Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

The Warner Books back cover proclaims: In the tradition of Oliver Sachʼs [sic] bestselling *The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat...* The manner and misspellingsignify that Cytowic himself had nothing to do with such publishing hucksterism. However, one thing is clear upon reading this book: Richard Cytowic, M.D., is no Oliver Sacks. Though, as will be seen, there is much in here to recommend itself, his stilted reproduction of conversations which or may not have taken place and (...) his CreativeFiction 100 characterizations (i.e., Dr. Wood's continual inhalation of smoke or food) strike the experienced reader as painfully contrived, as though Cytowic were doing hislevel best to imitate Sacks and reach that always-elusive wider audience. (shrink)

Freud, kendini Kopernik ve Darwin’in de dahil olduğu merkezsizleştirici düşünce hareketi içinde görmekteydi. Ünlü bir pasajında, psikanalizin, “egoya kendi evinin bile efendisi olmadığını, ancak aklında, bilinçten uzak bir biçimde olup bitenlerin kıt bilgisi ile yetinmesi gerektiğini kanıtlamaya çabaladığını” söyler. Kendimizin önemli olduğu hissi veya özdenetim duygumuz, gerçekten kendimize karşı şeffaf olduğumuz inancına mı dayanmaktadır? Bilinç dışının keşfi neden arzularımızın keşfine değersizlik eklemek zorundadır?Freud thought of himself as part of the same “decentering” movement of thought to which Copernicus and Darwin belonged. (...) In a famous passage, he says that psychoanalysis “seeks to prove to the ego that it is not even master in its own house, but must content itself with scanty information of what is going on unconsciously in its mind.” Does our sense of our importance, or our capacity for self-control, really depend on the belief that we are transparent to ourselves? Why should the discovery of the unconscious add humiliation to the discovery of the passions? (shrink)

Propositional logics in general, considered as a set of sentences, can be undecidable even if they have “nice” representations, e.g., are given by a calculus. Even decidable propositional logics can be computationally complex (e.g., already intuitionistic logic is PSPACE-complete). On the other hand, finite-valued logics are computationally relatively simple—at worst NP. Moreover, finite-valued semantics are simple, and general methods for theorem proving exist. This raises the question to what extent and under what circumstances propositional logics represented in various ways can (...) be approximated by finite-valued logics. It is shown that the minimal m-valued logic for which a given calculus is strongly sound can be calculated. It is also investigated under which conditions propositional logics can be characterized as the intersection of (effectively given) sequences of finite-valued logics. (shrink)

这是既惊人的,适合这个巨大的,行话满载(这本书真的需要一个词汇表!),大量的学术工作已成为畅销书在世界上的教育。一个人必须专心学习行话,然后翻阅551页的文本和238页的笔记。M,我们一次又一次地被告 知,这只是一个即将发生的事情的轮廓! 虽然他严厉批评了三个运动的过激行为,但从非常自由的精神观点来看,这是一种解构的、新时代神秘主义和后现代对宗教、哲学和行为科学的解释,没有最坏的德顿,下午和不结盟运动的行话,狂热的平均主义和反科学的反知 识主义。 他详细分析了哲学、心理学、社会学和宗教的各种世界观,揭露了哲学、心理学、社会学和宗教等不同世界观的致命减少缺陷,但如今他分析的大部分来源几乎毫无关系。 他们使用的术语和概念,已经过时的,当他研究和写作20年前。人们不得不浏览无数页的行话——关于哈贝马斯、康德、爱默生、荣格et.al。去珍珠 你得到一个了不起的样本,糟糕的写作,混乱和过时的想法和过时的行话。 如果一个人有一个良好的当前教育,读这本书(和大多数关于人类行为的写作)是双重痛苦的。 痛苦,因为它是如此的折磨和困惑,然后再次当你意识到它是多么简单与现代心理学和哲学。术语和想法是可怕的混乱和过时的(但在威尔伯自己的分析比在他的来源更不然)。 这本书和它的大部分来源是可能的心理文本,虽然大多数作者没有意识到这一点。它是关于人类行为和推理的,关于我们为什么以我们的方式思考和行动,以及将来我们如何改变。但是(就像直到最近所有的这类讨论一样),没 有一个解释是真正的解释,因此它们不能洞察人类的行为。没有人讨论所涉及的心理机制。这就像描述汽车是如何工作的by讨论方向盘和金属和油漆没有任何了解的发动机,燃料或传动系。事实上,像大多数老人们的行为解释 一样,这里引用的文字和威尔伯的文法通常更有趣,因为他们接受(和忽略!)作为解释,以及推理的种类,而不是实际内容。 如果一个人对哲学、认知和进化心理学有一套,大部分都是古老的。像几乎每个人都一样(学者和公众一样。g g.,看看我对丹奈特的自由进化和其他书籍的评论,他不明白宗教和伦理的基本知识——事实上所有的人类行为,都是被编程到我们的基因中。当他写许多书时,一场了解自己的革命正在发生,它经过他。 那些希望从现代两个系统的观点来看为人类行为建立一个全面的最新框架的人,可以查阅我的书《路德维希的哲学、心理学、Min d和语言的逻辑结构》维特根斯坦和约翰·西尔的《第二部》(2019年)。那些对我更多的作品感兴趣的人可能会看到《会说话的猴子——一个末日星球上的哲学、心理学、科学、宗教和政治——文章和评论2006-20 19年第3次(2019年)和自杀乌托邦幻想21篇世纪4日 (2019).

The 'substitution argument' purports to demonstrate the falsity of Russellian accounts of belief-ascription by observing that, e.g., these two sentences: (LC) Lois believes that Clark can fly. (LS) Lois believes that Superman can fly. could have different truth-values. But what is the basis for that claim? It seems widely to be supposed, especially by Russellians, that it is simply an 'intuition', one that could then be 'explained away'. And this supposition plays an especially important role in Jennifer Saul's defense of (...) Russellianism, based upon the existence of an allegedly similar contrast between these two sentences: (PC) Superman is more popular than Clark. (PS) Superman is more popular than Superman. The latter contrast looks pragmatic. But then, Saul asks, why shouldn't we then say the same about the former? The answer to this question is that the two cases simply are not similar. In the case of (PC) and (PS), we have only the facts that these strike us differently, and that people will sometimes say things like (PC), whereas they will never say things like (PS). By contrast, there is an argument to be given that (LS) can be true even if (LC) is false, and this argument does not appeal to anyone's 'intuitions'. The main goal of the paper is to present such a version of the substitution argument, building upon the treatment of the Fregan argument against Russellian accounts of belief itself in "Solving Frege's Puzzle". A subsidiary goal is to contribute to the growing literature arguing that 'intuitions' simply do not play the sort of role in philosophical inquiry that so-called 'experimental philosophers' have supposed they do. (shrink)

In Mind and World, John McDowell argues against the view that perceptual representation is non-conceptual. The central worry is that this view cannot offer any reasonable account of how perception bears rationally upon belief. I argue that this worry, though sensible, can be met, if we are clear that perceptual representation is, though non-conceptual, still in some sense 'assertoric': Perception, like belief, represents things as being thus and so.

The purpose of this note is to present a strong form of the liar paradox. It is strong because the logical resources needed to generate the paradox are weak, in each of two senses. First, few expressive resources required: conjunction, negation, and identity. In particular, this form of the liar does not need to make any use of the conditional. Second, few inferential resources are required. These are: (i) conjunction introduction; (ii) substitution of identicals; and (iii) the inference: From ¬(p (...) ∧ p), infer ¬ p. It is, interestingly enough, also essential to the argument that the ‘strong’ form of the diagonal lemma be used: the one that delivers a term λ such that we can prove: λ = ¬ T(⌈λ⌉); rather than just a sentence Λ for which we can prove: Λ ≡ ¬T(⌈Λ⌉). The truth-theoretic principles used to generate the paradox are these: ¬(S ∧ T(⌈¬S⌉); and ¬(¬S ∧ ¬T(⌈¬S⌉). These are classically equivalent to the two directions of the T-scheme, but they are intuitively weaker. The lesson I would like to draw is: There can be no consistent solution to the Liar paradox that does not involve abandoning truth-theoretic principles that should be every bit as dear to our hearts as the T-scheme. So we shall have to learn to live with the Liar, one way or another. (shrink)

In his paper “Flaws of Formal Relationism”, Mahrad Almotahari argues against the sort of response to Frege's Puzzle I have defended elsewhere, which he dubs ‘Formal Relationism’. Almotahari argues that, because of its specifically formal character, this view is vulnerable to objections that cannot be raised against the otherwise similar Semantic Relationism due to Kit Fine. I argue in response that Formal Relationism has neither of the flaws Almotahari claims to identify.

As is well-known, the formal system in which Frege works in his Grundgesetze der Arithmetik is formally inconsistent, Russell’s Paradox being derivable in it.This system is, except for minor differ...

Some years ago, Machery, Mallon, Nichols, and Stich reported the results of experiments that reveal, they claim, cross-cultural differences in speaker’s ‘intuitions’ about Kripke’s famous Gödel–Schmidt case. Several authors have suggested, however, that the question they asked their subjects is ambiguous between speaker’s reference and semantic reference. Machery and colleagues have since made a number of replies. It is argued here that these are ineffective. The larger lesson, however, concerns the role that first-order philosophy should, and more importantly should not, (...) play in the design of such experiments and in the evaluation of their results. (shrink)

Contemporary Western societies are obsessed with the “obesity epidemic,” dieting, and fitness. Fat people violate the Western conscience by violating a thinness norm. In virtue of violating the thinness norm, fat people suffer many varied consequences. Is their suffering morally permissible, or even obligatory? In this paper, I argue that the answer is no. I examine contemporary philosophical accounts of oppression and draw largely on the work of Sally Haslanger to generate a set of conditions sufficient for some phenomena to (...) count as oppression, and I illustrate the account’s value using the example of gender oppression. I then apply the account to fat people, examine empirical evidence, and argue that the suffering of fat people counts as oppression. (shrink)

The main focus of my comments is the role played in Dickie's view by the idea that "the mind has a need to represent things outside itself". But there are also some remarks about her (very interesting) suggestion that descriptive names can sometimes fail to refer to the object that satisfies the associated description.

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)

Hartry Field has suggested that we should adopt at least a methodological deflationism: [W]e should assume full-fledged deflationism as a working hypothesis. That way, if full-fledged deflationism should turn out to be inadequate, we will at least have a clearer sense than we now have of just where it is that inflationist assumptions ... are needed. I argue here that we do not need to be methodological deflationists. More pre-cisely, I argue that we have no need for a disquotational truth-predicate; (...) that the word true, in ordinary language, is not a disquotational truth-predicate; and that it is not at all clear that it is even possible to introduce a disquotational truth-predicate into ordinary language. If so, then we have no clear sense how it is even possible to be a methodological deflationist. My goal here is not to convince a committed deflationist to abandon his or her position. My goal, rather, is to argue, contrary to what many seem to think, that reflection on the apparently trivial character of T-sentences should not incline us to deflationism. (shrink)

Aristotle argued that you need some wealth to live well. The Stoics argued that you could live well with or without wealth. But the Cynics argued that wealth is a hinderance. For the Cynics, a good life consists in self-sufficiency, or being able to rule and help yourself. You accomplish this by living simply and naturally, and by subjecting yourself to rigorous philosophical exercises. Cynics confronted people to get them to abandon extraneous possessions and positions of power to live better. (...) And while the Cynics were experts in living in this way, their ascetic lifestyles made their message curious to some audiences. This paper reflects on Cynic ascetic practices and the ways others perceived them. (shrink)

The paper argues, as against Thau and Caplan, that the traditional interpretation that Frege abandoned his earlier views about identity and identity--statements is correct.

Why should one think Frege's definition of the ancestral correct? It can be proven to be extensionally correct, but the argument uses arithmetical induction, and that seems to undermine Frege's claim to have justified induction in purely logical terms. I discuss such circularity objections and then offer a new definition of the ancestral intended to be intensionally correct; its extensional correctness then follows without proof. This new definition can be proven equivalent to Frege's without any use of arithmetical induction. This (...) proves, without any use of arithmetical induction, that Frege's definition is extensionally correct and so answers the circularity objections. (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.

Maybe the most important argument in David Chalmers’s monumental book Constructing the World is the one he calls the ‘Frontloading Argument’, which is used in Chapter 4 to argue for the book’s central thesis, A Priori Scrutability. And, at first blush, the Frontloading Argument looks very strong. I argue here, however, that it is incapable of securing the conclusion it is meant to establish.

A reply to two responses to an earlier paper, "A Liar Paradox".

Øystein Linnebo has recently shown that the existence of successors cannot be proven in predicative Frege arithmetic, using Frege’s definitions of arithmetical notions. By contrast, it is shown here that the existence of successor can be proven in ramified predicative Frege arithmetic.

John MacFarlane has made relativism popular again. Focusing just on his original discussion, I argue that the data he uses to motivate the position do not, in fact, motivatie it at all. Many of the points made here have since been made, independently, by Hermann Cappelen and John Hawthorne, in their book Relativism and Monadic Truth.

A close look at Frege's proof in "Foundations of Arithmetic" that every number has a successor. The examination reveals a surprising gap in the proof, one that Frege would later fill in "Basic Laws of Arithmetic".

Tarihte herhalde çok az soru Tanrı’nın varlığı sorusu kadar sık sorulmuş, çok yanıtlanmış ve verilen birbirinden farklı onca yanıta rağmen kesin bir sonuca ulaştırılamayıp tartışılmaya devam etmiştir. Yine de geçmişe dönüp baktığımızda bu soruya verilen farklı yanıtların farklı uygarlıkların inşa edilmesine, bazılarının yıkılmasına, acımasız çatışmalara ve her şeye rağmen kucaklaşmalara da vesile olduğunu görüyoruz. Tanrı var mı? Varsa onu nasıl bilebiliriz? Tanrı yoksa her şey mubah mı? İnsan aklı ilahi olanı kavrayabilir mi? Tanrı’nın varlığı ahlaklı olmanın şartı mı? Evren akıllı (...) bir tasarımcının imzasını taşıyor mu? Bu kitapta felsefeci William David Beck, bu sorulara tarihte verilen yanıtları ve bu konudaki tartışmaları ele alarak meselenin genel ve tarihsel bir tablosunu bize sunuyor. Platon, Aristoteles, Marcus Aurelius gibi Eski Yunan ve Roma düşünürlerinden Anselmus, Thomas Aquinas, Augustinus ve Yahudi-Hıristiyan geleneğine, Doğu’nun bilgelerine, İbni Rüşd, Fârâbî ve Gazzâlî gibi İslam düşünürlerinden Alvin Plantinga, Graham Oppy, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Max Tegmark gibi Batılı modern ilahiyatçılara, bilim insanlarına ve Yeni Ateizm hareketine kadar uzanan bir çizgide “Tanrı var mı?” sorusuna verilen çeşitli yanıtları ve bu yanıtlara sunulan akılcı gerekçeleri ortaya koyarak soruya felsefece bir yanıt vermenin nasıl bir iş olduğunu da gösteriyor. (shrink)

The monograph summarizes energy and environmental aspects of biofuel production from waste in the context of rural development; institutional aspects of the formation of a “green economy” in the agricultural sector are considered; attention is paid to energy auditing as a form of implementing the state policy on energy saving and energy efficiency. The monograph includes the results obtained in the implementation of the state scientific work “Development of the concept of ensuring energy security and energy efficiency as priority areas (...) for sustainable development of rural areas” (0121U109443), 2021-2022. For researchers, agriculture specialists, ecologists, economists, entrepreneurs, teachers, students, graduate students. (shrink)

The acceptance of causal closure has had a profoundly limiting effect on the philosophical treatment of sui generis mental causation in recent decades. Philosophical treatments of special divine action have been likewise hampered by a widespread commitment to closure. If fundamental reality is as closure tells us it is, then nonphysical minds—human and divine— are either causally impotent or redundant. In this paper, I reject this limitation as baseless. Specifically, I will show how Hempel’s dilemma poses a far greater challenge (...) when applied to a causal closure principle than it did to the task of defining physicalism. Reponses to the dilemma can be used to disambiguate closure, but not without significant cost. In light of Hempel’s dilemma, there is no conception of closure that can do all of the following: rule out sui generis mental causation, have a reasonable chance of being true, and avoid problematic circularity. At the end of the day, I maintain that closure, properly understood, is, or ought to be, just one methodological stance among many. If this is correct, it is a stance that a theist can freely reject. (shrink)

Erik Wielenberg recently invoked the parent-child analogy in an argument against Christian theism. The argument relies on the claim that a loving parent would never allow her child to feel abandoned in the midst of what feels like gratuitous suffering. In this paper, I offer three clear counterexamples to Wielenberg’s central premise. At the same time, a successful counterexample does not a robust theology of suffering make. To that end, and with a careful eye towards anti-theodical concerns, I defend the (...) need for a more proactive Christian philosophical examination of the role of suffering in a meaningful life. (shrink)

In 2022, at an interdisciplinary conference on Creation and the Imago Dei, Biola psychologist Liz Hall posed a powerful challenge to the philosophers and theologians in the room. In the face of the “already and not yet” nature of Christian theology, she put forth the need for a “theology of tension.” Over and over again, while reading Biblical Philosophy, I was reminded of this challenge. The features Johnson puts forth as emblematic of Hebraic Philosophy can help in this respect, in (...) two clear ways: First, retrospectively, Johnson’s categories are useful for diagnosing both the philosophical missteps targeted by critiques of theodicy and the features held in common by some of the more successful accounts. Second, going forward, the convictions and modes of argument central to Hebraic philosophy may help guide future philosophical responses to suffering. In general, I believe that the philosophical problems related to suffering are especially well-suited to responses that are pixelated, networked, mysterianist, creationist, transdemographic, and ritualist. Perhaps Hebraic philosophy can succeed where Hellenist philosophy has struggled: in addressing the tension that arises from the experience of suffering in a world governed by a loving, providential, sovereign God. While I am largely in favor of Johnson’s Hebraic philosophy, I will conclude by breaking from his view in one important respect. Johnson presents the Biblical view as substantially contrasting with the correspondence theory affirmed by many contemporary philosophers. I will end by pushing back on this claim. On Johnson’s own account, the Hebraic notion of truth is determined with reference to the divinely designed order. I propose that we understand the Hebraic notion of truth as degrees of correspondence to this divinely ordered, absolute reality. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I examine the implications of the problem of mental causation and what David Chalmers has dubbed the “ hard problem of consciousness” for competing accounts of the mind. I begin, in Chapter One, with a critical analysis of Jaegwon Kim’s Physicalism, or Something Near Enough. (2005) There, I maintain that Kim’s ontology cannot adequately address both the problem of mental causation and the “ hard problem of consciousness.” In Chapter Two, I examine the causal pairing problem for (...) substance dualism. I demonstrate both that the substance dualist can respond to the argument at no great cost, and that the pairing problem applies, with equal force, to the irreducible qualia posited on Kim’s account. Chapters Three and Four are devoted to what I take to be the central argument against any kind of dualism: the causal exclusion argument. In Chapter Three, I examine dualistic responses to the exclusion argument that grant the causal closure of the physical world. I note that these responses, though technically adequate, are nevertheless theoretically unpalatable. In addition to requiring the dualist to adopt unconventional attitudes towards causation, responses of this variety also have the unfortunate result of rendering libertarian freedom impossible. Finally, in Chapter Four, I turn my attention to the question of causal closure. I maintain that the causal closure of the physical world, though widely affirmed, is nevertheless extraordinarily difficult to support. In light of Hempel’s Dilemma, causal closure is either false, compatible with dualistic interaction, or unacceptably stipulative. There is, I maintain, no causal closure principle up to the tasks required by the causal exclusion argument. For that reason, I conclude that the dualist ought not to worry about causal closure. (shrink)

Much of the recent philosophical discussion about free will has been focused on whether compatibilists can adequately defend how a determined agent could exercise the type of free will that would enable the agent to be morally responsible in what has been called the basic desert sense :5–24, 1994; Fischer in Four views on free will, Wiley, Hoboken, 2007; Vargas in Four views on free will, Wiley, Hoboken, 2007; Vargas in Philos Stud, 144:45–62, 2009). While we agree with Derk Pereboom (...) and others that the compatibilist’s burden should be properly understood as providing a compelling account of how a determined agent could be morally responsible in the basic desert sense, the exact nature of this burden has been rendered somewhat unclear by the fact that there has been no definitive account given as to what the basic desert sense of moral responsibility amounts to. In Sect. 1 we set out to clarify the compatibilist’s burden by presenting our account of basic desert moral responsibility—which we call retributivist desert moral responsibility for purposes of clarity—and explain why it is of central philosophical and practical importance to the free will debate. In Sect. 2 we employ a thought experiment to illustrate the kind of difficulty that compatibilists of any stripe are likely to encounter in attempting to explain how determined agents can exercise the kind of free will needed for retributivist desert moral responsibility. (shrink)

Philosophers of science turned to historical case studies in part in response to Thomas Kuhn's insistence that such studies can transform the philosophy of science. In this issue Joseph Pitt argues that the power of case studies to instruct us about scientific methodology and epistemology depends on prior philosophical commitments, without which case studies are not philosophically useful. Here I reply to Pitt, demonstrating that case studies, properly deployed, illustrate styles of scientific work and modes of argumentation that are not (...) well handled by currently standard philosophical analyses. I illustrate these claims with exemplary findings from case studies dealing with exploratory experimentation and with interdisciplinary cooperation across sciences to yield multiple independent means of access to theoretical entities. The latter cases provide examples of ways that scientists support claims about theoretical entities that are not available in work performed within a single discipline. They also illustrate means of correcting systematic biases that stem from the commitments of each discipline taken separately. These findings illustrate the transformative power of case study methods, allow us to escape from the horns of Pitt's "dilemma of case studies," and vindicate some of the post-Kuhn uses to which case studies have been put. (shrink)

Several variants of Lewis's Best System Account of Lawhood have been proposed that avoid its commitment to perfectly natural properties. There has been little discussion of the relative merits of these proposals, and little discussion of how one might extend this strategy to provide natural property-free variants of Lewis's other accounts, such as his accounts of duplication, intrinsicality, causation, counterfactuals, and reference. We undertake these projects in this paper. We begin by providing a framework for classifying and assessing the variants (...) of the Best System Account. We then evaluate these proposals, and identify the most promising candidates. We go on to develop a proposal for systematically modifying Lewis's other accounts so that they, too, avoid commitment to perfectly natural properties. We conclude by briefly considering a different route one might take to developing natural property-free versions of Lewis's other accounts, drawing on recent work by Williams. (shrink)

Biological evolution is a complex blend of ever changing structural stability, variability and emergence of new phe- notypes, niches, ecosystems. We wish to argue that the evo- lution of life marks the end of a physics world view of law entailed dynamics. Our considerations depend upon dis- cussing the variability of the very ”contexts of life”: the in- teractions between organisms, biological niches and ecosys- tems. These are ever changing, intrinsically indeterminate and even unprestatable: we do not know ahead of (...) time the ”niches” which constitute the boundary conditions on selec- tion. More generally, by the mathematical unprestatability of the ”phase space”, no laws of mo- tion can be formulated for evolution. We call this radical emergence, from life to life. The purpose of this paper is the integration of variation and diversity in a sound concep- tual frame and situate unpredictability at a novel theoretical level, that of the very phase space. Our argument will be carried on in close comparisons with physics and the mathematical constructions of phase spaces in that discipline. The role of symmetries as invariant preserving transformations will allow us to under- stand the nature of physical phase spaces and to stress the differences required for a sound biological theoretizing. In this frame, we discuss the novel notion of ”enablement”. Life lives in a web of enablement and radical emergence. This will restrict causal analyses to differential cases. Mutations or other causal differ- ences will allow us to stress that ”non conservation princi- ples” are at the core of evolution, in contrast to physical dynamics, largely based on conservation principles as sym- metries. Critical transitions, the main locus of symmetry changes in physics, will be discussed, and lead to ”extended criticality” as a conceptual frame for a better understanding of the living state of matter. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework that will help in understanding and evaluating, along social and ethical lines, the issue of killing day-old male chicks and two alternative directions of responsible innovations to solve this issue. The following research questions are addressed: Why is the killing of day-old chicks morally problematic? Are the proposed alternatives morally sound? To what extent do the alternatives lead to responsible innovation? The conceptual framework demonstrates clearly that there is a (...) moral “lock-in”, and why the killing of day-old chicks is indeed an issue. Furthermore, it is shown that both alternative directions address some important objections with regard to the killing of day-old chicks, but that they also raise new dilemmas. It also becomes clear that the framework enables and secures anticipation, reflection, deliberation with and responsiveness to stakeholders, the four dimensions of responsible innovation, in a structured way. (shrink)

Philosophers often suggest that their theories of free will are supported by our phenomenology. Just as their theories conflict, their descriptions of the phenomenology of free will often conflict as well. We suggest that this should motivate an effort to study the phenomenology of free will in a more systematic way that goes beyond merely the introspective reports of the philosophers themselves. After presenting three disputes about the phenomenology of free will, we survey the (limited) psychological research on the experiences (...) relevant to the philosophical debates and then describe some pilot studies of our own with the aim of encouraging further research. The data seem to support compatibilist descriptions of the phenomenology more than libertarian descriptions. We conclude that the burden is on libertarians to find empirical support for their more demanding metaphysical theories with their more controversial phenomenological claims. (shrink)

Two attitudes are possible: one, that the world is an absolute jungle and that the exercise of coercive power by rulers is only a manifestation of this; and the other, that it is both necessary and right that there should be this exercise of power, that through it the world is much less of a jungle than it could possibly be without it, so that one should in principle be glad of the existence of such power, and only take exception (...) to its unjust exercise. (shrink)

A gas in a box is perhaps the most important model system studied in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Usually, studies focus on the gas, whereas the box merely serves as an idealized confinement. The present article focuses on the box as the central object and develops a thermodynamic theory by treating the geometric degrees of freedom of the box as the degrees of freedom of a thermodynamic system. Applying standard mathematical methods to the thermody- namics of an empty box allows (...) equations with the same structure as those of cosmology and classical and quantum mechanics to be derived. The simple model system of an empty box is shown to have interesting connections to classical mechanics, special relativity, and quantum field theory. (shrink)

While it seems to be evident that the vision of the eternal return of the same is the solution to the riddle mentioned in "On the vision and the riddle," exactly what constitutes the riddle is anything but clear. Li ke all good riddles the solution demands a paradigm shift. Nietzsche's riddle is solved by a radical rethinking of the concept of time, from a straight line to a circle. I give a detailed account of how Nietzsche's riddle is formulated (...) in such a way tha t the eternal return of the same is the only possible solution. (shrink)

The question of the cognitive role of fictionality is this: what is the correct cognitive attitude to take to p, when it is fictional that p? We began by considering one answer to this question, implicit in the work of Kendall Walton, that the correct response to a fictional proposition is to imagine that proposition. However, this approach is silent in cases of fictional incompleteness, where neither p nor its negation are fictional. We argue that that Waltonians should embrace a (...) pluralistic account of the cognitive role of fictional incompleteness: in some cases of fictional incompleteness, we are permitted to resolve the incompleteness during our engagement with the target fiction, and in other cases, we are obliged not to resolve the incompleteness. But though pluralism is accommodated by Walton’s wider account of fictionality, it puts tension on his motivating idea that fictionality stands to the imagination as truth stands to belief. And so we develop a rival conception of the cognitive role of fictionality that is built around a different analogy: on this evidentialist approach, (known) fictionality stands to the imagination as evidence stands to credence. (shrink)

This study is a phenomenological inquiry into several relatively unexplored phenomena, including certain key methodological issues. It seeks to elicit and explicate the grounds of free-fantasy variation, which Husserl insists contains his “fundamental methodological insight” since it articulates “the fundamental form of all particular transcendental methods…” In the course of pursuing the full sense of this method and its grounds, the essay also uncovers the origins and eventual presence of “self” and explores the multiple connections among self, mental life, embodiment (...) and the surrounding world. To that end, it is necessary to take seriously Husserl’s otherwise odd declaration that “‘feigning’ [‘Fiktion’] makes up the vital element of phenomenology as of every other eidetic science…”, and thus that every philosopher must “fertilize” his or her “fantasy” through works of art and history as well as other areas and practices of human life. The essay offers an in-depth probing of several striking but largely unexplored phenomena: exemplifying and possibilizing, and concludes with an exploration of one of the most pervasive themes in phenomenological inquiry: intersubjectivity. (shrink)

Se analizan las principales propuestas ontológicas con respecto a la naturaleza de la experiencia humana, en el contexto de la filosofía de la mente. Por un lado, se examinan distintas formas de dualismo, tomando como criterio de definición la irreducibilidad de lo mental. Por otro lado, se exploran distintas formas de materialismo, tomando como criterio de definición la posibilidad de la reducción de lo mental, así como la posibilidad de su eliminación. Mediante este análisis, se busca esclarecer los presupuestos ontológicos, (...) implícitos y explícitos, que determinan la naturaleza de cada una de las propuestas. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted immense work on the investigation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Rapid, accurate, and consistent interpretation of generated data is thereby of fundamental concern. Ontologies––structured, controlled, vocabularies––are designed to support consistency of interpretation, and thereby to prevent the development of data silos. This paper describes how ontologies are serving this purpose in the COVID-19 research domain, by following principles of the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology (OBO) Foundry and by reusing existing ontologies such as the Infectious Disease Ontology (...) (IDO) Core, which provides terminological content common to investigations of all infectious diseases. We report here on the development of an IDO extension, the Virus Infectious Disease Ontology (VIDO), a reference ontology covering viral infectious diseases. We motivate term and definition choices, showcase reuse of terms from existing OBO ontologies, illustrate how ontological decisions were motivated by relevant life science research, and connect VIDO to the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO). We next use terms from these ontologies to annotate selections from life science research on SARS-CoV-2, highlighting how ontologies employing a common upper-level vocabulary may be seamlessly interwoven. Finally, we outline future work, including bacteria and fungus infectious disease reference ontologies currently under development, then cite uses of VIDO and CIDO in host-pathogen data analytics, electronic health record annotation, and ontology conflict-resolution projects. (shrink)

Jest to fragment traktatu "O Bogu" z "Summy Teologii" św. Tomasza z Akwinu - zawiera on Wstęp, Wprowadzenie i przekład ksiąg VII - X. ks. VII - "O nieskończoności Boga" ks. VIII - "O byciu Boga w rzeczach" ks. IX - "O niezmienności Boga" ks. X - "O wieczności Boga".

Se analizan los argumentos de la obra cartesiana en torno a la tesis dualista del autor. Al rechazar que el dualismo cartesiano sea un tipo de dualismo ontológico, se indaga sobre los conceptos fundamentales de la filosofía cartesiana, en la búsqueda de una caracterización más apropiada de la propuesta de Descartes. Analizando la “distinción real” entre la mente y el cuerpo, se llega a la afirmación de que el dualismo cartesiano es un dualismo de atributos que implica el dualismo sustancial, (...) teniendo en cuenta los principios metafísicos y epistemológicos del autor. (shrink)

If an AI makes a significant contribution to a research paper, should it be listed as a co-author? The current guidelines in the field have been created to reduce duplication of credit between two different authors in scientific articles. A new computer program could be identified and credited for its impact in an AI research paper that discusses an early artificial intelligence system which is currently under development at Lawrence Berkeley National. One way to imagine the future of artificial intelligence (...) is that it will be much less expensive to develop new technologies than to create new ways of thinking. Now we have done this technology, and now we go and ask why in the end it is the artificial intelligence that takes over? Well, it is not that artificial intelligence is bad, but it is not as effective as human minds or as intelligent as machine minds. Even in the past, when computers were more intelligent than humans, not all the AI programs have been so intelligent as to be intelligent enough to be called intelligent. (shrink)