Trust is a topic of longstanding philosophical interest. It is indispensable to every kind of coordinated human activity, from sport to scientific research. Even more, trust is necessary for the successful dissemination of knowledge, and by extension, for nearly any form of practical deliberation and planning. Without trust, we could achieve few of our goals and would know very little. Despite trust’s fundamental importance in human life, there is substantial philosophical disagreement about what trust is, and further, how trusting is (...) normatively constrained and best theorized about in relation to other things we value. This entry is divided into three sections, which explore key (and sometimes interconnected) ethical and epistemological themes in the philosophy of trust: (1) The Nature of Trust; (2) The Normativity of Trust, and (3) The Value of Trust. (shrink)

The medium‐independence of computational descriptions has shaped common conceptions of computational explanation. So long as our goal is to explain how a system successfully carries out its computations, then we only need to describe the abstract series of operations that achieve the desired input–output mapping, however they may be implemented. It is argued that this abstract conception of computational explanation cannot be applied to so‐called real‐time computing systems, in which meeting temporal deadlines imposed by the systems with which a device (...) interfaces are constitutive of the computing tasks that a device performs. Instead, real‐time computing reveals the need for alternative conceptions of computational explanation, as well as computational implementation, that eschew medium‐independence. (shrink)

Common everyday materials such as textiles, foodstuffs, soil or skin can have complex, mutable and varied appearances. Under typical viewing conditions, most observers can visually recognize materials effortlessly, and determine many of their properties without touching them. Visual material perception raises many fascinating questions for vision researchers, neuroscientists and philosophers, yet has received little attention compared to the perception of color or shape. Here we discuss some of the challenges that material perception raises and argue that further philosophical thought should (...) be directed to how we see materials. (shrink)

One of the classic debates in cognitive science is between nativism and empiricism about the development of psychological capacities. In principle, the debate is empirical. However, in practice nativist hypotheses have also been challenged for relying on an ill-defined, or even unscientific, notion of innateness as that which is “not learned”. Here this minimal conception of innateness is defended on four fronts. First, it is argued that the minimal conception is crucial to understanding the nativism-empiricism debate, when properly construed; Second, (...) various objections to the minimal conception—that it risks overgeneralization, lacks an account of learning, frustrates genuine explanations of psychological development, and fails to unify different notions of innateness across the sciences—are rebutted. Third, it is argued that the minimal conception avoids the shortcomings of primitivism, the prominent view that innate capacities are those that are not acquired via a psychological process in development. And fourth, the minimal conception undermines some attempts to identify innateness with a natural kind. So in short, we have little reason to reject, and good reason to accept, the minimal conception of innateness in cognitive science. (shrink)

In the recent philosophical literature on inquiry, epistemologists point out that their subject has often begun at the point at which you already have your evidence and then focussed on identifying the beliefs for which that evidence provides justification. But we are not mere passive recipients of evidence. While some comes to us unbidden, we often actively collect it. This has long been recognised, but typically epistemologists have taken the norms that govern inquiry to be practical, not epistemic. The recent (...) literature challenges this assumption and uncovers a rich range of questions about the epistemic normativity of inquiry. In this paper, I approach these questions from the formal side of epistemology. Developing out of the philosophy of science, as it did, this branch of epistemology has long discussed inquiry. And, building on the insights of Janina Hosiasson (1931), David Blackwell (1951), and I. J. Good (1967), it has produced a reasonably well-developed framework in which to understand norms of inquiry, both epistemic and practical. In the first half of the paper, I will present the pragmatic versions of this framework due to Hosiasson, Blackwell, and Good, and the epistemic version due to Graham Oddie (1997); in the second half of the paper, I put this framework to work, turning to some of the questions from the recent debate about inquiry and asking how the framework can help us answer them. Questions include: When should we initiate an inquiry, when should we continue it, when should we conclude it, and when should we reopen it? How do epistemic norms of inquiry relate to epistemic norms of belief or credence, and can they conflict, as Jane Friedman (2020) contends? How should we resolve the apparent puzzle raised by Friedman's example of counting the windows in the Chrysler Building? How should we direct our attention, as Georgi Gardiner (2022) asks? How should we choose and reason after receiving evidence we'd rather not have received? And how should we understand the epistemic error that occurs when someone is resistant to evidence in the way Mona Simion (2023) describes? (shrink)

Some language encourages essentialist thinking. While philosophers have largely focused on generics and essentialism, I argue that nouns as a category are poised to refer to kinds and to promote representational essentializing. Our psychological propensity to essentialize when nouns are used reveals a limitation for anti-essentialist ameliorative projects. Even ameliorated nouns can continue to underpin essentialist thinking. I conclude by arguing that representational essentialism does not doom anti-essentialist ameliorative projects. Rather it reveals that would-be ameliorators ought to attend to the (...) propensities for our representational devices to essentialize and to the complex relationship between essentialism and prejudice. (shrink)

Identity politics has been critiqued in various ways. One central problem—the Reinforcement Problem—claims that identity politics reinforces groups rooted in oppression thereby undermining its own liberatory aims. Here I consider two versions of the problem—one psychological and one metaphysical. I defang the first by drawing on work in social psychology. I then argue that careful consideration of the metaphysics of social groups and of the practice of identity politics provides resources to dissolve the second version. Identity politics involves the creation (...) or transformation of groups in ways that do not succumb to the metaphysical Reinforcement Problem. (shrink)

We start with an observation about implicit quantifier domain restriction: certain implicit restrictions (e.g., restricting objects by location and time) appear to be more natural and widely available than others (e.g., restricting objects by color, aesthetic, or historical properties). Our aim is to explain why this is. That is, we aim to explain why some implicit domain restriction possibilities are available by default. We argue that, regardless of their other explanatory virtues, extant pragmatic and metasemantic frameworks leave this question unanswered. (...) We then motivate a partially nativist account of domain restriction that involves a minimal view of joint planning around broad shared goals about navigating and influencing our environments augmented with cognitive heuristics that facilitate these. Finally, we sketch how the view can be extended to account for the ways non-default restriction possibilities become available when conversationalists have shared idiosyncratic goals. (shrink)

Cooperation has been analyzed primarily in the context of theories of collective intentionality. These discussions have primarily focused on interactions between pairs or small groups of agents who know one another personally. Cooperative game theory has also been used to argue for a form of cooperation in large unorganized groups. Here I consider a form of minimal cooperation that can arise among members of potentially large organized groups (e.g., corporate teams, committees, governmental bodies). I argue that members of organized groups (...) can be minimally cooperative in virtue of playing roles in an organizational structure and having a common goal. The minimal form of cooperation I argue for is not grounded in collective intentions involving symmetric mental states, special collective intentional modes, or joint commitments. More generally, I show how considering minimal cooperation in the context of organized groups provides an opportunity to reevaluate the extent to which the social world and social phenomena depend on internalist mental factors (e.g., intentions, beliefs) and externalist non-mental factors (e.g., documents, laws, job descriptions). The view of minimal cooperation among members of organized groups I offer provides support for an externalist rather than internalist theory of at least one social phenomenon. (shrink)

This paper aims at helping trainees to overcome the difficulties they face when dealing with Arduino platform by describing the design of a desktop based intelligent tutoring system. The main idea of this system is a systematic introduction into the concept of Arduino platform. The system shows the circuit boards of Arduino that can be purchased at low cost or assembled from freely-available plans; and an open-source development environment and library for writing code to control the board topic of Arduino (...) platform. The system is adaptive with the trainee’s individual progress. The system functions as a special tutor who deals with trainees according to their levels and skills. Evaluation of the system has been applied on professional and unprofessional trainees in this field and the results were good. (shrink)

According to Jonathan Kvanvig, the practice of taking back one’s assertion when finding out that one has been mistaken or gettiered fails to speak in favour of a knowledge norm of assertion. To support this claim, he introduces a distinction between taking back the content of the assertion, and taking back the speech act itself. This paper argues that Kvanvig’s distinction does not successfully face close speech-act-theoretic scrutiny. Furthermore, I offer an alternative diagnosis of the target cases sourced in the (...) normativity of action. (shrink)

Cloud computing (ClC) has become a more popular computer paradigm in the preceding few years. Quality of Service (QoS) is becoming a crucial issue in service alteration because of the rapid growth in the number of cloud services. When evaluating cloud service functioning using several performance measures, the issue becomes more complex and non-trivial. It is therefore quite difficult and crucial for consumers to choose the best cloud service. The user's choices are provided in a quantifiable manner in the current (...) methods for choosing cloud services. Hence, this study attempts to achieve this objective through construction. decision-making framework so-called cloud services evaluator (CSsEv). The main indicator and its sub-indicators are formed as nodes at levels(n) in tree soft sets (TSSs). Thereafter Single Value Neutrosophic Sets (SVNSs) as branch of neutrosophic sets which conjunction with the Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) technique to facilitate analysis and evaluation process for the available Cloud services providers. Hence, entropy is employed to obtain indicators and sub_indicators weights and Complex Proportional Assessment utilizes these weights to facilitate the decision process of selecting optimal ClSPs. (shrink)

Traditionally, social entities (i.e., social properties, facts, kinds, groups, institutions, and structures) have not fallen within the purview of mainstream metaphysics. In this chapter, we consider whether the exclusion of social entities from mainstream metaphysics is philosophically warranted or if it instead rests on historical accident or bias. We examine three ways one might attempt to justify excluding social metaphysics from the domain of metaphysical inquiry and argue that each fails. Thus, we conclude that social entities are not justifiably excluded (...) from metaphysical inquiry. Finally, we ask how focusing on social entities could change the character of metaphysical inquiry. We suggest that starting from examples of social entities might lead metaphysicians to rethink the assumption that describing reality in terms of intrinsic, independent, and individualistic features is preferable to describing it in terms of relational, dependent, and non-individualistic features. (shrink)

This essay considers what it means to understand natural language and whether a computer running an artificial-intelligence program designed to understand natural language does in fact do so. It is argued that a certain kind of semantics is needed to understand natural language, that this kind of semantics is mere symbol manipulation (i.e., syntax), and that, hence, it is available to AI systems. Recent arguments by Searle and Dretske to the effect that computers cannot understand natural language are discussed, and (...) a prototype natural-language-understanding system is presented as an illustration. (shrink)

Easy Ontologists, most notably Thomasson (2015), argue that ontological questions are shallow. They think that these questions can either be answered by using our ordinary conceptual competence—of course tables exist!—or are meaningless, or else should be answered through conceptual re-engineering. Ontology thus is “easy”, requiring no distinctively metaphysical investigation. This paper raises a two-stage objection to Easy Ontology. We first argue that questions concerning which entities exist are inextricably bound up with “ontological category questions”, which are questions concerning the identity (...) of and differences between kinds of entities. We then argue that ontological category questions do not have trivial answers, are meaningful, and cannot be answered through conceptual re-engineering. Easy Ontology hence does not constitute a comprehensive ontological methodology. While some of ontology might be easy, category questions form a central part of ontology and are not answered easily. (shrink)

Observers inspected normal, high quality color displays of everyday visual scenes while their eye movements were recorded. A large display change occurred each time an eye blink occurred. Display changes could either involve "Central Interest" or "Marginal Interest" locations, as determined from descriptions obtained from independent judges in a prior pilot experiment. Visual salience, as determined by luminance, color, and position of the Central and Marginal interest changes were equalized. -/- The results obtained were very similar to those obtained in (...) prior experiments showing failure to detect changes occurring simultaneously with saccades, flicker, or “mudsplashes” in the visual scene: Many changes were very hard to detect, and Marginal Interest changes were harder to detect than Central Interest changes. -/- Analysis of eye movements showed, as expected, that the probability of detecting a change depended on the eye’s distance from the change location. However a surprising finding was that both for Central and Marginal Interest changes, evenwhen observers were directly fixating the change locations (within 1 degree),more than 40% of the time they still failed to see the changes. It seems that looking at something does not guarantee you “ see” it. (shrink)

Evidence matters for responsibility. This paper investigates implications of this insight for group responsibility and the literature on group belief. In particular, we will be focusing on the transmission of group responsibility from group to individual. We will argue that there are cases in which responsibility transmits fully (to all members of the group), partially (to some but not all of its members), or not at all (to none of its members), and we will explore some implications of these observations (...) for accounts of group belief and evidence in the literature on social epistemology. More specifically, we will provide reason to think that these observations provide support for an account of group belief that we favour over its main rivals in the literature. (shrink)

John Searle once said: "The Chinese room shows what we knew all along: syntax by itself is not sufficient for semantics. (Does anyone actually deny this point, I mean straight out? Is anyone actually willing to say, straight out, that they think that syntax, in the sense of formal symbols, is really the same as semantic content, in the sense of meanings, thought contents, understanding, etc.?)." I say: "Yes". Stuart C. Shapiro has said: "Does that make any sense? Yes: Everything (...) makes sense. The question is: What sense does it make?" This essay explores what sense it makes to say that syntax by itself is sufficient for semantics. (shrink)

Where does entitlement to trust come from? When we trust someone to φ, do we need to have reason to trust them to φ or do we start out entitled to trust them to φ by default? Reductivists think that entitlement to trust always “reduces to” or is explained by the reasons that agents have to trust others. In contrast, anti-reductivists think that, in a broad range of circumstances, we just have entitlement to trust. even if we don’t have positive (...) reasons to do so. In this paper, we argue for a version of anti-reductivism. Roughly, we argue that we have default entitlement to trust someone to φ so long as there is an operative norm that requires S to φ. At least in such circumstances (and absent defeaters), we don’t need any positive reasons to trust S to φ. (shrink)

Plagiarism detection is the process of finding similarities on electronic based documents. Recently, this process is highly required because of the large number of available documents on the internet and the ability to copy and paste the text of relevant documents with simply Control+C and Control+V commands. The proposed solution is to investigate and develop an easy, fast, and multi-language support plagiarism detector with the easy of one click to detect the document plagiarism. This process will be done with the (...) support of intelligent system that can learn, change and adapt to the input document and make a cross-fast search for the content on the local repository and the online repository and link the content of the file with the matching content everywhere found. Furthermore, the supported document type that we will use is word, text and in some cases, the pdf files –where is the text can be extracting from them- and this made possible by using the DLL file from Word application that Microsoft provided on OS. The using of DLL will let us to not constrain on how to get the text from files; and will help us to apply the file on our Delphi project and walk throw our methodology and read the file word by word to grantee the best working scenarios for the calculation. In the result, this process will help in the uprising the documents quality and enhance the writer experience related to his work and will save the copyrights for the official writer of the documents by providing a new alternative tool for plagiarism detection problem for easy and fast use to the concerned Institutions for free. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that dissociative identity disorder (DID) is best interpreted as a causal model of a (possible) post-traumatic psychological process, as a mechanical model of an abnormal psychological condition. From this perspective we examine and criticize the evidential status of DID, and we demonstrate that there is really no good reason to believe that anyone has ever suffered from DID so understood. This is so because the proponents of DID violate basic methodological principles of good causal modeling. (...) When every ounce of your concentration is fixed upon blasting a winged pig out of the sky, you do not question its species' ontological status. James Morrow, City of Truth (1990). (shrink)

This research paper presents the development and evaluation of an expert system for diagnosing kidney diseases. The expert system utilizes a decision-making tree approach and is implemented using the CLIPS and Delphi frameworks. The system's accuracy in diagnosing kidney diseases and user satisfaction were evaluated. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the expert system in providing accurate diagnoses and high user satisfaction.

Hauser argues that his pocket calculator (Cal) has certain arithmetical abilities: it seems Cal calculates. That calculating is thinking seems equally untendentious. Yet these two claims together provide premises for a seemingly valid syllogism whose conclusion - Cal thinks - most would deny. He considers several ways to avoid this conclusion, and finds them mostly wanting. Either we ourselves can't be said to think or calculate if our calculation-like performances are judged by the standards proposed to rule out Cal; or (...) the standards- e.g., autonomy and self-consciousness- make it impossible to verify whether anything or anyone (save oneself) meets them. While appeals to the intentionality of thought or the unity of minds provide more credible lines of resistance, available accounts of intentionality and mental unity are insufficiently clear and warranted to provide very substantial arguments against Cal's title to be called a thinking thing. Indeed, considerations favoring granting that title are more formidable than is generally appreciated. Rapaport's comments suggest that, on a strong view of thinking, mere calculating is not thinking (and pocket calculators don't think), but on a weak, but unexciting, sense of thinking, pocket calculators do think. He closes with some observations on the implications of this conclusion. (shrink)

A brief historical and conceptual account of the concept of imagination.

In his paper “What the externalist can know a priori”, Paul Boghossian rejects the compatibility between self-knowledge and content externalism by arguing that compatibilists are committed to the absurd view that a subject can know, by reasoning purely a priori, substantive truths about the world, such as that water exists. In this paper I try to show that Boghossian’s incompatibilist argument does not succeed. According to Boghossian, it is enough, for an externalist to reach the undesired conclusion, that she satisfies (...) a number of conditions that can be known by her a priori. I argue that, by an externalist’s lights, some of these conditions are simply too weak to be acceptable by her and some of them can only be known a posteriori. So, compatibilists are not committed to the absurdity Boghossian ascribes to them. (shrink)

The intentionality of virtually all thought that is distinctive of human beings is linguistically based and constitutively normative. As Robert Brandom claims in Making It Explicit, this normativity is best understood as having roots in social practice. But Brandom is wrong to insist that all intentionality is normative (thus denying intentionality to nonhuman, nonlinguistic animals). For even the simple social practices that ground the most primate norms presuppose robust nonnormative intentionality. Furthermore, Brandom’s appeal to perception to supplement his informal semantics (...) with a view to avoiding complete indeterminacy of linguistic meaning is either ineffective or arbitrary and unjustified unless perceptual states are recognized as having nonnormative intentional contents that go way beyond the mere differential responsiveness which he allows them. (shrink)

Data access control is a challenging issue in public cloud storage systems. Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE) has been adopted as a promising technique to provide flexible, fine-grained and secure data access control for cloud storage with honest-but- curious cloud servers. However, in the existing CP-ABE schemes, the single attribute authority must execute the time-consuming user legitimacy verification and secret key distribution, and hence it results in a single-point performance bottleneck when a CP-ABE scheme is adopted in a large-scale cloud storage (...) system. Users may be stuck in the waiting queue for a long period to obtain their secret keys, thereby resulting in low-efficiency of the system. Although multi authority access control schemes have been proposed, these schemes still cannot overcome the drawbacks of single-point bottleneck and low efficiency, due to the fact that each of the authorities still independently manages a disjoint attribute set. In this paper we propose a system that improves the approach of CP-ABE from text based asymmetric to Image based symmetric approach for faster encryption as well as access to data. We also propose a multiple access policy generation for single user where we will be able to implement one to many and many to many methodology. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Titu Maiorescu had a special relationship with psychology under the influence of both Kant and Herbart. The following study presents Maiorescu’s answers to the main issues raised by the materialism controversy that broke out in Germany in the mid-1850s century, at a time when he was writing and defending his doctoral thesis in Giessen. Most of these issues were related to the mind–body liaison and the capability of science to explain the mind. KEYWORDS: materialism controversy; mind–body relationship; psychology and (...) metaphysics; materialism vs, spiritualism; transcendental idealism. (shrink)

Abstract. The neutral monism suggested by Constantin Rădulescu-Motru was a theoretical frame intended to match the general idea of Kant’s apriorism with the results reached by physics and psychology at the beginning of the 20th Key words: transcendental aesthetic; consciousness in general; empirical consciousness; psychophysical parallelism; phenomenal ontology; scientistic ontology.

David Bloor’s thought experiment is taken into consideration to suggest that the rationality of the Other cannot be inferred by way of argument for the reason that it is unavoidably contained as a hidden supposition by any argument engaged in proving it. We are able to understand a different culture only as far as we recognize in it the same kind of rationality that works in our own culture. Another kind of rationality is either impossible, or indiscernible.

As an alternative for causality – which modern science found to be rather construed than objective – Jung developed his idea of synchronicity according to the demands of a modern scientific approach of nature. As I will show in the following paper, even if he promised a complementary principle of explanation, he ended by offering a principle of reality. His attempt gave birth to a pretty vast literature that links Jung’s synchronicity to Bohr’s complementarity. I will show that such a (...) connection, although not entirely groundless, should be treated with caution as long as the two approaches of reality are on completely different bases. Keywords: Jung, Bohr, causality, the measurement problem, quantum epistemology. (shrink)

Until recently, the economic history of pre-colonial Africa was replete with uncomplimentary theories and from scholars of different disciplines. The belief was that the economy was subsistent, uniform, unchanging and very uninteresting. These theorists believed that the dominant agricultural sector was virtually immobilized by a combination of primitive technology, like communal land tenure and extended family, while the development of key entrepreneurial groups was inhibited by the prevalence of an anti-capitalist value system. The historical analytical method was adopted in this (...) research. The theories portrayed pre-colonial Africans as people that lacked the capacity to progress even though they lived in a rich environment. It was believed that it was not until the advent of the Europeans that positive changes were recorded. However, contrary to these theories, the Ibibio pre-colonial economy was premised on agriculture, complemented by trade and the existence of local industries. Thus, their pre-colonial economy was more coordinated, complex and diversified than the Eurocentric writers opined. The success recorded in this direction was activated by economic diplomacy which the Ibibio had practiced in the pre-colonial period. Issues relating to the economy were properly managed through the adoption of various relevant methods and strategies. Since the economy of a people operates in the society and remains fundamental to the survival of such society with the capacity to influence the political and other institutional decisions, economic diplomacy triggered holistic development in Ibibioland. Based on these, it recommended that present day Ibibio economy should not be totally divorced from these fundamental variables if the Ibibio are to be economically relevant in present day Nigeria. (shrink)

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein the brilliant scientist Viktor Frankenstein constructs and animates a gigantic and superhumanly powerful man. But upon animation, Frankenstein discovers he neglected beauty, and beholding his hideous creation flees in horror without even naming the man. Abandoned and alone the monster leaves society, yet secretly observing humanity learns language and philosophy and eventually discovers humanity’s self-understanding and his own self-understanding to be grounded in beauty rather than reason.

This paper has two aims. The first is critical: it argues that our mainstream epistemology of disagreement does not have the resources to explain what goes wrong in cases of group-level epistemic injustice. The second is positive: we argue that a functionalist account of group belief and group justification delivers (1) an account of the epistemic peerhood relation between groups that accommodates minority and oppressed groups, and (2), furthermore, diagnoses the epistemic injustice cases correctly as cases of unwarranted belief on (...) the part of the oppressor group. (shrink)

Breast cancer is the leading cause of death among women with cancer. Computer-aided diagnosis is an efficient method for assisting medical experts in early diagnosis, improving the chance of recovery. Employing artificial intelligence (AI) in the medical area is very crucial due to the sensitivity of this field. This means that the low accuracy of the classification methods used for cancer detection is a critical issue. This problem is accentuated when it comes to blurry mammogram images. In this paper, convolutional (...) neural networks (CNNs) are employed to present the traditional convolutional neural network (TCNN) and supported convolutional neural network (SCNN) approaches. The TCNN and SCNN approaches contribute by overcoming the shift and scaling problems included in blurry mammogram images. In addition, the flipped rotation-based approach (FRbA) is proposed to enhance the accuracy of the prediction process (classification of the type of cancerous mass) by taking into account the different directions of the cancerous mass to extract effective features to form the map of the tumour. The proposed approaches are implemented on the MIAS medical dataset using 200 mammogram breast images. Compared to similar approaches based on KNN and RF, the proposed approaches show better performance in terms of accuracy, sensitivity, spasticity, precision, recall, time of performance, and quality of image metrics. (shrink)

I argue that Kripke’s construal of the distinction between speaker’s reference and semantic reference, in ‘Speaker’s reference and semantic reference’ (Kripke in Midwest Stud Philos 2:255–276, 1977), in conjunction with an intuitive view of the nature of conventions, implies a theory of semantic reference that is distinct from his causal theory. On this theory, semantic reference is conventionalized speaker’s reference. The argument concerning Kripke has two general implications. First, any theory that features a notion of speaker’s reference will have great (...) difficulty in avoiding the view that semantic reference is conventionalized speaker’s reference. Second, theories that deny that there is a viable notion of speaker’s reference, and thereby deny that semantic reference is conventionalized speaker’s reference, will face an uphill battle in meeting certain general constraints originating in the theory of conventions. (shrink)

Russell claims that ordinary proper names are eccentric, i.e. that the semantic referent of a name is determined by the descriptive condition that the individual utterer of the name associates with the name. This is deeply puzzling, for the evidence that names are subject to interpersonal coordination seems irrefutable. One way of making sense of Russell’s view would be to claim that he has been systematically misinterpreted and did not, in fact, offer a semantic theory at all. Such a view (...) is put forward in Sainsbury Departing from Frege, Routledge, London, 2002). Sainsbury claims that Russellian descriptivism is not the theory that the thought in the mind of the speaker determines the semantic reference of a name, but simply a theory about the thought in the mind of the speaker using a name. I argue that the truth is subtly different, and points the way towards an intuitive explanation of Russell’s eccentricity. (shrink)

Charlotte Witt covers a remarkable amount of ground in this concise and elegantly written book. Coming in at under 150 pages, she artfully weaves together Aristotle’s theory of functions with contemporary work on cultural transmission and apprenticeship, ideas about self-creation with theories of aspiration and transformative experience, and reflections on the relationships among social norms and games with thoughts about social roles and the nature of hierarchy. At the heart of it is an elaboration and defense of a thoroughly externalist (...) account of social normativity. Witt takes skilled experts, especially artisans like chefs and carpenters, as paradigm cases for theorizing about social normativity. She uses them to argue that the ultimate source of many normative obligations is found not in the acquiescence, attitudes, or any other features internal to those on whom those obligations fall. Rather, the demands are rooted in the world itself, and flow from specific circumstances, especially from the constraints those circumstances impose on different actors in virtue of the tasks they need to perform. The result is a view that depicts social normativity not just as external to individuals but also unavoidably role specific; what is right for a chef is not necessarily right for a carpenter, and what makes for a good nurse might make for a poor drill sergeant. Witt’s presentation of this package of ideas is both careful and austere, and it makes for a wonderfully thought provoking read. Social Goodness: On the Ontology of Social Norms will reward the careful attention of anyone interested in social ontology, especially the metaphysical foundations of normativity, the nature of social norms, and the relationship between social roles and the self. (shrink)

Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a top-level ontology consisting of thirty-six classes, designed to support information integration, retrieval, and analysis across all domains of scientific investigation, presently employed in over 350 ontology projects around the world. BFO is a genuine top-level ontology, containing no terms particular to material domains, such as physics, medicine, or psychology. In this paper, we demonstrate how a series of cases illustrating common types of change may be represented by universals, defined classes, and relations employing the (...) BFO framework. We provide discussion of these cases to provide a template for other ontologists using BFO, as well as to facilitate comparison with the strategies proposed by ontologists using different top-level ontologies. (shrink)

Rawls famously argues that the parties in the original position would agree upon the two principles of justice. Among other things, these principles guarantee equal political liberty—that is, democracy—as a requirement of justice. We argue on the contrary that the parties have reason to reject this requirement. As we show, by Rawls’ own lights, the parties would be greatly concerned to mitigate existential risk. But it is doubtful whether democracy always minimizes such risk. Indeed, no one currently knows which political (...) systems would. Consequently, the parties—and we ourselves—have reason to reject democracy as a requirement of justice in favor of political experimentalism, a general approach to political justice which rules in at least some non-democratic political systems which might minimize existential risk. (shrink)

The Caesar problem arises for abstractionist views, which seek to secure reference for terms such as ‘the number of Xs’ or #X by stipulating the content of ‘unmixed’ identity contexts like ‘#X = #Y’. Frege objects that this stipulation says nothing about ‘mixed’ contexts such as ‘# X = Julius Caesar’. This article defends a neglected response to the Caesar problem: the content of mixed contexts is just as open to stipulation as that of unmixed contexts.