The problem of old evidence, first described by Glymour [1980], is still widely regarded as one of the most pressing foundational challenges to the Bayesian account of scientific reasoning. Many solutions have been proposed, but all of them have drawbacks and none is considered to be definitive. Here, we introduce and defend a new kind of solution, according to which hypotheses are confirmed when we become more confident that they provide the only way of accounting for the known (...) class='Hi'>evidence. (shrink)

Bayesian confirmation theory is our best formal framework for describing inductive reasoning. The problem of old evidence is a particularly difficult one for confirmation theory, because it suggests that this framework fails to account for central and important cases of inductive reasoning and scientific inference. I show that we can appeal to the fragmentation of doxastic states to solve this problem for confirmation theory. This fragmentation solution is independently well-motivated because of the success of fragmentation in solving other problems. (...) I also argue that the fragmentation solution is preferable to other solutions to the problem of old evidence. These other solutions are already committed to something like fragmentation, but suffer from difficulties due to their additional commitments. If these arguments are successful, Bayesian confirmation theory is saved from the problem of old evidence, and the argument for fragmentation is bolstered by its ability to solve yet another problem. (shrink)

I discuss a contemporary solution to the dynamic problem of old evidence (POE), as proposed by Sprenger. Sprenger’s solution combines the Garber–Jeffrey–Niiniluoto (GJN) approach with Howson’s suggestion of counterfactually removing the old evidence from scientists’ belief systems. I argue that in the dynamic POE, the challenge is to explain how an insight under beliefs in which the old evidence E is known increased the credence of a scientific hypothesis. Therefore, Sprenger’s counterfactual solution, in which E has been (...) artificially removed, does not resolve the problem. I consider several potential responses. (shrink)

The fundamental constants that are involved in the laws of physics which describe our universe are finely-tuned for life, in the sense that if some of the constants had slightly different values life could not exist. Some people hold that this provides evidence for the existence of God. I will present a probabilistic version of this fine-tuning argument which is stronger than all other versions in the literature. Nevertheless, I will show that one can have reasonable opinions such that (...) the fine-tuning argument doesn’t lead to an increase in one’s probability for the existence of God. (shrink)

Archaeological data are shadowy in a number of senses. Not only are they notoriously fragmentary but the conceptual and technical scaffolding on which archaeologists rely to constitute these data as evidence can be as constraining as it is enabling. A recurrent theme in internal archaeological debate is that reliance on sedimented layers of interpretative scaffolding carries the risk that “preunderstandings” configure what archaeologists recognize and record as primary data, and how they interpret it as evidence. The selective and (...) destructive nature of data capture in archeology further suggests that there may be little scope for putting “legacy” data to work in new ways. And yet archaeologists have been strikingly successful in mining old datasets for new insights. I situate these concerns in the broader context of debate about the epistemic standing of the historical sciences, and then consider three strategies by which archaeologists address the challenges posed by legacy data. The first two – secondary retrieval and recontextualization – are a matter of reconfiguring the scaffolding that underpins evidential reasoning. The third turns on redeploying old data in the context of computational models that support the experimental simulation of the cultural systems and contexts under study. (shrink)

I review prominent historical arguments against scientific realism to indicate how they display a systematic overshooting in the conclusions drawn from the historical evidence. The root of the overshooting can be located in some critical, undue presuppositions regarding realism. I will highlight these presuppositions in connection with both Laudan’s ‘Old induction’ and Stanford’s New induction, and then delineate a minimal realist view that does without the problematic presuppositions.

God and Evidence presents a new set of compelling problems for theistic philosophers. The problems pertain to three types of theistic philosopher, which Lovering defines here as 'theistic inferentialists,' 'theistic non-inferentialists,' and 'theistic fideists.' Theistic inferentialists believe that God exists, that there is inferential probabilifying evidence of God's existence, and that this evidence is discoverable not simply in principle but in practice. Theistic non-inferentialists believe that God exists, that there is non-inferential probabilifying evidence of God's existence, (...) and that this evidence is discoverable not simply in principle but in practice. Theistic fideists believe that God exists, that there is no discoverable probabilifying evidence (inferential or non-inferential) of God's existence, and that it is nevertheless acceptable-morally if not otherwise-to have faith that God exists. Lovering argues that each type of theistic philosopher faces a problem unique to his type and that they all share two particular problems. Some of these problems take us down an entirely new discursive path; others down a new discursive path branching off from an old one. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that arguments from the history of science against scientific realism, like the arguments advanced by P. Kyle Stanford and Peter Vickers, are fallacious. The so-called Old Induction, like Vickers's, and New Induction, like Stanford's, are both guilty of confirmation bias—specifically, of cherry-picking evidence that allegedly challenges scientific realism while ignoring evidence to the contrary. I also show that the historical episodes that Stanford adduces in support of his New Induction are indeterminate between a (...) pessimistic and an optimistic interpretation. For these reasons, these arguments are fallacious, and thus do not pose a serious challenge to scientific realism. (shrink)

This paper is about interpreting the aim of Plato's Sophist in a linguistic framework and arguing that in its attempt at resolving the conundrum of what the true meaning and essence of the word "sophist" could be, it resembles a number of themes encountered in contemporary linguistics. I think it is important to put our findings from the Sophist in a broader Platonic context: in other words, I assume—I think not too unreasonably—that Plato pursued (or at least had in mind) (...) a number of overall projects ('OP' for short) throughout some or most of the dialogues, while each one of the dialogues would in addition have more specific projects ('SP') as part of its individual blueprint. To be sure, the OPs, if they actually existed, might have evolved from the earlier-written to later dialogues, but their foundational premises should have remained intact. In Section A, I provide evidence for reading the Sophist on a linguistic basis. In Section B, I focus on two OPs that I think are relevant to our discussion, one having to do with language and meaning acquisition, and the second concerning the "mind" or a "thought faculty". Ultimately, in Section C, I will use the OPs to contextualise two (related) SPs in the Sophist: (i) identifying cases of intentional referrals for names versus (ii) identifying internal references when searching for word meanings without particular referable instances. At the end of this section, I will draw close parallels between this interpretation of the dialogue and a congruous project of modern 'generative' linguistics. (shrink)

This research investigates 3- and 5-year-olds' relative fairness in distributing small collections of even or odd numbers of more or less desirable candies, either with an adult experimenter or between two dolls. The authors compare more than 200 children from around the world, growing up in seven highly contrasted cultural and economic contexts, from rich and poor urban areas, to small-scale traditional and rural communities. Across cultures, young children tend to optimize their own gain, not showing many signs of self-sacrifice (...) or generosity. Already by 3 years of age, self-optimizing in distributive justice is based on perspective taking and rudiments of mind reading. By 5 years, overall, children tend to show more fairness in sharing. What varies across cultures is the magnitude of young children's self-interest. More fairness (less self-interest) in distributive justice is evident by children growing up in small-scale urban and traditional societies thought to promote more collective values. (shrink)

In this study, the archaic counting systems of Mesopotamia as understood through the Neolithic tokens, numerical impressions, and proto-cuneiform notations were compared to the traditional number-words and counting methods of Polynesia as understood through contemporary and historical descriptions of vocabulary and behaviors. The comparison and associated analyses capitalized on the ability to understand well-known characteristics of Uruk-period numbers like object-specific counting, polyvalence, and context-dependence through historical observations of Polynesian counting methods and numerical language, evidence unavailable for ancient numbers. Similarities (...) between the two number systems were then used to argue that archaic Mesopotamian numbers, like those of Polynesia, were highly elaborated and would have served as cognitively efficient tools for mental calculation. Their differences also show the importance of material technologies like tokens, impressions, and notations to developing mathematics. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 785793. (shrink)

The ninth and tenth chapters of the Origin mark a profound, if perhaps difficult to detect, shift in the book’s argumentative structure. In the previous few chapters and in the ninth, Darwin has been exploring a variety of objections to natural selection, some more obvious (where are all the fossils of transitional forms?) and some showing careful attention to challenging consequences of evolution (could selection really produce instincts?). Starting in the tenth, however, Darwin turns to showing us what kinds of (...) new and unexpected results evolutionary theory might be able to offer us, again in domains both predictable (extinction) and unexpected (biogeography, embryology). It is notable that it is the fossil record that serves as this pivot point, being both a source of potentially powerful objections to evolutionary theory and home to some of its most compelling new explanations. In this chapter, I present both sets of arguments and consider what role Darwin gave to fossil evidence, in the process attempting to discover why it might have played this unique role in two different parts of Darwin’s “long argument” for evolution by natural selection. Geology’s special place, I argue, derives at least in part from its particular importance in Darwin’s social and intellectual context. (shrink)

When William James published Pragmatism, he gave it a subtitle: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. In this article, I argue that pragmatism is an epistemological method for articulating success in, and between, a plurality of practices, and that this articulation helped James develop radical empiricism. I contend that this pluralistic philosophical methodology is evident in James’s approach to philosophy of religion, and that this method is also exemplified in the work of one of James’s most famous (...) students, W.E.B. Du Bois, specifically in the closing chapter of The Souls of Black Folk, “Of the Sorrow Songs.” I argue that “Sorrow Songs” can be read as an epistemological text, and that once one identifies the epistemic standards of pragmatism and radical empiricism in the text, it’s possible to identify an implicit case for moderate fideism in “Sorrow Songs.” I contend that this case illuminates the pluralistic philosophical methodology James worked throughout his career to develop, and that the James-Du Bois approach to philosophy may even help locate the epistemic value of other religious practices, beyond the singing of hymns, and identify terrain mainstream philosophy has long neglected. (shrink)

Starting from the basic premises of Schank's notion of indexing in story telling and the representational approach of language, this paper investigates whether fairy tales create initial indexes for children, that may be re-indexed later in adult life, by reshaping their pre-existing experiences. More specifically, it focuses on the way fairy tales present several concepts already familiar to children, and whether this representation matches children’s pre-existing experiences. The data collected comes from several of Grimm Brothers' fairy tales and consists of (...) a corpus of 62839 word tokens. The fairy tales included were thematically related to general areas of everyday experience: femininity, blackness, whiteness, day, night, being young, ageing. The following semantically contradictory lexical pairs were examined in the expanded concordance, in relation to their collocations and semantic associations: old - young, woman - maiden, day - night, white - black. These were then compared with an adults’ and a children’s dictionary to check whether the collocations, semantic associations of the selected words as portrayed in the data, matched the societally accepted meanings found in dictionaries. The comparison indicated that, although the connotative meanings were included in the majority of denotative meanings that make up words' definitions in the adult dictionary examined, only five of them matched the connotative meanings of the words examined in the data. On the other hand, the way the above concepts/words were presented in the children’s dictionary, was very simple, probably reflecting children’s experiences. It seems, thus, that the concepts - at least some of them - presented in the fairy tales examined, do not “officially” relate to children's but to adults' experiences, functioning as an index that re-shapes children’s pre-existing concepts. (shrink)

I argue that when we use ‘probability’ language in epistemic contexts—e.g., when we ask how probable some hypothesis is, given the evidence available to us—we are talking about degrees of support, rather than degrees of belief. The epistemic probability of A given B is the mind-independent degree to which B supports A, not the degree to which someone with B as their evidence believes A, or the degree to which someone would or should believe A if they had (...) B as their evidence. My central argument is that the degree-of-support interpretation lets us better model good reasoning in certain cases involving old evidence. Degree-of-belief interpretations make the wrong predictions not only about whether old evidence confirms new hypotheses, but about the values of the probabilities that enter into Bayes’ Theorem when we calculate the probability of hypotheses conditional on old evidence and new background information. (shrink)

Ancient Egyptians precisely direct their temples and tombs to specific astronomical points, as attested in the designs of the Old kingdom pyramids and related temples. Likewise, the same approach was used in many religious and funerary buildings across the sequential historical epochs of ancient Egypt. This research introduces what can be called "astronomical design improvements" conducted by ancient Egyptians to secure a precise orientation for a specific direction of religious and funerary monuments. Moreover, this precise orientation requires observatories used for (...) the orientation and monitoring of geographical directions. Therefore, this paper discusses the inquiring; are there any Astronomical Observatories evidences in ancient Egypt? (shrink)

This thesis contains three studies which provide theoretical analysis and empirical evidence on the decision-making of farm households under shocks and imperfect markets in Vietnam. The first study attempts to investigate the effects of the 2007-08 global food crisis on the investment, saving and consumption decisions of household producers by using the panel data of the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey (VHLSS), covering 2006 and 2008. The results show that the high food prices had a positive effect on only (...) fixed asset investments in the period of the crisis. When the price shocks are incorporated in the financial conditions, the findings reveal that the effects of household incomes, loans obtained and land sizes matter. The second study uses the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) of 2010 to assess the determinants of chemical fertiliser adoption for rice cultivation, and effects on productivity and household welfare. The analysis implements both nonparametric (propensity score matching) and parametric (instrumental variables) approaches. The findings show determinants affecting decision of adoption differ from those affecting decision of adoption intensity. The results show unsurprisingly positive impact on outcomes, but focus on advantage of using parametric approach to estimate these impacts. The third study employs a sub-sample from the 2008 VHLSS that is restricted to rural areas and to children from 10 to 14 years old to explore the relationship between farmland and the employment of children on their family’s farm. The hypothesis is tested in three models (the Tobit, Heckit and double-hurdle models), in which the dependent variables are examined for two stages of decision-making, including the probability of participation and the extent of participation. Empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that child labour increases in land-rich households and decreases in land-poor households. (shrink)

An analysis of Scripture uncovers a new model of God’s election and predestination of souls, which fits under the umbrella of the Calvinist theologies, but where this model involves an answer to the long-standing question of why God chose some, rather than all. It will be explored how before souls were elected (or condemned), God looked at them and knew them in a pre-election state, which God used to predestine each soul in physical reality. This analysis reveals why it could (...) be no other way but where God only would choose some, rather than all souls during the physical embodiment stage of the soul, and the vexing centuries-old Calvinist question of why God elected some not all has an answer. (shrink)

The old evidence problem affects any probabilistic confirmation measure based on comparing pr(H/E) and pr(H). The article argues for the following points: (1) measures based on likelihood ratios also suffer old evidence difficulties; (2) the less-discussed synchronic old evidence problem is, in an important sense, the most acute; (3) prominent attempts to solve or dissolve the synchronic problem fail; (4) a little-discussed variant of the standard measure avoids the problem, in an appealing way; and (5) this measure (...) nevertheless reveals a different problem for probabilistic confirmation measures, a problem that is unlikely to lend itself to formal solution. (shrink)

Material traces of the past are notoriously inscrutable; they rarely speak with one voice, and what they say is never unmediated. They stand as evidence only given a rich scaffolding of interpretation which is, itself, always open to challenge and revision. And yet archaeological evidence has dramatically expanded what we know of the cultural past, sometimes demonstrating a striking capacity to disrupt settled assumptions. The questions we address in Evidential Reasoning are: How are these successes realized? What gives (...) us confidence in the credibility and robustness, the trustworthiness, of the evidential claims based on archaeological data? And, what constitute best practices in building evidential claims, critically scrutinizing them and putting them to work in archaeological contexts? Rather than retreat to abstractions about how how science operates in the ideal, we approach this question by interrogating a number of close-to-the-ground case studies with the aim of teasing out the wisdom embodied in archaeological practice. The cases we consider – of fieldwork, strategies for working with old evidence, and the role of external resources – illuminate the role of various types of inferential scaffolding and bring into focus practice-grounded epistemic norms that we believe serve archaeologists better than the all-or-nothing ideals of truth and objectivity that dominate programmatic debate. (shrink)

Bayesianism is the position that scientific reasoning is probabilistic and that probabilities are adequately interpreted as an agent's actual subjective degrees of belief, measured by her betting behaviour. Confirmation is one important aspect of scientific reasoning. The thesis of this paper is the following: if scientific reasoning is at all probabilistic, the subjective interpretation has to be given up in order to get right confirmation—and thus scientific reasoning in general. The Bayesian approach to scientific reasoning Bayesian confirmation theory The example (...) The less reliable the source of information, the higher the degree of Bayesian confirmation Measure sensitivity A more general version of the problem of old evidence Conditioning on the entailment relation The counterfactual strategy Generalizing the counterfactual strategy The desired result, and a necessary and sufficient condition for it Actual degrees of belief The common knock-down feature, or ‘anything goes’ The problem of prior probabilities. (shrink)

This article examines the effect of material evidence upon historiographic hypotheses. Through a series of successive Bayesian conditionalizations, I analyze the extended competition among several hypotheses that offered different accounts of the transition between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age in Palestine and in particular to the “emergence of Israel”. The model reconstructs, with low sensitivity to initial assumptions, the actual outcomes including a complete alteration of the scientific consensus. Several known issues of Bayesian confirmation, including the problem (...) of old evidence, the introduction and confirmation of novel theories and the sensitivity of convergence to uncertain and disputed evidence are discussed in relation to the model’s result and the actual historical process. The most important result is that convergence of probabilities and of scientific opinion is indeed possible when advocates of rival hypotheses hold similar judgment about the factual content of evidence, even if they differ sharply in their historiographic interpretation. This speaks against the contention that understanding of present remains is so irrevocably biased by theoretical and cultural presumptions as to make an objective assessment impossible. (shrink)

It has been argued in relation to Old Babylonian mathematical procedure texts that their validity or correctness is self-evident. One “sees” that the procedure is correct without it having, or being accompanied by, any explicit arguments for the correctness of the procedure. Even when agreeing with this view, one might still ask about how is the correctness of a procedure articulated? In this work, we present an articulation of the correctness of ancient Egyptian and Old Babylonian mathematical procedure texts – (...) mathematical texts presenting the solution of problems. We endeavor to make explicit and explain how and why the procedures are reliable over and above the fact that their correctness is intuitive. (shrink)

At the core of evidentialism lies a very plausible claim: rational thinkers follow their evidence. While this seems to be a very intuitive, almost trivial, claim, providing a full and complete evidentialist theory is complicated. In this entry, I begin with elucidating what kind of theory evidentialists aim to provide us with. I will show that, in order to provide a complete evidentialist theory, we have to provide a lot of details on what evidence is and how it (...) relates to the proposition it’s evidence for, as well as the agent possessing such evidence. I then consider objections arising for the most popular answers one can give to such questions. I conclude by considering old and new challenges that arise for evidentialism, regardless of the specific version one endorses. (shrink)

The UK government decided to introduce Income Tax in 1799. Later, tax avoidance schemes involved creation of Deeds of Convenant. It is a fact that crime is increasing but the number of people committing crime is not increasing because many crimes are repeated crimes committed by persons with habitual criminal behaviour, ie hard-core criminals. -/- For more than half a century now, there has been scientific evidence that genetics plays a key role in the origins of criminal behaviour. There (...) are many ethical considerations thus raised which governments are reluctant to face and which, if faced, will cost a lot in financial terms to implement and to also dismantle the old entrenched systems -/- As the author states, genetics is considered in evidence only in federal United States ; New Zealand and Australia and not in the United Kingdom, although the UK’s Criminal Justice Act 2003 does, in some circumstances, allow evidence from relatives about the defendant’s character, but this is not expert evidence but merely non-expert opinion, permitted in relation to the defendant’s bad character in circumstances as per s 101 CJA 2003. Note that in the US, the Federal Rules of Evidence Rule 402 prevents the submission of irrelevant evidence. -/-. (shrink)

Arguments and conditionals are powerful means language provides us to reason about possibilities and to reach conclusions from premises. These two kinds of constructions exhibit several affinities—e.g., they both come in different varieties depending on the mood; they share some of the same connectives (i.e., ‘then’); they allow for similar patterns of modal subordination. In the light of these affinities, it is not surprising that prominent theories of conditionals—old and new suppositionalisms as well as dynamic theories of conditionals—as well as (...) certain reductive theories of arguments tend to semantically assimilate conditionals and arguments. In this paper, I shall marshall some linguistic evidence as well as some theoretical considerations for thinking that, despite these similarities, arguments and conditionals should be given a different semantics and I shall lay out a framework that can capture at least some of their affinities while accounting for their outstanding differences. (shrink)

This book tells the story of modern ethics, namely the story of a discourse that, after the Renaissance, went through a methodological revolution giving birth to Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s new science of natural law, leaving room for two centuries of explorations of the possible developments and implications of this new paradigm, up to the crisis of the Eighties of the eighteenth century, a crisis that carried a kind of mitosis, the act of birth of both basic paradigms of the two (...) following centuries: Kantian ethics and utilitarianism. The new science of natural law carried a fresh start for ethics, resulting from a mixture of the Old and the New. It was, as suggested by Schneewind, an attempt at rescuing the content of Scholastic and Stoic doctrines on a new methodological basis. The former was the claim of existence of objective and universal moral laws; the latter was the self-aware attempt at justifying a minimal kernel of such laws facing skeptical doubt. What Bentham and Kant did was precisely carrying this strategy further on, even if restructuring it each of them around one out of two alternative basic claims. The nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics of the Enlightenment attacked both not on their alleged failure in carrying out their own projects, but precisely on having adopted Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s project. What counter-enlightenment has been unable to spell out is which alternative project could be carried out facing the modern condition of pluralism, while on the contrary, if we takes a closer look at developments in twentieth-century ethics or at on-going discussions on practical issues, we might feel inclined to believe that Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s project is as up-to-date as ever. -/- Table of Contents -/- Preface I. Fathers of the Reformation and Schoolmen 1.1. Luther: passive justice and the good deeds; 1.2. Calvin: voluntarism and predestination; 1.3. Baroque Scholasticism; 1.4. Casuistry and Institutiones morales -/- II Neo-Platonists, neo-Stoics, neo-Sceptics 2.1. Aristotelian, neo-Platonic, neo-Epicurean and neo-Cynic Humanists; 2.2. Oeconomica and the art of living; 2.3. Neo-Stoics; 2.4. Neo-Sceptics; 2.5. Moralistic literature -/- III Neo-Augustinians 3.l. The Jansenists on natura lapsa, sufficient grace, pure love; 3.2. Nicole on the impossibility of self-knowledge; 3.3. Nicole on self-love and charity; 3.4. Nicole against civic virtue, for Christian civility; 3.5. Malebranche on general laws and necessary evil; 3.6. Malebranche on Neo-Augustinianism and Platonism. -/- IV Grotius, Pufendorf and the new moral science 4.1. Grotius against Aristotle and the sceptics; 4.2. Mersenne and Gassendi; 4.3. Descartes on ethics as the last branch of philosophy’s tree; 4.4. Hobbes on scepticism and the new moral science; 4.5. Spinoza on the new moral science as a descriptive science;4.6. Locke on voluntarism and probabilism; 4.7. Pufendorf on natural law as an exact science; 4.8. Pufendorf on physical and moral entities; 10. Pufendorf on self-preservation -/- V The empiricist version of the new moral science: from Cumberland to Paley 5.1. Cumberland against Hobbesian voluntarism; 5.2. Cumberland and theological consequentialism; 5.3. Cumberland on universal benevolence and self-love; 5.4. Shaftesbury on the moral sense; 5.5. Hutcheson on natural law and moral faculties; 5.6. Gay, Brown, Paley and theological consequentialism. -/- VI The rationalist version of the new moral science: from Cudworth to Price 6.1. The Cambridge Platonists; 6.2. Shaftesbury on the moral sense; 6.3. Butler and a third way between voluntarism and scepticism; 6.4. Price and the rational character of moral truths; -/- VII Leibniz’s compromise between the new moral science and Aristotelianism 1.Leibniz against voluntarism; 2.Leibniz against the division between the physical and the moral good; 3.Leibniz on la place d’autrui and theological consequentialism; 4.Thomasius, Wolff, Crusius -/- VIII French eighteenth-century philosophers without the new moral science 8.1. The genealogy of our ideas of virtue and vice; 8.2. Maupertuis and moral arithmetic 8.3. The philosophes and the harmony of interests; 8.4. Rousseau on corruption, self-love, and virtue; 8.5. Sade on the merits of vice -/- IX Experimental moral science: Hume and Adam Smith 9.1. Mandeville’s paradox; 9.2. Hutcheson on the law of nature and moral faculties; 9.3. Hume on experimental moral philosophy and the intermediate principles; 9.4. Hume’s Law; 9.5. Hume on the fellow-feeling; 9.6. Hume on natural and artificial virtues and disinterested pleasure for utility; 9.7. Adam Smith’s anti-realist metaethics; 9.8. Adam Smith on self-deception and the paradox of happiness; 9.9. Adam Smith on sympathy and the impartial spectator; 9.10. Adam Smith on the twofold criterion for moral judgement and its paradox; 9.11. Reid on the refutation of scepticism and the self-evidence of duty -/- X Kantian ethics 10.1. Kantian metaethics: moral epistemology; 10.2. Kantian metaethics: moral ontology; 10.3. Kantian metaethics: moral psychology; 10.4. Kantian normative ethics; 10.5. Kant on the impracticability of applied ethics; 10.6. Kantian moral anthropology; 10.7. Civilisation and moralisation; 10.8. Theology on a moral basis and the origins of evil; 10.9. Fichte and the transformation of theoretical philosophy into practical philosophy XI Bentham and utilitarianism 11.1. Bentham’s linguistic theory; 11.2. Bentham’s moral ontology, psychology, and theory of action; 11.3. The principle of greatest happiness; 11.4. The critique of religious ethics; 11.5. The new morality; 11.6. Interest and duty; 11.7. Virtues; 11.8. Private ethics and legislation -/- XII Followers of the Enlightenment: liberal Judaism and Liberal Theology 12.1. Mendelssohn; 12.2. Salomon Maimon; 12.3. Haskalā and liberal Judaism; 12.4. Liberal Theology. -/- XIII Counter-Enlighteners 13.1.Romanticism and the fulfilment of individuality as the Summum Bonum; 13.2. Hegel on history as the making of liberty; 13.3. Hegel on the unhappy consciousness and the beautiful soul; 13.4. Hegel on Morality and Sittlichkeit; 13.5. Marx on ideology, alienation, and praxis; 13.6. Schopenhauer on compassion; 13.7. Kierkegaard on faith beyond ethics. -/- XIV Followers of the Enlightenment: intuitionists and utilitarian 14.1 Whewell‘s criticism of utilitarianism; 14.2 Whewell on morality and the philosophy of morality; 14.3 Whewell on the Supreme Norm; 14.4 Whewell on the conflict between duties; 14.5 Mill and the proof of the principle of utility; 14.6 Mill’s eudemonistic utilitarianism; 14.7 Mill on rules -/- XV Followers of the Enlightenment: neo-Kantians and positivists 15.1. French spiritualism; 15.2. Neo-Kantians: the Marburg school; 15.3. Neo-Kantians: the Marburg school; 15.4. Comte’s positivism and the invention of altruism; 15.5. Social Darwinism; 15.6. Wundt and an ethic of humankind -/- XVI Post-enlighteners: Sidgwick 16.1. Criticism of intuitionism; 16.2. On ethical egoism; 16.3. Criticism of utilitarianism -/- XVII Post-enlighteners: Durkheim 17.1. Sociology as physics of customs; 17.2. Morality as physics of customs and as practical science; 17.3. On Kantian ethics and utilitarianism; 17.4. The variability of moralities;17.5. Social solidarity as end and justification of morality; 17.6. Secular morality as “sociodicy”; XVIII Post-enlighteners: Nietzsche 18.1. On the Dionysian; 18.2. On the deconstruction of the world of values 18.3 On the twofold genealogy of moralities; 18.4. On ascetics and nihilism; 18.5. Normative ethics of self-fulfilment -/- Bibliography / Index of names / Index of concepts -/- . (shrink)

The idea that fictions may educate us is an old one, as is the view that they distort the truth and mislead us. While there is a long tradition of passionate assertion in this debate, systematic arguments are a recent development, and the idea of empirically testing is particularly novel. Our aim in this chapter is to provide clarity about what is at stake in this debate, what the options are, and how empirical work does or might bear on its (...) resolution. We distinguish between merely influencing people’s opinions and providing genuine learning, where the latter requires that the source of the change in opinion should be reliable. Other important ideas here are the extent to which authors of fiction may be considered to provide testimony, or something like it, and the possibility of recognizing an unstated purpose in the project of the fictional work. We ask whether fictions can furnish us not merely with ideas but with reasons for believing them, perhaps by constituting thought experiments. We consider whether the focus should be on understanding rather than on knowledge, and whether fictions can inform us about the qualities of another’s experiences. We briefly describe some experimental work of recent decades and suggest that the evidence for learning from fiction is currently meagre. (shrink)

It is often assumed that adaptation — a temporary change in sensitivity to a perceptual dimension following exposure to that dimension — is a litmus test for what is and is not a “primary visual attribute”. Thus, papers purporting to find evidence of number adaptation motivate a claim of great philosophical significance: That number is something that can be seen in much the way that canonical visual features, like color, contrast, size, and speed, can. Fifteen years after its reported (...) discovery, number adaptation’s existence seems to be nearly undisputed, with dozens of papers documenting support for the phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to offer a counterweight — to critically assess the evidence for and against number adaptation. After surveying the many reasons for thinking that number adaptation exists, we introduce several lesser-known reasons to be skeptical. We then advance an alternative account — the old news hypothesis — which can accommodate previously published findings while explaining various (otherwise unexplained) anomalies in the existing literature. Next, we describe the results of eight pre-registered experiments which pit our novel old news hypothesis against the received number adaptation hypothesis. Collectively, the results of these experiments undermine the number adaptation hypothesis on several fronts, whilst consistently supporting the old news hypothesis. More broadly our work raises questions about the status of adaptation itself as a means of discerning what is and is not a visual attribute. (shrink)

Can it be better or worse for a person to be than not to be, that is, can it be better or worse to exist than not to exist at all? This old 'existential question' has been raised anew in contemporary moral philosophy. There are roughly two reasons for this renewed interest. Firstly, traditional so-called “impersonal” ethical theories, such as utilitarianism, have counter-intuitive implications in regard to questions concerning procreation and our moral duties to future, not yet existing people. Secondly, (...) it has seemed evident to many that an outcome can only be better than another if it is better for someone, and that only moral theories that are in this sense “person affecting” can be correct. The implications of this Person Affecting Restriction will differ radically, however, depending on which answer one gives to the existential question. Melinda Roberts (2003) and Matthew Adler (2009) have defended an affirmative answer to the existential question using an assumption that one can asribe a zero level of wellbeing to a person in a world in which that person doesn't exist. Contrariwise, Derek Parfit (1984), John Broome (1999), and others have worried that if we take a person’s life to be better for her than non-existence, then we would have to conclude that it would have been worse for her if she did not exist, which is absurd: Nothing would have been worse or better for a person if she had not existed. The paper suggests that an affirmative answer to the existential question can avoid such absurdities: One can claim that, say, it is better for a person to exist than not to exist, without implying that it would have been worse for a person if she had not existed or that her level of wellbeing would then have been lower. (shrink)

This report reviews what quantum physics and information theory have to tell us about the age-old question, How come existence? No escape is evident from four conclusions: (1) The world cannot be a giant machine, ruled by any preestablished continuum physical law. (2) There is no such thing at the microscopic level as space or time or spacetime continuum. (3) The familiar probability function or functional, and wave equation or functional wave equation, of standard quantum theory provide mere continuum idealizations (...) and by reason of this circumstance conceal the information-theoretic source from which they derive. (4) No element in the description of physics shows itself as closer to primordial than the elementary quantum phenomenon, that is, the elementary device-intermediated act of posing a yes-no physical question and eliciting an answer or, in brief, the elementary act of observer-participancy. Otherwise stated, every physical quantity, every it, derives its ultimate significance from bits, binary yes-or-no indications, a conclusion which we epitomize in the phrase, it from bit. (shrink)

I advocate Time-Slice Rationality, the thesis that the relationship between two time-slices of the same person is not importantly different, for purposes of rational evaluation, from the relationship between time-slices of distinct persons. The locus of rationality, so to speak, is the time-slice rather than the temporally extended agent. This claim is motivated by consideration of puzzle cases for personal identity over time and by a very moderate form of internalism about rationality. Time-Slice Rationality conflicts with two proposed principles of (...) rationality, Conditionalization and Reflection. Conditionalization is a diachronic norm saying how your current degrees of belief should fit with your old ones, while Reflection is a norm enjoining you to defer to the degrees of belief that you expect to have in the future. But they are independently problematic and should be replaced by improved, time-slice-centric principles. Conditionalization should be replaced by a synchronic norm saying what degrees of belief you ought to have given your current evidence and Reflection should be replaced by a norm which instructs you to defer to the degrees of belief of agents you take to be experts. These replacement principles do all the work that the old principles were supposed to do while avoiding their problems. In this way, Time-Slice Rationality puts the theory of rationality on firmer foundations and yields better norms than alternative, non-time-slice-centric approaches. (shrink)

First impressions suggest the following contrast between perception and memory: perception generates new beliefs and reasons, justification, or evidence for those beliefs; memory preserves old beliefs and reasons, justification, or evidence for those beliefs. In this paper, I argue that reflection on perceptual learning gives us reason to adopt an alternative picture on which perception plays both generative and preservative epistemic roles.

Standpoint epistemology has been linked with increasing calls for deference to the socially marginalized. As we understand it, deference involves recognizing someone else as better positioned than we are, either to investigate or to answer some question, and then accepting their judgment as our own. We connect contemporary calls for deference to old objections that standpoint epistemology wrongly reifies differences between groups. We also argue that while deferential epistemic norms present themselves as a solution to longstanding injustices, habitual deference prevents (...) the socially dominant from developing for themselves the skills necessary to expand their capacity for empathy, to deftly probe for evidence, and to ask critical questions. Consequently, we argue that standpoint epistemology must be understood as calling for inclusion, not deference. (shrink)

We argue that concerns about double-counting—using the same evidence both to calibrate or tune climate models and also to confirm or verify that the models are adequate—deserve more careful scrutiny in climate modelling circles. It is widely held that double-counting is bad and that separate data must be used for calibration and confirmation. We show that this is far from obviously true, and that climate scientists may be confusing their targets. Our analysis turns on a Bayesian/relative-likelihood approach to incremental (...) confirmation. According to this approach, double-counting is entirely proper. We go on to discuss plausible difficulties with calibrating climate models, and we distinguish more and less ambitious notions of confirmation. Strong claims of confirmation may not, in many cases, be warranted, but it would be a mistake to regard double-counting as the culprit. 1 Introduction2 Remarks about Models and Adequacy-for-Purpose3 Evidence for Calibration Can Also Yield Comparative Confirmation3.1 Double-counting I3.2 Double-counting II4 Climate Science Examples: Comparative Confirmation in Practice4.1 Confirmation due to better and worse best fits4.2 Confirmation due to more and less plausible forcings values5 Old Evidence6 Doubts about the Relevance of Past Data7 Non-comparative Confirmation and Catch-Alls8 Climate Science Example: Non-comparative Confirmation and Catch-Alls in Practice9 Concluding Remarks. (shrink)

This article explores the enduring mysteries of consciousness and the afterlife, two enigmatic topics that have fascinated humanity for ages. Despite extensive scientific efforts, the existence of an afterlife remains unproven, and understanding consciousness remains a significant challenge. The research introduces innovative hypotheses through simple thought experiments with empirical evidence and robust theoretical foundations. It delves into the complexities of consciousness, its relationship with the brain, and the need for interdisciplinary approaches encompassing physics, psychology, and philosophy. Boldly contemplating the (...) probability of a continuous consciousness after death, the study argues that existing evidence strongly supports this idea. Beyond theoretical implications, it envisions practical outcomes, suggesting that insights into these mysteries could enhance human well-being and contribute to a more harmonious world. In summary, this article embarks on a quest to shed light on age-old questions about consciousness and the afterlife. Through fresh methodologies, it aims to provide new perspectives that could reshape our understanding of existence and inspire intellectuals to positive individual and societal advancements. -/- . (shrink)

الملخص قاعدة "الأصل" و "استصحاب الحال" قراءة في منهج النحاة من الاستعمال إلى التعليل إلى القاعدة ملخص تعدّ فكرة "الأصل" (=علة الأصل) منهجـًا اتّبعه النّحاة لتقديم تفسيرات منطقية في بعض مسائل الكلم في العربية، إذ أخذ النحاة إجراء منهج تحليليّ يعتمد افتراض أو استحضار مكوّن بنيوي على أنّه "أصل الاستعمال" غاية إيجاد مقاربات منطقية تربط الاستعمال المنجز بالقاعدة، فـ"الأصل"–وفق النحاة- إمّا "نمطٌ لغويٌّ مهجورٌ غير أنّه اُستعمل في طور من أطوار العربية"، أو "نمط لغوي افتراضي" يجريه النحاة على معيارية الاستعمال (...) بحيث يصحّ عدّه منجزًا لغويًا تقابليًّا لاستعمالات تجري والقاعدة؛ وقد أجرى سيبيويه منهج قياسٍ افتراضي وَفْقَ عبارته:"وهذا تمثيلٌ ولم يُتكلّم به" ليجعل "المكوّن" الافتراضي شاهدًا نحويًّا يمثّل "أصل الاستعمال" ويصحّ الرجوع إليه في اشتقاق القاعدة والوصول إلى التعليل. يدرس البحث علاقة الوظيفة التعليلية بين "الأصل" و"استصحاب الحال" أجْل الوقوف على منهج النحاة في إطلاق الأحكام القواعدية في المسائل التي اعتمدوا فيها فكرة التعليل بـ"الأصل"، وهل كانت أحكامهم في تلك المسائل مقنعة أو غير مقنعة؟ ويسعى البحث إلى بيان العلاقة بين فكرة "الأصل" و"أدلة النحو" (الأصول) من وجهة تسعى إلى بيان منطق التعليل بـ"علة الأصل". The original rule of the historical usage of the primary sentence and the semi-original rules of the grammatical thinking A reading in the grammarian's approach, from usage to the reasoning to the rules Abstract The original rule of the historical usage of the primary sentence is considered one of the methods that followed by the grammarians to provide a logical explanation sequence for some of the language issues. Most of the grammarians assume that there is a new sentence style that referred to an old usage in some of the sentence’s structure. According to the grammarians that these old structures are being the reference rules and evidences to explain the structure of the new structure style. Also based on the grammarian approach the old structure is divided into two parts: the first, sentence structure that have been actually used in the language history. The second is an imagination assumption where such kind of structures have not been used before and therefore can be considered as a hypothetical lingual style only, Sebaweeh has conducted a standard approach according to his phrase "This is a an example only, it has not been spoken". It is important to know that the grammarians have followed an analytical approach to make a center point between the original rule and the semi-original rule so as to provide a logical explanation of these structure styles. This research seeks to study the relation between the original rule and semi-original rules of the grammatical thinking. In addition, this search seeks to study the relation between the original rule and the Grammatical evidence (=OSOL) Key Words: The original rule - the semi-original rules -/- الكلمات المفتاحية أصول النحو، قاعدة الأصل، استصحاب الحال. (shrink)

Leuridan (2011) questions whether mechanisms can really replace laws at the heart of our thinking about science. In doing so, he enters a long-standing discussion about the relationship between the mech-anistic structures evident in the theories of contemporary biology and the laws of nature privileged especially in traditional empiricist traditions of the philosophy of science (see e.g. Wimsatt 1974; Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005; Bogen 2005; Darden 2006; Glennan 1996; MDC 2000; Schaffner 1993; Tabery 2003; Weber 2005). In our view, Leuridan (...) misconstrues this discussion. His weak positive claim that mechanistic sciences appeal to generalizations is true but uninteresting. His stronger claim, that all causal claims require laws, is unsupported by his arguments. Though we proceed by criticizing Leuridan’s arguments, our greater purpose is to embellish his arguments in order to show how thinking about mechanisms enriches and transforms old philosophical debates about laws in biology and provides new insights into how generalizations afford prediction, explanation and control. (shrink)

Donald Preziosi, an influential modern voice in art history, argues that his discipline has proved ‘particularly effective in naturalizing and validating the very idea of art as a “universal” human phenomenon’. If this claim is true, it would mean, in my view, that art history has done a serious disservice to our modern understanding of art. For as the French art theorist, André Malraux, points out, the idea of art is definitely not a universal human phenomenon, there being ample (...) class='Hi'>evidence that the vast majority of cultures throughout history, have not regarded their painting, sculpture, poetry, and music as ‘art’. -/- Today, of course, we willingly regard many works from non-European and early cultures as art and welcome them into art museums, but this is a recent development, barely more than a century old. This paper examines certain major issues arising from this situation, including: when and why the idea of art arose; the radical change in the word’s meaning that occurred after Manet; how this change led to the inclusion of many non-European and ancient works in our modern world of art; and the inadequate responses to these developments by modern philosophers of art and art historians. (shrink)

Donald Preziosi, an influential modern voice in art history, argues that his discipline has proved ‘particularly effective in naturalizing and validating the very idea of art as a “universal” human phenomenon’. If this claim is true, it would mean, in my view, that art history has done a serious disservice to our modern understanding of art. For as the French art theorist, André Malraux, points out, the idea of art is definitely not a universal human phenomenon, there being ample (...) class='Hi'>evidence that the vast majority of cultures throughout history, have not regarded their painting, sculpture, poetry, and music as ‘art’. -/- Today, of course, we willingly regard many works from non-European and early cultures as art and welcome them into art museums, but this is a recent development, barely more than a century old. This paper examines certain major issues arising from this situation, including: when and why the idea of art arose; the radical change in the word’s meaning that occurred after Manet; how this change led to the inclusion of many non-European and ancient works in our modern world of art; and the inadequate responses to these developments by modern philosophers of art and art historians. -/- My apologies: I entered this item twice by mistake. PhilPapers will fix this soon. (shrink)

Only our lineage has ever used trackways reading to find unseen and unheard targets. All other terrestrial animals, including our great ape cousins, use scent trails and airborne odors. Because trackways as natural signs have very different properties, they possess an information-rich narrative structure. There is good evidence we began to exploit conspecific trackways in our deep past, at first purely associatively, for safety and orienteering when foraging in vast featureless wetlands. Since our own old trackways were recognizable they (...) were self-mirroring, triggering memories of what we had been up to in the past. Using them to find our way back to the band when temporarily lost or to re-find a resource-rich area discovered the day before enabled optimal foraging. Selection for daily reiteration of one’s own old trackways therefore triggered the evolution of what is distinctive about human cognition: the autobiographical or narrative (episodic) faculty for imaginative self-projection. This faculty enabled us to glean useful social information from the stories “told” by other band members’ old trackways, and created spin-off capacities for fast-track social learning. Resultant increases in socioecological complexity then created positive selective feedback loops for further entrenchment. Incrementally we became the ultra-social narrative-minded ape, capable of creating cumulative culture. (shrink)

This paper argues that we need to re-think the semantics/pragmatics distinction in the light of new evidence from embedding of irony. This raises a new version of the old problem of ‘embedded implicatures’. I argue that embedded irony isn’t fully explained by solutions proposed for other embedded implicatures. I first consider two strategies: weak pragmatics and strong pragmatics. These explain embedded irony as truth-conditional content. However, by trying to shoehorn irony into said-content, they raise problems of their own. I (...) conclude by considering how a modified Gricean model can explain that irony embeds qua implicature. This leads us to prefer a local implicature model. This has important consequences for how we draw the semantics/pragmatics distinction. (shrink)

The 'Why ain'cha rich?' argument for one-boxing in Newcomb's problem allegedly vindicates evidential decision theory and undermines causal decision theory. But there is a good response to the argument on behalf of causal decision theory. I develop this response. Then I pose a new problem and use it to give a new 'Why ain'cha rich?' argument. Unlike the old argument, the new argument targets evidential decision theory. And unlike the old argument, the new argument is sound.

The question of where the knowledge comes from when we conduct thought experiments has been one of the most fundamental issues discussed in the epistemological position of thought experiments. In this regard, Pierre Duhem shows a skeptical attitude on the subject by stating that thought experiments cannot be evaluated as real experiments or cannot be accepted as an alternative to real experiments. James R. Brown, on the other hand, states that thought experiments, which are not based on new experimental (...) class='Hi'>evidence or logically derived from old data, called the Platonic thought experiment, provide intuitive access to a priori knowledge. Unlike Brown, John D. Norton strictly criticizes the idea that thought experiments provide mysterious access to the knowledge of the physical world, and states that thought experiments cannot provide knowledge that transcends empiricism. In the context of the NortonBrown debate, in this article, Brown's stance on thought experiments is supported by critically analyzing the thoughts put forward on the subject. -/- Düşünce deneylerini gerçekleştirdiğimizde sonucunda elde edilen bilginin nereden geldiği sorusu düşünce deneylerinin epistemolojik konumuna ilişkin tartışılan en temel konulardan bir tanesidir. Bu doğrultuda, Pierre Duhem düşünce deneylerinin gerçek deneyler ile aynı statüde değerlendirilemeyeceğini ve hatta düşünce deneylerinin gerçek deneylerin bir alternatifi olarak bile kabul edilemeyeceğini belirterek konuya ilişkin şüpheci bir tavır sergilemektedir. James R. Brown ise yeni deneysel kanıtlara dayanmayan ya da eski verilerden mantıksal olarak türetilmeyen, Platoncu düşünce deneyi olarak adlandırılan düşünce deneylerinin a priori bilgiye sezgisel erişim sağladığını ifade etmektedir. Brown’ın aksine, John D. Norton düşünce deneylerinin fiziksel dünyanın bilgisine gizemli bir erişim sağladığı yönündeki düşünceyi kesin bir dille eleştirmekte ve düşünce deneylerinin ampirizmi aşan bir bilgi sağlamasının mümkün olamayacağını ifade etmektedir. Norton-Brown tartışması çerçevesinde bu makalede, Brown'un düşünce deneylerine ilişkin tutumu, konuyla ilgili düşüncelerin eleştirel olarak analiz edilmesiyle desteklenmektedir. (shrink)

The mythical bronze creature Talos (Greek: Τάλως) was worshiped initially as the god of light or the sun in the Hellenic Island of Crete. He is supposed to have lived in the peak Kouloukona of the Tallaia Mountains in the Gerontospelio cave. His relation towards bronze and fire and his continuous voyage circling the island of Crete most probably introduces the concept of the change of the four seasons. The sun was considered in the area of the South-East Mediterranean nations (...) as just judge, a guardian who monitors and judges from above all the actions of the commoners, a controller for the faithful application of laws in Crete [1]. Hesychios in his Lexicon notes that talos means sun and that the name Tallaios was initially attributed to Zeus [2]. The birth of the Olympian gods forged a new Pantheon and nomenclature forcing some of the old gods to fell into lower deities. This happened to Talos who soon became a mythical hero [1]. According to Apollodorus, the bronze creature was forged by the magnificent constructor Hephaestus as a gift to the mythical King Minoa to help him guard the island [3]. Although the verb “peritrohazo” (Greek: περιτροχαζω) was used, meaning a movement in a steady orbit (track), some depictions image him as a winged being. To protect the island, he was throwing rocks into unknown ships or in the case of a foreign landing he was burning with fire or with his flamed bronze body the intruders. He was holding copper plates with the laws of the island and his circle allowed him to pass all island sores three times daily [1,4-6]. Plato, speaks of him as a real person, suggesting he was the brother of King Rhadamanthys, thus a son of Zeus [5]. Talos may be considered as the token of the Cretan power, a symbol of technological development in the field of metalworking in prehistoric and Minoan times. An animated, programmed gigantic android to enforce its will. A primitive robot for basic actions having a power source, fire and ichor (Greek: ιχώρ) the sacred fluid in the vessels of the gods. The first manufactured being with his individual intelligence, a primary concept of artificial intelligence (AI) [7]. -/- Homer was the first to introduce the term automata (Greek: αυτόματα), to describe ingenious machines built by the supreme blacksmith god of invention and technology, God of metal and fire, Hephaestus, manufactured devices “acting of one’s own will” as the Hellenic word indicates [8]. Eons later, the humanoid automaton the “Automa cavaliere” (English: Automaton knight) appeared in the court of the nobleman and Duke of Milan Ludovico Maria Sforza. It was the year 1495, when Leonardo da Vinci presented his robotic knight, an innovative construction operated by a series of pulleys and cables, presenting though no individual mind. Although it was manufactured by a highly intelligent polymath, it could only be operated through an outer intelligence [9]. Advancements made during the Fourth Industrial Revolution allowed modern technology to manufacture intelligent machines to aid the field of invasive surgery. One of those most sophisticated devises is the da Vince Surgical Tower. -/- Launched in the setting of the 21st century, the DaVinci System is one of the most commonly employed tools/systems, which has prevailed in the field of robotic-assisted surgery [10]. One could claim that it practically reshaped the concept of surgery, providing doctors with immense capabilities, aiming towards the optimal post-operative outcome. Through visual augmentation, high resolution 3D video, enhanced precision and reduced complication rates [11] the DaVinci Si and the latest DaVinci Xi system have been implemented in a variety of surgeries, including but not limited to general, urologic, gynecologic, thoracic and even cardiac procedures; valve and coronary artery bypass graft operations [12,13]. Da Vinci is cleared globally for cardiosurgery and came in vogue to fulfill the dream of cardiac surgeons to operate in closet chest. It offers in patients the same benefits as those that open chest incision surgery procedures do [14]. -/- The more recent DaVinci Xi model was introduced to counteract commonly known drawbacks of the Si system, such as the inability to simultaneously manipulate the different abdominal quadrants [10]. It consists of four boom mounted robotic arms along with a mobile platform and a master console. The latter with the adaptable intraocular distance, the cushioned headrest, the modifiable arm bars and the flexible finger loops, is meticulously designed to meet the surgeon´s “demands” [12]. Every robotic arm has three degrees of freedom, which combined with the EndoWrist technology to imitate the delicate motion of the surgeon´s hand, acquires an extra seven degrees of freedom. Evidently, the combination of the user-friendly interface, the high-quality 3D intraoperative images, the multiple joints and sensors, as well as the surgeon himself, who can learn to handle the DaVinci Xi Surgical System in a relatively short period of time, has established the model in the surgical armamentarium, paving the way towards a continuously progressive future of minimally invasive and robotic surgery (Figure 1) [12]. -/- History testifies that the nomination of the AI surgical tower as da Vinci was wrongfully given to commemorate a majestic historical figure. It is clear that the mythical creature Talos which was fabricated by the ingenious god Hephaestus was the first true automaton in the line of AI origins. (shrink)

My topic is how to make decisions when you possess foreknowledge of the consequences of your choice. Many have thought that these kinds of decisions pose a distinctive and novel problem for causal decision theory (CDT). My thesis is that foreknowledge poses no new problems for CDT. Some of the purported problems are not problems. Others are problems, but they are not problems for CDT. Rather, they are problems for our theories of subjunctive supposition. Others are problems, but they are (...) not new problems. They are old problems transposed into a new key. Nonetheless, decisions made with foreknowledge illustrate important lessons about the instrumental value of our choices. Once we've appreciated these lessons, we are left with a version of CDT which faces no novel threats from foreknowledge. (shrink)

: This article aims to show that although the apostle Paul did not call himself a prophet, still makes his presentation in his letters in the same way that the Old Testament prophets. The article points out the many similarities between Paul and the prophets. It seeks to analyze and interact with Scripture and literature concerning the matter.We conclude that the Apostle founded the authority of his call, highlighting the prophetic aspect of his apostolate. It is evident that the Apostle (...) had a awareness of the prophetic character of his person, mission and message. It is called and sent directly by God, records the Scripture inspired by the Spirit and has a fruitful ministry of preaching and teaching. Este artigo tem como objetivo mostrar que embora o apóstolo Paulo não chame a si mesmo de profeta, ainda assim faz sua apresentação em suas cartas nos mesmos moldes que os profetas do Antigo Testamento. O artigo aponta as várias semelhanças entre Paulo e os profetas. Procura-se fazer uma análise e interação com a Escritura bem como literatura pertinente ao tema. Conclui-se que o Apóstolo fundamenta a autoridade de seu chamado, destacando o aspecto profético de seu apostolado. Evidencia-se que o Apóstolo possuía uma consciência do caráter profético de sua pessoa, missão e mensagem. É chamado e enviado diretamente por Deus, registra a Escritura de maneira inspirada pelo Espírito e tem um profícuo ministério de pregação e ensino. (shrink)

I outline three conceptions of seeing that a creature might possess: ‘the headlamp conception,’ which involves an understanding of the causal connections between gazing at an object, certain mental states, and behavior; ‘the stage lights conception,’ which involves an understanding of the selective nature of visual attention; and seeing-as. I argue that infants and various nonhumans possess the headlamp conception. There is also evidence that chimpanzees and 3-year-old children have some grasp of seeing-as. However, due to a dearth of (...) studies, there is no evidence that infants or nonhumans possess the stage lights conception of seeing. I outline the kinds of experiments that are needed, and what we stand to learn about the evolution and development of perspective taking. (shrink)

The Consequentialist Scale (Robinson, 2012) [89] assesses the endorsement of consequentialist and deontological moral beliefs. This study empirically investigated the application of the Greek translation of the Consequentialist Scale in a sample of native Greek speakers. Specifically, 415 native Greek speakers completed the questionnaire. To uncover the underlying structure of the 10 items in the Consequentialist Scale, an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted. The results revealed a three-factor solution, where the deontology factor exhibited the same structure as the original (...) work by Robinson (2012) [89], while the original consequentialism factor split into two separate factors. Significant Pearson's r correlations were observed between age and responses to the Consequentialist Scale. Separate EFAs were conducted for two age groups based on a medial split: younger (36 years old or less) and older (more than 36 years old). Interestingly, the younger group exhibited a two-factor solution with the same structure as the original work, while the older group showed a three-factor solution. A hierarchical k-means cluster analysis revealed that the cluster of participants who scored higher in deontology compared to consequentialism primarily consisted of older participants, whereas the two other clusters comprised of younger participants exhibited the reverse pattern. Neither gender nor previous experience with philosophy significantly affected scores on the Consequentialist Scale. Overall, our study provides evidence that the Consequentialist Scale is suitable for use in the Greek population. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to make an unlikely connection between the old question about the meaning of life and some important concepts in philosophy of biology. More precisely, I argue that while biology is unlikely to help us to figure out the meaning of life, the fact that this question has been considered to be such a crucial one could be explained with the help of some consideration of our evolutionary past. I argue that if there is (...) class='Hi'>evidence for group selection in the course of human evolution, this may explain not the meaning of life but rather the reason why we are preoccupied with this question. First, I examine what group selection is and what role it played in human evolution. After surveying the evidence for the claim that in the course of human evolution we lived in isolated group societies, I analyse what influence this social structure had on our present psychological dispositions, including our quest for the meaning of life. (shrink)