Proceedings of Philosophical Festival Drift 2014. Theme: Under Influence. Includes lectures by Katrien Schaubroeck, Philippe Descola, Markus Gabriel, Ray Brassier, Francesco Berto, Henk Oosterling, and Tomáš Sedlácek (among others). Lectures are in Dutch or English.

In this paper we examine to what extent the lengths of the links in an animated articulated figure can be changed without the viewer being aware of the change. This is investigated in terms of a framework that emphasizes the role of attention in visual perception. We conducted a set of five experiments to establish bounds for the sen-sitivity to changes in length as a function of several parameters and the amount of attention available. We found that while length changes (...) of 3% can be perceived when the relevant links are given full attention, changes of over 20% can go unnoticed when attention is not focused in this way. These results provide general guidelines for algorithms that produce or process character motion data and also bring to light some of the potential gains that stand to be achieved with attention-based algorithms. (shrink)

Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta has been very influential in India, both as a well-articulated philosophical system and a weighty theological position. However, Advaita’s supposedly dismissive attitude toward the world always remained its Achilles’ heel. Thinkers whose sympathies lie firmly with Advaita are at pains to give a philosophically satisfactory explanation of the ontological status of the world. This article briefly discusses the efforts and resultant views of four such contemporary thinkers – K.C. Bhattacharyya, S. Radhakrishnan, P.T. Raju, and Richard De (...) class='Hi'>Smet. (shrink)

This publication offers the first critical edition of John Buridan’s second set of questions on Aristotle's “De generatione et corruptione”. The edition was made by Michiel Streijger, Paul Bakker and Hans Thijssen. First published as a printed book in 2010, the publication has been converted to open access with the CC BY-NC-ND license as of September 2023.

The history of twentieth-century American psychology is often depicted as a history of the rise and fall of behaviorism. Although historians disagree about the theoretical and social factors that have contributed to the development of experimental psychology, there is widespread consensus about the growing and declining influence of behaviorism between approximately 1920 and 1970. Since such wide-scope claims about the development of American psychology are typically based on small and unrepresentative samples of historical data, however, the question rises to what (...) extent the received view is justified. This paper aims to answer this question in two ways. First, we use advanced scientometric tools to quantitatively analyze the metadata of 119.278 papers published in American journals between 1920 and 1970. We reconstruct the development and structure of American psychology using co-citation and co-occurrence networks and argue that the standard story needs reappraising. Second, we argue that the question whether behaviorism was the ‘dominant’ school of American psychology is historically misleading to begin with. Using the results of our bibliometric analyses, we argue that questions about the development of American psychology deserve more fine-grained answers. (shrink)

The Natural Problems, attributed to Aristotle, have gained much scholarly attention in the last decades, yet a systematic study of how the collection circulated in the Graeco-Roman Empire remains a blind spot in contemporary scholarship. Indeed, the Imperial Era is a seminal period for the history of the text, not just as a conduit between Aristotle and the Middle Ages – which in itself is essential for explaining the subsequent Arabic and Latin uptake of the Problems more clearly – but (...) also for the wealth of sources and testimonies it offers about the collection’s ancient readership and concrete use. The evidence shows that the collection sparked much debate among a range of ancient philosophers, doctors, sophists and scholars, both Greeks and Romans. This paper provides a selection of readings representative of the different socio-intellectual milieus in which the Problems circulated and the different agendas that it served. (shrink)

Purpose This article aims to gain a better understanding of the reasons why serendipity is designed for in different kinds of environments. Understanding these design intents sheds light on the value such designs bring to designers, in contrast to the users of the environment. In this way, the article seeks to contribute to the literature on cultivating serendipity from a designers’ point of view. -/- Design/methodology/approach An extensive review of the literature discussing designing for serendipity was conducted to elicit the (...) different motivations to design for serendipity. Based on these findings and a thorough analysis, a typology of design intents for serendipity is presented. -/- Findings The article puts forward four intents to design for serendipity: serendipity as an ideal, common good, mediator and feature. It also highlights that the current academic discourse puts a strong emphasis on two of them. It is argued that this academic abstraction could be problematic for how we deal with designs for serendipity, both in theory and practice. -/- Originality/value The novelty of this article is that it addresses the question of why to design for serendipity from a designer’s point of view. By introducing the notion of directionality it opens up the opportunity to discuss serendipity from multiple perspectives, which contributes to gaining a firmer understanding of serendipity. It allows to more explicitly formulate the different functions of a design for serendipity and thereby expands our knowledge on the value of designing for serendipity. At the same time, it sheds light on the potential threats to designing for serendipity. (shrink)

The fourh version contains the edition of Books I-II and the first part of Book III of Walter Burley's Expositio et quaestiones omnium librorum Physicorum Aristotelis. It is a preprint version and has not undergone the peer review process.

This is a review of Monika Michalowska's critical edition of question 3 from Richard Kilvington's questions commentary on the Sentences by Peter Lombard. It is published in open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.

In the late summer of 1998, the authors, a cognitive scientist and a logician, started talking about the relevance of modern mathematical logic to the study of human reasoning, and we have been talking ever since. This book is an interim report of that conversation. It argues that results such as those on the Wason selection task, purportedly showing the irrelevance of formal logic to actual human reasoning, have been widely misinterpreted, mainly because the picture of logic current in psychology (...) and cognitive science is completely mistaken. We aim to give the reader a more accurate picture of mathematical logic and, in doing so, hope to show that logic, properly conceived, is still a very helpful tool in cognitive science. The main thrust of the book is therefore constructive. We give a number of examples in which logical theorizing helps in understanding and modeling observed behavior in reasoning tasks, deviations of that behavior in a psychiatric disorder (autism), and even the roots of that behavior in the evolution of the brain. (shrink)

We present a framework for epistemic logic, modeling the logical aspects of System 1 and System 2 cognitive processes, as per dual process theories of reasoning. The framework combines non-normal worlds semantics with the techniques of Dynamic Epistemic Logic. It models non-logically-omniscient, but moderately rational agents: their System 1 makes fast sense of incoming information by integrating it on the basis of their background knowledge and beliefs. Their System 2 allows them to slowly, step-wise unpack some of the logical consequences (...) of such knowledge and beliefs, by paying a cognitive cost. The framework is applied to three instances of limited rationality, widely discussed in cognitive psychology: Stereotypical Thinking, the Framing Effect, and the Anchoring Effect. (shrink)

Although Kant (1998) envisaged a prominent role for logic in the argumentative structure of his Critique of Pure Reason, logicians and philosophers have generally judged Kantgeneralformaltranscendental logics is a logic in the strict formal sense, albeit with a semantics and a definition of validity that are vastly more complex than that of first-order logic. The main technical application of the formalism developed here is a formal proof that Kants logic is after all a distinguished subsystem of first-order logic, namely what (...) is known as geometric logic. (shrink)

Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is an established method for integrating values into technical design. It has been applied to different technologies and, more recently, to artificial intelligence (AI). We argue that AI poses a number of challenges specific to VSD that require a somewhat modified VSD approach. Machine learning (ML), in particular, poses two challenges. First, humans may not understand how an AI system learns certain things. This requires paying attention to values such as transparency, explicability, and accountability. Second, ML (...) may lead to AI systems adapting in ways that ‘disembody’ the values embedded in them. To address this, we propose a threefold modified VSD approach: 1) integrating a known set of VSD principles (AI4SG) as design norms from which more specific design requirements can be derived; 2) distinguishing between values that are promoted and respected by the design to ensure outcomes that not only do no harm but also contribute to good; and 3) extending the VSD process to encompass the whole life cycle of an AI technology in order to monitor unintended value consequences and redesign as needed. We illustrate our VSD for AI approach with an example use case of a SARS-CoV-2 contact tracing app. (shrink)

Lethal Autonomous Weapons (LAWs) are robotic weapons systems, primarily of value to the military, that could engage in offensive or defensive actions without human intervention. This paper assesses and engages the current arguments for and against the use of LAWs through the lens of achieving more ethical warfare. Specific interest is given particularly to ethical LAWs, which are artificially intelligent weapons systems that make decisions within the bounds of their ethics-based code. To ensure that a wide, but not exhaustive, survey (...) of the implications of employing such ethical devices to replace humans in warfare is taken into account, this paper will engage on matters related to current scholarship on the rejection or acceptance of LAWs—including contemporary technological shortcomings of LAWs to differentiate between targets and the behavioral and psychological volatility of humans—and current and proposed regulatory infrastructures for developing and using such devices. After careful consideration of these factors, this paper will conclude that only ethical LAWs should be used to replace human involvement in war, and, by extension of their consistent abilities, should remove humans from war until a more formidable discovery is made in conducting ethical warfare. (shrink)

A recently proposed model of sensory processing suggests that perceptual experience is updated in discrete steps. We show that the data advanced to support discrete perception are in fact compatible with a continuous account of perception. Physiological and psychophysical constraints, moreover, as well as our awake-primate imaging data, imply that human neuronal networks cannot support discrete updates of perceptual content at the maximal update rates consistent with phenomenology. A more comprehensive approach to understanding the physiology of perception (and experience at (...) large) is therefore called for, and we briefly outline our take on the problem. (shrink)

Information is a central notion for cognitive sciences and neurosciences, but there is no agreement on what it means for a cognitive system to acquire information about its surroundings. In this paper, we approximate three influential views on information: the one at play in ecological psychology, which is sometimes called information for action; the notion of information as covariance as developed by some enactivists, and the idea of information as minimization of uncertainty as presented by Shannon. Our main thesis is (...) that information for action can be construed as covariant information, and that learning to perceive covariant information is a matter of minimizing uncertainty through skilled performance. We argue that the agent’s cognitive system conveys information for acting in an environment by minimizing uncertainty about how to achieve her intended goals in that environment. We conclude by reviewing empirical findings that support our view and by showing how direct learning, seen as instance of ecological rationality at work, is how mere possibilities for action are turned into embodied know-how. Finally, we indicate the affinity between direct learning and sense-making activity. (shrink)

This collection addresses two different audiences: 1) historians and philosophers of the life sciences reflecting on collaborations across disciplines, especially as regards defining and addressing Grand Challenges; 2) researchers and other stakeholders involved in cross-disciplinary collaborations aimed at tackling Grand Challenges in the life and medical sciences. The essays collected here offer ideas and resources both for the study and for the practice of goal-driven cross-disciplinary research in the life and medical sciences. We organise this introduction in three sections. The (...) first section provides some background and context. The second motivates our take on this topic and then outlines the central ideas of each paper. The third section highlights the specificity and significance of this approach by considering: a) how this collection departs from existing literature on inter- and trans-disciplinarity, b) what is characteristic about this approach, and c) what role this suggests for the history and philosophy of the life sciences in addressing Grand Challenges. (shrink)

The idea of personalised medicine (PM) has gathered momentum recently, attracting funding and generating hopes as well as scepticism. As PM gives rise to differing interpretations, there have been several attempts to clarify the concept. In an influential paper published in this journal, Schleidgen and colleagues have proposed a precise and narrow definition of PM on the basis of a systematic literature review. Given that their conclusion is at odds with those of other recent attempts to understand PM, we consider (...) whether their systematic review gives them an edge over competing interpretations. We have found some methodological weaknesses and questionable assumptions in Schleidgen and colleagues’ attempt to provide a more specific definition of PM. Our perplexities concern the lack of criteria for assessing the epistemic strength of the definitions that they consider, as well as the logical principles used to extract a more precise definition, the narrowness of the pool from which they have drawn their empirical data, and finally their overlooking the fact that definitions depend on the context of use. We are also worried that their ethical assumption that only patients’ interests are legitimate is too simplistic and drives all other stakeholders’ interests—including those that are justifiable—underground, thus compromising any hope of a transparent and fair negotiation among a plurality of actors and interests. As an alternative to the shortcomings of attempting a semantic disciplining of the concept we propose a pragmatic approach. Rather than considering PM to be a scientific concept in need of precise demarcation, we look at it as an open and negotiable concept used in a variety of contexts including at the level of orienting research goals and policy objectives. We believe that since PM is still more an ideal than an achieved reality, a plurality of visions is to be expected and we need to pay attention to the people, reasons and interests behind these alternative conceptions. In other words, the logic and politics of PM cannot be disentangled and disagreements need to be tackled addressing the normative and strategic conflicts behind them. (shrink)

Drugs used to provide improvement of cognitive functioning have been shown to be effective in healthy individuals. It is sometimes assumed that the use of these drugs constitutes cheating in an academic context. We examine whether this assumption is ethically sound. Beyond providing the most up-to-date discussion of modafinil use in an academic context, this contribution includes an overview of the safety of modafinil use in greater depth than previous studies addressing the issue of cheating. Secondly, we emphasize two crucial, (...) but hitherto nearly overlooked, nuances to the issues: the potential for modafinil to decrease inequality and disadvantage in academic settings, and the fact that how modafinil is used dramatically impacts its effects on health, coercion, fairness, authenticity and effort. Finally, we explicitly defend the position that there are no qualitatively morally relevant differences between modafinil use and other enhancement modalities; any such differences are in degree,... (shrink)

This project originates in a session devoted to teaching Peirce held at the 2007 annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. The session, organized by James Campbell and Richard Hart, was co-sponsored by the American Association of Philosophy Teachers.

David Shoemaker has recently defended a response-dependent view of moral responsibility. We critically discuss some aspects of Shoemaker's view.

Defenders of moral perception have famously argued that seeing value is relevantly similar to seeing color. Some critics think, however, that the analogy between color-seeing and value-seeing breaks down in several crucial respects. Defenders of moral perception, these critics say, have not succeeded in providing examples of non-moral perception that are relevantly analogous to cases of moral perception. Therefore, it can be doubted whether there is such a thing as moral perception at all. I argue that, although the analogy between (...) color perception and moral perception does indeed break down in several crucial respects, that conclusion does not weaken the case of defenders of moral perception, because better analogies are available. If defenders of moral perception seek to draw support from an analogy, then seeing emotion will protect them better against criticisms than will seeing color. (shrink)

We aim to show that Kant’s theory of time is consistent by providing axioms whose models validate all synthetic a priori principles for time proposed in the Critique of Pure Reason. In this paper we focus on the distinction between time as form of intuition and time as formal intuition, for which Kant’s own explanations are all too brief. We provide axioms that allow us to construct ‘time as formal intuition’ as a pair of continua, corresponding to time as ‘inner (...) sense’ and the external representation of time as a line Both continua are replete with infinitesimals, which we use to elucidate an enigmatic discussion of ‘rest’ in the Metaphysical foundations of natural science. Our main formal tools are Alexandroff topologies, inverse systems and the ring of dual numbers. (shrink)

This article presents important properties of standard discrete distributions and its conjugate densities. The Bernoulli and Poisson processes are described as generators of such discrete models. A characterization of distributions by mixtures is also introduced. This article adopts a novel singular notation and representation. Singular representations are unusual in statistical texts. Nevertheless, the singular notation makes it simpler to extend and generalize theoretical results and greatly facilitates numerical and computational implementation.

Abordagens pós-cognitivistas mais recentes têm lançado duras críticas à noção de representação mental, procurando ao invés disso pensar a mente e a cognição em termos de ações corporificadas do organismo em seu meio. Embora concordemos com essa concepção, não está claro que ela implique necessariamente a rejeição de qualquer tipo de vocabulário representacional. O objetivo deste artigo é argumentar que representações podem nos comprar uma dimensão explicativa adicional não disponível por outros meios e sugerir que, ao menos em alguns casos, (...) elas podem participar da explicação de performances ou capacidades cognitivas. A noção de representação apresentada, como deixaremos claro ao longo do artigo, não viola os preceitos metodológicos mais caros à cognição 4E em geral e ao enativismo em particular, podendo, portanto, ser utilizada como uma ferramenta teórica útil em investigações sobre a natureza corporificada e situada da mente. (shrink)

The authors of *Linguistic Bodies* appeal to shared know-how to explain the social and participatory interactions upon which linguistic skills and agency rest. However, some issues lurk around the notion of shared know-how and require attention and clarification. In particular, one issue concerns the agent behind the shared know-how, a second one concerns whether shared know-how can be reducible to individual know-how or not. In this paper, I sustain that there is no single answer to the first issue; depending on (...) the case, shared know-how can belong to the participants of a social activity or to the system the participants bring forth together. In relation to the second issue, I sustain, following the authors, a non-reductive account of shared know-how. I also suggest that responsiveness to others, which is a fundamental element of shared know-how, can be extended by perceptual learning. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss an abductive argument for the existence of God from the experience of awe at natural beauty. If God's creative work is a viable explanation for why we experience awe at natural beauty, and there is no satisfactory naturalistic explanation for the origins of such experiences, then we have defeasible evidence that God exists. To evaluate the argument's tenability, we assess the merits of the two main theocentric frameworks that can be marshaled to answer the question (...) of why human beings experience awe at natural beauty: (1) taking the experience of natural beauty as resulting from God's design intentions and (2) conceiving experiences of natural beauty as religious experiences in themselves. We argue that the presence of phenomenological content the fine-grainedness of which exceeds our descriptive and conceptual capacities is better accounted for by the latter hypothesis: experiencing natural beauty amounts to experiencing divine attributes. We conclude that the argument's theological premise is tenable and, having previously argued for the empirical premise (Porcher & De Luca-Noronha, 2021), we conclude that awe at natural beauty is best explained by the existence of God. (shrink)

The hypothesis of this paper is that legal positivism depends on the non plausibility of strong moral cognitivism because of the non necessary connection thesis between law and morality that legal positivism is supposed to acknowledge. The paper concludes that only when based on strong moral cognitivism is it consistent to sustain the typical non-positivistic thesis of the necessary connection between law and morality. Habermas’s Philosophy of law is confronted with both positions.

Resumen: Husserl propone una teoría sobre la intersubjetividad que parte de la conciencia trascendental como inserta en el mundo de la vida donde están los otros y donde la comunidad se construye bajo una estructura de esencias que garantiza la comunalidad. El mundo de la vida es dado y compartido por todas las conciencias intencionales y trascendentales, es condición para intuiciones empíricas y eidéticas, la epoché y las reducciones eidética y trascendental. Cada momento del método fenomenológico se basa en la (...) existencia de un mundo de la vida independiente de la subjetividad. En este mundo, hay objetos reales y, entre estos, los otros, reconocidos por analogía a través de la empatía. Desde una perspectiva metodológico-epistemológico, el yo es anterior al mundo y a los otros yos. El yo constituye, en sentido fenomenológico, la realidad. La conciencia es el lugar de evidenciación de la realidad. No obstante, en la perspectiva ontológica, es lo contrario. El mundo de la vida es anterior a la conciencia individual. El mundo de la vida está ahí, disponible, existente, independiente del sujeto, funcionando con su propio orden, con sus leyes y reglas. Es el yo el que esta insertado en el mundo de la vida y que se esfuerza por desvendarlo. La realidad se impone y el yo es, sobre todo, miembro de una comunidad de otros yos. Aun así, ¿cómo compartir las experiencias? Las vivencias pueden ser diferentes, pero hay un límite en las variaciones, un límite dado por la esencia del objeto vivido y por las leyes que rigen las relaciones de tal objeto. Así, la constitución del mundo y de sus objetos está permanentemente en progreso. Es posible donarles nuevos sentidos, en los límites de su esencia. Para Husserl, la constitución comunal del mundo es la condición de posibilidad para la existencia de sujetos separados unos de los otros, y este entendimiento recíproco solo es posible a través de la constitución trascendental de la objetividad. Así, no hay una separación entre la intersubjetividad y la constitución del mundo, es la comunidad de yos la que dona sentidos a las objetividades. En el mundo de la vida con los otros en comunidad. -/- Abstract: Husserl proposes a theory on intersubjectivity that starts from transcendental consciousness as inserted in the lifeworld where the others and where the community are built under a structure of essences that guarantees communality. The lifeworld is given and shared by all intentional and transcendental consciousnesses, it is a condition for empirical and eidetic intuitions, the epoché and the eidetic and transcendental reductions. Every moment of the phenomenological method is based on the existence of a lifeworld independent of subjectivity. In this world, there are real objects and, among these, the others, recognized by analogy through empathy. From a methodologicalepistemological perspective, the self is prior to the world and the other selves. The self constitutes, in a phenomenological sense, reality. Consciousness is the locus of evidence of reality. However, from the ontological perspective, it is the opposite. The lifeworld is prior to individual consciousness. The lifeworld is there, available, existing, independent of subjectivity, functioning with its own order, with its laws and rules. It is the self that is inserted in the lifeworld and that strives to unveil it. Reality prevails and the self is, above all, a member of a community of other selves. Even so, how to share the experiences? The experiences can be different, but there is a limit in variations, a limit given by the essence of the lived object and by the laws that govern the relation of the object. Thus, the constitution of the world and its objects is permanently in progress. It is possible to give them new meanings, within the limits of their essence. For Husserl, the communal constitution of the world is the condition of possibility for the existence of subjects separated from each other, and this reciprocal understanding is only possible through the transcendental constitution of objectivity. therefore, there is no separation between intersubjectivity and the constitution of the world, it is the community of selves that gives meaning to objectivities. (shrink)

People often do things together and form groups in order to get things done that they cannot do alone. In short they form a collectivity of some kind or a group, for short. But if we consider a group on the one hand and the persons that constitute the group on the other hand, how does it happen that these persons work together and finish a common task with a common goal? In the philosophy of action this problem is often (...) solved by saying that there is a kind of collective intention that the group members have in mind and that guides their actions. Does such a collective intention really exist? In this article I’ll show that the answer is “no”. In order to substantiate my view I’ll discuss the approaches of Bratman, Gilbert and Searle on collective intention. I’ll put forward four kinds of criticism that undermine the idea of collective intention. They apply mainly to Bratman and Gilbert. First, it is basically difficult to mark off smaller groups from bigger unities. Second, most groups change in membership composition over time. Third, as a rule, on the one hand groups are internally structured and on the other hand they belong to a larger structure. It makes that generally it cannot be a collective intention that moves the actions of the members of a group. Fourth, conversely, most individual actions cannot be performed without the existence of a wider context of agents who support these actions and make them possible. My critique on Searle mainly involves that in his approach his idea of collective intention is superfluous and that he is not radical enough in his idea that collective action is based on coordinated individual intentions and actions. However, it is a good starting point for showing how collective action actually functions, especially when combined with Giddens’s structuration theory. Every agent in a group executes his or her own individual intentions, relying on what the group offers to this agent and asks from him or her. In this way individual actions of the members of a group are coordinated and it makes that the group can function and that its goals can be performed. And in this way the group is produced and reproduced by fitting individual actions together. An individual agent who belongs to a group only needs to know what s/he wants and what s/he has to do in the group, even if s/he has no knowledge of the intentions and commitments of the other members. Then he or she can do things together with others in a group without supposing that there is something like a collective intention. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to articulate and clarify the role of the epistemic authority of experts in Kuhn’s explanation for the transition process between rival paradigms in the scientific revolutionary period. If science progresses, that process should contribute to the attainment of the cognitive aim of science, namely, the articulation of paradigms increasingly successful at the resolution of problems. It is hard to see that process as rational and as attaining the cognitive aim of science without the consideration of (...) epistemic authority.The mistake of Kuhn was to emphasize and clarify insufficiently the role of the epistemic authority of experts; his critics failed for ignoring it altogether. (shrink)

The paper traces some of the assumptions that have informed conservative naturalism in linguistic theory, critically examines their justification, and proposes a more liberal alternative.

In identifying intrinsic molecular chance and extrinsic adaptive pressures as the only causally relevant factors in the process of evolution, the theoretical perspective of the Modern Synthesis had a major impact on the perceived tenability of an ontology of dispositional properties. However, since the late 1970s, an increasing number of evolutionary biologists have challenged the descriptive and explanatory adequacy of this “chance alone, extrinsic only” understanding of evolutionary change. Because morphological studies of homology, convergence, and teratology have revealed a space (...) of possible forms and phylogenetic trajectories that is considerably more restricted than expected, evo-devo has focused on the causal contribution of intrinsic developmental processes to the course of evolution. Evo-devo’s investigation into the developmental structure of the modality of morphology – including both the possibility and impossibility of organismal form – has led to the utilisation of a number of dispositional concepts that emphasise the tendency of the evolutionary process to change along certain routes. In this sense, and in contrast to the perspective of the Modern Synthesis, evo-devo can be described as a “science of dispositions.” This chapter discusses the recent philosophical literature on dispositional properties in evo-devo, exploring debates about both the metaphysical and epistemological aspects of the central dispositional concepts utilised in contemporary evo-devo and addressing the epistemological question of how dispositional properties challenge existing explanatory models in evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

We provide here irrefutable facts that prove the falsehood of the claims published in [1] by Dehmer and Mowshowitz (DM) against our paper published in [2]. We first prove that Dehmer’s definition of node probability [3] is flawed. In addition, we show that it was not Dehmer in [3] who proposed this definition for the first time. We continue by proving how the use of Dehmer’s definition does not reveal all the physico-mathematical richness of the walk entropy of graphs. Finally, (...) we show a few facts about the failure of DM themselves to cite properly the relevant literature in their field. We also show here how the Editors of Complexity have failed to manage the publication of [1] in an appropriate way according to the accepted guidelines given in the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (shrink)

This chapter examines the possibility of using AI technologies to improve human moral reasoning and decision-making, especially in the context of purchasing and consumer decisions. We characterize such AI technologies as artificial ethics assistants (AEAs). We focus on just one part of the AI-aided moral improvement question: the case of the individual who wants to improve their morality, where what constitutes an improvement is evaluated by the individual’s own values. We distinguish three broad areas in which an individual might think (...) their own moral reasoning and decision-making could be improved: one’s actions, character, or other evaluable attributes fall short of one’s values and moral beliefs; one sometimes misjudges or is uncertain about what the right thing to do is in particular situations, given one’s values; one is uncertain about some fundamental moral questions or recognizes a possibility that some of one’s core moral beliefs and values are mistaken. We sketch why one might think that AI tools could be used to support moral improvement in those areas, and describe two types of assistance: preparatory assistance, including advice and training supplied in advance of moral deliberation; and on-the-spot assistance, including on-the-spot advice and facilitation of moral functioning over the course of moral deliberation. Then, we turn to some of the ethical issues that AEAs might raise, looking in particular at three under-appreciated problems posed by the use of AI for moral self-improvement: namely, reliance on sensitive moral data; the inescapability of outside influences on AEAs; and AEA usage prompting the user to adopt beliefs and make decisions without adequate reasons. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a new reading of transcendental idealism. For a start, I endorse Allison’s rejection of the traditional so-called two-world view and, hence, of Guyer and Van Cleve’s ontological phenomenalism. But following Allais, I also reject Allison’s metaphysical deflacionism: transcendental idealism is metaphysically committed to the existence of things in themselves, noumena in the negative sense. Nevertheless, in opposition to Allais, I take Kant’s claim that appearances are “mere representations” inside our minds seriously. In the empirical sense, (...) appearances are the undetermined object of our sensible intuition. Yet, in the transcendental sense, appearances are nothing but the mind-dependent way that noumena manifest inside our minds and, hence, our mind-dependent way of knowing the mind-independent reality in itself (epistemological phenomenalism). (shrink)

[OPEN ACCESS TARGET ARTICLE WITH COMMENTARIES AND RESPONSE] We develop a new model of how human agency-detection capacities and other socio-cognitive biases are involved in forming religious beliefs. Crucially, we distinguish general religious beliefs (such as *God exists*) from personal religious beliefs that directly refer to the agent holding the belief or to her peripersonal time and space (such as *God appeared to _me_ last night*). On our model, people acquire general religious beliefs mostly from their surrounding culture; however, people (...) use agency-intuitions and other low-level experiences to form personal religious beliefs. We call our model the Interactive Religious Experience Model (IREM). IREM inverts received versions of Hyperactive Agency-Detection Device Theory (HADD Theory): instead of saying that agency-intuitions are major causes of religious belief in general, IREM says that general belief in supernatural agents causes people to seek situations that trigger agency-intuitions and other experiences, since these enable one to form personal beliefs about those agents. In addition to developing this model, we (1) present empirical and conceptual difficulties with received versions of HADD Theory, (2) explain how IREM incorporates philosophical work on indexical belief, (3) relate IREM to existing anthropological and psychological research, and (4) propose future empirical research programs based on IREM. (shrink)

K. Lüscher, M. Sánchez, A. Klimczuk, Generations, intergenerational relationships, generational policy: A multilingual compendium, 12 languages, Universität Konstanz, Konstanz 2016, 300pp.

Das Buch stellt den ersten Teil eines mehrbändigen Sammelwerkes dar, in dem von Philosophen sowie klassischen und modernen Philologen Beiträge zur ethischen Ökonomie und ihrer Geschichte zusammengeführt sind. Es gliedert sich in zwei Teile. Der erste Teil – „Philosophische Quellen“ – enthält Studien zur ökonomischen Dimension im Denken Heraklits, Platons, der Stoa, Thomas von Aquins, Ockhams, Kants, Nietzsches, Thoreaus, Simone Weils; der zweite Teil – „Dichterische Quellen“ – versammelt entsprechende Untersuchungen zu Aischylos, zur Augusteischen Dichtung, zu Shakespeare, Ramuz, Pound und (...) Cummings. (shrink)

This paper is a defense of the so-called phenomenal-concept strategy, based on a new view of phenomenal concepts as special de re modes of presentation of the phenomenal character of experience. Phenomenal concepts can be explained in physical terms as mental particulars (as phenomenal files) created in the individual’s mind to pick out the phenomenal character of experience by representing certain physical properties as those represented by the experiences themselves (metarepresentation). They are individuated by two fundamental relations: the perceptual (acquaintance) (...) relation the creature bears to the physical properties represented by its own experience and the relation the creature bears to itself (self-acquaintance) as the subject undergoing those experiences. Mary’s newly acquired phenomenal file presents the phenomenal character of her new experience of red by means of the new relation she bears to herself as the creature standing in the experiential relation to the color red. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to show that it’s a serious mistake to construe the role of sensible representation in Kant’s work as a nonconceptual content (in the contemporary and technical sense of “content”), which, like a mental indexical would refer to what appears in space and time in the so-called de re form. The interpretation I advance and further support is this: without possessing a representational content, sensible representation must be understood as the basic epistemic relation between the subject (...) and the physical entities in space and time she is acquainted with. Immediate reference of sensible intuition to their respective objects is to be understood as a form of knowledge by acquaintance. I call my own interpretation relationalism. (shrink)

This paper is both systematic and historical in nature. From a historical viewpoint, I aim to show that to establish Wittgenstein’s claim that “an ‘inner process’ stands in need of outward criteria” (PI §580) there is an enthymeme in Wittgenstein’s private language argument (henceforth PLA) overlooked in the literature, namely Wittgenstein’s suggestion that both perceptual and bodily experiences are transparent in the relevant sense that one cannot point to a mental state and wonder “What is that?” From a systematic viewpoint, (...) I aim to show that Wittgenstein’s PLA teaches us that the prevailing picture of the nature of phenomenal concepts (henceforth PCs) is upside down: we can only introspectively know what is going on inside our heads after we learn of what is going on outside (PI §580). In this regard, I aim to defend two associate claims against the prevailing view of PCs on the basis of PLA. First, by means of transparency, I aim to show that there is no de re awareness of our private sensation that could determine the meaning of sensation words; for example, I am never aware of the phenomenal blueness of my experience of something blue. The second associated claim is that introspective self-knowledge of our private sensations is always de dicto. We can only know introspectively that phenomenal blueness is the phenomenal character of the experience we are undergoing after we have learned that (de dicto knowledge) blue is the color that usually causes us that kind of experience. Likewise, we can only introspectively know that pain is the phenomenal character of the experience we are undergoing after we have learned that pain is what usually causes some typical pain behavior. (shrink)

The extended mind thesis claims that some mental states and cognitive processes extend onto the environment. Items external to the organism or exploratory actions may constitute in part mental states and cognitive processes. In Clark and Chalmers’ original paper, ‘The Extended Mind’, this thesis receives support from the parity principle and from the active externalism. In their paper, more emphasis is given to the parity principle, which is presented as neutral regarding the nature of cognition. It would be advantageous to (...) maintain that extended mental states and processes do not require a reform of our pre-theoretical view of cognition. In the present paper, I submit that we should give more emphasis on the active externalism, which, I argue, is not neutral regarding the nature of cognition. Cognition is viewed as successful adaptation to a specific task. Although this move may seem at first disadvantageous, it is necessary for the correct understanding and justification of Otto case as an example of extended mental state. Additionally, the parity principle cannot handle Weiskopf’s criticism that information registered in Otto’s notebook is not responsive to reasons. In order to address this criticism, we need to appeal to active externalism and its corresponding view of cognition. (shrink)

Tendo em vista que “todo sistema de educação é uma maneira política de manter ou de modificar a apropriação dos discursos, com os saberes e os poderes que eles trazem consigo”, nossa pesquisa visa refletir sobre a nova identidade docente materializada no discurso dos PCNs de língua Portuguesa. Trata-se de traduzir a política oficial de formação de professor e/ou desconstruí-la (Derrida, 1998), analisando e discutindo a(s) identidade(s) e competências atribuídas aos professores, abrindo a possibilidade para questionarmos a identidade unificada e (...) transparente que os documentos oficiais desenham para os professores em serviço. Esperamos, com esse trabalho, contribuir para a construção de uma política de formação de professores sensível à subjetividade heterogênea dos professores no Brasil. (shrink)

This is an article about Legal Pragmatism, studied under the prism of the Philosophy of Law. The pragmatist philosophical current, born in the United States, was responsible for consolidating the line of legal reasoning aimed at obtaining the results that best meet social desires and human hopes. Legal Pragmatism is not presented as a Theory of Law, consubstantiating itself, in reality, in a method based on argumentation, capable of substantiating decision making. Finally, an attempt was made to ponder on Legal (...) Pragmatism in the Brazilian legal system, as a guide for new perspectives on the application of Law, with emphasis on the recent changes in the Law of Introduction to the Rules of Brazilian Law (Lei de Introdução às Normas do Direito Brasileiro). (shrink)