so I will make a few remarks about the contrast between my view and theirs. (shrink)

Stanley Cavell isn't the first to arrive at philosophy through a life with music. Nor is he the first whose philosophical practice bears the marks of that life. Much of Cavell's life with music is confirmed for the world in his philosophical autobiography Little Did I Know. A central moment in that book is Cavell's describing the realization that he was to leave his musical career behind – for what exactly, he did not yet know. He connects the memory-shock of (...) this leaving with "the work of mourning." How does such a life out of music inform Cavell's philosophical sensibility? The thought I follow in this essay is that Cavell's distinctive orientation in philosophy – call this his lifelong coming to terms with his abandoning a life in music – is guided in part by an interest in those moments in experience where words seem to run out, or veer toward nonsense, leaving in their wake touchstones of ecstasy. I explore this idea by summarizing my exchange with Stanley Cavell years ago when I asked him whether certain passages from his essay "Music Discomposed" are depictions of the unsayable. Cavell's response is elaborated, or qualified, by considering a pair of moments in Little Did I Know where words appear to run out. I conclude by discussing culminating thoughts on the burden borne by words and their failure that appear in Cavell's late essay on music, "Impressions of Revolution.". (shrink)

Remembering that there’s a difference between intellectual and perceptual attention can help us avoid miscommunication due to meaning different things by the same terms, which has been a particular problem during the last hundred years or so of the study of attention. I demonstrate this through analyzing in depth one such miscommunication that occurred in a philosophical criticism of the influential psychological text, Inattentional Blindness. But after making the distinction between perceptual attention and intellectual attention, and after making an effort (...) to keep this distinction in mind, we are still faced with the problem of specifying what makes intellectual attention distinct from perceptual attention. In the second half of this article, I discuss the range of proposals about how to understand intellectual attention that are present in the literature, and the problems with them. I do this with the aim of stimulating further discussion about how best to conceptualize intellectual attention, although I do not settle that further question within this paper. (shrink)

Despite its many advantages as a metaethical theory, moral expressivism faces difficulties as a semantic theory of the meaning of moral claims, an issue underscored by the notorious Frege-Geach problem. I consider a distinct metaethical view, inferentialism, which like expressivism rejects a representational account of meaning, but unlike expressivism explains meaning in terms of inferential role instead of expressive function. Drawing on Michael Williams’ recent work on inferential theories of meaning, I argue that an appropriate understanding of the pragmatic role (...) of moral discourse—the facilitation of coordinated social behavior—suggests the kind of inferences we should expect terms with this function to license. I offer a sketch of the inferential roles the moral ‘ought’ plays, and argue that if we accept that the relevant inferential roles are meaning-constitutive, we will be in a position to solve the Frege-Geach problem. Such an inferentialist solution has advantages over those forwarded by expressivists such as Blackburn and Gibbard. First, it offers a more straightforward explanation of the meaning of moral terms. It also gives simple answers to at least two semantic worries that have vexed contemporary expressivists—the “problem of permissions” and the commitment to “mentalism”, both of which I argue are problems that don’t get traction with an inferentialist approach. I conclude by considering ways in which this approach can be expanded into a more robust semantic account. (shrink)

THIS IS A PRE-PUBLICATION VERSION OF THE PAPER and does not have the same pagination as the published version. -/- It is sometimes said that religious belief and empiricism are different or even incompatible ways of believing. However, William James and notable twentieth-century philosophers representing Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity have argued that there is a high degree of compatibility between religious faith and empiricism. Their analyses suggest that there are three characteristics of empiricism—that an empiricist bases his (...) beliefs on past experience, that he seeks to test his beliefs in future experience, and that he holds his beliefs with a degree of tentativeness in case future experience should uncover evidence against them. The epistemological insights of these philosophers, along with Augustine, show that Christian theology is consistent with empiricism. Indeed, reliance on faith fails to distinguish Christianity from science, and Christian theology is even to a significant extent both verifiable and falsifiable. (shrink)

Scholars have devoted considerable attention to the discovery by Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson of a distinction between the fittingness of an emotion and the propriety of the same. Meanwhile, Christian theology has long been attentive to the relevance of Christian theology to the emotions. Although it seems that never so far have the twain discussions met, they should meet. A fitting emotion accurately construes a situation. Christian theology tells us something about the importance—or the lack thereof—of emotional fit for (...) the emotions involved in love. It is a desideratum for the emotions that they are fitting. But other desiderata for the emotional life sometimes overrule the desideratum of fit. Moreover, emotions sometimes have an effect on their own fittingness. As Kierkegaard shows, love construes its object as better than he presently is, but it also makes the object better. We should cultivate a disposition to loving emotions that are occasionally unfitting yet help to bring about better fit. I explain these things and consider how someone might go about cultivating loving emotions which are sometimes unfitting yet also restorative of fit. (shrink)

The general idea of strong foundationalism is that knowledge has a foundation in well warranted beliefs which do not derive any warrant from other beliefs and that all our other beliefs depend on these foundational ones for their warrant. Although inerrancy posits Scripture as a solid foundation for theology, the idea that the doctrine of biblical inerrancy involves a strong foundationalist epistemology is deeply problematic. In fact, inerrancy does not require any particular view of the structure of knowledge, and notable (...) sources on inerrancy tout it in ways inconsistent with most forms of strong foundationalism. (shrink)

The ‘man born blind restored to light’ was one of the foundational myths of the Enlightenment, according to Foucault. With ophthalmic surgery in its infancy, the fascination by the sighted with blindness and what the blind might ‘see’ after sight restoration remained largely speculative. Was being blind, as Descartes once remarked, like ‘seeing with the hands’? Did evidence from early cataract operations begin to resolve epistemological debates about the relationship between vision and touch in the newly sighted, such as the (...) famous ‘Molyneux Question’ posed by William Molyneux to John Locke? More recently, how have autobiographical accounts of blind and vision impaired writers and poets advanced the sighted public’s understanding of blind subjectivity? -/- Through an unfolding historical, philosophical and literary narrative that includes Locke, Molyneux and Berkeley in Britain, and Diderot, Voltaire and Buffon in France, this book explores how the Molyneux Question and its aftermath has influenced attitudes towards blindness by the sighted, and sensory substitution technologies for the blind and vision impaired, to this day. (shrink)

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In light of the pragmatic aspirations of ordinary language philosophy, this essay critically examines the competing grammatical strictures that are often set forth within the theoretical discourse of 'power'. It repudiates both categorically appraisive employments of 'power' and the antithetical urge to fully operationalize the concept. It offers an attenuated defense of the thesis that 'power' is an essentially contestable concept, but rejects the notion that this linguistic fact stems from conflict between antipodal ideological paradigms. Careful attention to the ordinary (...) pragmatics of power-language evinces the prospects for integrating various context-specific aspects of power and mediating between traditionally divergent theoretical frameworks. (shrink)

This paper is about whether consciousness flows. Evan Thompson (2014) has recently claimed that the study of binocular rivalry shows that there are some moments where consciousness does not flow, contra William James (1890). Moreover, he’s claimed that Abhidharma philosophers reject James’s claim that consciousness flows. I argue that binocular rivalry poses no special challenge to James. Second, I argue that because Thompson did not take up the question of how James and Abhidharma philosophers analyse or define flow, he (...) under-described their disagreement in a way that obscures an important conceptual contribution that Abhidharma philosophers make to the study of flow. They reject James’s claim that there are only two conceivable ways for consciousness to fail to flow, and suggest that there is a third way for consciousness to fail to flow – a way that James’s imagination did not reveal to be possible. (shrink)

According to Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, Wittgenstein’s On Certainty presents a theory of hinges, and hinges have a role to play in a foundationalist epistemology (2013). Michael Williams (2005) and Annalisa Coliva (2013 ) have claimed that the hinges are not suitable to play such a role as they are not shared universally. Moyal-Sharrock has replied that a subset of the hinges is suitable to play such a role: the “universal” hinges. I argue that for Moyal-Sharrock’s reply to be sustained, she must (...) construe the set of universal hinges much more narrowly than she does currently. For instance, Moyal-Sharrock claims that “I have a brain” is a universal hinge, which consigns people who know nothing about brains to stand outside the bounds of sense. I also provide a novel way of thinking about the universal hinges, which I argue is better textually motivated than Moyal-Sharrock’s own way, and which provides a set of hinges more suitable to play a role in foundationalist epistemology. (shrink)

Review of Jesse Norman, "Edmund Burke: Philosopher, Politician, Prophet" (William Collins, 2013).

I argue that there is a hitherto unrecognized connection between Henry of Ghent’s general theory of real relations and his Trinitarian theology, namely the notion of numerical sameness without identity. A real relation (relatio) is numerically the same thing (res) as its absolute (non-relative) foundation, without being identical to its foundation. This not only holds for creaturely real relations but also for the divine persons’ distinguishing real relations. A divine person who is constituted by a real relation (relatio) and the (...) divine essence is numerically the same thing (res) as the divine essence without being identical to it. Further, I compare Mark Henninger’s and Jos Decorte’s interpretations of Henry’s general theory of real relations and show that Henninger’s is to be preferred and how it is consistent with my interpretation. I argue that the difficulty with Decorte’s interpretation stems, in part, from his misrepresentation of Henry’s Trinitarian theology. Subsequently, I fill in some missing pieces to Decorte’s presentation of Henry’s Trinitarian theology, and this in turn shows why Henninger’s interpretation in conjunction with mine is to be preferred. (shrink)

This piece is a side-by-side review of two books: Strangers Drowning, by Larissa MacFarquhar, and Doing Good Better, by William MacAskill. Both books are concerned with the question of whether we should try to live as morally good a life as possible. MacAskill thinks the answer is 'yes', and his book is an overview of how the Effective Altruist movement approaches the problem of how to achieve a morally optimal life. MacFarquhar's book is a more descriptive account of the (...) lives of people who aim to live in a morally optimal way. Her discussion is nuanced, and somewhat ambivalent about the merits of this aim. My review brings out some commonalities and differences between the two books, and critically digests the arguments on offer. (shrink)

The structure of communication networks can be more or less “democratic”: networks are less democratic if (a) communication is more limited in terms of characteristic degree and (b) is more tightly channeled to a few specifc nodes. Together those measures give us a two-dimensional landscape of more and less democratic networks. We track opinion volatility across that landscape: the extent to which random changes in a small percentage of binary opinions at network nodes result in wide changes across the network (...) as a whole. If wide and frequent swings of popular opinion are taken as a mark of instability, democratic communication networks prove far more stable than anti-democratic ones. In a fnal section, we consider the democratic or anti-democratic character of networks that respond to volatility by rewiring at random, in a search for community, or in a search for a leader. (shrink)

This paper is about the work of a long forgotten philosopher and his views which have surprising relevance to discussions in present-day philosophy of mind and cognitive science. I argue that, far from being a traditional idealist, Mitchell advanced a very subtle position best seen as marking a transition from idealist views and later materialist accounts, the latter popularly attributed to Australian philosophers in the second half of the 20th century.

مداخلة مترجمة عن الفرنسية للفيلسوف الفرنسي جيل دولوز.

2015 Reprint of 1956 Printing. Full facsimile of the original edition. Not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Cybernetics is here defined as "the science of control and communication, in the animal and the machine"-in a word, as the art of steersmanship; and this book will interest all who are interested in cybernetics, communication theory and methods for regulation and control. W. Ross Ashby (1903-1972) was an English psychiatrist and a pioneer in cybernetics, the study of complex systems. His two books, (...) "Design for a Brain" and "An Introduction to Cybernetics," were landmark works. They introduced exact and logical thinking into the nascent discipline and were highly influential. Contents include: What is new -- Change -- The Determinate Machine -- The Machine with Input -- Stability -- The Black Box -- Quantity of Variety -- Transmission of Variety -- Incessant Transmission -- Regulation in Biological Systems -- Requisite Variety -- The Error-controlled Regulator -- Regulating the Very Large System -- Amplifying Regulation. (shrink)

Mark Coeckelbergh starts his book with a very powerful picture based on a real incident: On the 9th of January 2020, Robert Williams was wrongfully arrested by Detroit police officers in front of his two young daughters, wife and neighbors. For 18 hours the police would not disclose the grounds for his arrest (American Civil Liberties Union 2020; Hill 2020). The decision to arrest him was primarily based on a facial detection algorithm which matched Mr. Williams’ driving license photo (...) with the picture of a man who was suspected of watch theft two years earlier. Not only did the computer ‘get it wrong’ as one of the detectives said, when Mr. Williams made them aware that the picture of the suspect obviously wasn’t resembling him, the probably unreliable algorithm very likely contributed to racial discrimination (Hill 2020). It is well documented that many available facial detection algorithms at this time had significant problems (e.g. a comparably high false positive rate) with respect to black persons, like Mr. Williams (NIST 2019). Multiple causes may exist, such as unbalanced training datasets and insufficient optimization. Coeckelbergh compares the disturbing case of Mr. Williams with a political interpretation of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, where the protagonist, Josef K., is accused of an unspecified crime by an opaque, oppressive and absurd bureaucracy: “In the 21st-century United States, Josef K. is black and is falsely accused by an algorithm, without explanation” (p. 2). (shrink)

Albert and Cederman couch the neorealist perspective in terms of ‘systems’ theorizing, Ferguson and Mansbach rhetorically discuss issues and non-issues which are readily addressed within the neoliberal perspective, and of course, Onuf is unabashedly a constructivist. Below, I discuss each theoretical perspective relative to the articles assigned, and, thereafter conclude with some observations on the three articles and theoretical frameworks.

After nearly 76 years following the UN Charter, the dominant feature of the multilateral international order has shifted from a focus on states’ sovereignty to the rights of the individual. It is now widely accepted that human rights are not the province of any one state’s domestic affairs, but of importance to the entire international community. The UN Security Council sits atop the supra-state order, and holds the ultimate authority to initiate consensus-based, collective action so as to limit or prevent (...) gross human rights violations. Yet, many times the Security Council is slow to act, and consensus is exceedingly rare. This begs the question: in the face of gross human rights violations and Security Council inaction, is unilateral humanitarian intervention justified? The present state of international law on the matter is unsettled and controversial to many. What follows is a discussion on the development of international law relating to unilateral humanitarian intervention, the permissibility of intervention for gross human rights violations, and justification for intervention under existing international law. I conclude that under the present multilateral regime, unilateral humanitarian intervention is legally justified, despite fears that the principle may be invoked for the purposes of cloaking acts of aggression. (shrink)

Does it seem that with each reported state cyberattack, there comes an announcement of discovery, an attribution to one of a handful of usual suspects, some threatening language suggesting imminent retribution, and then nothing more? Increased incidence of cyberattack makes its occurrence seem simultaneously rampant in terms of publicity and minimal in terms of threat of war. If rampant, how can repeated deployment by the same actors carry no punitive consequences? How is such audaciousness tolerated? For some, a cyberattack by (...) a state is an act of war. Its prevalence suggests there must be a void somewhere that facilitates its use without consequence. Others think state cyberattack is like other internet novelties: digital malfeasance, amounting to a nuisance that naturally follows from a digital‐based existence, particularly since non‐state actors are typically involved. Yet, state‐on‐state hostilities are historically perilous on a vast scale, and there is a multilateral system for regulating the use of force in the context of war. Acts of war, even when seeming minimal in impact, are not by‐products of a digital fad, and cyberattack is now described as far more than ‘nuisance’. If anywhere, the place for clarity on hostile state cyberoperations use should be accounted for in International Humanitarian Law. Yet, in its present form, it is ambiguous if not silent on the subject, suggesting that cyberattack currently presents an advantage to perpetrating states. Does this void or these ambiguities make cyberattacks more legally advantageous to states than traditional, kinetic weaponry? I examine whether existing IHL is sufficiently adaptable to state cyberoperations through a mixed legal and theoretical approach and conclude that they do. (shrink)

For the purposes of this enquiry—an account of what Equiano’sa modernity was, and which particular historical ‘demarcations’ of modernity provided for an enslaved man to achieve freedom through great fortune and great cunning, I will assume a definition of ‘modernity’ as defined by Kathleen Wilson: “. . . not one moment or age, but a set of relations that are constantly being made and unmade, contested and reconfigured, that nonetheless produce among their contemporaneous witnesses the conviction of historical difference.” By (...) adopting this definition, modernity in the times of Equiano refers to, “the cultural practices and representations that produced certain kinds of subjects and objects of knowledge, upheld widely-shared notions of space and time, or facilitated the formation of cultural identities that resulted in pluralities and contradictions as well as unities and coherences,” which provided for a slave to acquire freedom amidst eighteenth-century imperialism, slave-trade, and emerging abolitionist sentiments within bourgeois culture. (shrink)

For Rousseau, humankind is in a perpetual state of decay—decadency from an earlier, natural, primitive, and perfect state. For Rousseau, the natural man, or man in the state of beast, was of an era where humankind was unencumbered by that which is now entirely associated with society—that is, “. . . establishment of laws and of the right of property . . . the institution of magistracy . . . and the conversion of legitimate into arbitrary power.” For Kant, humankind (...) is in its natural state. For Kant, nature brings about conditions that continually develop and refine humankind’s dispositions, purposefully setting about societies in order to facilitate a foundation within all civilized society, whereby all of humankind’s goals may be achieved. All matters have their place—placed there by nature, as though with purpose. For Kant, nature intended for humankind to employ reason, to acquiesce to coercion for social cohesion, and to strive to build a society that is ever-increasingly progressing towards perfection. Nature uses humankind’s dispositions, including ‘antagonistic’ behavior to gradually bring about a, “perfectly just civil constitution.” Humankind’s highest goal yet to be achieved is for that just civil constitution to emerge from trial and error (in the form of wars, revolutions, secessions, abdications), over time, ultimately providing for development of other dispositions within a perfect society. (shrink)

Under the UDHR, all persons have the right to "seek and to enjoy . . . asylum from persecution." From this designation as fundamental followed codification of the right in the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating (collectively 'the Convention'), the "centrepiece" of treaties and customary norms that make up international refugee law. It defines and regulates the status and rights of refugees; its purpose is to safeguard the basic rights of persons "outside (...) their country of origin," who have fled due to a legitimate fear of persecution. Fundamentally, it guarantees that asylees and refugees enjoy rights without discrimination; without penalization for illegal territorial entry; and, without expulsion or return to "territories where . . . life or freedom would be threatened on account of . . . race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion," —or 'non-refoulement'. What follows is background on development of the principle of non-refoulement, evasive US Asylum Cooperative Agreements ('ACAs') and implementing legislation, and the resulting erosion to the right to asylum. (shrink)

Kant's formulae ought to effectively produce the same result when applied to the moral validity of any particular maxim; further, no valid maxim produces contradictory results when applied against Kant's Universal Law and Humanity formulae. Where one uses all formulae in the assessment of a maxim, one gains a more complete understanding of the moral law, thereby bridging principles of reason with intuition within the agent who has undertaken to evaluate the morality of a particular action. These formulae command without (...) regard to any particular interests, but are instead unconditional; further, these formulae effectively limit choice of action and therefore give rise to duty. Kant implies that the structure of all maxims requires different formulae of the same moral law, i.e., all maxims have a ‘form’ and a ‘matter’, which prompt reconfiguring of the categorical imperative into different formulae in order to test the morality of a maxim. (shrink)

Justiciability sets the boundaries of judicial review and the rule of law. A justiciable issue is that which is appropriate within a judicial forum. That is, where an "independent and impartial body" can remedy rights violations of identifiable claimants, the issue before it is justiciable. If it falls beyond what is judicially determinable, it is 'non-justiciable'. The principle is not fixed, as it does not permanently set the boundaries of that which is appropriate for judicial determination. Rather, it evolves "from (...) context to context," and expands and narrows along what falls within judicial competencies at a particular time. On an elementary level, it is distinct from jurisdiction, as it establishes boundaries of subject matter on policy or constitutional grounds, whereas jurisdiction is grounded in established legal rules. However, questions of jurisdiction can be subsumed under broader questions of justiciability. (shrink)

The local opposes the global or the macro opposes the micro and vice versa, respectively. This dialectical relationship further exposes that scales are socially and politically constructed, representative of a phenomena that is relational, and is thus of important consideration in analysis beyond simple labeling. That is, scale represents more than ‘size’ and ‘complexity’, but also reveals the relational. It is the relational—the relationship between the ‘global’ and its contents or the ‘local’—which provides for or is wont for analytic complexity (...) and theorizing. (shrink)

A phronetic approach takes into account everything possible. By this, the phronetic researcher ought to be better-informed of the practical—that which is readily available in order to solve localized political problems and to direct political participants to think in terms of value-rational understanding and action. Phronetic knowledge ought to be of utility to the citizenry—and not only to academia. It does not only explain phenomena, but also provides for altering the outcomes associated with political phenomena by integrating value judgments and (...) broader ethical precepts into the analysis. This is instrumental in producing knowledge that provides for practical application of problem solving that can be deemed good or better, and provides a means for ascertaining the bad or worse in a given political scenario. This paper examines how knowledge is produced by the phronetic approach, what knowledge can be known by the phronetic approach, and whether there are inherent limitations to the phronetic approach to understanding. (shrink)

Fitting Attitudes accounts of value analogize or equate being good with being desirable, on the premise that ‘desirable’ means not, ‘able to be desired’, as Mill has been accused of mistakenly assuming, but ‘ought to be desired’, or something similar. The appeal of this idea is visible in the critical reaction to Mill, which generally goes along with his equation of ‘good’ with ‘desirable’ and only balks at the second step, and it crosses broad boundaries in terms of philosophers’ other (...) commitments. For example, Fitting Attitudes accounts play a central role both in T.M. Scanlon’s [1998] case against teleology, and in Michael Smith [2003], [unpublished] and Doug Portmore’s [2007] cases for it. And of course they have a long and distinguished history. (shrink)

A representationalist-friendly introduction to representationalism which covers a number of central problems and objections.

Batterman and Rice ([2014]) argue that minimal models possess explanatory power that cannot be captured by what they call ‘common features’ approaches to explanation. Minimal models are explanatory, according to Batterman and Rice, not in virtue of accurately representing relevant features, but in virtue of answering three questions that provide a ‘story about why large classes of features are irrelevant to the explanandum phenomenon’ ([2014], p. 356). In this article, I argue, first, that a method (the renormalization group) they propose (...) to answer the three questions cannot answer them, at least not by itself. Second, I argue that answers to the three questions are unnecessary to account for the explanatoriness of their minimal models. Finally, I argue that a common features account, what I call the ‘generalized ontic conception of explanation’, can capture the explanatoriness of minimal models. (shrink)

Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation. Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in Metaphors We (...) Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection. (shrink)