În ciuda faptului că nu contribuie la ordonarea cunoașterii actuale despre fascism, ci dimpotrivă, creează confuzie, lucrarea Madeleinei Albright are unele merite incontestabile. Primul dintre ele este capacitatea de a simplifica, într-o naraţiune scurtă, ușor de parcurs, ideile și faptele liderilor fasciști interbelici. Începând cu capitolul al doilea și până la cel de-al cincilea, istorisirea ar putea să fie folosită ca un foarte accesibil, viu și instructiv rezumat istoric pentru studenţi. Cu certitudine, experienţa profesorală a autoarei în învăţământul politic american (...) a ajutat-o să ajungă la acest nivel excepţional de persuasiune didactică. În al doilea rând, focalizându-și descrierile asupra personalităţii liderilor mai mult decât asupra fenomenelor social-economice, efectul imediat al lecturii este acela de a te face să reflectezi la cât de mult contează orgoliul și ambiţiile personale în alegerea drumului spre fascism. Portretele pe care cartea le schiţează sugerează că nu politician fascist modest și delăsător pur și simplu nu poate exista, așadar transmite cititorilor o intuiţie interesantă în sine. De asemenea, deși face destul de multe afirmaţii îndoielnice, Albright nu se abţine să enunţe unele adevăruri pe care politicienii de obicei le ocolesc. De exemplu, admiraţia lui Winston Churchill faţă de membrii cuplului fascist italo-german este ilustrată cu citate atât în capitolul despre ascensiunea lui Mussolini (p. 25), cât și în cel despre dobândirea puterii de către Hitler (p. 52). Este descris destul de clar și felul în care anticomunismul elitei liberale și conservatoare a contribuit decisiv la succesul politic al celor doi. În fine, cartea arată indirect cât de diferită este încercarea de a defini un fascist de aceea de a defini fascismul și că fascismul este mai mult decât suma credinţelor și acţiunilor adepţilor lui. (shrink)

This eighth volume of Collected Papers includes 75 papers comprising 973 pages on (theoretic and applied) neutrosophics, written between 2010-2022 by the author alone or in collaboration with the following 102 co-authors (alphabetically ordered) from 24 countries: Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Abduallah Gamal, Firoz Ahmad, Ahmad Yusuf Adhami, Ahmed B. Al-Nafee, Ali Hassan, Mumtaz Ali, Akbar Rezaei, Assia Bakali, Ayoub Bahnasse, Azeddine Elhassouny, Durga Banerjee, Romualdas Bausys, Mircea Boșcoianu, Traian Alexandru Buda, Bui Cong Cuong, Emilia Calefariu, Ahmet Çevik, Chang Su Kim, Victor (...) Christianto, Dae Wan Kim, Daud Ahmad, Arindam Dey, Partha Pratim Dey, Mamouni Dhar, H. A. Elagamy, Ahmed K. Essa, Sudipta Gayen, Bibhas C. Giri, Daniela Gîfu, Noel Batista Hernández, Hojjatollah Farahani, Huda E. Khalid, Irfan Deli, Saeid Jafari, Tèmítópé Gbóláhàn Jaíyéolá, Sripati Jha, Sudan Jha, Ilanthenral Kandasamy, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, Darjan Karabašević, M. Karthika, Kawther F. Alhasan, Giruta Kazakeviciute-Januskeviciene, Qaisar Khan, Kishore Kumar P K, Prem Kumar Singh, Ranjan Kumar, Maikel Leyva-Vázquez, Mahmoud Ismail, Tahir Mahmood, Hafsa Masood Malik, Mohammad Abobala, Mai Mohamed, Gunasekaran Manogaran, Seema Mehra, Kalyan Mondal, Mohamed Talea, Mullai Murugappan, Muhammad Akram, Muhammad Aslam Malik, Muhammad Khalid Mahmood, Nivetha Martin, Durga Nagarajan, Nguyen Van Dinh, Nguyen Xuan Thao, Lewis Nkenyereya, Jagan M. Obbineni, M. Parimala, S. K. Patro, Peide Liu, Pham Hong Phong, Surapati Pramanik, Gyanendra Prasad Joshi, Quek Shio Gai, R. Radha, A.A. Salama, S. Satham Hussain, Mehmet Șahin, Said Broumi, Ganeshsree Selvachandran, Selvaraj Ganesan, Shahbaz Ali, Shouzhen Zeng, Manjeet Singh, A. Stanis Arul Mary, Dragiša Stanujkić, Yusuf Șubaș, Rui-Pu Tan, Mirela Teodorescu, Selçuk Topal, Zenonas Turskis, Vakkas Uluçay, Norberto Valcárcel Izquierdo, V. Venkateswara Rao, Volkan Duran, Ying Li, Young Bae Jun, Wadei F. Al-Omeri, Jian-qiang Wang, Lihshing Leigh Wang, Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas. (shrink)

Technology has the power to break the limitations of traditional passive learning and innovate almost all aspects of everyday life with the power of connecting things of the world to the Internet, “Internet of Things (IoT).” IoT is no longer a phenomenon, but it has become a prevalent system in which people, processes, data, and things connect to the Internet and each other. This paper ‘Enhanced Campus Automation System and the emerging need of IoT integration: an automation perspective’ [eCAS-IoT] is (...) an outcome of case study undertaken at St. Aloysius’ College, Jabalpur, India, wherein the automation challenges are taken into consideration that has been integrated in the existing ERP and related tools such as RFID based attendance and monitoring system in real-time, digital library, API integration and implementation of Optical Network. In this paper we have tried to bring out ideas to achieve the campus automation challenges and awareness of greater need of technical expertise, promotion and training on the effective use of ICT and related devices to make teaching, learning and administration more impacting. (shrink)

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.

Modelling ethics is critical to understanding and analysing social phenomena. However, prior literature either incorporates ethics into agent strategies or uses it for evaluation of agent behaviour. This work proposes a framework that models both, ethical decision making as well as evaluation using virtue ethics and utilitarianism. In an iteration, agents can use either the classical Continuous Prisoner's Dilemma or a new type of interaction called moral interaction, where agents donate or steal from other agents. We introduce moral interactions to (...) model ethical decision making. We also propose a novel agent type, called virtue agent, parametrised by the agent's level of ethics. Virtue agents' decisions are based on moral evaluations of past interactions. Our simulations show that unethical agents make short term gains but are less prosperous in the long run. We find that in societies with positivity bias, unethical agents have high incentive to become ethical. The opposite is true of societies with negativity bias. We also evaluate the ethicality of existing strategies and compare them to those of virtue agents. (shrink)

The landscape of cybersecurity is constantly evolving, with adversaries becoming increasingly sophisticated and persistent. This manuscript explores the utilization of artificial intelligence (AI) to address these evolving threats, focusing on the journey from threat detection to autonomous response. By examining AI-driven detection methodologies, advanced threat analytics, and the implementation of autonomous response systems, this paper provides insights into how organizations can leverage AI to strengthen their cybersecurity posture against modern threats. Key words: Ransomware, Anomaly Detection, Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), Automated (...) Threat Response and Artificial Intelligence. (shrink)

The rapid adoption of cloud computing has revolutionized the way organizations operate, offering unparalleled flexibility, scalability, and efficiency. However, it also introduces a new set of vulnerabilities and security challenges. This manuscript explores the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in cybersecurity solutions to address these cloud vulnerabilities. By examining the current landscape, AI methodologies, and practical implementation strategies, we aim to provide a roadmap for enhancing cloud security through AI-powered solutions. -/- .

The modern computer environment has moved past the local data center with a single entry and exit point to a global network comprising many data centers and hundreds of entry and exit points, commonly referred as Cloud Computing, used by all possible devices with numerous entry and exit point for transactions, online processing, request and responses traveling across the network, making the ever complex networks even more complex, making traversing, monitoring and detecting threats over such an environment a big challenge (...) for Network forensic and investigation for cybercrimes. It has demanded in depth analysis using network tools and techniques to determine how best information can be extracted pertinent to an investigation. Data mining technique providing great aid in finding relevant clusters for predicting unusual activities, pattern matching and fraud detection in an environment, capable to deal with huge amount of data. The concept of network forensics in cloud computing requires a new mindset where some data will not be available, some data will be suspect, and some data will be court ready and can fit into the traditional network forensics model. From a network security viewpoint, all data traversing the cloud network backplane is visible and accessible by the cloud service provider. It is not possible to think now that one physical device will only have one operating system that needs to be taken down for investigation. Without the network forensics investigator, understanding the architecture of the cloud environment systems and possible compromises will be overlooked or missed. In this paper, we focus on the role of Network Forensic in a cloud environment, its mapping few of the available tools and contribution of Data Mining in making analysis, and also to bring out the challenges in this field. (shrink)

We present a multi-agent system where agents can cooperate to solve a system of dependent tasks, with agents having the capability to explore a solution space, make inferences, as well as query for information under a limited budget. Re-exploration of the solution space takes place by an agent when an older solution expires and is thus able to adapt to dynamic changes in the environment. We investigate the effects of task dependencies, with highly-dependent graph G_40 (a well-known program graph that (...) contains 40 highly interlinked nodes, each representing a task) and less-dependent graphs G_18 (a program graph that contains 18 tasks with fewer links), increasing the speed of the agents and the complexity of the problem space and the query budgets available to agents. Specifically, we evaluate trade-offs between the agent's speed and query budget. During the experiments, we observed that increasing the speed of a single agent improves the system performance to a certain point only, and increasing the number of faster agents may not improve the system performance due to task dependencies. Favoring faster agents during budget allocation enhances the system performance, in line with the "Matthew effect." We also observe that allocating more budget to a faster agent gives better performance for a less-dependent system, but increasing the number of faster agents gives a better performance for a highly-dependent system. (shrink)

Modeling social interactions based on individual behavior has always been an area of interest, but prior literature generally presumes rational behavior. Thus, such models may miss out on capturing the effects of biases humans are susceptible to. This work presents a method to model egocentric bias, the real-life tendency to emphasize one's own opinion heavily when presented with multiple opinions. We use a symmetric distribution, centered at an agent's own opinion, as opposed to the Bounded Confidence (BC) model used in (...) prior work. We consider a game of iterated interactions where an agent cooperates based on its opinion about an opponent. Our model also includes the concept of domain-based self-doubt, which varies as the interaction succeeds or not. An increase in doubt makes an agent reduce its egocentricity in subsequent interactions, thus enabling the agent to learn reactively. The agent system is modeled with factions not having a single leader, to overcome some of the issues associated with leader-follower factions. We find that agents belonging to factions perform better than individual agents. We observe that an intermediate level of egocentricity helps the agent perform at its best, which concurs with conventional wisdom that neither overconfidence nor low self-esteem brings benefits. (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.

Pada musim semi, entah kenapa, tidak banyak ikan. Karena tangkapannya sangat tidak stabil, Pekakak mulai berpikir. Lalu membuat beberapa rencana. Dengan otoritas komandonya, dia memanggil Bangau: – Ini adalah musim penangkapan ikan yang sangat sulit. Jika kita ingin kenyang, kita harus membuat usaha patungan. Bangau mengangguk, menambahkan: - Saya setuju; mari kita beternak ikan kakap putih dan ikan mas krusia. Jenis ini berumur panjang dan sangat produktif. Pekakak dan Bangau sepakat untuk berbagi tugas beternak, dan tidak ada diskriminasi yang diizinkan. (...) Namun imbalannya berbeda: Pekakak bertanggung jawab untuk ikan kakap putih dan, dengan demikian, dapat memiliki lebih banyak ikan kakap putih, sedangkan Bangau mendapat ikan mas krusia. Siapapun yang memelihara ikan mana yang lebih banyak akan menikmati 80% dari panen akhir ikan tersebut. Keduanya akan mengevaluasi dan membagi produk ternak pada akhir musim beternak. Ini berarti mengantongi sendiri ikan hasil usaha patungan untuk diri sendiri itu dilarang. (shrink)

The problem considered in this chapter emerges from the tension we find when looking at the design and architecture of chatbots on the one hand and their conversational aptitude on the other. In the way that LLM chatbots are designed and built, we have good reason to suppose they don't possess second-order capacities such as intention, belief or knowledge. Yet theories of conversation make great use of second-order capacities of speakers and their audiences to explain how aspects of interaction succeed. (...) As we can all bear witness to now though, at the point of use chatbots appear capable of performing language tasks at a level close to that of humans. This creates a tension when we consider something like, for example, the classic Gricean theory of implicature. On a broad summary of this type of account, to utter p and implicate q requires the reflexive occurrence of an audience supposing a speaker believes that q, and the speaker believing that their audience can determine they believe it when they utter p. So taken at face value, if a chatbot doesn’t have the capacity for belief, then either in their role as speaker or audience, they would not seem capable of either generating or comprehending implicatures. Yet on the surface it does seem that chatbots are capable of dealing with (some) implicatures, and as such it raises questions about how we should then correlate this with what we think occurs in cases of implicature with chatbots. (shrink)

Suatu pagi di musim panas, desa burung diselimuti keheningan. Semua orang sibuk mendengarkan pengembara baru. Burung pengembara ini berasal dari keluarga yang tidak jelas; bulunya berwarna-warni, gerak-geriknya lucu, dan ilmunya baru. Dia bercerita seolah-olah sedang memberi ceramah, tepat sekali, warga desa memanggilnya burung Guru – orang yang menjawab setiap pertanyaan aneh warga desa yang rajin belajar. Burung pelatuk telah belajar menangkap cacing di sore hari, sehingga mereka tidak perlu bangun pagi. Burung pipit sekarang tahu cara mencuri beras dari gudang saat (...) sawah mulai kering. Bulbul, sementara itu, telah mengambil kesempatan berkumpul untuk memamerkan kecantikan dan fashion mereka… . (shrink)

Pekakak selama ini tinggal di gua galiannya sendiri di tepi kolam, tapi sekarang dia memutuskan bahwa dia membutuhkan rumah baru. Dia melakukan tur keliling desa untuk melihat bagaimana burung-burung lain membangun rumah mereka. Dia mengunjungi Tuan Pipit, yang tinggal di pohon pinus yang bersiul. Bagian depan bangunannya tampak indah, dan lokasinya yang tinggi memberikan ventilasi yang baik. Tapi, semakin lama dia menginap, dia jadi semakin pusing. Hembusan angin apa pun yang menerpa membuat seluruh struktur bangunan bergetar seolah-olah akan hancur berantakan.

Some scientific categories seem to correspond to genuine features of the world and are indispensable for successful science in some domain; in short, they are natural kinds. This book gives a general account of what it is to be a natural kind and puts the account to work illuminating numerous specific examples.

It seems obvious that a community of one thousand scientists working together to make discoveries and solve puzzles should arrange itself differently than would one thousand scientist-hermits working independently. Because of limited time, resources, and attention, an independent scientist can explore only some of the possible approaches to a problem. Working alone, each hermit would explore the most promising approaches. They would needlessly duplicate the work of others and would be unlikely to develop approaches which look unpromising but really have (...) tremendous potential. Contrariwise, a large community can more rigorously explore the space of possible approaches. Most scientists should work on the most promising approaches, but a smaller number can be committed to approaches that initially look less promising. Exploratory work can reveal if one of those initially unpromising approaches has unrealized potential, and more scientists can adopt it once its potential becomes more apparent. (shrink)

There is a history of thinking that photographs provide a special kind of access to the objects depicted in them, beyond the access that would be provided by a painting or drawing. What is included in the photograph does not depend on the photographer’s beliefs about what is in front of the camera. This feature leads Kendall Walton to argue that photographs literally allow us to see the objects which appear in them. Current generative algorithms produce images in response to (...) users’ text prompts. Depending on the parameters, the output can resemble specific people or things which are named in the prompt. This resemblance does not depend on the user’s beliefs, so generated images are in this sense like photographs. Given this parallel, how should we think about AI-generated images? (shrink)

Most philosophers who study moral responsibility have done so in isolation of the concept of truth. Here, I show that thinking about the nature of truth has profound consequences for discussions of moral responsibility. In particular, by focusing on the very trivial nature of truth—that truth depends on the world and not the other way around—we can see that widely accepted counterexamples to one of the most influential incompatibilist arguments can be shown not only to be false, but also impossible.

There is growing interest in the use of technology to enhance the tracking and quality of clinical information available for patients in disaster settings. This paper describes the design and evaluation of the Wireless Internet Information System for Medical Response in Disasters (WIISARD).

Exclusionary defeat is Joseph Raz’s proposal for understanding the more complex, layered structure of practical reasoning. Exclusionary reasons are widely appealed to in legal theory and consistently arise in many other areas of philosophy. They have also been subject to a variety of challenges. I propose a new account of exclusionary reasons based on their justificatory role, rejecting Raz’s motivational account and especially contrasting exclusion with undercutting defeat. I explain the appeal and coherence of exclusionary reasons by appeal to commonsense (...) value pluralism and the intermediate space of public policies, social roles, and organizations. We often want our choices to have a certain character or instantiate a certain value and in order to do so, that choice can only be based on a restricted set of reasons. Exclusion explains how pro tanto practical reasons can be disqualified from counting towards a choice of a particular kind without being outweighed or undercut. (shrink)

Political legitimacy is best understood as one type of a broader notion, which I call institutional legitimacy. An institution is legitimate in my sense when it has the right to function. The right to function correlates to a duty of non-interference. Understanding legitimacy in this way favorably contrasts with legitimacy understood in the traditional way, as the right to rule correlating to a duty of obedience. It helps unify our discourses of legitimacy across a wider range of practices, especially including (...) the many evaluations we increasingly make of international institutions of various sorts, but also including domestic institutions. (shrink)

Imperatives cannot be true, but they can be obeyed or binding: `Surrender!' is obeyed if you surrender and is binding if you have a reason to surrender. A pure declarative argument — whose premisses and conclusion are declaratives — is valid exactly if, necessarily, its conclusion is true if the conjunction of its premisses is true; similarly, I suggest, a pure imperative argument — whose premisses and conclusion are imperatives — is obedience-valid (alternatively: bindingness-valid) exactly if, necessarily, its conclusion is (...) obeyed (alternatively: binding) if the conjunction of its premisses is. I argue that there are two kinds of bindingness, and that a vacillation between two corresponding variants of bindingness-validity largely explains conflicting intuitions concerning the validity of some pure imperative arguments. I prove that for each of those two variants of bindingness-validity there is an equivalent variant of obedience-validity. Finally, I address alternative accounts of pure imperative inference. (shrink)

When we ask what natural kinds are, there are two different things we might have in mind. The first, which I’ll call the taxonomy question, is what distinguishes a category which is a natural kind from an arbitrary class. The second, which I’ll call the ontology question, is what manner of stuff there is that realizes the category. Many philosophers have systematically conflated the two questions. The confusion is exhibited both by essentialists and by philosophers who pose their accounts in (...) terms of similarity. It also leads to misreading philosophers who do make the distinction. Distinguishing the questions allows for a more subtle understanding of both natural kinds and their underlying metaphysics. (shrink)

In this paper, I reply to 18 of the essays on panpsychism in this issue. Along the way, I sketch out what a post-Galilean science of consciousness, one in which consciousness is taken to be a fundamental feature of reality, might look like.

The accepted narrative treats John Stuart Mill’s Kinds as the historical prototype for our natural kinds, but Mill actually employs two separate notions: Kinds and natural groups. Considering these, along with the accounts of Mill’s nineteenth-century interlocutors, forces us to recognize two distinct questions. First, what marks a natural kind as worthy of inclusion in taxonomy? Second, what exists in the world that makes a category meet that criterion? Mill’s two notions offer separate answers to the two questions: natural groups (...) for taxonomy and Kinds for ontology. This distinction is ignored in many contemporary debates about natural kinds and is obscured by the standard narrative that treats our natural kinds just as a development of Mill’s Kinds. (shrink)

If two theory formulations are merely different expressions of the same theory, then any problem of choosing between them cannot be due to the underdetermination of theories by data. So one might suspect that we need to be able to tell distinct theories from mere alternate formulations before we can say anything substantive about underdetermination, that we need to solve the problem of identical rivals before addressing the problem of underdetermination. Here I consider two possible solutions: Quine proposes that we (...) call two theories identical if they are equivalent under a reconstrual of predicates, but this would mishandle important cases. Another proposal is to defer to the particular judgements of actual scientists. Consideration of an historical episodethe alleged equivalence of wave and matrix mechanicsshows that this second proposal also fails. Nevertheless, I suggest, the original suspicion is wrong; there are ways to enquire into underdetermination without having solved the problem of identical rivals. (shrink)

Standard accounts of civil disobedience include nonviolence as a necessary condition. Here I argue that such accounts are mistaken and that civil disobedience can include violence in many aspects, primarily excepting violence directed at other persons. I base this argument on a novel understanding of civil disobedience: the special character of the practice comes from its combination of condemnation of a political practice with an expressed commitment to the political. The commitment to the political is a commitment to engaging with (...) others as co-members in the on-going political project of living together. I show how such an understanding of civil disobedience is superior to the Rawlsian strain of thought, which focuses on fidelity to law. Rawls was concerned with civil disobedience solely in the context of overriding political obligation. The project of characterizing a contestatory political practice that can be distinguished and used in a wider variety of contexts than Rawls is concerned with, including under illegitimate regimes, beyond the nation-state, or on behalf of anarchism, requires a different understanding of civil disobedience. (shrink)

Tradução para o português do livro "Ceticismo e naturalismo: algumas variedades", Strawson, P. F. . São Leopoldo, RS: Editora da Unisinos, 2008, 114 p. Coleção: Ideias. ISBN: 9788574313214. Capítulo 1 - Ceticismo, naturalismo e argumentos transcendentais 1. Notas introdutórias; 2. Ceticismo tradicional; 3. Hume: Razão e Natureza; 4. Hume e Wittgenstein; 5. “Apenas relacionar”: O papel dos argumentos transcendentais; 6. Três citações; 7. Historicismo: e o passado.

How should we respond to the humanity of others? Should we care for others’ well-being? Respect them as autonomous agents? Largely neglected is an answer we can find in the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism: we should love all. This paper argues that an ideal of love for all can be understood apart from its more typical religious contexts and moreover provides a unified and illuminating account of the the nature and grounds of morality. I defend a novel (...) account of love for all that avoids serious worries about the incoherence or impossibility of loving everyone. Doing so requires countenancing a neglected form of love. Love admits as its object not just individual entities like people and groups; we can also bear a love for the Fs in general---for all the Joneses, all the philosophers, or even all the human beings. I go on to argue that while it is possible for ordinary agents like us to love all, we shouldn't. Instead, we should approximate love for all. The minimal approximation of love for all is, surprisingly, respect; I derive the basic, structural features of deontological ethics (including anti-paternalism and anti-aggregation) from the ideal of loving all. (NB: This paper used to be titled "Ethics in the Shadow of Love" and has been cited as an unpublished manuscript under that title.). (shrink)

Tradução para o português do ensaio "Freedom and Resentment”, de P. F. Strawson. Publicado originalmente em Proceedings of the British Academy, v. 48, 1960. Republicado em Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays. Londres: Methuen, 1974. [Routledge, 2008, p. 2-28]. Publicado na coletânea: Ensaios sobre a filosofia de Strawson: com a tradução de Liberdade e ressentimento & Moralidade social e ideal individual. Organizadores: Jaimir Conte & Itamar Luís Gelain. Editora da UFSC, 2015. ISBN: 9788532807250.

Tradução para o português do ensaio "Social Morality and Individual Ideal”. Publicado originalmente em Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, vol. XXXVI, n. 136, p. 1-17, Jan. 1961. Republicado em: STRAWSON, P. F. Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays. Londres: Methuen, 1974. [Routledge, 2008, p. 26-44]. ]. Publicado na coletânea: Ensaios sobre a filosofia de Strawson: com a tradução de Liberdade e ressentimento & Moralidade social e ideal individual. Organizadores: Jaimir Conte & Itamar Luís Gelain. Editora da (...) UFSC, 2015. ISBN: 9788532807250. (shrink)

Some philosophers understand natural kinds to be the categories which are constraints on enquiry. In order to elaborate the metaphysics appropriate to such an account, I consider the complicated history of scurvy, citrus, and vitamin C. It may be tempting to understand these categories in a shallow way (as mere property clusters) or in a deep way (as fundamental properties). Neither approach is adequate, and the case instead calls for middle-range ontology: starting from categories which we identify in the world (...) and elaborating their structure, but not pretending to jump ahead to a complete story about fundamental being. (shrink)

Philosophy in Africa has for more than a decade now been dominated by the discussion of one compound question, namely, is there an African philosophy, and if there is, what is it? The first part of the question has generally been unhesitatingly answered in the affirmative. Dispute has been primarily over the second part of the question as various specimens of African philosophy presented do not seem to pass muster. Those of us who refuse to accept certain specimens as philosophy (...) have generally been rather illogically said also to deny an affirmative answer to the first part of the question. In a paper presented at the International Symposium in Memory of Dr William Amo, the Ghanaian philosopher who taught in German universities in the early part of the eighteenth century, Professor Odera Oruka identified four trends, perhaps more appropriately approaches, in current African philosophy. (shrink)

This book delves into esoteric knowledge, describing the structure of the universe (Brahmanda or Cosmic Egg) as a series of astral biospheres. These biospheres, or lokas, are linked to spiritual consciousness and degrees of divine bliss (Ananda). Advanced spiritual figures, such as Rishis and Mahatmas, can navigate these realms and help others evolve. The article presents a detailed comparison between “Puranic Hinduism” and “Sanatana Dharma”, specifically addressing their differences in cosmogenesis and spiritual evolution. The difference between the cosmogenesis of Puranic (...) Hinduism and Sanatana Dharma is that while the former is founded on the concept of Trimurti as taught by the Puranas, the latter is a Manu-centric and Guru-centric spiritual system. This has a lot of significance concerning the rituals and the social order they have produced. Here, the Cosmic Purusha is identifiable with Manu, not with Trimurti or the God of Abrahamic religions, because of their different spiritual status in the cosmological hierarchy. (shrink)

The Argument from Inductive Risk (AIR) is taken to show that values are inevitably involved in making judgements or forming beliefs. After reviewing this conclusion, I pose cases which are prima facie counterexamples: the unreflective application of conventions, use of black-boxed instruments, reliance on opaque algorithms, and unskilled observation reports. These cases are counterexamples to the AIR posed in ethical terms as a matter of personal values. Nevertheless, it need not be understood in those terms. The values which load a (...) theory choice may be those of institutions or past actors. This means that the challenge of responsibly handling inductive risk is not merely an ethical issue, but is also social, political, and historical. (shrink)

According to the standard narrative, natural kind is a technical notion that was introduced by John Stuart Mill in the 1840s and the recent craze for natural kinds, launched by Putnam and Kripke, is a continuation of that tradition. I argue that the standard narrative is mistaken. The Millian tradition of kinds was not particularly influential in the 20th-century, and the Putnam-Kripke revolution did not clearly engage with even the remnants that were left of it. The presently active tradition of (...) natural kinds is less than half a century old. Recognizing this might help us better appreciate both Mill and natural kinds. (shrink)

The no-miracles argument and the pessimistic induction are arguably the main considerations for and against scientific realism. Recently these arguments have been accused of embodying a familiar, seductive fallacy. In each case, we are tricked by a base rate fallacy, one much-discussed in the psychological literature. In this paper we consider this accusation and use it as an explanation for why the two most prominent `wholesale' arguments in the literature seem irresolvable. Framed probabilistically, we can see very clearly why realists (...) and anti-realists have been talking past one another. We then formulate a dilemma for advocates of either argument, answer potential objections to our criticism, discuss what remains (if anything) of these two major arguments, and then speculate about a future philosophy of science freed from these two arguments. In so doing, we connect the point about base rates to the wholesale/retail distinction; we believe it hints at an answer of how to distinguish profitable from unprofitable realism debates. In short, we offer a probabilistic analysis of the feeling of ennui afflicting contemporary philosophy of science. (shrink)

Our findings reveal that implementing accelerated computing can achieve substantial improvements, often reducing computation times by more than 60% compared to traditional sequential methods. This paper details the experimental setup, including algorithm selection and parallelization techniques, and discusses the role of memory bandwidth and latency in achieving optimal performance. Based on the analysis, we propose a streamlined methodology to guide the deployment of accelerated computing frameworks in various industries. Concluding with a discussion on future directions, we highlight potential advancements in (...) hardware architectures and software optimizations that could further augment computational efficiency and scalability in accelerated computing. (shrink)

Migrating legacy database applications to modern cloud-based solutions, such as Snowflake, is becoming essential for organizations aiming to leverage scalable, efficient, and cost-effective data solutions. Legacy databases, typically bound to on-premises infrastructure, often lack the flexibility required by contemporary data analytics and storage needs. Snowflake, a cloud-native data platform, provides a versatile environment that enables efficient data storage, sharing, and processing. This research examines a structured methodology for migrating legacy database applications to Snowflake, addressing key stages from initial assessment to (...) data transformation, integration, and performance optimization. A systematic, step-by-step migration process is implemented to minimize risks, reduce downtime, and ensure data integrity. (shrink)

It is now commonly held that values play a role in scientific judgment, but many arguments for that conclusion are limited. First, many arguments do not show that values are, strictly speaking, indispensable. The role of values could in principle be filled by a random or arbitrary decision. Second, many arguments concern scientific theories and concepts which have obvious practical consequences, thus suggesting or at least leaving open the possibility that abstruse sciences without such a connection could be value-free. Third, (...) many arguments concern the role values play in inferring from evidence, thus taking evidence as given. This paper argues that these limitations do not hold in general. There are values involved in every scientific judgment. They cannot even conceivably be replaced by a coin toss, they arise as much for exotic as for practical sciences, and they are at issue as much for observation as for explicit inference. (shrink)

The emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) and advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) offer an opportunity for computational social science research at scale. Building upon prior explorations of LLM agent design, our work introduces a simulated agent society where complex social relationships dynamically form and evolve over time. Agents are imbued with psychological drives and placed in a sandbox survival environment. We conduct an evaluation of the agent society through the lens of Thomas Hobbes's seminal Social Contract Theory (SCT). We (...) analyze whether, as the theory postulates, agents seek to escape a brutish "state of nature" by surrendering rights to an absolute sovereign in exchange for order and security. Our experiments unveil an alignment: Initially, agents engage in unrestrained conflict, mirroring Hobbes's depiction of the state of nature. However, as the simulation progresses, social contracts emerge, leading to the authorization of an absolute sovereign and the establishment of a peaceful commonwealth founded on mutual cooperation. This congruence between our LLM agent society's evolutionary trajectory and Hobbes's theoretical account indicates LLMs' capability to model intricate social dynamics and potentially replicate forces that shape human societies. By enabling such insights into group behavior and emergent societal phenomena, LLM-driven multi-agent simulations, while unable to simulate all the nuances of human behavior, may hold potential for advancing our understanding of social structures, group dynamics, and complex human systems. (shrink)

I've previously suggested that the historical evidence used to challenge scientific realism should lead us to embrace what I call Uniformitarianism, but many recently influential forms of scientific realism seem happy to share this commitment. I trace a number of further points of common ground that collectively constitute an appealing Middle Path between classical forms of realism and instrumentalism, and I suggest that many contemporary realists and instrumentalists have already become fellow travelers on this Middle Path without recognizing how far (...) they have thereby diverged from those who share their labels and slogans. I conclude by describing their central remaining disagreement and the sorts of evidence needed to resolve it. (shrink)

I argue that legitimacy discourses serve a gatekeeping function. They give practitioners telic standards for riding herd on social practices, ensuring that minimally acceptable versions of the practice are implemented. Such a function is a necessary part of implementing formalized social practices, especially including law. This gatekeeping account shows that political philosophers have misunderstood legitimacy; it is not secondary to justice and only necessary because we cannot agree about justice. Instead, it is a necessary feature of actual human social practices, (...) which must be implemented via practitioners' discretion in changing contexts. (shrink)

Consider the concept combination ‘pet human’. In word association experiments, human subjects produce the associate ‘slave’ in relation to this combination. The striking aspect of this associate is that it is not produced as an associate of ‘pet’, or ‘human’ in isolation. In other words, the associate ‘slave’ seems to be emergent. Such emergent associations sometimes have a creative character and cognitive science is largely silent about how we produce them. Departing from a dimensional model of human conceptual space, this (...) article will explore concept combinations, and will argue that emergent associations are a result of abductive reasoning within conceptual space, that is, below the symbolic level of cognition. A tensor-based approach is used to model concept combinations allowing such combinations to be formalized as interacting quantum systems. Free association norm data is used to motivate the underlying basis of the conceptual space. It is shown by analogy how some concept combinations may behave like quantum-entangled particles. Two methods of analysis were presented for empirically validating the presence of non-separable concept combinations in human cognition. One method is based on quantum theory and another based on comparing a joint probability distribution with another distribution based on a separability assumption using a chi-square goodness-of-fit test. Although these methods were inconclusive in relation to an empirical study of bi-ambiguous concept combinations, avenues for further refinement of these methods are identified. (shrink)

forall x: Calgary is a full-featured textbook on formal logic. It covers key notions of logic such as consequence and validity of arguments, the syntax of truth-functional propositional logic TFL and truth-table semantics, the syntax of first-order (predicate) logic FOL with identity (first-order interpretations), symbolizing English in TFL and FOL, and Fitch-style natural deduction proof systems for both TFL and FOL. It also deals with some advanced topics such as modal logic, soundness, and functional completeness. Exercises with solutions are available. (...) It is provided in PDF (for screen reading, printing, and a special version for dyslexics), HTML, and in LaTeX source code. (shrink)

A critical note on Christopher Bartel and Jack M. C. Kwong, ‘Pluralism, Eliminativism, and the Definition of Art’, Estetika 58 (2021): 100–113. Art pluralism is the view that there is no single, correct account of what art is. Instead, art is understood through a plurality of art concepts and with considerations that are different for particular arts. Although avowed pluralists have retained the word ‘art’ in their discussions, it is natural to ask whether the considerations that motivate pluralism should lead (...) us to abandon art talk altogether; that is, should pluralism lead to eliminativism? This paper addresses arguments both for and against this move. We ultimately argue that pluralism allows one to retain the word ‘art’, if one wants it, but only in a loose, conversational sense. The upshot of pluralism is that talk of art in general cannot be asked to do theoretical and philosophical work. (shrink)

Kyle Stanford has recently claimed to offer a new challenge to scientific realism. Taking his inspiration from the familiar Pessimistic Induction (PI), Stanford proposes a New Induction (NI). Contra Anjan Chakravartty’s suggestion that the NI is a ‘red herring’, I argue that it reveals something deep and important about science. The Problem of Unconceived Alternatives, which lies at the heart of the NI, yields a richer anti-realism than the PI. It explains why science falls short when it falls short, and (...) so it might figure in the most coherent account of scientific practice. However, this best account will be antirealist in some respects and about some theories. It will not be a sweeping antirealism about all or most of science. (shrink)

In 1956, a few writings of Wittgenstein that he didn't publish in his lifetime were revealed to the public. These writings were gathered in the book Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956). There, we can see that Wittgenstein had some discontentment with the way philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians were thinking about paradoxes, and he even registered a few polemic reasons to not accept Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.