J. M. E. McTaggart’s anti-passage argument (the argument that time is “unreal) has misled philosophers of time for almost a century. The present paper shows that the clearest formulation of this argument, that of D. H. Mellor in Real Time II, is unsound when its premises are interpreted so that it is valid and invalid when it so interpreted that it is sound). This argument need mislead us no longer. -/- The crucial item in the interpretation of the premises is (...) the copula ‘is’, as in ‘E is past’. The copula may be either tensed or tenseless. While this ambiguity of the copula has been noted before, its implications for McTaggart’s argument had not been adequately exploited. This paper does that job. (shrink)

What does social justice require in contemporary societies? What are the requirements of social democracy? Who and where are the individuals and groups that can carry forward agendas for progressive social transformation? What are we to make of the so-called new social movements of the last thirty years? Is identity politics compatible with egalitarianism? Can cultural misrecognition and economic maldistribution be fought simultaneously? What of the heritage of Western Marxism is alive and dead? And how is current critical social theory (...) to approach these and other questions? Much of the most productive work done in recent social theory has revolved around such issues, in particular, around those concerning the relationship between the politics of recognition and the politics of distribution. After the intense theoretical focus over the last fifteen years or so on the issues of recognition politics—multiculturalism, multi-nationalism, identity politics, group-differentiated rights, the accommodation of difference, and so on—some social theorists have worried that attention has been diverted from important issues of distributive equality—systematic impoverishment, increasing material inequality, ‘structural’ unemployment, the growth of oligarchic power, global economic segmentation, and so on. While some critics seem to have adopted a blunt ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ line of criticism,1 others have attempted to develop an overarching, integrative theoretical framework adequate to the diverse issues concerning both economic and cultural justice. For example, Axel Honneth proposes that a suitably developed and normatively robust theory of intersubjective recognition can adequately integrate an analysis of apparently diverse contemporary struggles: those for a just division of labor and hence, a fair distribution of resources and opportunities, as well as those for a culture free of identity-deforming disrespect and denigration. (shrink)

I present a possible worlds semantics for a hyperintensional belief revision operator, which reduces the logical idealization of cognitive agents affecting similar operators in doxastic and epistemic logics, as well as in standard AGM belief revision theory. (Revised) belief states are not closed under classical logical consequence; revising by inconsistent information does not perforce lead to trivialization; and revision can be subject to ‘framing effects’: logically or necessarily equivalent contents can lead to different revisions. Such results are obtained without resorting (...) to non-classical logics, or to non-normal or impossible worlds semantics. The framework combines, instead, a standard semantics for propositional S5 with a simple mereology of contents. (shrink)

I present an account of the passage of time and the present in relativistic spacetimes, and I defend these views against recent criticism by Oliver Pooley and Craig Callender.

This is a transcript of a conversation between P F Strawson and Gareth Evans in 1973, filmed for The Open University. Under the title 'Truth', Strawson and Evans discuss the question as to whether the distinction between genuinely fact-stating uses of language and other uses can be grounded on a theory of truth, especially a 'thin' notion of truth in the tradition of F P Ramsey.

Lawrence Kohlberg's Approach to Moral Education presents what the late Lawrence Kohlberg regarded as the definitive statement of his educational theory. Addressing the sociology and social psychology of schooling, the authors propose that school culture become the center of moral education and research. They discuss how schools can develop as just and cohesive communities by involving students in democracy, and they focus on the moral decisions teachers and students face as they democratically resolve problems. As the authors put it: "...we (...) propose an educational renewal of our democratic society.... We have attempted to establish schools that do more than just teach about democratic citizenship, that are themselves democratic societies.". (shrink)

This paper argues that political civility is actually an illusionistic ideal and that, as such, realism counsels that we acknowledge both its promise and peril. Political civility is, I will argue, a tension-filled ideal. We have good normative reasons to strive for and encourage more civil political interactions, as they model our acknowledgement of others as equal citizens and facilitate high-quality democratic problem-solving. But we must simultaneously be attuned to civility’s limitations, its possible pernicious side-effects, and its potential for strategic (...) manipulation and oppressive abuse, particularly in contemporary, pluralistic and heterogeneous societies. (shrink)

This paper explains how to use a new software tool for argument diagramming available free on the Internet, showing especially how it can be used in the classroom to enhance critical thinking in philosophy. The user loads a text file containing an argument into a box on the computer interface, and then creates an argument diagram by dragging lines from one node to another. A key feature is the support for argumentation schemes, common patterns of defeasible reasoning historically know as (...) topics . Several examples are presented, as well as the results of an experiment in using the system with students in a university classroom. (shrink)

Contemporary recognition theory has developed powerful tools for understanding a variety of social problems through the lens of misrecognition. It has, however, paid somewhat less attention to how to conceive of appropriate responses to misrecognition, usually making the tacit assumption that the proper societal response is adequate or proper affirmative recognition. In this paper I argue that, although affirmative recognition is one potential response to misrecognition, it is not the only such response. In particular, I would like to make the (...) case for derecognition in some cases: derecognition, in particular, through the systematic deinstitutionalization or uncoupling of various reinforcing components of social institutions, components whose tight combination in one social institution has led to the misrecognition in the first place. I make the case through the example of recent United States debates over marriage, especially but not only with respect to gay marriage. I argue that the proper response to the misrecognition of sexual minorities embodied in exclusively heterosexual marriage codes is not affirmative recognition of lesbian and gay marriages, but rather the systematic derecognition of legal marriage as currently understood. I also argue that the systematic misrecognition of women that occurs under the contemporary institution of marriage would likewise best be addressed through legal uncoupling of heterogeneous social components embodied in the contemporary social institution of marriage. (shrink)

I agree that Wollheim is wrong in his reconstruction of Bradley's arguments on Subject-Predicate judgements, but not completely. Wollheim is right about the conclusion of Bradley's arguments. I argue that Bradley does not reject subject-predicate form of judgements rather he attack's the idea that there is some judgement in which the subject is the nude reality.

Theorists of public reason such as John Rawls often idealize constitutional courts as exemplars of public reason. This paper raises questions about the seduction and limits of analogies between theorists’ account of public reason and actual constitutional jurisprudence. Examining the work product of the United States Supreme Court, the paper argues that while it does engage in reason-giving to support its decisions—as the public reason strategy suggests— those reasons are (largely) legalistic and specifically juristic reasons—not the theorists’ idealized moral-political reasons (...) on matters of fundamental principle. But if constitutional courts do not engage on matters of fundamental principle, then a public reason strategy for assuaging democratic worries about judicial review would no longer be open: prominent liberal and deliberative democratic theorists could no longer point to the alleged superiority of constitutional courts to speak in the name of, and for, the people’s shared political principles. The paper extends beyond the U.S. case study by pointing to three institutional factors explaining the disanalogy between what some constitutional courts do and what public reason theories require them to do. It concludes with considerations about whether the public reason strategy might be more successfully applied to international courts. (shrink)

Robert Kimball, in “What’s Wrong with Argumentum Ad Baculum?” (Argumentation, 2006) argues that dialogue-based models of rational argumentation do not satisfactorily account for what is objectionable about more malicious uses of threats encountered in some ad baculum arguments. We review the dialogue-based approach to argumentum ad baculum, and show how it can offer more than Kimball thinks for analyzing such threat arguments and ad baculum fallacies.

Recent work in democratic theory has seriously questioned the dominant pluralist model of self-government and recommended the adoption of a ‘deliberative’ conception of constitutional democracy. With this shift in basic political theory, the objection to judicial review, often voiced in jurisprudential theory, as an anti-democratic instance of paternalism merits another look. This paper argues that the significant differences between four recent theories of constitutional review—put forward by Ely, Perry, Dworkin, and Habermas—are best understood as arising from different positions taken on (...) two cross-cutting distinctions that have been inherited from Locke and Rousseau: democratic processes as aggregative versus deliberative, and democratic legitimacy as substantive versus procedural. A reconstruction and critical evaluation of the four theories of judicial review, with special emphasis on their underlying theories of constitutional democracy, yields a set of criteria for adequate accounts of democratic processes, democratic legitimacy, and their relation to judicial review. I argue that the best understanding of constitutional review is yielded by Habermas’s theory because it combines a conception of popular sovereignty in terms of the collective process of citizens’ deliberative attempt to institutionalize the general will through law, with a resolutely proceduralist conception of democratic legitimacy. However, I also argue that some of the specific proposals Habermas makes concerning the institutionalization of constitutional review in an independent, non-accountable judiciary and the scope of duties for such a body need to be modified in the light of his overriding commitments to participatory deliberative processes and procedural legitimacy. (shrink)

Concerned about the harmful effects of pervasive political ignorance, epistocrats argue that we should amplify the political power of politically knowledgeable citizens. But their proposals have been widely criticized on the grounds that they are susceptible to manipulation and abuse. Instead of empowering the knowledgeable, incumbents who control epistocratic institutions are likely to selectively empower their supporters, thereby increasing their share of power. Call this the problem of political capture. In this paper I argue for two claims. First, I claim (...) that the problem of political capture for epistocracy has been overstated. Incumbents who want to increase their share of power will encounter certain obstacles that complicate the task of capturing the system. Second, however, I claim that if the problem is nevertheless sufficiently serious, it militates against not just epistocracy, but also many other institutions. The problem of political capture is thus far wider than typically recognized. (shrink)

Causal finitism claims nothing can have an infinite causal history. An influential defense of this position uses infinity paradoxes to argue that, if causal finitism is false, several impossible scenarios would be possible. In this paper, I defend that theists should not be persuaded by this argument. If true, this is an important development, since causal finitism is often argued for by theists as a core premise in Kalam-style cosmological arguments for theism. I extend the same analysis to an argument (...) in favor of temporal finitism and conclude that my point may generalize to any reasoning of a similar structure. (shrink)

A comemoração dos 150 anos de nascimento de Max Weber foi considerada uma data promissora para novos debates sobre o pensamento deste intelectual, cuja obra representa um dos fundamentos do pensamento social contemporâneo. Com a realização do Colóquio Max Weber: 150 anos, foi possível reunir diferentes pesquisadores que têm estudado o seu pensamento ou investigado temas weberianos no Brasil. Uma das características marcantes do evento é que ele foi multidisciplinar e teria de sê-lo, uma vez que a obra de Max (...) Weber percorre diferentes áreas do saber. Por isso participaram do colóquio filósofos, historiadores, sociólogos, cientistas políticos e antropólogos. Este livro é resultado das contribuições de diferentes especialistas que participaram daquele encontro, e tem por escopo apresentar as pesquisas recentes no campo da crítica weberiana. (shrink)

The process of cooperative problem solving can be divided into four stages. First, finding potential team members, then forming a team followed by constructing a plan for that team. Finally, the plan is executed by the team. Traditionally, very simple protocols like the Contract Net protocol are used for performing the first two stages of the process. In an open environment however, there can be discussion among the agents in order to form a team that can achieve the collective intention (...) of solving the problem. For these cases fixed protocols like contract net do not suffice. In this paper we present an alternative solution, using structured dialogues, with an emphasis on persuasion, that can be shown to lead to the required team formation. The dialogues are described formally using modal logics and speech acts. (shrink)

The biological sciences study (bio)complex living systems. Research directed at the mechanistic explanation of the "live" state truly requires a pluralist research program, i.e. BioComplexity research. The program should apply multiple intra-level and inter-level theories and methodologies. We substantiate this thesis with analysis of BioComplexity: metabolic and modular control analysis of metabolic pathways, emergence of oscillations, and the analysis of the functioning of glycolysis.

En este artículo argumentamos que la naturaleza pública o privada de la educación tiene una incidencia directa en las instituciones que conforman la realidad social. Para sustentar lo anterior, en primer lugar discutimos cómo, según Searle, habitamos un mundo de instituciones gobernadas por reglas y poderes deónticos, ontológicamente irreductibles. Luego, postulamos que la intencionalidad colectiva requiere de la confianza para mantenerse, y esta aumenta cuando gobiernan reglas y poderes deónticos en circunstancias normales. Finalmente, planteamos que la educación pública es una (...) institución que, a diferencia de la privada, privilegia el espacio de lo común. Sócrates es un ejemplo de esto, al proponer una filosofía que no solo busca la verdad, sino que además privilegia el reconocimiento de la ley por sobre la satisfacción inmediata de deseos e inclinaciones personales. De todo esto se explica el círculo virtuoso: la educación pública, al ser inclusiva y beneficiar a todos, potencia las instituciones sociales que tutelan ese interés y, dentro de ellas, el servicio público. (shrink)

Abortion bans have been characterized as cruel especially in not allowing exceptions for rape or incest. The article first examines one approach to morally justifying bans based on the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) which distinguishes morally between killing or letting die intending death versus doing so only foreseeing death. It then presents some criticisms of the implications of the DDE but also argues that what the doctrine permits helps provide a ground for the permissibility of abortions even if the (...) fetus is a person. Whether there are limits on applying this argument is also considered. In conclusion, the article considers whether and why not permitting exceptions to bans for rape and incest is cruel and whether cruelty is a ground for opposition to bans. (shrink)

According to one large family of views, scientific explanations explain a phenomenon (such as an event or a regularity) by subsuming it under a general representation, model, prototype, or schema (see Bechtel, W., & Abrahamsen, A. (2005). Explanation: A mechanist alternative. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 36(2), 421–441; Churchland, P. M. (1989). A neurocomputational perspective: The nature of mind and the structure of science. Cambridge: MIT Press; Darden (2006); Hempel, C. G. (1965). Aspects of scientific (...) explanation. In C. G. Hempel (Ed.), Aspects of scientific explanation (pp. 331–496). New York: Free Press; Kitcher (1989); Machamer, P., Darden, L., & Craver, C. F. (2000). Thinking about mechanisms. Philosophy of Science, 67(1), 1–25). My concern is with the minimal suggestion that an adequate philosophical theory of scientific explanation can limit its attention to the format or structure with which theories are represented. The representational subsumption view is a plausible hypothesis about the psychology of understanding. It is also a plausible claim about how scientists present their knowledge to the world. However, one cannot address the central questions for a philosophical theory of scientific explanation without turning one’s attention from the structure of representations to the basic commitments about the worldly structures that plausibly count as explanatory. A philosophical theory of scientific explanation should achieve two goals. The first is explanatory demarcation. It should show how explanation relates with other scientific achievements, such as control, description, measurement, prediction, and taxonomy. The second is explanatory normativity. It should say when putative explanations succeed and fail. One cannot achieve these goals without undertaking commitments about the kinds of ontic structures that plausibly count as explanatory. Representations convey explanatory information about a phenomenon when and only when they describe the ontic explanations for those phenomena. (shrink)

Neuroscience has studied deductive reasoning over the last 20 years under the assumption that deductive inferences are not only de jure but also de facto distinct from other forms of inference. The objective of this research is to verify if logically valid deductions leave any cerebral electrical trait that is distinct from the trait left by non-valid deductions. 23 subjects with an average age of 20.35 years were registered with MEG and placed into a two conditions paradigm (100 trials for (...) each condition) which each presented the exact same relational complexity (same variables and content) but had distinct logical complexity. Both conditions show the same electromagnetic components (P3, N4) in the early temporal window (250–525 ms) and P6 in the late temporal window (500–775 ms). The significant activity in both valid and invalid conditions is found in sensors from medial prefrontal regions, probably corresponding to the ACC or to the medial prefrontal cortex. The amplitude and intensity of valid deductions is significantly lower in both temporal windows (p = 0.0003). The reaction time was 54.37% slower in the valid condition. Validity leaves a minimal but measurable hypoactive electrical trait in brain processing. The minor electrical demand is attributable to the recursive and automatable character of valid deductions, suggesting a physical indicator of computational deductive properties. It is hypothesized that all valid deductions are recursive and hypoactive. (shrink)

Bu tezde töz sorununun ampirist filozoflar tarafından nasıl ele alındığı üzerinde durulacaktır. Varlık ve bilgi felsefesini tek bir potada eriten ve felsefenin en eski sorunlarından bir tanesi olan töz sorunu on sekizinci yüzyıl düşünürleri olan Locke, Berkeley ve Hume’un görüşleri çerçevesinde incelenmeye çalışılacaktır. Bu konunun belirlenmesinde töz sorununun felsefenin başlangıcından günümüze kadar devam eden bir sorun olması etkili olmuştur.

In contrast to the thesis of a thorough homology between the demystifying vocation of modernism and the profanatory tendencies of capitalist dynamics, the work of Roberto Schwarz seems to provide elements for a more nuanced conception of the modernist experience. While denouncing the setback caused by the routinisation of artistic strategies of defamiliarization, the Brazilian critic remains reluctant to accept the postmodernist assumption that any attempt to give consequence to the modernist universe in changed circumstances is necessarily doomed to failure. (...) To be sure, works that uncritically reproduce modernist tropes and tactics of representing reality in a dislocated way in order to provoke surprise, as advertisements do, are indeed bound to falter. But as long as they let themselves be informed at every stage by a critical inadequacy to the commodified world, modernist approaches may retain a critical value within an increasingly virulent anti-modernist culture. (shrink)

Effective altruism is a movement which aims to maximise good. Effective altruists are concerned with extreme poverty and many of them think that individuals have an obligation to donate to effective charities to alleviate extreme poverty. Their reasoning, which I will scrutinise, is as follows: -/- Premise 1. Extreme poverty is very bad. -/- Premise 2. If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything else morally significant, we ought, morally, to do (...) it. -/- Premise 3. Individuals ought to choose the effective option in preventing very bad things. -/- Premise 4. Donating to effective charities is one of the best ways to alleviate extreme poverty. -/- Conclusion. Individuals ought to donate to effective charities working towards extreme poverty alleviation where doing so does not require them to give up anything of moral significance. -/- I will scrutinise each of these premises in turn. -/- For Premise 1, I focus on hedonistic utilitarianism and criticise its outlook on extreme poverty. I claim that hedonistic utilitarianism might be problematic for effective altruism. -/- Premise 2 is Peter Singer's Weaker Principle of Sacrifice. I introduce several possible interpretations of it, and press several objections to it by stressing overpermissiveness, luck, and rights. I defend strengthening the Weaker Principle of Sacrifice without making it overdemanding. -/- I claim that Premise 3 can be attractive to both consequentialists and non-consequentialists. Nevertheless, by showing that effectiveness sometimes violates fairness, I propose a method which avoids always helping the greater number and always giving everyone equal chances of being helped, which is compatible with effective altruism. -/- Against Premise 4, I assess the systemic change objection, which states that effective altruism unjustifiably distracts individuals from systemic change. By considering risk and the moral standing of the future extremely poor, I claim that the systemic change objection is partially successful, but cannot undermine effective altruism. -/- After analysing all of these, I argue that individuals have an obligation to donate to effective charities to alleviate extreme poverty where doing so does not require them to give up anything of moral significance. (shrink)

Sorensen (1992) has provided two modal-logical schemas to reconstruct the logical structure of two types of destructive thought experiments: the Necessity Refuter and the Possibility Refuter. The schemas consist of five propositions which Sorensen claims but does not prove to be inconsistent.We show that the five propositions, as presented by Sorensen, are not inconsistent, but by adding a premise (and a logical truth), we prove that the resulting sextet of premises is inconsistent. Häggqvist (2009) has provided a different modal-logical schema (...) (Counterfactual Refuter), which is equivalent to four premises, again claimed to be inconsistent. We show that this schema also is not inconsistent, for similar reasons. Again, we add another premise to achieve inconsistency. The conclusion is that all three modal-logical reconstructions of the arguments that accompany thought experiments, two by Sorensen and one by Häggqvist, have now been made rigorously correct. This may inaugurate new avenues to respond to destructive thought experiments. (shrink)

An increasing number of European research projects return, or plan to return, individual genomic research results (IRR) to participants. While data access is a data subject’s right under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and many legal and ethical guidelines allow or require participants to receive personal data generated in research, the practice of returning results is not straightforward and raises several practical and ethical issues. Existing guidelines focusing on return of IRR are mostly project-specific, only discuss which results to (...) return, or were developed outside Europe. To address this gap, we analysed existing normative documents identified online using inductive content analysis. We used this analysis to develop a checklist of steps to assist European researchers considering whether to return IRR to participants. We then sought feedback on the checklist from an interdisciplinary panel of European experts (clinicians, clinical researchers, population-based researchers, biobank managers, ethicists, lawyers and policy makers) to refine the checklist. The checklist outlines seven major components researchers should consider when determining whether, and how, to return results to adult research participants: 1) Decide which results to return; 2) Develop a plan for return of results; 3) Obtain participant informed consent; 4) Collect and analyse data; 5) Confirm results; 6) Disclose research results; 7) Follow-up and monitor. Our checklist provides a clear outline of the steps European researchers can follow to develop ethical and sustainable result return pathways within their own research projects. Further legal analysis is required to ensure this checklist complies with relevant domestic laws. (shrink)

P. F. Strawson; II*—Scruton and Wright on Anti-Realism Etc., Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 77, Issue 1, 1 June 1977, Pages 15–22, https://doi.

This article considers some different views of fairness and whether they conflict with the use of a version of Cost Effectiveness Analysis (CEA) that calls for maximizing health benefits per dollar spent. Among the concerns addressed are whether this version of CEA ignores the concerns of the worst off and inappropriately aggregates small benefits to many people. I critically examine the views of Daniel Hausman and Peter Singer who defend this version of CEA and Eric Nord among others who criticize (...) it. I come to focus in particular on the use of CEA in allocating scarce resources to the disabled. (shrink)

In this article it is shown that a careful analysis of Kant 's Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte und Beurtheilung der Beweise leads to a conclusion that does not match the usually accepted interpretation of Kant 's reasoning in 1747, according to which the young Kant supposedly establishes a relationship between the tridimensionality of space and Newton's law of gravitation. Indeed, it is argued that this text does not yield a satisfactory explanation of space dimensionality, and actually (...) restricts itself to justifying the tridimensionality of extension. (shrink)

Eastern philosophy and western science have convergent and divergent viewpoints for their explanation of consciousness. Convergence is found for the practice of meditation allowing besides a time dependent consciousness, the experience of a timeless consciousness and its beneficial effect on psychological wellbeing and medical improvements, which are confirmed by multiple scientific publications. Theories of quantum mechanics with non-locality and timelessness also show astonishing correlation to eastern philosophy, such as the theory of Penrose-Hameroff (ORC-OR), which explains consciousness by reduction of quantum (...) superposition in the brain. Divergence appears in the interpretation of the subjective experience of timeless consciousness. In eastern philosophy, meditation at a higher level of awareness allows the personal experience of timeless and non-dual consciousness, considered as an empirical proof for the existence of pure consciousness or spirituality existing before the material world and creating it by design. Western science acknowledges the subjective, non-dual experience, and its multiple beneficial effects, however, the interpretation of spirituality designing the material universe is in disagreement with the Darwinian Theory of mutation and selection. A design should create an ideal universe without the injustice of 3% congenital birth defects and later genetic health problems. The western viewpoint of selection is more adapted to explain congenital errors. The gap between subjectivity and objectivity, the mind-body problem, is in eastern philosophy reduced to the dominance of subjectivity over objectivity, whereas western science attributes equal values to both. Nevertheless, there remains an astonishing complementarity between eastern and western practices. (shrink)

En el presente art´ıculo exploramos la carencia de valor que tiene la muerte, el cese de la vida de una persona, para la filosof ´ıa estoica, que con-sidera a aquella como uno de los factores indiferentes o adi´aphora (“no prefe-ribles”) para la felicidad humana. La idea del “temor hacia la muerte”, comoun sentimiento incorrecto, repercuti´o en la pol´ıtica cotidiana de la Roma im-perial; seg´un concluimos, esta circunstancia demuestra el car´acter pragm´aticoy terap´eutico de la Stoa, escuela que siempre busc´o eliminar tal (...) temor. (shrink)

Lewis Carroll’s 1895 paper, 'What the Tortoise Said to Achilles' is widely regarded as a classic text in the philosophy of logic. This special issue of 'The Carrollian' publishes five newly commissioned articles by experts in the field. The original paper is reproduced, together with contemporary correspondence relating to the paper and an extensive bibliography.

Brain-related diseases are among the most difficult diseases due to their sensitivity, the difficulty of performing operations, and their high costs. In contrast, the operation is not necessary to succeed, as the results of the operation may be unsuccessful. One of the most common diseases that affect the brain is Alzheimer’s disease, which affects adults, a disease that leads to memory loss and forgetting information in varying degrees. According to the condition of each patient. For these reasons, it is important (...) to classify memory loss and to know the patient at what level and his assessment of Alzheimer's disease through CT scans of the brain. In this thesis, we review ways and techniques to use deep learning classification to classifying the Alzheimer's Disease The proposed method used to improve patient care, reduce costs, and allow fast and reliable analysis in large studies. The model will be designed using Python language for implementing the system, which is very useful for doctors, classifying the Alzheimer's Disease, was used. The model used 70% from image for training and 30% from image for validation, our trained model achieved an accuracy of 100% on a held-out test set. (shrink)

An adequate understanding of the ubiquitous practice of mechanistic explanation requires an account of what Craver termed “constitutive relevance.” Entities or activities are constitutively relevant to a phenomenon when they are parts of the mechanism responsible for that phenomenon. Craver’s mutual manipulability account extended Woodward’s account of manipulationist counterfactuals to analyze how interlevel experiments establish constitutive relevance. Critics of MM argue that applying Woodward’s account to this philosophical problem conflates causation and constitution, thus rendering the account incoherent. These criticisms, we (...) argue, arise from failing to distinguish the semantic, epistemic, and metaphysical aspects of the problem of constitutive relevance. In distinguishing these aspects of the problem and responding to these critics accordingly, we amend MM into a refined epistemic criterion, the “matched interlevel experiments” account. Further, we explain how this epistemological thesis is grounded in the plausible metaphysical thesis that constitutive relevance is causal betweenness. (shrink)

Politická reflexia uskutočňovaná v akademických kruhoch predstavuje rad vlastných charakteristík v porovnaní s inými druhmi intelektuálnej činnosti. Nejde len o j e j viac-menej prirodzené preniknutie do domácich mocenských vzťahov, ale o mimoriadnu citlivosť j e j obsahu a rozvoja na spoločenské a politické podmienky inštitucionálneho kontextu. O politickej kultúre krajiny sa môžeme naučiť veľa práve na základe analýzy toho, o čom j e j intelektuáli diskutujú - a o čom nediskutujú, ako aj o teoretických nástrojoch, ktoré pritom využívajú.

The present article focuses on the idea that divine nature is prior to being. This idea was first articulated in John of Scythopolis’s commentary on Pseudo-Dionysius. It was adopted by Maximus Confessor and re-used in Meister Eckhart’s first Quaestio Parisiensis. The main tenet of this idea is that, if God is the origin of being, he must be more fundamental than being. Thus, being cannot be identical to divine nature. The conclusion that can be drawn from the discussion of this (...) idea is that the importance that has been traditionally attached to the "Exodusmetaphysik" must be reconsidered, and that the pro-ontological conception of divine nature constitutes an autonomous tradition in Christian thought. (shrink)

Since its inception, a core aspiration of deliberative democracy has been to enable more and better inclusion within democratic politics. In this article, we argue that deliberative democracy can achieve this aspiration only if it goes beyond verbal forms of communication and acknowledges the crucial role of non-verbal communication in expressing and exchanging arguments. The article develops a multidimensional approach to deliberative democracy by emphasizing the visual, sonic and physical dimensions of communication in public deliberation. We argue that non-verbal modes (...) of communication can contribute to public deliberation when they (1) are used as part of reason-giving processes, (2) enable the inclusion of marginalized actors in public debates and (3) induce reflection and encourage new ways of thinking about the public controversies at hand. (shrink)

When agents violate norms, they are typically judged to be more of a cause of resulting outcomes. In this paper, we suggest that norm violations also affect the causality attributed to other agents, a phenomenon we refer to as "causal superseding." We propose and test a counterfactual reasoning model of this phenomenon in four experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 provide an initial demonstration of the causal superseding effect and distinguish it from previously studied effects. Experiment 3 shows that this causal (...) superseding effect is dependent on a particular event structure, following a prediction of our counterfactual model. Experiment 4 demonstrates that causal superseding can occur with violations of non-moral norms. We propose a model of the superseding effect based on the idea of counterfactual sufficiency. (shrink)

Complex human reasoning involves minimal abilities to extract conclusions implied in the available information. These abilities are considered “deductive” because they exemplify certain abstract relations among propositions or probabilities called deductive arguments. However, the electrophysiological dynamics which supports such complex cognitive pro- cesses has not been addressed yet. In this work we consider typically deductive logico- probabilistically valid inferences and aim to verify or refute their electrophysiological functional connectivity differences from invalid inferences with the same content (same relational variables, same (...) stimuli, same relevant and salient features). We recorded the brain electrophysiological activity of 20 participants (age 1⁄4 20.35 ± 3.23) by means of an MEG system during two consecutive reasoning tasks: a search task (invalid condition) without any specific deductive rules to follow, and a logically valid deductive task (valid condition) with explicit deductive rules as instructions. We calculated the functional connectivity (FC) for each condition and conducted a seed-based analysis in a set of cortical regions of interest. Finally, we used a cluster-based permutation test to compare the dif- ferences between logically valid and invalid conditions in terms of FC. As a first novel result we found higher FC for valid condition in beta band between regions of interest and left prefrontal, temporal, parietal, and cingulate structures. FC analysis allows a second novel result which is the definition of a propositional network with operculo-cingular, parietal and medial nodes, specifically including disputed medial deductive “core” areas. The experiment discloses measurable cortical processes which do not depend on content but on truth-functional propositional operators. These experimental novelties may contribute to understand the cortical bases of deductive processes. (shrink)