On standard readings of Grice, Gricean communication requires (a) possession of a concept of belief, (b) the ability to make complex inferences about others’ goal-directed behaviour, and (c) the ability to entertain fourth order meta-representations. To the extent that these abilities are pre-requisites of Gricean communication they are inconsistent with the view that Gricean communication could play a role in their development. In this paper, I argue that a class of ‘minimally Gricean acts’ satisfy the intentional structure described by Grice, (...) but require none of abilities (a)-(c). As a result, Gricean communicative abilities may indeed contribute to the development of (a)-(c) – in particular, by enabling language development. This conclusion has important implications for our theorising about cognitive development. (shrink)

Computers can mimic human intelligence, sometimes quite impressively. This has led some to claim that, a.) computers can actually acquire intelligence, and/or, b.) the human mind may be thought of as a very sophisticated computer. In this paper I argue that neither of these inferences are sound. The human mind and computers, I argue, operate on radically different principles.

We attempt here to trace the evolution of Frege’s thought about truth. What most frames the way we approach the problem is a recognition that hardly any of Frege’s most familiar claims about truth appear in his earliest work. We argue that Frege’s mature views about truth emerge from a fundamental re-thinking of the nature of logic instigated, in large part, by a sustained engagement with the work of George Boole and his followers, after the publication of Begriffsschrift and the (...) appearance of critical reviews by members of the Boolean school. (shrink)

An investigation of Frege's various contributions to the study of language, focusing on three of his most famous doctrines: that concepts are unsaturated, that sentences refer to truth-values, and that sense must be distinguished from reference.

At least since the middle of the twentieth century, philosophers have tended to identify weakness of will with akrasia—i.e. acting, or having a disposition to act, contrary to one‘s judgments about what is best for one to do. However, there has been some recent debate about whether this captures the ordinary notion of weakness of will. Richard Holton (1999, 2009) claims that it doesn’t, while Alfred Mele (2010) argues that, to a certain extent, it does. As Mele recognizes, the (...) question about an ordinary concept here is one apt for empirical investigation. We evaluate Mele’s studies and report some experiments of our own in order to investigate what in the world the ordinary concept of weakness of will is. We conclude that neither Mele nor Holton (previously) was quite right and offer a tentative proposal of our own: the ordinary notion is more like a prototype or cluster concept whose application is affected by a variety of factors. (shrink)

An investigation of what Frege means by his doctrine that functions (and so concepts) are 'unsaturated'. We argue that this doctrine is far less peculiar than it is usually taken to be. What makes it hard to understand, oddly enough, is the fact that it is so deeply embedded in our contemporary understanding of logic and language. To see this, we look at how it emerges out of Frege's confrontation with the Booleans and how it expresses a fundamental difference between (...) Frege's approach to logic and theirs. (shrink)

A general survey of Frege's views on truth, the paper explores the problems in response to which Frege's distinctive view that sentences refer to truth-values develops. It also discusses his view that truth-values are objects and the so-called regress argument for the indefinability of truth. Finally, we consider, very briefly, the question whether Frege was a deflationist.

Are Fregean thoughts compositionally complex and composed of senses? We argue that, in Begriffsschrift, Frege took 'conceptual contents' to be unstructured, but that he quickly moved away from this position, holding just two years later that conceptual contents divide of themselves into 'function' and 'argument'. This second position is shown to be unstable, however, by Frege's famous substitution puzzle. For Frege, the crucial question the puzzle raises is why "The Morning Star is a planet" and "The Evening Star is a (...) planet" have different contents, but his second position predicts that they should have the same content. Frege's response to this antinomy is of course to distinguish sense from reference, but what has not previously been noticed is that this response also requires thoughts to be compositionally complex, composed of senses. That, however, raises the question just how thoughts are composed from senses. We reconstruct a Fregean answer, one that turns on an insistence that this question must be understood as semantic rather than metaphysical. It is not a question about the intrinsic nature of residents of the third realm but a question about how thoughts are expressed by sentences. (shrink)

An investigation of what Frege means by his doctrine that functions (and so concepts) are 'unsaturated'. We argue that this doctrine is far less peculiar than it is usually taken to be. What makes it hard to understand, oddly enough, is the fact that it is so deeply embedded in our contemporary understanding of logic and language. To see this, we look at how it emerges out of Frege's confrontation with the Booleans and how it expresses a fundamental difference between (...) Frege's approach to logic and theirs. (shrink)

This study examines the correlation between job descriptions and salaries at Immaculate Conception College of Balayan Inc. (ICCBI), a private Catholic institution devoted to faith-based education. Using qualitative research, a single-case study was conducted with ten (10) participants selected through purposive sampling based on specific criteria. Through face-to-face interviews, data was collected and analyzed using a narrative approach. Thus, it was found out that job descriptions at ICCBI are established through methods like job analysis, role and responsibility approaches, qualifications, and (...) the school manual-based method. Salary determination involves factors such as tenure, educational attainment, performance, teaching loads, experience, and collegial care. Key factors influencing job descriptions include salary differentiation, aligned job descriptions, career development opportunities, and increased duties and responsibilities. Variations in the salary structure are affected by teaching loads, department designations, and educational qualifications. The findings indicate that job descriptions impact employee salaries at the institution, and future research is encouraged to explore identified factors for insights into developing more efficient roles and contributing to organizational effectiveness. With this, the study proposed a strategic plan for future use and implementation. (shrink)

Socioeconomic status refers to the family's social and economic standing in society. It is measured by combining an individual or group's economic and social position, which is often based on income, education, and occupation. It significantly affects academic performance and even one's health status. The pandemic changed the educational system, causing a huge transition from traditional learning methods to online learning. This shift resulted in confusion, burden, and difficulty among students from different walks of life. This study was conducted to (...) determine the academic stress on online learning among nursing students in relation to their economic status and their ability to access technology. The study utilized a quantitative-correlational method aided by a standard questionnaire. Two hundred thirty-six University of Bohol nursing students enrolled in the second semester of SY 2021–2022 were included in the study by random selection. Data revealed a significant correlation between economic status and the level of stress related to academic expectations and a significant correlation between economic status and access to technology after being subjected to the Spearman rho test of correlation. However, no significant correlation was found between access to technology and the respondents' level of academic stress. (shrink)

Effective altruism sounds so innocuous—who could possibly be opposed to doing good more effectively? Yet it has inspired significant backlash in recent years. This paper addresses some common misconceptions and argues that the core “beneficentric” ideas of effective altruism are both excellent and widely neglected. Reasonable people may disagree on details of implementation, but all should share the basic goals or values underlying effective altruism.

Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and individual-level dimensions of collectivism and individualism values for predicting ethical behaviors of business professionals. Our values-based behavioral analysis indicates that values at the individual-level make a more significant contribution to (...) explaining variance in ethical behaviors than do values at the societal-level. Implicitly, our findings question the soundness of using societal-level values measures. Implications for international business research are discussed. (shrink)

This paper analyses the phenomenology and epistemology of chatbots such as ChatGPT and Bard. The computational architecture underpinning these chatbots are large language models (LLMs), which are generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems trained on a massive dataset of text extracted from the Web. We conceptualise these LLMs as multifunctional computational cognitive artifacts, used for various cognitive tasks such as translating, summarizing, answering questions, information-seeking, and much more. Phenomenologically, LLMs can be experienced as a “quasi-other”; when that happens, users anthropomorphise them. (...) For most users, current LLMs are black boxes, i.e., for the most part, they lack data transparency and algorithmic transparency. They can, however, be phenomenologically and informationally transparent, in which case there is an interactional flow. Anthropomorphising and interactional flow can, in some users, create an attitude of (unwarranted) trust towards the output LLMs generate. We conclude this paper by drawing on the epistemology of trust and testimony to examine the epistemic implications of these dimensions. Whilst LLMs generally generate accurate responses, we observe two epistemic pitfalls. Ideally, users should be able to match the level of trust that they place in LLMs to the degree that LLMs are trustworthy. However, both their data and algorithmic opacity and their phenomenological and informational transparency can make it difficult for users to calibrate their trust correctly. The effects of these limitations are twofold: users may adopt unwarranted attitudes of trust towards the outputs of LLMs (which is particularly problematic when LLMs hallucinate), and the trustworthiness of LLMs may be undermined. (shrink)

There are various philosophical approaches and theories describing the intimate relation people have to artifacts. In this paper, I explore the relation between two such theories, namely distributed cognition and distributed morality theory. I point out a number of similarities and differences in these views regarding the ontological status they attribute to artifacts and the larger systems they are part of. Having evaluated and compared these views, I continue by focussing on the way cognitive artifacts are used in moral practice. (...) I specifically conceptualise how such artifacts (a) scaffold and extend moral reasoning and decision-making processes, (b) have a certain moral status which is contingent on their cognitive status, and (c) whether responsibility can be attributed to distributed systems. This paper is primarily written for those interested in the intersection of cognitive and moral theory as it relates to artifacts, but also for those independently interested in philosophical debates in extended and distributed cognition and ethics of (cognitive) technology. (shrink)

Critics have often misunderstood the higher-order theory (HOT) of consciousness. Here we clarify its position on several issues, and distinguish it from other views such as the global The higher-order theory (HOT) of consciousness has often been misunderstood by critics. Here we clarify its position on several issues, and distinguish it from other views such as the global workspace theory (GWT) and early sensory models (e.g. first-order local recurrency theories). For example, HOT has been criticized for over-intellectualizing consciousness. We show (...) that while higher-order states are cognitively assembled, the requirements are actually considerably less than often presumed. In this sense HOT may be viewed as an intermediate position between GWT and early sensory views. Also, we clarify that most proponents of HOT do not stipulate consciousness as equivalent to metacognition or confidence. Further, compared to other existing theories, HOT can arguably account better for complex everyday experiences, such as of emotions and episodic memories. This makes HOT particularly useful as a framework for conceptualizing pathological mental states. (shrink)

This paper considers the relation between the value of a whole (person, society) and its parts (timeslices, individuals), arguing that the contributory value of a part cannot be determined in isolation. For example, the value of an additional life may depend on what other lives there are. This has important implications for population ethics, and especially Parfit's 'repugnant conclusion'.

In "Counting and Indeterminate Identity", N. Ángel Pinillos develops an argument that there can be no cases of `Split Indeterminate Identity'. Such a case would be one in which it was indeterminate whether a=b and indeterminate whether a=c, but determinately true that b≠c. The interest of the argument lies, in part, in the fact that it appears to appeal to none of the controversial claims to which similar arguments due to Gareth Evans and Nathan Salmon appeal. I argue for two (...) counter-claims. First, the formal argument fails to establish its conclusion, for essentially the same reason Evans's and Salmon's arguments fail to establish their conclusions. Second, the phenomena in which Pinillos is interested, which concern the cardinalities of sets of vague objects, manifest the existence of what Kit Fine called `penumbral connections', phenomena that the logics Pinillos considers are already known not to handle well. (shrink)

In a study drawing from both evolutionary biology and the social sciences, evidence and argument is assembled in support of the comprehensive appli- cation of selfish gene theory to the human population. With a focus on genes giving rise to characteristically-human cooperation (“cooperative genes”) in- volving language and theory of mind, one may situate a whole range of pat- terned behaviour—including celibacy and even slavery—otherwise seeming to present insuperable difficulties. Crucially, the behaviour which tends to propa- gate the cooperative genes (...) may be “at cost” to the genes of some who may be party to the cooperation itself. Explanatory insights are provided by Trivers’ parent-offspring conflict theory, Lack’s principle, and Hamilton’s kin selec- tion mechanism. A primary observation is that cooperation using language and theory of mind is itself interdependent with full human conceptualization of a world of objects and of themselves as embodied beings. Human capaci- ties inhering in, or arising out of, the ability to cooperate are also responsible for a vitally important long-term process, the domestication of animals and p- lants. The approach illuminates the difference between animal and human sexual behaviour, and the emergence of kinship systems. Again, recent pat- terns of population growth become much more explicable. It is argued that the gene is the single controlling replicator; the notion of the meme as a sec- ond independent replicator is flawed. (shrink)

A framework is developed for understanding what is “taken for granted” both in philosophy and in life generally, which may serve to orient philosophical inquiry and make it more effective. The framework takes in language and its development, as well as mathematics, logic, and the empirical sphere with particular reference to the exigencies of life. It is evaluated through consideration of seven philosophical issues concerned with such topics as solipsism, sense data as the route to knowledge, the possible reduction of (...) geometry to logic, and the existence and status of human rights. Various dichotomies and the notion of continuity are evidently highly strategic. (shrink)

My interest lies in offering a phenomenological perspective on how noise is experienced, with particular attention to what may be common to different sorts of noise phenomena. As a counterpoint to the notion that noise is an empty or constructed notion, I argue for two desiderata of a phenomenological account of noise; accommodating a plurality of noise experiences, on the one hand, and clarifying their specific phenomenal character, on the other. I then pursue these desiderata by turning to an examination (...) of some contemporary views of perception that have implications for how the phenomenal character of perceptual noise in particular is to be understood; an epistemic misfire view and a sensory misfire view. After clarifying each and its appeal, I convey concerns about the one and the other. I propose a third alternative for further exploration - a perceptual disjoint view - and point to how it ought to explored. On the premise that there is something like a unity of consciousness or experience, I lay out the idea that there may then be many forms of 'disunities' of experience. From an analysis of the latter, I suggest, one may account for many different types of experiences of noise, though with a common ‘phenomenal’ thread running through them. (shrink)

According to a common judgement, a social planner should often use a lottery to decide which of two people should receive a good. This judgement undermines one of the best-known arguments for utilitarianism, due to John C. Harsanyi, and more generally undermines axiomatic arguments for utilitarianism and similar views. In this paper we ask which combinations of views about (a) the social planner’s attitude to risk and inequality, and (b) the subjects’ attitudes to risk are consistent with the aforementioned judgement. (...) We find that the class of combinations of views that can plausibly accommodate this judgement is quite limited. But one theory does better than others: the theory of chance-sensitive utility. (shrink)

I write as a Jew who has come to see the Jewish and Christian religious movements as complementary, at least as each may be ideally envisioned. This complementarity does not entail the ‘supersession’ of Judaism or the negation of Judaism. It does not in any way imply that Jews should abandon Judaism. On the contrary, rightly seen it can lead to a greater affirmation of Judaism and of the teachings at Judaism's heart. In this article I discuss the nature of (...) this complementarity and argue that its recognition can help further and deepen the spiritual missions of both traditions. (shrink)

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are an emerging and converging technology that translates the brain activity of its user into command signals for external devices, ranging from motorized wheelchairs, robotic hands, environmental control systems, and computer applications. In this paper I functionally decompose BCI systems and categorize BCI applications with similar functional properties into three categories, those with (1) motor, (2) virtual, and (3) linguistic applications. I then analyse the relationship between these distinct BCI applications and their users from an epistemological and (...) phenomenological perspective. Specifically, I analyse functional properties of BCIs in relation to the abilities (particularly motor behaviour and communication) of their human users, asking how they may or may not extend these abilities. This includes a phenomenological analysis of whether BCIs are experienced as transparent extensions. Contrary to some recent philosophical claims, I conclude that, although BCIs have the potential to become bodily as well as cognitive extensions for skilled users, at this stage they are not. And while the electrodes and signal processor may to a variable degree be transparent and incorporated, the BCI system as a whole is not. Contemporary BCIs are difficult to use. Most systems only work in highly controlled laboratory settings, require a high amount of training and concentration, have very limited control options, have low and variable information transfer rates, and effector motions are often slow, clumsy and sometimes unsuccessful. These drawbacks considerably limit their possibilities for transparency and incorporation into either the body schema or cognitive system which is essential for bodily and cognitive extension. Current BCIs can therefore only be seen as a weak or metaphorical extension of the human central nervous system. To increase their potential for cognitive extension, I give suggestions for improving the interface design of what I refer to as linguistic applications. (shrink)

Satisficing Consequentialism is often rejected as hopeless. Perhaps its greatest problem is that it risks condoning the gratuitous prevention of goodness above the baseline of what qualifies as "good enough". I propose a radical new willpower-based version of the view that avoids this problem, and that better fits with the motivation of avoiding an excessively demanding conception of morality. I further demonstrate how, by drawing on the resources of an independent theory of blameworthiness, we may obtain a principled specification of (...) what counts as "good enough". (shrink)

In the history of external information systems, the World Wide Web presents a significant change in terms of the accessibility and amount of available information. Constant access to various kinds of online information has consequences for the way we think, act and remember. Philosophers and cognitive scientists have recently started to examine the interactions between the human mind and the Web, mainly focussing on the way online information influences our biological memory systems. In this article, we use concepts from the (...) extended cognition and distributed cognition frameworks and from transactive memory theory to analyse the cognitive relations between humans and the Web. We first argue that while neither of these approaches neatly capture the nature of human-Web interactions, both offer useful concepts to describe aspects of such interactions. We then conceptualize relations between the Web and its users in terms of cognitive integration, arguing that most current Web applications are not deeply integrated and are better seen as a scaffold for memory and cognition. Some highly personalised applications accessed on wearable computing devices, however, may already have the capacity for deep integration. Finally, we draw out some of the epistemic implications of our cognitive analysis. (shrink)

Thought experiments involving The Matrix, brains-in-vats, or Cartesian demons have traditionally thought to describe skeptical possibilities. Chalmers has denied this, claiming that the simulations involved are real enough to at least sometimes defeat the skeptic. Through an examination of the meaning of kind terms in natural language I argue that, though the Chalmers view may be otherwise attractive, it is not an antidote to skepticism.

This paper falls into three parts. The first looks at wh-constructions, focussing on the so-called factual whs, ‘X knows where… ’, ‘when’, ‘who’, ‘what’ etc. I suggest, drawing on both linguistic considerations and evidence from developmental psychology, that these constructions take things as their objects, not propositions; and that this may be why they are learned before those taking sentential complements. The second part moves to the case of telling-wh: to constructions such as telling someone who is at the door. (...) This construction brings a very particular set of requirements, not just to tell the truth, but to tell all the relevant truths and nothing but. The third section, in a critical discussion of Katherine Hawley's work, argues that an account of trust and testimony focussing on the telling-wh construction brings better results than one focussed on the blander idea of assertion. (shrink)

So-called 'Frege cases' pose a challenge for anyone who would hope to treat the contents of beliefs (and similar mental states) as Russellian propositions: It is then impossible to explain people's behavior in Frege cases without invoking non-intentional features of their mental states, and doing that seems to undermine the intentionality of psychological explanation. In the present paper, I develop this sort of objection in what seems to me to be its strongest form, but then offer a response to it. (...) I grant that psychological explanation must invoke non-intentional features of mental states, but it is of crucial importance which such features must be referenced. -/- It emerges from a careful reading of Frege's own view that we need only invoke what I call 'formal' relations between mental states. I then claim that referencing such 'formal' relations within psychological explanation does not undermine its intentionality in the way that invoking, say, neurological features would. The central worry about this view is that either (a) 'formal' relations bring narrow content in through back door or (b) 'formal' relations end up doing all the explanatory work. Various forms of each worry are discussed. The crucial point, ultimately, is that the present strategy for responding to Frege cases is not available either to the 'psycho-Fregean', who would identify the content of a belief with its truth-value, nor even to someone who would identify the content of a belief with a set of possible worlds. It requires the sort of rich semantic structure that is distinctive of Russellian propositions. There is therefore no reason to suppose that the invocation of 'formal' relations threatens to deprive content of any work to do. (shrink)

Many consider Nozick’s “utility monster”—a being more efficient than ordinary people at converting resources into wellbeing, with no upper limit—to constitute a damning counterexample to utilitarianism. But our intuitions may be reversed by considering a variation in which the utility monster starts from a baseline status of massive suffering. This suggests a rethinking of the force of the original objection.

Progress may be made in resolving the tension between free will and determinism by analysis of the necessary conditions of freedom. It is of the essence that these conditions include causal and deterministic regularities. Furthermore, the human expression of free will is informed by understanding some of those regularities, and increments in that understanding have served to enhance freedom. When the possible character of a deterministic system based on physical theory is considered, it is judged that, far from implying the (...) elimination of human freedom, such a theory might simply set parameters for it; indeed knowledge of that system could again prove to be in some respects liberating. On the other hand, it is of the essence that the overarching biological framework is not a deterministic system and it foregrounds the behavioural flexibility of humans in being able to choose within a range of options and react to chance occurrences. Furthermore, an issue for determinism flows from the way in which randomness (e.g. using a true random number generator) and chance events could and do enter human life. Once the implications of that issue are fully understood, other elements fit comfortably together in our understanding of freely undertaken action: the contribution of reasons and causes; the fact that reasons are never sufficient to account for outcomes; the rationale for the attribution of praise and blame. (shrink)

In this very brief reflection, I argue against the suggestion that consciousness may be viewed as an emergent property of matter.

According to the Asymmetry, we’ve strong moral reason to prevent miserable lives from coming into existence, but no moral reason to bring happy lives into existence. This procreative asymmetry is often thought to be part of commonsense morality, however theoretically puzzling it might prove to be. I argue that this is a mistake. The Asymmetry is merely prima facie intuitive, and loses its appeal on further reflection. Mature commonsense morality recognizes no fundamental procreative asymmetry. It may recognize some superficially similar (...) theses, but we will see that they derive from more familiar principles, and are compatible with there being moral reason to bring happy lives into existence. (shrink)

Clarke and Beck assume that approximate number system representations should be assigned referents from our scientific ontology. However, many representations, both in perception and cognition, do not straightforwardly refer to such entities. If we reject Clarke and Beck's assumption, many possible contents for ANS representations besides number are compatible with the evidence Clarke and Beck cite.

These days the two most popular approaches to belief ascription are Millianism and Contextualism. The former approach is inconsistent with the existence of ordinary Frege cases, such as Lois believing that Superman flies while failing to believe that Clark Kent flies. The Millian holds that the only truth-conditionally relevant aspect of a proper name is its referent or extension. Contextualism, as I will define it for the purposes of this essay, includes all theories according to which ascriptions of the form (...) ‘S believes that a is F’ and ‘S believes that b is F’, where ‘a’ and ‘b’ are coreferential proper names, may, depending on the context, differ in truth-value even though in those very contexts each ascription relates the same believer to the very same proposition. What the two theories have in common is the claim that names are Millian. What separates the two theories is what they say about belief contexts. In this essay I prove that Millianism is true, Contextualism is true, or our intuitions regarding belief ascriptions are hopelessly inaccurate. As a consequence, my argument is a proof that either names and many general terms are Millian or our intuitions regarding belief ascriptions are hopelessly inaccurate. (shrink)

Tomasello and colleagues have offered various arguments to explain why apes find the comprehension of pointing difficult. They have argued that: (i) apes fail to understand communicative intentions; (ii) they fail to understand informative, cooperative communication, and (iii) they fail to track the common ground that pointing comprehension requires. In the course of a review of the literature on apes' production and comprehension of pointing, I reject (i) and (ii), and offer a qualified defence of (iii). Drawing on work on (...) expressive communication, I sketch an account of a mechanism by which ape gestural communication may proceed: the showing of expressive and naturally meaningful embodied behaviours. Such gestures are easily interpretable because they present rich evidence for a speaker's message. By contrast, pointing typically provides poor evidence for a speaker’s message, which must therefore be inferred from considerations in the interlocutors' common ground. This makes pointing comprehension comparatively difficult. (shrink)

The extent of confusion between symbols and that which is symbolised is examined across five institutional spheres. Religion is the institution most marked by confusion of this type; indeed in some respects the symbolic mes- sage of religion may be the extent of the substantive reality. On the other hand, the very existence of the nation state may be judged to depend upon the exercise of the human imagination; hence providing a source of instability which may lead to the excesses (...) of nationalism. In regard to social status, the main problematical element is a certain circularity: it is necessary to get peo- ple to exhibit differences in behaviour which are then used to justify or con- stitute the status differences themselves. In politics, the symbolism of left and right threatens to strangle creative thinking, while in education the tendency on all sides to orient towards public systems of measurement and grading undermines the claim that what is really important is pupil and student learn- ing. A social cost is being paid for the failure to recognise and, where possible, address the issues identified. (shrink)

Gareth Evans has argued that the existence of vague objects is logically precluded: The assumption that it is indeterminate whether some object a is identical to some object b leads to contradiction. I argue in reply that, although this is true—I thus defend Evans's argument, as he presents it—the existence of vague objects is not thereby precluded. An 'Indefinitist' need only hold that it is not logically required that every identity statement must have a determinate truth-value, not that some such (...) statements might actually fail to have a determinate truth-value. That makes Indefinitism a cousin of mathematical Intuitionism. (shrink)

Kadri Vihvelin, in "What time travelers cannot do" (Philos Stud 81: 315-330, 1996), argued that "no time traveler can kill the baby who in fact is her younger self, because (V1) "if someone would fail to do something, no matter how hard or how many times she tried, then she cannot do it", and (V2) if a time traveler tried to kill her baby self, she would always fail. Theodore Sider (Philos Stud 110: 115-138, 2002) criticized Vihvelin's argument, and Ira (...) Kiourti (Philos Stud 139: 343-352, 2008) criticized both Vihvelin's argument and Sider's critique. I present a critique of Vihvelin's argument different from both Sider's and Kiourti's critiques: I argue in a novel way that both V1 and V2 are false. Since Vihvelin's argument might be understood as providing a challenge to the possibility of time travel, if my critique succeeds then time travel survives such a challenge unscathed. (shrink)

A current focus of legal debate is the proper role of the courts in the interpretation of statutes and the Constitution. Are judges to look solely to the naked language of an enactment, then logically deduce its application in simple syllogistic fashion, as legal formalists had purported to do? Or may the inquiry into meaning be informed by perhaps unbridled and unaccountable judicial notions of public policy, using legal realism to best promote the general welfare? Judge Posner considers the concepts (...) of formalism and realism to be meaningful and useful in common law reasoning but in interpretation to be useless and, worse, forbidden. He analogizes unclear "orders" from a legislature to garbled battlefield communications, and argues that the duty of the recipient of those orders (the judge) is to advance as best he can the enterprise set on foot by the superiors. Case studies elaborate this thesis. Judicial decisions interpreting fixed texts, Judge Posner concludes, can be neither logically correct or incorrect, philosophically sound or unsound, until the ultimate jurist, time, has adjudged their results. (shrink)

In the world according to Hume, people are complicated creatures, with convoluted, often contradictory characters. Consider, for example, Hume's controversial assessment of Charles I: "The character of this prince, as that of most men, if not of all men, was mixed .... To consider him in the most favourable light, it may be affirmed, that his dignity was free from pride, his humanity from weakness, his bravery from rashness, his temperance from austerity, his frugality from avarice .... To speak the (...) most harshly of him, we may affirm, that many of his good qualities were attended with some latent frailty, which, though seemingly inconsiderable, was able, when seconded by the extreme malevolence of his fortune, to disappoint them of all their influence: His beneficent disposition was clouded by a manner not very gracious; his virtue was tinctured with superstition; his good sense was disfigured by a deference to persons of a capacity inferior to his own; and his moderate temper exempted him not from hasty and precipitate resolutions." This sketch shows Charles in all his complexities, with his virtues, near virtues, and contradicting virtues. I have quoted it at length because it is hard to summarize without losing the subtleties that lie within it. Hume's moral theory is based fundamentally on judgments of character, 2 so those subtleties are important to his view. The character sketches that pervade the.. (shrink)

Critical examination of possible socio-political Anthropocene consequences leads to the conclusion that the sustainable development concept is not an adequate answer for current threats and risks. An effort to implement the sustainable development concept can even make climate changes and other forms of nature devastation worse, as it turns out on ongoing greenhouse gas concentrations growth in the atmosphere, despite obligations that result to all states of the world from Paris agreement. The climate change rate and range of plant and (...) animal species extinction confirms J. Lovelock´s thesis that humanity does not have enough time and, most likely, enough sources to implement the sustainable development concept and, as B. Latour points out, we do not have a big enough planet. Therefore, it is necessary to think about a retreat – to areas that are likely to stay livable even after the sea level rise and desertification; it is necessary to think about how to move millions of people from areas flooded by sea or parched by desert; to think about a change of our current way of life, of production of food and energy so that not only humankind as animal species would continue, but also our civilization and its technological and organizational knowledge. Even basic theses based on this concept indicate a need to reassess most political concepts, mainly the concepts of sovereignty, citizenship, but also those of freedom of movement and residence, freedom of business and consume, which work as fundamentals of the neoliberal economic-political system. Retreat expects complex and organized migration to beforehand chosen and arranged areas. Opposite to retreat is mass escape chaos that reduces human relations to fight for survival. As J. Lovelock proposed in his sustainable retreat concept, relocating people from areas affected by climate changes to climate oases would mean that rich northern countries give up their current, in fact, isolationistic politics of refusing climate migrants. Therefore, the concept of sustainable retreat requires much greater competence and especially willingness to cooperate not only nationally, but also internationally and globally, in addition to what humanity is capable of doing today. (shrink)

For over 20 years, Jaegwon Kim’s Causal Exclusion Argument has stood as the major hurdle for non-reductive physicalism. If successful, Kim’s argument would show that the high-level properties posited by non-reductive physicalists must either be identical with lower-level physical properties, or else must be causally inert. The most prominent objection to the Causal Exclusion Argument—the so-called Overdetermination Objection—points out that there are some notions of causation that are left untouched by the argument. If causation is simply counterfactual dependence, for example, (...) then the Causal Exclusion Argument fails. Thus, much of the existing debate turns on the issue of which account of causation is appropriate. In this paper, however, I take a bolder approach and argue that Kim’s preferred version of the Causal Exclusion Argument fails no matter what account one gives of causation. Any notion of causation that is strong enough to support the premises of the argument is too strong to play the role required in the logic of the argument. I also consider a second version of the Causal Exclusion Argument, and suggest that although it may avoid the problems of the first version, it begs the question against a particular form of non-reductive physicalism, namely emergentism. (shrink)

In recent times we have seen an explosion in the amount of attention paid to the conscious brain from scientists and philosophers alike. One message that has emerged loud and clear from scientific work is that the brain is a dynamical system whose operations unfold in time. Any theory of consciousness that is going to be physically realistic must take account of the intrinsic nature of neurons and brain activity. At the same time a long discussion on consciousness among philosophers (...) has resulted in our distinguishing several kinds of consciousness. So when we ask where the place of consciousness is in nature we may mean several different things. In this chapter I will argue that it is plausible that all of the kinds of consciousness turn out to be nothing but patterns of synchronized neural activity in various frequencies against a dynamically changing chemical background. (shrink)

In The Boundary Stones of Thought, Rumfitt defends classical logic against challenges from intuitionistic mathematics and vagueness, using a semantics of pre-topologies on possibilities, and a topological semantics on predicates, respectively. These semantics are suggestive but the characterizations of negation face difficulties that may undermine their usefulness in Rumfitt’s project.

Recent scientific approaches to aesthetics include evolutionary theories about the origin of art behavior, psychological investigations into human aesthetic experience and preferences, and neurophysiological explorations of the mechanisms underlying art experience. Critics of these approaches argue that they are ultimately irrelevant to a philosophical aesthetics because they cannot help us understand the distinctive conceptual basis and normativity of our art experience. This criticism may seem plausible given the piecemeal nature of these scientific approaches, but a more comprehensive naturalistic framework can (...) help us understand the conceptual basis and normativity of art. In particular, the ecology of art, an understanding of how individuals interact within particular environments, can help us understand the engineered art niches in which we create and experience art. Each niche is associated with a particular deme, or set of individuals that interact within that niche, and a set of cognitive, epistemic, and pedagogical technologies that form the conceptual basis of a niche-dependent normativity. This is to be contrasted with the niche-independent normativity revealed by many of the scientific approaches. This framework, and the conflicting streams of normativity it reveals, allows us to better understand conflicts in normativity and the implausibility of unequivocal and universal normative principles. (shrink)

The pantheist ontology of Baruch Spinoza (b.1632 – d.1677) is an attempt to deny the accountability of political evil. -/- Spinoza’s instinct for statist control and his distrust of the common man are displayed in Theological-Political Treatise (published 1670). His masterwork, Ethics (published posthumously in 1677), is a bold attempt (in the guise of ontology) to classify minds and bodies as attributes of the State. -/- In Ethics, Spinoza ‘outlaws’ any vantage point from which we can address or protest the (...) kind of ‘perfect power’ -- and its attendant evils -- that constitute the essence and existence of the State. (shrink)

Newman’s zips act as a kind of intervention or temporal event that differentiates the canvas, preventing Being from falling into the anonymous and impersonal il y a. The zip is what might be described as ecstatic temporality (ecstatic from the Ancient Greek ek “out” + histanai “to place, cause to stand out”). Time not only gives sense or meaning to Being, it marks the emergence of sensation, the physical materiality of something or someone.

Reading, taking notes, and holding study sessions are all examples of routine, habitual study behaviors that pupils engage in to fulfill the learning objective. This study was conducted to the two hundred-five (n=205) grade 6 pupils at Malitbog 1 District, Division of Bukidnon, School Year 2022-2023. It attempted to answer the level of pupils’ study habits and academic performance and determine the significant relationship between the study habits and academic performance. The study utilized the descriptive-correlational research design with documentary analysis (...) and used an adapted and modified questionnaire to gather the necessary data to answer the specific questions of the study. Purposive sampling was employed to determine the respondents. Mean, Standard Deviation, Frequency, Percentage and Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient or Pearson r were used as statistical tools. Results revealed that pupils’ overall level of study habits was high while their overall academic performance was at very satisfactory level. Significant correlation was registered between pupils’ study habits and their academic performance. Thus, teachers, parents and stakeholders may collaborate with each other to create and conduct activities that will continue to enhance and improve the pupils study habits to improve their academic performance. (shrink)