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 physical basis of conscious experience is revealed by direct observation and analysis of any conscious experience. Human conscious experience has an invariant structural mode of organization based on the three types of space-time intervals (light-like, time-like, space-like). Sensory input activates the autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, and ascending reticular activating system to produce the awake conscious state. The dorsal and ventral frontoparietal attention networks are activated. Dorsal and ventral cortical functional streams carry “what”, “where”, and “when” information to the (...) medial temporal lobe for the encoding, storage, and recall of conscious experience (episodic memory). Hippocampal place cells and time cells encode events in space and time within spatiotemporal contexts conveyed by entorhinal cortex grid cells and ramping cells. Theta phase precession unifies the encoding of space and time in the hippocampus so that segments of space and time are encoded in the hippocampus. Theta travelling waves ensure that the instantaneous output of the hippocampus consists of topographically-organized segments of space and time, space-time intervals. By parsing spatiotemporal contexts into quantal units of where and when events occur (spacetime intervals), hippocampal neurons bridge, and thereby organize events, in a conceptual organization of events (conscious experience). Space-time intervals are extracted from the hippocampus by a prefrontal cortex-basal ganglia-thalamic-prefrontal cortex loop for the cognitive, affective, and motivational aspects of conscious experience. (shrink)

In an all too familiar part of our lives, we are sometimes strongly tempted to do things we think we shouldn’t do. Consider the burning desire to eat one of the donuts your coworker brought to work while you are on a diet. Often times we surrender to temptation. But sometimes we fight the urges and refrain—we exhibit will-power. Much of our ordinary thinking involves reference to “the will” in this sort of way. Yet for quite some time many contemporary (...) philosophers have avoided talk of the will in their accounts of human action. This is largely because the will was thought to be a mysterious and superfluous thing—a ghostly cog in psychological theory that serves no explanatory purpose. However, there is a growing trend in philosophy that is bringing back talk of the will. Willing, Wanting, Waiting is, refreshingly, part of that trend. Holton develops a unique account of the will and related phenomena that is both empirically informed and philosophically rigorous in a way that is accessible to an interdisciplinary audience. (shrink)

It is proposed that our memory is made up of individual, unconnected Records, to each of which is attached a Heading. Retrieval of a Record can only be accomplished by addressing the attached Heading, the contents of which cannot itself be retrieved. Each Heading is made up of a mixture of content in more or less literal form and context, the latter including specification of environment and of internal states (e.g. drug states and mood). This view of memory allows an (...) easy account of a number of natural memory phenomena as well as a variety of laboratory findings such as the differences between recall and recognition. The theory further proposes that Headed Records can neither be deleted nor modified. Data apparently against such a hypothesis can be accounted for in terms of the retrieval process. (shrink)

Children conceived in order to donate biological material to save the life of an already existing child are known as 'saviour siblings'. The primary reasons that have been offered against the practice are: (i) creating a saviour sibling has negative impacts on the created child and (ii) creating a saviour child represents a wrongful procreative motivation of the parents. In this paper we examine to what extent the creation of saviour siblings actually presents a special case in procreative ethics. Although (...) we do not deny that there is a unique feature present in the saviour sibling case—namely, that the child was created to save their sibling’s life, we argue that the distinctive feature of being a saviour sibling does not make the procreative act wrong. Our claim is that the features that would make the creation of a particular saviour sibling (im)permissible are the same features that would make the creation of any child (im)permissible. Our conclusion is that saviour siblings—in relation to the reasons for the (im)permissibility of their creation—are not a special case for procreative ethics. (shrink)

When discussing the extinction of humanity, there does not seem to be any clear agreement about what ‘humanity’ really means. One aim of this paper is to show that it is a more slippery concept than it might at first seem. A second aim is to show the relationship between what constitutes or defines humanity and what gives it value. Often, whether and how we ought to prevent human extinction depends on what we take humanity to mean, which in turn (...) depends on what we value about humans. Finally, I will offer a definition of humanity that I argue offers a plausible account of when we might say humanity has gone extinct, and reflects what we value about humans, and relatedly, what many actually care about in terms of why we should be preserved. (shrink)

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 argues that there are good reasons to limit the scope of luck egalitarianism to co‐existing people. First, I outline reasons to be sceptical about how “luck” works intergenerationally and therefore the very grounding of luck egalitarianism between non‐overlapping generations. Second, I argue that what Kasper Lippert‐Rasmussen calls the “core luck egalitarian claim” allows significant intergenerational inequality which is a problem for those who object to such inequality. Third, luck egalitarianism cannot accommodate the intuition that it might be required (...) to leave future generations better off than we are, even if it would come at no cost to ourselves. Finally, I argue that following another, broader, version of luck egalitarianism would require us to level down future generations and possibly even ourselves, which is a problem for those persuaded by the levelling‐down objection. (shrink)

In everyday language, we readily attribute experiences to groups. For example, 1 might say, “Spain celebrated winning the European Cup” or “The uncovering of corruption caused the union to think long and hard about its internal structure.” In each case, the attribution makes sense. However, it is quite difficult to give a nonreductive account of precisely what these statements mean because in each case a mental state is ascribed to a group, and it is not obvious that groups can have (...) mental states. In this article, I do not offer an explicit theory of collective experience. Instead, I draw on phenomenological analyses and empirical data in order to provide general conditions that a more specific theory of collective experience must meet in order to be coherent. (shrink)

Most models of generational succession in sexually reproducing populations necessarily move back and forth between genic and genotypic spaces. We show that transitions between and within these spaces are usually hidden by unstated assumptions about processes in these spaces. We also examine a widely endorsed claim regarding the mathematical equivalence of kin-, group-, individual-, and allelic-selection models made by Lee Dugatkin and Kern Reeve. We show that the claimed mathematical equivalence of the models does not hold. *Received January 2007; revised (...) April 2008. †To contact the authors, please write to: Elisabeth Lloyd, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, 130 Goodbody Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405; e-mail: [email protected]; Richard Lewontin, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138; Marcus Feldman, Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

This paper applies a virtue epistemology approach to using the Internet, as to improve our information-seeking behaviours. Virtue epistemology focusses on the cognitive character of agents and is less concerned with the nature of truth and epistemic justification as compared to traditional analytic epistemology. Due to this focus on cognitive character and agency, it is a fruitful but underexplored approach to using the Internet in an epistemically desirable way. Thus, the central question in this paper is: How to use the (...) Internet in an epistemically virtuous way? Using the work of Jason Baehr, it starts by outlining nine intellectual or epistemic virtues: curiosity, intellectual autonomy, intellectual humility, attentiveness, intellectual carefulness, intellectual thoroughness, open-mindedness, intellectual courage and intellectual tenacity. It then explores how we should deploy these virtues and avoid the corresponding vices when interacting with the Internet, particularly search engines. Whilst an epistemically virtuous use of the Internet will not guarantee that one will acquire true beliefs, understanding or even knowledge, it will strongly improve one’s information-seeking behaviours. The paper ends with arguing that teaching and assessing online intellectual virtues should be part of school and university curricula, perhaps embedded in critical thinking courses, or even better, as individual units. (shrink)

It is more than a platitude to admit that we are always dying. It is a recognition of the fundamental finitude that marks our existence as human persons. It says something essential about the human condition. We are all born. We all die. And the very living of life is, leaving aside for the moment religious considerations, oriented toward death. Phenomenologists make much of this observation, perhaps none more so than Martin Heidegger who argues that our being-toward-death permits the ontological (...) grasping of Da-sein as a whole. Indeed for him, the“existential and ontological concept of death” is “the own most nonrelational, certain, and, as such, indefinite and not to be bypassed possibility of Da-sein.” However, if one spends much time around those who are very close to death it can begin to sound disingenuous to talk about death as one’s own most possibility. It is easy to think these patients are dying—not me. Still, the phenomenologist might claim that, vis-à-vis our being-toward-death, the difference between me and the terminally ill patient is a matter of degree and not kind. But, is this so? One may be excused for thinking not. There appears to be an important difference in the kinds of possible experiences open to us. I may experience healing if I become ill; on the other hand, the very condition of the patient with a terminal illness is defined by the impossibility of her experiencing healing. The primary aim of this paper is to argue that the terminally ill patient can, in fact, experience healing at the end of her life and in the face of impending death. I will not argue that the possibility of experiencing healing at the end of life means leaving room for divine intervention, though neither do I intend to preclude such a possibility. Rather, I will argue that healing is something that we experience quite apart from what happens to our biological make-up. While healing is often correlated with a change in the state of our bodies, it need not be. (shrink)

Justice in production is concerned with ensuring the benefits and burdens of work are distributed in a way that is reflective of persons' status as moral equals. While a variety of accounts of productive justice have been offered, insufficient attention has been paid to the distribution of work's benefits and burdens in the future. In this article, after granting for the sake of argument forecasts of widespread future technological unemployment, we consider the implications this has for egalitarian requirements of productive (...) justice. We argue that in relation to all the benefits affiliated with work, other than undertaking social contribution, the technological replacement of work is unproblematic as these benefits could in principle be attained elsewhere. But because social contribution uniquely corresponds to work (when work is understood as more than a paid job), the normative assessment of technological unemployment will turn on the value that theories of justice give to contributive activity. We then argue that despite technological replacement being plainly beneficial insofar as it relieves persons from the burdens of work, such as dangerous work or drudgery, because the nature of care work makes it less susceptible to technological replacement, egalitarian concern will require the burdens of care work to be shared equally between individuals. (shrink)

Dombrowski and Murdoch offer versions of the ontological argument which aim to avoid two types of objection – those concerned with the nature of the divine, and those concerned with the move from an abstract concept to a mind-independent reality. For both, the nature of the concept of God/Good entails its instantiation, and both supply a supporting argument from experience. It is only Murdoch who successfully negotiates the transition from an abstract concept to the instantiation of that concept, however, and (...) this is achieved by means of an ontological argument from moral experience which, in a reversal of the Kantian doctrine, depends ultimately on a form of the cosmological argument. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to assess the relationship between anti-physicalist arguments in the philosophy of mind and anti-naturalist arguments in metaethics, and to show how the literature on the mind-body problem can inform metaethics. Among the questions we will consider are: (1) whether a moral parallel of the knowledge argument can be constructed to create trouble for naturalists, (2) the relationship between such a "Moral Knowledge Argument" and the familiar Open Question Argument, and (3) how naturalists can respond (...) to the Moral Twin Earth argument. We will give particular attention to recent arguments in the philosophy of mind that aim to show that anti-physicalist arguments can be defused by acknowledging a distinctive kind of conceptual dualism between the phenomenal and the physical. This tactic for evading anti-physicalist arguments has come to be known as the Phenomenal Concept Strategy. We will propose a metaethical version of this strategy, which we shall call the `Moral Concept Strategy'. We suggest that the Moral Concept Strategy offers the most promising way out of these anti-naturalist arguments, though significant challenges remain. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to develop a systematic taxonomy of cognitive artifacts, i.e., human-made, physical objects that functionally contribute to performing a cognitive task. First, I identify the target domain by conceptualizing the category of cognitive artifacts as a functional kind: a kind of artifact that is defined purely by its function. Next, on the basis of their informational properties, I develop a set of related subcategories in which cognitive artifacts with similar properties can be grouped. In this (...) taxonomy, I distinguish between three taxa, those of family, genus, and species. The family includes all cognitive artifacts without further specifying their informational properties. Two genera are then distinguished: representational and non-representational (or ecological) cognitive artifacts. These genera are further divided into species. In case of representational artifacts, these species are iconic, indexical, or symbolic. In case of ecological artifacts, these species are spatial or structural. Within species, token artifacts are identified. The proposed taxonomy is an important first step towards a better understanding of the range and variety of cognitive artifacts and is a helpful point of departure, both for conceptualizing how different artifacts augment or impair cognitive performance and how they transform and are integrated into our cognitive system and practices. (shrink)

Some of the most important developments of symbolic logic took place in the 1920s. Foremost among them are the distinction between syntax and semantics and the formulation of questions of completeness and decidability of logical systems. David Hilbert and his students played a very important part in these developments. Their contributions can be traced to unpublished lecture notes and other manuscripts by Hilbert and Bernays dating to the period 1917-1923. The aim of this paper is to describe these results, focussing (...) primarily on propositional logic, and to put them in their historical context. It is argued that truth-value semantics, syntactic ("Post-") and semantic completeness, decidability, and other results were first obtained by Hilbert and Bernays in 1918, and that Bernays's role in their discovery and the subsequent development of mathematical logic is much greater than has so far been acknowledged. (shrink)

Efforts by governments, firms, and patients to deliver pioneering drugs for critical health needs face a challenge of diminishing efficiency in developing those medicines. While multi-sectoral collaborations involving firms, researchers, patients, and policymakers are widely recognized as crucial for countering this decline, existing incentives to engage in drug development predominantly target drug manufacturers and thereby do little to stimulate collaborative innovation. In this mini review, we consider the unexplored potential within pharmaceutical regulations to create novel incentives to encourage a diverse (...) set of actors from the public and private spheres to engage in the kind of collaborative knowledge exchange requisite for fostering enhanced innovation in early drug development. (shrink)

Art plays a significant role in Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy, a major part of which may be interpreted as a proposal for the revision of religious belief. In this paper, I identify within Murdoch’s philosophical writings five distinct but related ways in which great art can assist moral/religious belief and practice: art can reveal to us “the world as we were never able so clearly to see it before”; this revelatory capacity provides us with evidence for the existence of the (...) Good, a metaphor for a transcendent reality of which God was also a symbol; art is a “hall of reflection” in which “everything under the sun can be examined and considered”; art provides us with an analogue for the way in which we should try to perceive our world; and art enables us to transcend our selfish concerns. I consider three possible objections: that Murdoch’s theory is not applicable to all forms of art; that the meaning of works of art is often ambiguous; and that there is disagreement about what constitutes a great work of art. I argue that none of these objections are decisive, and that all forms of art have at least the potential to furnish us with important tools for developing the insight required to live a moral/religious life. (shrink)

Angell's logic of analytic containment AC has been shown to be characterized by a 9-valued matrix NC by Ferguson, and by a 16-valued matrix by Fine. We show that the former is the image of a surjective homomorphism from the latter, i.e., an epimorphic image. The epimorphism was found with the help of MUltlog, which also provides a tableau calculus for NC extended by quantifiers that generalize conjunction and disjunction.

Logic has pride of place in mathematics and its 20th century offshoot, computer science. Modern symbolic logic was developed, in part, as a way to provide a formal framework for mathematics: Frege, Peano, Whitehead and Russell, as well as Hilbert developed systems of logic to formalize mathematics. These systems were meant to serve either as themselves foundational, or at least as formal analogs of mathematical reasoning amenable to mathematical study, e.g., in Hilbert’s consistency program. Similar efforts continue, but have been (...) expanded by the development of sophisticated methods to study the properties of such systems using proof and model theory. In parallel with this evolution of logical formalisms as tools for articulating mathematical theories (broadly speaking), much progress has been made in the quest for a mechanization of logical inference and the investigation of its theoretical limits, culminating recently in the development of new foundational frameworks for mathematics with sophisticated computer-assisted proof systems. In addition, logical formalisms developed by logicians in mathematical and philosophical contexts have proved immensely useful in describing theories and systems of interest to computer scientists, and to some degree, vice versa. Three examples of the influence of logic in computer science are automated reasoning, computer verification, and type systems for programming languages. (shrink)

In a recent publication in this journal, Asle Kiran and Peter-Paul Verbeek (hereafter K&V) argue that extension theory and the notion of trust it implies are flawed. In this commentary, I defend extension theory against their critique. I first briefly introduce extension theory, then reconstruct K&V’s five arguments against extension theory and demonstrate that four of their five arguments are misplaced.

To claim that the divine is a person or personal is, according to Swinburne, ‘the most elementary claim of theism’. I argue that, whether the classical theist’s concept of the divine as a person or personal is construed as an analogy or a metaphor, or a combination of the two, analysis necessitates qualification of that concept such that any differences between the classical theist’s concept of the divine as a person or personal and revisionary interpretations of that concept are merely (...) superficial. Thus, either the classical theist has more in common with revisionary theism than he/she might care to admit, or classical theism is a multi-faceted position which encompasses interpretations which some might regard as revisionist. This article also explores and employs the use of a gender-neutral pronoun in talk about God. (shrink)

The proof theory of many-valued systems has not been investigated to an extent comparable to the work done on axiomatizatbility of many-valued logics. Proof theory requires appropriate formalisms, such as sequent calculus, natural deduction, and tableaux for classical (and intuitionistic) logic. One particular method for systematically obtaining calculi for all finite-valued logics was invented independently by several researchers, with slight variations in design and presentation. The main aim of this report is to develop the proof theory of finite-valued first order (...) logics in a general way, and to present some of the more important results in this area. In Systems covered are the resolution calculus, sequent calculus, tableaux, and natural deduction. This report is actually a template, from which all results can be specialized to particular logics. (shrink)

This paper argues that a popular account of intentions can be extended to beliefs. Beliefs are stable all-out states that allow for planning and coordination in a way that is tractable for cognitively limited creatures like human beings. Scepticism is expressed that there is really anything like credences as standardly understood.

In her recent paper ‘The Epistemology of Propaganda’ Rachel McKinnon discusses what she refers to as ‘TERF propaganda’. We take issue with three points in her paper. The first is her rejection of the claim that ‘TERF’ is a misogynistic slur. The second is the examples she presents as commitments of so-called ‘TERFs’, in order to establish that radical (and gender critical) feminists rely on a flawed ideology. The third is her claim that standpoint epistemology can be used to establish (...) that such feminists are wrong to worry about a threat of male violence in relation to trans women. In Section 1 we argue that ‘TERF’ is not a merely descriptive term; that to the extent that McKinnon offers considerations in support of the claim that ‘TERF’ is not a slur, these considerations fail; and that ‘TERF’ is a slur according to several prominent accounts in the contemporary literature. In Section 2, we argue that McKinnon misrepresents the position of gender critical feminists, and in doing so fails to establish the claim that the ideology behind these positions is flawed. In Section 3 we argue that McKinnon’s criticism of Stanley fails, and one implication of this is that those she characterizes as ‘positively privileged’ cannot rely on the standpoint-relative knowledge of those she characterizes as ‘negatively privileged’. We also emphasize in this section McKinnon’s failure to understand and account for multiple axes of oppression, of which the cis/trans axis is only one. (shrink)

Even if all of the content of conscious experience is encoded in the brain, there is a considerable difference between the view that consciousness does independent processing and the view that it does not. If all processing is done by the brain, then conscious experience is unnecessary and irrelevant to behavior. If consciousness performs a function, then its association with particular aspects of brain processing reflect its functional use in determining behavior. However, if consciousness does perform a function, it cannot (...) be described entirely by known physical laws. Rather, even if the content of conscious experience follows physical encoding in the brain, consciousness must then be governed in part by a principle which is different from any known physical principle. (shrink)

Hilbert’s program was an ambitious and wide-ranging project in the philosophy and foundations of mathematics. In order to “dispose of the foundational questions in mathematics once and for all,” Hilbert proposed a two-pronged approach in 1921: first, classical mathematics should be formalized in axiomatic systems; second, using only restricted, “finitary” means, one should give proofs of the consistency of these axiomatic systems. Although Gödel’s incompleteness theorems show that the program as originally conceived cannot be carried out, it had many partial (...) successes, and generated important advances in logical theory and metatheory, both at the time and since. The article discusses the historical background and development of Hilbert’s program, its philosophical underpinnings and consequences, and its subsequent development and influences since the 1930s. (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)

In recent years, some simulation theorists have claimed that the discovery of mirror neurons provides empirical support for the position that mind reading is, at some basic level, simulation. The purpose of this essay is to question that claim. I begin by providing brief context for the current mind reading debate and then developing an influential simulationist account of mind reading. I then draw on the works of Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein to develop an alternative, phenomenological account. In conclusion, (...) I offer multiple objections against simulation theory and argue that the empirical evidence mirror neurons offer us does not necessarily support the view that empathy is simulation. (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)

In this paper I argue that a priori arguments fail to present any real problem for physicalism. They beg the question against physicalism in the sense that the argument will only seem compelling if one is already assuming that qualitative properties are nonphysical. To show this I will present the reverse-zombie and reverse-knowledge arguments. The only evidence against physicalism is a priori arguments, but there are also a priori arguments against dualism of exactly the same variety. Each of these parity (...) arguments has premises that are just as intuitively plausible, and it cannot be the case that both the traditional scenarios and the reverse-scenarios are all ideally conceivable. Given this one set must be merely prima facie conceivable and only empirical methods will tell us which is which. So, by the time a priori methodology will be of any use it will be too late. (shrink)

Some physicians, in their care of patients at risk of misusing opioids, use machine learning (ML)-based prediction drug monitoring programmes (PDMPs) to guide their decision making in the prescription of opioids. This can cause a conflict: a PDMP Score can indicate a patient is at a high risk of opioid abuse while a patient expressly reports oppositely. The prescriber is then left to balance the credibility and trust of the patient with the PDMP Score. Pozzi1 argues that a prescriber who (...) downgrades the credibility of a patient’s testimony based on a low PDMP Score is epistemically and morally unjustified and contributes to a form of testimonial injustice. This results in patients being silenced, excluded from decision-making processes and subjected to structural injustices. Additionally, the use of ML systems in medical practices raises concerns about perpetuating existing inequalities, overestimating their capabilities and displacing human authority. However, almost the very same critiques apply to human-based systems. Formalisation, ML systems included, should instead be viewed positively,2 and precisely as a powerful means to begin eroding these and other problems in ethically sensitive domains. In this case, the epistemic virtues of formalisation include promoting transparency, consistency and replicability in decision making. Rigorous ML systems can also help ensure that models …. (shrink)

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)

Methods available for the axiomatization of arbitrary finite-valued logics can be applied to obtain sound and complete intelim rules for all truth-functional connectives of classical logic including the Sheffer stroke and Peirce’s arrow. The restriction to a single conclusion in standard systems of natural deduction requires the introduction of additional rules to make the resulting systems complete; these rules are nevertheless still simple and correspond straightforwardly to the classical absurdity rule. Omitting these rules results in systems for intuitionistic versions of (...) the connectives in question. (shrink)

In the 1920s, David Hilbert proposed a research program with the aim of providing mathematics with a secure foundation. This was to be accomplished by first formalizing logic and mathematics in their entirety, and then showing---using only so-called finitistic principles---that these formalizations are free of contradictions. ;In the area of logic, the Hilbert school accomplished major advances both in introducing new systems of logic, and in developing central metalogical notions, such as completeness and decidability. The analysis of unpublished material presented (...) in Chapter 2 shows that a completeness proof for propositional logic was found by Hilbert and his assistant Paul Bernays already in 1917--18, and that Bernays's contribution was much greater than is commonly acknowledged. Aside from logic, the main technical contribution of Hilbert's Program are the development of formal mathematical theories and proof-theoretical investigations thereof, in particular, consistency proofs. In this respect Wilhelm Ackermann's 1924 dissertation is a milestone both in the development of the Program and in proof theory in general. Ackermann gives a consistency proof for a second-order version of primitive recursive arithmetic which, surprisingly, explicitly uses a finitistic version of transfinite induction up to www . He also gave a faulty consistency proof for a system of second-order arithmetic based on Hilbert's &egr;-substitution method. Detailed analyses of both proofs in Chapter 3 shed light on the development of finitism and proof theory in the 1920s as practiced in Hilbert's school. ;In a series of papers, Charles Parsons has attempted to map out a notion of mathematical intuition which he also brings to bear on Hilbert's finitism. According to him, mathematical intuition fails to be able to underwrite the kind of intuitive knowledge Hilbert thought was attainable by the finitist. It is argued in Chapter 4 that the extent of finitistic knowledge which intuition can provide is broader than Parsons supposes. According to another influential analysis of finitism due to W. W. Tait, finitist reasoning coincides with primitive recursive reasoning. The acceptance of non-primitive recursive methods in Ackermann's dissertation presented in Chapter 3, together with additional textual evidence presented in Chapter 4, shows that this identification is untenable as far as Hilbert's conception of finitism is concerned. Tait's conception, however, differs from Hilbert's in important respects, yet it is also open to criticisms leading to the conclusion that finitism encompasses more than just primitive recursive reasoning. (shrink)

In this paper we explore the idea that Pentecostalism is best supported by conjoining it to a postmodern, narrative epistemology in which everything is a text requiring interpretation. On this view, truth doesn’t consist in a set of uninterpreted facts that make the claims of Christianity true; rather, as James K. A. Smith says, truth emerges when there is a “fit” or proportionality between the Christian story and one’s affective and emotional life. We argue that Pentecostals should reject this account (...) of truth, since it leads to either a self-refuting story-relativism or the equally problematic fallacy of story-ism: favoring one’s own story over others without legitimate reason. In either case, we contend, the gospel itself is placed at risk. (shrink)

A personal reflection on the meaning of worship and the 'worthiness' of God.

What are the possible varieties of cognition-artifact relations, and which dimensions are relevant for exploring these varieties? This question is answered in two steps. First, three levels of functional and informational integration between human agent and cognitive artifact are distinguished. These levels are based on the degree of interactivity and direction of information flow, and range from monocausal and bicausal relations to continuous reciprocal causation. In these levels there is a hierarchy of integrative processes in which there is an increasing (...) degree of hybridization. Therefore, from a functional and informational level of abstraction, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between agent and artifact in this hierarchy. Second, a multidimensional matrix for exploring cognition-artifact relations is sketched. The dimensions in the matrix include reliability, durability, trust, procedural and representational transparency, individualization, bandwidth, speed of information flow, distribution of computation, and cognitive and artifactual transformation. Together, these dimensions constitute a multidimensional space in which particular cognition-artifact relations can be located. The higher a particular cognition-artifact relation scores on these dimensions, the more integration and hybridization occurs, and the more tightly coupled the overall system is. It is then better, for explanatory reasons, to see agent and artifact as one cognitive system with a distributed informational architecture. (shrink)

A brief dialogue on the meaning of Christ's salvation with a Christian evangelical.

This work is the transcript of a theological dialogue I had with ChatGPT that spanned a couple of days. I began it merely out of curiosity over how ChatGPT might respond to questions and challenges I posed. As it progressed, I became increasingly impressed with the nuance, depth, and relevance of its responses. The dialogue became, for me, something of a contemplative exercise. I still don’t know quite how to understand the ability of generative A.I. to respond with such (apparent) (...) understanding and even insight. -/- I’ve decided to post this dialogue, not only because of the puzzle it poses concerning A.I, but even more, because I believe that the theological conclusions ‘we’ arrived at have real merit. -/- In the end, the theological views expressed here echo those that I’ve expressed in other works of mine, but the expression of these views are enhanced by the way ChatGPT picks up on them, rephrases them, elaborates upon them, and often places them in the context of the classical theological tradition. -/- I might add that I have been an A.I. skeptic for some time now, concerned over the potential dangers of A.I. in general. But this dialogue, anyway, reveals its potential use as a vehicle for reflection, even profound reflection. -/- . (shrink)

I discuss a puzzle that arises as an apparent tension between plausible theories of good guessing and intuitive constraints on rational inquiry. Clearly, our best guess at a question should reflect the likelihoods we assign to its possible answers. Your best guess is the answer you judge most likely. Additionally, it seems like a requirement of rational inquiry that our guesses be coherent. Thus, our best guess to a constituent (wh-) questions should cohere with our best guess to a polar (...) (yes/no) question whenever answers to the former entail answers to the latter. I argue that these requirements are in conflict and that a familiar form of contextualism doesn’t resolve the issue. The puzzle stands as a challenge to existing accounts of rational inquiry and question directed attitudes like guessing. (shrink)

This paper considers a now familiar argument that the ubiquity of context -dependence threatens the project of natural language semantics, at least as that project has usually been conceived: as concerning itself with `what is said' by an utterance of a given sentence. I argue in response that the `anti-semantic' argument equivocates at a crucial point and, therefore, that we need not choose between semantic minimalism, truth-conditional pragmatism, and the like. Rather, we must abandon the idea, familiar from Kaplan and (...) others, that utterances express propositions `relative to contexts' and replace it with the Strawonian idea that speakers express propositions by making utterances in contexts. The argument for this claim consists in a detailed investigation of the particular case of demonstratives, which I argue demand such a Strawsonian treatment. I then respond to several objections, the most important of which allege that the Strawsonian account somehow undermines the project of natural language semantics, or threatens the semantics -pragmatics distinction. Please note that the paper posted here is an extended version of what was published. (shrink)

This paper discusses the question whether it is possible to explain the notion of a singular term without invoking the notion of an object or other ontological notions. The framework here is that of Michael Dummett's discussion in Frege: Philosophy of Language. I offer an emended version of Dummett's conditions, accepting but modifying some suggestions made by Bob Hale, and defend the emended conditions against some objections due to Crispin Wright. This paper dates from about 1989. It originally formed part (...) of a very early draft of what became my Ph.D. dissertation. I rediscovered it and began scanning it, when I had nothing better to do, in Fall 2001, making some minor editing changes along the way. Suffice it to say that it no longer represents my current views. I hope, however, that it remains of some small interest. (shrink)

The term action of consciousness is used to refer to an influence, such as psychokinesis or free will, that produces an effect on matter that is correlated to mental intention, but not completely determined by physical conditions. Such an action could not conserve energy. But in that case, one wonders why, when highly accurate measurements are done, occasions of non-conserved energy (generated perhaps by unconscious PK) are not detected. A possible explanation is that actions of consciousness take place within the (...) limits of the uncertainty principle. Two models are reviewed that, using the latter assumption, propose that consciousness can originate an action potential in the brain. One (that of Eccles) uses the latter assumption only, and the other (that of Burns) additionally assumes that consciousness acts, within those limits, by ordering quantum fluctuations. (shrink)

This chapter describes Kurt Gödel's paper on the incompleteness theorems. Gödel's incompleteness results are two of the most fundamental and important contributions to logic and the foundations of mathematics. It had been assumed that first-order number theory is complete in the sense that any sentence in the language of number theory would be either provable from the axioms or refutable. Gödel's first incompleteness theorem showed that this assumption was false: it states that there are sentences of number theory that are (...) neither provable nor refutable. The first theorem is general in the sense that it applies to any axiomatic theory, which is ω-consistent, has an effective proof procedure, and is strong enough to represent basic arithmetic. Their importance lies in their generality: although proved specifically for extensions of system, the method Gödel used is applicable in a wide variety of circumstances. Gödel's results had a profound influence on the further development of the foundations of mathematics. It pointed the way to a reconceptualization of the view of axiomatic foundations. (shrink)

What does it mean to ‘give’ the value of a variable in an algebraic context, and how does giving the value of a variable differ from merely describing it? I argue that to answer this question, we need to examine the role that giving the value of a variable plays in problem-solving practice. I argue that four different features are required for a statement to count as giving the value of a variable in the context of solving an elementary algebra (...) problem: the variable must be in the scope opened by the problem statement; the values given must be in the range of the variable, which is determined by the problem; the statement giving the values must represent a complete solution; and it must be in a canonical form. This account helps us better understand elementary algebra itself, as well as the use of algebraic tools to analyze phenomena in natural language. (shrink)