Dilation occurs when an interval probability estimate of some event E is properly included in the interval probability estimate of E conditional on every event F of some partition, which means that one’s initial estimate of E becomes less precise no matter how an experiment turns out. Critics maintain that dilation is a pathological feature of imprecise probability models, while others have thought the problem is with Bayesian updating. However, two points are often overlooked: (1) knowing that E is stochastically (...) independent of F (for all F in a partition of the underlying state space) is sufficient to avoid dilation, but (2) stochastic independence is not the only independence concept at play within imprecise probability models. In this paper we give a simple characterization of dilation formulated in terms of deviation from stochastic independence, propose a measure of dilation, and distinguish between proper and improper dilation. Through this we revisit the most sensational examples of dilation, which play up independence between dilator and dilatee, and find the sensationalism undermined by either fallacious reasoning with imprecise probabilities or improperly constructed imprecise probability models. (shrink)

Analyzing geometric properties of high-dimensional loss functions, such as local curvature and the existence of other optima around a certain point in loss space, can help provide a better understanding of the interplay between neural network structure, implementation attributes, and learning performance. In this work, we combine concepts from high-dimensional probability and differential geometry to study how curvature properties in lower-dimensional loss representations depend on those in the original loss space. We show that saddle points in the original space are (...) rarely correctly identified as such in expected lower-dimensional representations if random projections are used. The principal curvature in the expected lower-dimensional representation is proportional to the mean curvature in the original loss space. Hence, the mean curvature in the original loss space determines if saddle points appear, on average, as either minima, maxima, or almost flat regions. We use the connection between expected curvature in random projections and mean curvature in the original space (i.e., the normalized Hessian trace) to compute Hutchinson-type trace estimates without calculating Hessian-vector products as in the original Hutchinson method. Because random projections are not suitable to correctly identify saddle information, we propose to study projections along dominant Hessian directions that are associated with the largest and smallest principal curvatures. We connect our findings to the ongoing debate on loss landscape flatness and generalizability. Finally, for different common image classifiers and a function approximator, we show and compare random and Hessian projections of loss landscapes with up to about 7×10^6 parameters. (shrink)

The common use of Shannon’s information, specified for the needs of telecommunications, gives rise to many misunderstandings outside of this context. (e.g. in conceptions of such well-known theorists as C.F. Weizsäcker and J. A. Wheeler). This article shows that the terms of the general definition of information meet the structural information, and Shannon’s information is a special case of it. Similarly, complexity is misunderstood today as exemplified by the concepts of reputable computer scientists, such as S. Lloyd, S. Wolfram (...) and J. Schmidhuber. These theorists use an algorithmic definition of complexity and the so-called logical depth, neither of which meets the intuitive criterion of complexity. Hence, their misconceptions of beauty, art and the universe. It will be shown that the intuitive criterion is met by Abstract Complexity Definition. This definition also fulfils the criterion for a general complexity definition, as it defines complexity of the most general/abstract structure of our reality, that is, binary structure. It also explains such fundamental issues of information theory as the information–energy relationship and the value of information, which are still discussed and need to be clarified. (shrink)

The role of the body in cognition is acknowledged across a variety of disciplines, even if the precise nature and scope of that contribution remain contentious. As a result, most philosophers working on embodiment—e.g. those in embodied cognition, enactivism, and ‘4e’ cognition—interact with the life sciences as part of their interdisciplinary agenda. Despite this, a detailed engagement with emerging findings in epigenetics and post-genomic biology has been missing from proponents of this embodied turn. Surveying this research provides an opportunity to (...) rethink the relationship between embodiment and genetics, and we argue that the balance of current epigenetic research favours the extension of an enactivist approach to mind and life, rather than the extended functionalist view of embodied cognition associated with Andy Clark and Mike Wheeler, which is more substrate neutral. (shrink)

This volume of twelve specially commissioned essays about species draws on the perspectives of prominent researchers from anthropology , botany, developmental psychology , the philosophy of biology and science, protozoology, and zoology . The concept of species has played a focal role in both evolutionary biology and the philosophy of biology , and the last decade has seen something of a publication boom on the topic (e.g., Otte and Endler 1989; Ereshefsky 1992b; Paterson 1994; lambert and Spence 1995; Claridge, Dawah, (...) and Wilson 1997; Wheeler and Meier 1999; Howard and Berlocher 1998). (shrink)

El primer objetivo de este artículo es mostrar que explicaciones genuinamente geométricas/matemáticas e intrínsecamente diagramáticas de fenómenos físicos no solo son posibles en la práctica científica, sino que además comportan un potencial epistémico que sus contrapartes simbólico-verbales carecen. Como ejemplo representativo utilizaremos la metodología geométrica de John Wheeler (1963) para calcular cantidades físicas en una reacción nuclear. Como segundo objetivo pretendemos analizar, desde un marco inferencial, la garantía epistémica de este tipo de explicaciones en términos de dependencia sintáctica y (...) semántica del contenido lo inferido en las premisas, lo cual denominaremos criterio de validez inferencial (CVI). (shrink)

From the Philosophies journal program, one of the main aims of the journal is to help establish a new unity in diversity in human knowledge, which would include both “Wissen” (i.e., “Wissenschaft”) and “sc¯ıre” (i.e., “science”). As is known, “Wissenshaft” (the pursuit of knowledge, learning, and scholarship) is a broader concept of knowledge than “science”, as it involves all kinds of knowledge,including philosophy, and not exclusively knowledge in the form of directly testable explanations and predictions. The broader notion of scholarship (...) incorporates an understanding and articulation of the role of the learner and the process of the growth of knowledge and its development, rather than only the final product and its verification and validation. In other words, it is a form of knowledge that is inclusive of both short-term and long-term perspectives; it is local and global, critical and hypothetical (speculative), breaking new ground. This new synthesis or rather re-connection of knowledge is expected to resonate with basic human value systems, including cultural values. Since knowledge tends to spontaneously fragment while it grows, we take existing diversity as a resource and a starting point for a new synthesis. The idea of broad, inclusive knowledge is in fact not so new. From the beginning, natural philosophy included all contemporary knowledge about nature. Newton was a natural philosopher, as were Bohr, Einstein, Prigogine, Weizsäcker, and Wheeler—to name but a few. Today, the unifying picture of the natural/physical world is sorely missing among the isolated silos of particular scientific domains, each with its own specific ontologies, methodologies, and epistemologies. From the profound need for connected and common knowledge, new trends towards synthesis have emerged in the last decades. One major theme is complexity, especially when applied to biology or medicine, which helps us to grasp the importance of connectedness between present-day disparate pieces of knowledge—frameworks, theories, approaches, etc. Related to this is the emergence of network science, which studies structures of nodes (actors) and edges as connections between them. This book is connecting work on contemporary natural philosophy and its connections with existing philosophies, sciences and other knowledge fields. (shrink)

The Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) is chosen to illustrate the long-standing wave-particle duality problem. Why is which-way (welcher weg) information incompatible with wave interference? How do we explain Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment? Most crucially, how can the photon divide at the first beam splitter and yet terminate on either arm with its undiminished energy? The position advanced is that the photon has two identities, one supporting particle features and the other wave features. There is photon kinetic energy that never splits (...) (on half-silvered mirrors) or diffracts (in pinholes or slits). Then there are photon probability waves that do diffract and can reinforce or cancel. Photon kinetic energy is oscillatory; its cycles require/occupy time. E = mc2 suggests that kinetic energy is physically real as occurrence in time just as rest mass is physically real as existence in space; both are quantized and both occupy/require a dimension for their occurrence or existence. Photon kinetic energy (KE) thus resides in time, but is still present/available for interactions (events) in space; rest mass (e.g., your desk) resides in space but is still present/available for interactions (events) in time. While photon probability waves progress in space and diffract there, photon KE resides in time and never diffracts in space; at reception it always arrives whole and imitates particle impact without being a particle. Photon probability waves are real; they diffract in space. Acknowledging that the photon has two identities (residing energy and progressing probability), explains photon dual nature. And wave-particle duality is central to quantum mechanics. Understanding it leads to new insights into entanglement, nonlocality and the measurement problem. A 30-minute video on nonlocality and photon dualism can be found by a google: search “youtube klevgard nonlocality”). (shrink)

This article’s conclusion is that the theories of Einstein are generally correct and will still be relevant in the next century (there will be modifications necessary for development of quantum gravity). Those Einsteinian theories are Special Relativity, General Relativity, and the title of a paper he published in 1919 which asked if gravitation plays a role in the composition of elementary particles of matter. This paper was the bridge between General Relativity and the Unified Field Theory he sought during the (...) last 25 years of his life. In an article published in the "Annals of Physics" in 1957, Charles Misner and John Wheeler claimed that Einstein's latest equations demonstrated the unified field theory. But Einstein himself felt he had not fully succeeded. The present article begins with Olbers’ paradox (why is the sky dark at night?) Then it briefly proceeds to the subjects of Newtonian gravity, quantum entanglement, gravitational waves, E=mc^2, dark energy, dark matter, cosmic expansion, redshift, blueshift, the cosmic microwave background, the 1st Law of Thermodynamics, and explanation of advanced waves travelling back in time. The section “vector-tensor-scalar geometry” touches on mass, quantum spin, the Higgs boson and Higgs field, stellar jets, the pervasiveness of photons and gravitons, and supersymmetry. Then come half a dozen paragraphs referring to formation of planets, black holes, and bosons of the weak and strong nuclear forces. They end with Descartes’ space-matter relation. Also added are paragraphs about simply-connected mathematics, non-orientability, consciousness, the Law of Falling Bodies, the multiverse, space-time travel developed from maths’ Brouwer Fixed Point Theorem and from an experiment in electrical engineering performed at Yale University, development from future space-time travel of human flight in the manner of fiction’s Superman and Supergirl, as well as downloaded band-gap implants in the brain that could deal with forms of matter. They could add or delete anything and everything we choose by emulating computers’ copy/paste function to add things; as well as their delete function, to remove things. To complete my seemingly unusual ideas, 6 sections are added – 1) “Advanced and Retarded Waves” is extended to include dinosaurs, ageing, and photography, 2) there’s a bit about space-time warping and “imaginary” computers, 3) several paragraphs about restoring health (even gaining immortality) by using gravity, 4) a section about superconductivity and the electric or magnetic fields of planets (this section mentions Mercury, Planet 9 and precession), 5) a section titled EXPLAINING OCEAN TIDES WHEN GENERAL RELATIVITY SAYS GRAVITY IS A PUSH CAUSED BY THE CURVATURE OF SPACE-TIME (this has subsections about M-Sigma, Geysers on Saturn’s Moon Enceladus, and A Brief History of Gravity), plus 5) the potential of COVID-19 to create the Golden Rule, world peace, eternal life, and a non-economic world that doesn’t use any form of money (no cash, credit cards, digital currency, etc.) The final section is called DISTANT-FUTURE SCIENCE INTERPRETED BY RELIGIONS AS SUPERNATURAL and introduces an idea for becoming immortal in these physical bodies. If the Theory of Everything sought by physicists applies to all space-time, then every person’s brain must be entangled with the 22nd century (and far beyond that time too). (shrink)

The main objective of this dissertation is to philosophically assess how the use of informational concepts in the field of classical thermostatistical physics has historically evolved from the late 1940s to the present day. I will first analyze in depth the main notions that form the conceptual basis on which 'informational physics' historically unfolded, encompassing (i) different entropy, probability and information notions, (ii) their multiple interpretative variations, and (iii) the formal, numerical and semantic-interpretative relationships among them. In the following, I (...) will assess the history of informational thermophysics during the second half of the twentieth century. Firstly, I analyse the intellectual factors that gave rise to this current in the late forties (i.e., popularization of Shannon's theory, interest in a naturalized epistemology of science, etc.), then study its consolidation in the Brillouinian and Jaynesian programs, and finally claim how Carnap (1977) and his disciples tried to criticize this tendency within the scientific community. Then, I evaluate how informational physics became a predominant intellectual current in the scientific community in the nineties, made possible by the convergence of Jaynesianism and Brillouinism in proposals such as that of Tribus and McIrvine (1971) or Bekenstein (1973) and the application of algorithmic information theory into the thermophysical domain. As a sign of its radicality at this historical stage, I explore the main proposals to include information as part of our physical reality, such as Wheeler’s (1990), Stonier’s (1990) or Landauer’s (1991), detailing the main philosophical arguments (e.g., Timpson, 2013; Lombardi et al. 2016a) against those inflationary attitudes towards information. Following this historical assessment, I systematically analyze whether the descriptive exploitation of informational concepts has historically contributed to providing us with knowledge of thermophysical reality via (i) explaining thermal processes such as equilibrium approximation, (ii) advantageously predicting thermal phenomena, or (iii) enabling understanding of thermal property such as thermodynamic entropy. I argue that these epistemic shortcomings would make it impossible to draw ontological conclusions in a justified way about the physical nature of information. In conclusion, I will argue that the historical exploitation of informational concepts has not contributed significantly to the epistemic progress of thermophysics. This would lead to characterize informational proposals as 'degenerate science' (à la Lakatos 1978a) regarding classical thermostatistical physics or as theoretically underdeveloped regarding the study of the cognitive dynamics of scientists in this physical domain. (shrink)

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

Coherentism maintains that coherent beliefs are more likely to be true than incoherent beliefs, and that coherent evidence provides more confirmation of a hypothesis when the evidence is made coherent by the explanation provided by that hypothesis. Although probabilistic models of credence ought to be well-suited to justifying such claims, negative results from Bayesian epistemology have suggested otherwise. In this essay we argue that the connection between coherence and confirmation should be understood as a relation mediated by the causal relationships (...) among the evidence and a hypothesis, and we offer a framework for doing so by fitting together probabilistic models of coherence, confirmation, and causation. We show that the causal structure among the evidence and hypothesis is sometimes enough to determine whether the coherence of the evidence boosts confirmation of the hypothesis, makes no difference to it, or even reduces it. We also show that, ceteris paribus, it is not the coherence of the evidence that boosts confirmation, but rather the ratio of the coherence of the evidence to the coherence of the evidence conditional on a hypothesis. (shrink)

The field of of imprecise probability has matured, in no small part because of Teddy Seidenfeld’s decades of original scholarship and essential contributions to building and sustaining the ISIPTA community. Although the basic idea behind imprecise probability is (at least) 150 years old, a mature mathematical theory has only taken full form in the last 30 years. Interest in imprecise probability during this period has also grown, but many of the ideas that the mature theory serves can be difficult to (...) apprehend to those new to the subject. Although these fundamental ideas are common knowledge in the ISIPTA community, they are expressed, when they are expressed at all, obliquely, over the course of years with students and colleagues. -/- A single essay cannot convey the store of common knowledge from any research community, let alone the ISIPTA community. But, this essay nevertheless is an attempt to guide those familiar with the basic Bayesian framework to appreciate some of the elegant and powerful ideas that underpin the contemporary theory of lower previsions, which is the theory that most people associate with the term ‘imprecise probabilities’. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show that if one adopts conditional probabilities as the primitive concept of probability, one must deal with the fact that even in very ordinary circumstances at least some probability values may be imprecise, and that some probability questions may fail to have numerically precise answers.

Recent debate about the error theory has taken a ‘formal turn’. On the one hand, there are those who argue that the error theory should be rejected because of its difficulties in providing a convincing formal account of the logic and semantics of moral claims. On the other hand, there are those who claim that such formal objections fail, maintaining that arguments against the error theory must be of a substantive rather than a formal kind. In this paper, we argue (...) that formal objections to the error theory cannot be eschewed but must be met head-on. (shrink)

It is often said that the best system account of laws needs supplementing with a theory of perfectly natural properties. The ‘strength’ and ‘simplicity’ of a system is language-relative and without a fixed vocabulary it is impossible to compare rival systems. Recently a number of philosophers have attempted to reformulate the BSA in an effort to avoid commitment to natural properties. I assess these proposals and argue that they are problematic as they stand. Nonetheless, I agree with their aim, and (...) show that if simplicity is interpreted as ‘compression’, algorithmic information theory provides a framework for system comparison without the need for natural properties. (shrink)

It has been argued that the fundamental laws of physics do not face a ‘problem of provisos’ equivalent to that found in other scientific disciplines (Earman, Roberts and Smith 2002) and there is only the appearance of exceptions to physical laws if they are confused with differential equations of evolution type (Smith 2002). In this paper I argue that even if this is true, fundamental laws in physics still pose a major challenge to standard Humean approaches to lawhood, as they (...) are not in any obvious sense about regularities in behaviour. A Humean approach to physical laws with exceptions is possible, however, if we adopt a view of laws that takes them to be the algorithms in the algorithmic compressions of empirical data. When this is supplemented with a distinction between lossy and lossless compression, we can explain exceptions in terms of compression artefacts present in the application of the lossy laws. (shrink)

Information-based epistemology maintains that ‘being informed’ is an independent cognitive state that cannot be reduced to knowledge or to belief, and the modal logic KTB has been proposed as a model. But what distinguishes the KTB analysis of ‘being informed’, the Brouwersche schema (B), is precisely its downfall, for no logic of information should include (B) and, more generally, no epistemic logic should include (B), either.

A sound and complete axiomatization of two tabloid blogs is presented, Leiter Logic (KB) and Deontic Leiter Logic (KDB), the latter of which can be extended to Shame Game Logic for multiple agents. The (B) schema describes the mechanism behind this class of tabloids, and illustrates the perils of interpreting a provability operator as an epistemic modal. To mark this difference, and to avoid sullying Brouwer's good name, the (B) schema for epistemic modals should be called the Blog Schema.

The desirable gambles framework offers the most comprehensive foundations for the theory of lower pre- visions, which in turn affords the most general ac- count of imprecise probabilities. Nevertheless, for all its generality, the theory of lower previsions rests on the notion of linear utility. This commitment to linearity is clearest in the coherence axioms for sets of desirable gambles. This paper considers two routes to relaxing this commitment. The first preserves the additive structure of the desirable gambles framework and (...) the machinery for coherent inference but detaches the interpretation of desirability from the multiplicative scale invariance axiom. The second strays from the additive combination axiom to accommodate repeated gambles that return rewards by a non-stationary processes that is not necessarily additive. Unlike the first approach, which is a conservative amendment to the desirable gambles framework, the second is a rad- ical departure. Yet, common to both is a method for describing rewards called discounted utility. (shrink)

This essay argues that reparations for wrongs by one's ancestors can be justified. Differential benefits to those descended from victims of one's ancestors is discrimination which can be justified by one's right to be partial to one's ancestors, doing what they, with clearer thinking, would have done--namely compensating their victims. So, while there is no obligation to discriminate, one has a right to, in virtue of one's partiality towards one's ancestors.

A characterization result of dilation in terms of positive and negative association admits an extremal counterexample, which we present together with a minor repair of the result. Dilation may be asymmetric whereas covariation itself is symmetric. Dilation is still characterized in terms of positive and negative covariation, however, once the event to be dilated has been specified.

This paper argues that the Theaetetus establishes conditions on objects of knowledge which entail that only of Forms can there be knowledge. Plato's arguments for this are valid. The principles needed to make Plato's premises true will turn out to have deep connection with important parts of Plato's over-all theory, and to have consequences which Plato, in the middle dialogues, seems to welcome on other grounds as well.

Jim Joyce argues for two amendments to probabilism. The first is the doctrine that credences are rational, or not, in virtue of their accuracy or “closeness to the truth” (1998). The second is a shift from a numerically precise model of belief to an imprecise model represented by a set of probability functions (2010). We argue that both amendments cannot be satisfied simultaneously. To do so, we employ a (slightly-generalized) impossibility theorem of Seidenfeld, Schervish, and Kadane (2012), who show that (...) there is no strictly proper scoring rule for imprecise probabilities. -/- The question then is what should give way. Joyce, who is well aware of this no-go result, thinks that a quantifiability constraint on epistemic accuracy should be relaxed to accommodate imprecision. We argue instead that another Joycean assumption — called strict immodesty— should be rejected, and we prove a representation theorem that characterizes all “mildly” immodest measures of inaccuracy. (shrink)

The theory of lower previsions is designed around the principles of coherence and sure-loss avoidance, thus steers clear of all the updating anomalies highlighted in Gong and Meng's "Judicious Judgment Meets Unsettling Updating: Dilation, Sure Loss, and Simpson's Paradox" except dilation. In fact, the traditional problem with the theory of imprecise probability is that coherent inference is too complicated rather than unsettling. Progress has been made simplifying coherent inference by demoting sets of probabilities from fundamental building blocks to secondary representations (...) that are derived or discarded as needed. (shrink)

Epistemic decision theory (EDT) employs the mathematical tools of rational choice theory to justify epistemic norms, including probabilism, conditionalization, and the Principal Principle, among others. Practitioners of EDT endorse two theses: (1) epistemic value is distinct from subjective preference, and (2) belief and epistemic value can be numerically quantified. We argue the first thesis, which we call epistemic puritanism, undermines the second.

This article is about a very important metaphysical concept, macrocosm/microcosm and its appearance in Doric thought which in turn influenced Socrates and Plato. But since this concept has been gainsaid and negated in recent articles and distorted by some ancient thinkers it will be necessary to conduct reconstructive surgery to restore it to its pristine condition. Hopefully, this paper will illustrate how metaphysics is done with the use of the Mind's eye, in the reading of reality that was part and (...) parcel of the Greek mind but also in understanding the ancient Greeks themselves and their culture especially in the creation of the classical republican form of government. This account will discuss what macrocosm/microcosm is, its part in the Cosmos and hence its centrality in the Natural Law and in philosophy (wisdom). Second, it will prove the concept thru another natural law principle, righteousness. Third, point out it's provenance in Doric thought. In a corollary, it points to what the impact macrocosm/microcosm has on the true meaning "to be a lover of wisdom" and its importance in the concept of theosis. More than a research/academic article, this paper is also an exposition in which it will attempt to demonstrate the use and the mechanics of this principle by using a saying of Homer and the tripartite paradigm of the family. (shrink)

The general introduction, which is replicated across all four volumes, aims to orientate readers unfamiliar with this area of research. It provides an overview of the different approaches within distributed cognition and discussion of the value of a distributed cognitive approach to the humanities.

This paper explores how participation and sustainability are being addressed by architects within the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme in the UK. The intentions promoted by the programme are certainly ambitious, but the ways to fulfil these aims are ill-explored. Simply focu- sing on providing innovative learning technologies, or indeed teaching young people about phy- sical sustainability features in buildings, will not necessarily teach them the skills they will need to respond to the environmental and social challenges of (...) a rapidly changing world. However, anticipating those skills is one of the most problematic issues of the programme. The involve- ment of young people in the design of schools is used to suggest empowerment, place-making and to promote social cohesion but this is set against government design literature which advo- cates for exemplars, standard layouts and best practice, all leading to forms of standardisation. The potentials for tokenistic student involvement and conflict with policy aims are evident. This paper explores two issues: how to foster in young people an ethic towards future generations, and the role of co-design practices in this process. Michael Oakeshott calls teaching the conver- sation of mankind. In this paper, I look at the philosophy of Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Luce Irigaray to argue that investigating the ethical dilemmas of the programme through critical dialogue with students offers an approach to meeting government objectives, building sustainable schools, and fostering sustainable citizenship. (shrink)

Traditionally, logic has been the dominant formal method within philosophy. Are logical methods still dominant today, or have the types of formal methods used in philosophy changed in recent times? To address this question, we coded a sample of philosophy papers from the late 2000s and from the late 2010s for the formal methods they used. The results indicate that the proportion of papers using logical methods remained more or less constant over that time period but the proportion of papers (...) using probabilistic methods was approximately three times higher in the late 2010s than it was in the late 2000s. Further analyses explored this change by looking more closely at specific methods, specific levels of technical engagement, and specific subdisciplines within philosophy. These analyses indicate that the increasing proportion of papers using probabilistic methods was pervasive, not confined to particular probabilistic methods, levels of sophistication, or subdisciplines. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s concepts shed light on the phenomenon of schizophrenia in at least three different ways: with a view to empathy, scientific explanation, or philosophical clarification. I consider two different “positive” wittgensteinian accounts―Campbell’s idea that delusions involve a mechanism of which different framework propositions are parts, Sass’ proposal that the schizophrenic patient can be described as a solipsist, and a Rhodes’ and Gipp’s account, where epistemic aspects of schizophrenia are explained as failures in the ordinary background of certainties. I argue that (...) none of them amounts to empathic-phenomenological understanding, but they provide examples of how philosophical concepts can contribute to scientific explanation, and to philosophical clarification respectively. (shrink)

O presente trabalho visa apresentar a solução dada por Santo Agostinho ao problema do mal, aliado à aparente contraditoriedade entre a presciência de Deus e a liberdade humana. Para isto, será útil como bibliografia principal do filósofo sua obra De libero arbitrio, um livro em forma de diálogo onde o pensador esclarece suas posições acerca do livre-arbítrio e da presciência divina.

Este ensaio estabelece uma comparação estética e fenomenológica entre os pensamentos de Yves-Klein e Merleau-Ponty. Se o pintor materializou as suas reflexões e concepções em obra pictórica, o fenomenólogo francês dissertou na escrita filosófica o resultado da sua reflexão. Da análise conjunta entre um e outro resulta esta fenomenologia e estética comparativa que apresenta alguns conceitos fundamentais que alimentaram essas reflexões, tais como a visibilidade, o corpo, o mundo. Assim, para além dessa comparação, este ensaio viabiliza o diálogo entre ambos. (...) Palavras-chave: Corpo. Mundo. Visibilidade. Merleau-Ponty. Yves Klein -/- Abstract:This essay establishes an aesthetic and phenomenological comparison between the thoughts of Yves-Klein and Merleau-Ponty. If the painter materialized his reflections and concepts in pictorial work, the French phenomenologist disserted in the philosophical writing the result of his reflection. From the joint analysis between one and the other, this phenomenology and comparative aesthetics results, which presents some fundamental concepts that fed these reflections such as visibility, the body, the world. Thus, in addition to this comparison, this essay enables the dialogue between both. Keywords: Body. World. Visibility. Merleau-Ponty. Yves Klein. (shrink)

The role of imagination in Descartes. The critic of Sartre to the concept of image in Descartes.

The ability to perceive the shapes of things as enduring through changes in how they stimulate our sense organs is vital to our sense of stability in the world. But what sort of capacity is shape constancy, and how is it reflected in perceptual experience? This paper defends a pluralist account of shape constancy: There are multiple kinds of shape constancy centered on geometrical properties at various levels of abstraction, and properties at these various levels feature in the content of (...) perceptual experience, governing patterns of apparent shape similarity. I propose that the varieties of shape constancy are subserved by the syntactic complexity of perceptual shape representations. By assigning discrete constituents to various abstract shape parameters, these representations attune us to the preservation of certain abstract shape properties through changes in more determinate shape properties. Finally, I draw broader lessons concerning the nature and function of perceptual constancy. (shrink)

Resumo: A crise na União Europeia e os programas de austeridade subsequentes fizeram emergir uma miríade de movimentos sociais, diversos na sua natureza e nos seus propósitos. O que se pretende aferir neste artigo é a relação e a conexão existentes entre o Estado, o poder económico, a sociedade civil e os movimentos sociais neste contexto específico de crise. Procuraremos, nesta breve abordagem, explanar alguns elementos de originalidade intrínsecos aos movimentos sociais hodiernos, patentes na sua forma de participação e organização, (...) assim como aplicar estas questões teóricas relevantes ao contexto português. A parte empírica, dada a escassez de estudos de caso existentes, será apoiada no último inquérito do European Social Survey, de 2012. Analisando um conjunto de perguntas aí explícitas, podemos compreender, de forma indirecta, algumas das dinâmicas que caracterizam estes movimentos. Abstract: The crisis in the European Union and the subsequent austerity programs have unleashed a myriad of social movements, diverse in its nature and purpose. The purpose of this paper is to assess the relationship and connection between the State, economic power, civil society and social movements in this specific context of crisis. We will try, in this brief approach, to explain some elements of originality intrinsic to modern social movements, evident in their form of participation and organization, as well as to apply these theoretical questions relevant to the Portuguese context. The empirical part, given the paucity of existing case studies, will be supported in the last survey of the European Social Survey of 2012. By analyzing a set of questions explicit there, we can, indirectly, understand some of the dynamics that characterize these movements. (shrink)

A prominent view holds that perception and memory are distinguished at least partly by their temporal orientation: Perception functions to represent the present, while memory functions to represent the past. Call this view perceptual presentism. This chapter critically examines perceptual presentism in light of contemporary perception science. I adduce evidence for three forms of perceptual sensitivity to the past: (i) shaping perception by past stimulus exposure, (ii) recruitment of mnemonic representations in perceptual processing, and (iii) perceptual representation of present objects (...) as possessing past properties. I argue that forms (i) and (ii) are consistent with perceptual presentism, while form (iii) poses a genuine threat to the view. While the empirical case for form (iii) remains inconclusive, I suggest that the most serious challenges to perceptual presentism derive from representations that integrate mnemonic and present-tensed elements in the performance of canonical perceptual functions, such as perceiving object continuity over time. (shrink)

This chapter introduces and defends a pragmatist model of aesthetic disagreement that avoids many of the philosophical puzzles generated by the traditional, semantic, approach. Mainstream philosophical inquiry into aesthetic disagreement begins with a rather innocuous assumption: to understand what’s going on we must first explain what disputants are saying, which involves identifying the meaning of the relevant expressions or determining how aesthetic claims could be true. However, this task brings with it a new host of semantic and epistemic puzzles and (...) fails to vindicate the central role aesthetic disagreements occupy in our aesthetic lives more generally. Further, it isn’t clear how settling the meaning of aesthetic expressions bears on everyday aesthetic disagreements. Paying attention to what we do in an aesthetic disagreement will give us a better chance at identifying what matters for determining what we say. (shrink)

Logical realism is a view about the metaphysical status of logic. Common to most if not all the views captured by the label ‘logical realism’ is that logical facts are mind- and language-independent. But that does not tell us anything about the nature of logical facts or about our epistemic access to them. The goal of this paper is to outline and systematize the different ways that logical realism could be entertained and to examine some of the challenges that these (...) views face. It will be suggested that logical realism is best understood as a metaphysical view about the logical structure of the world, but this raises an important question: does logical realism collapse into standard metaphysical realism? It will be argued that this result can be accommodated, even if it cannot be altogether avoided. (shrink)

De uma perspectiva comportamentalista radical, o eu é um repertório verbal complexo, que, como tal, tem uma gênese social. O reconhecimento da origem social do “eu” abre caminho para uma análise política, incluindo uma discussão do pa- pel das relações de poder na constituição do eu. Entretanto, uma concepção radicalmente social do “eu”, como a proposta pelo comportamentalismo, suscita um problema político: se o eu é integralmente produto do ambiente social, de onde viria uma eventual “vontade” de romper com esse (...) sistema? Parece que para reconhecer a possibilidade de ação política transformadora seria preciso preservar uma noção descontextualizada de “eu”. Considerando essa dificuldade, o objetivo deste artigo é propor uma interpretação política da constituição do “eu” no âmbito do comportamentalismo radical, mantendo no horizonte a possibilidade de uma ação política transformadora. Para tanto, destacamos como “eus” oprimidos são tornados submissos, mas também como de certas contingências podem emergir “eus” subversivos, que se opõem a um sistema social opressivo. Esse “eu” subversivo é caracterizado por um repertório de autoconhecimento mais amplo, que inclui a discriminação do papel das relações de poder e do controle promovido por instituições. Concluímos, com isso, que um “eu” socialmente constituído pode ser politicamente ativo. (shrink)

Shedding light on the political power and oppressive potential of language, theories of illocutionary silencing and discursive injustice show how gender, class and race can shape the pragmatics of speech, limiting in some circumstances the speaker’s ability to do things with her words. This article takes a close look at discursive injustice in trials for gender-based violence in connection with the phenomenon of misogyny. It argues that in the courtroom the testimony of the complainant is sometimes silenced by a sexist (...) ideology used in service of misogynistic ends. In particular, it argues that sexist social meanings can sometimes be enacted by the judge and accommodated by prosecutors, figuring as a component of the score in the language game of the trial and thus 1) determining what counts as sexual violence and 2) preventing complainants from making the moves they intend to make. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the moral dimensions of gender affirmation. I argue that the moral value of gender affirmation is rooted in what Iris Murdoch called loving attention. Loving attention is central to the moral value of gender affirmation because such affirmation is otherwise too fragile or insincere to have such value. Moral reasons to engage in acts that gender affirm derive from the commitment to give and express loving attention to trans people as a way of challenging their (...) marginalization. In the latter part of the paper, I will discuss how my arguments bear on recent arguments by Robin Dembroff and Daniel Wodak (2018) on the use of gender-neutral language. They argue that we have a duty not to use gender-specific pronouns for anyone. Their conclusion turns, in part, on a rejection of gender affirmation as a moral duty. The value of gender affirmation, rooted in our moral perception of trans people, should make us skeptical of this conclusion, in favor of a more nuanced and pluralistic approach to the ethics of gendering. (shrink)

Abstract: Alienation and slavery from Precious or what we don't want to see. It is our purpose to establish, in a parallel reading, these two films (highly rewarded), namely The Fence and Precious, that apparently being so different, are an illustration of the reality of life and the modern democratic world: the social uprooting and slavery. If in the movie of Phillip Noyce and Christone Olsen The Fence, is told a story of three young Aboriginal girls who are forcibly taken (...) to be transformed into domestic slaves, in the movie of Lee Daniels Precious, the young woman is already a servant in her own home and seeks the transformation of her life. Uniting these two stories, we find fundamental elements: illiteracy, ill-treatment, the idea of a migration (real or metaphysical), among others, but whose fundamental notion is the journey. If the film The Fence, the fence itself is used to conduct the three young Aboriginal to a real reunion with the family, in Precious, the metaphorical ‘fence’ is the limit of her world. From this interpretation, we will undertake our reflection about what we consider to be the alienation of the modern world and the silence we produce about them. (shrink)

This article develops a view of shape representation both in visual experience and in subpersonal visual processing. The view is that, in both cases, shape is represented in a ‘layered’ manner: an object is represented as having multiple shape properties, and these properties have varying degrees of abstraction. I argue that this view is supported both by the facts about visual phenomenology and by a large collection of evidence in perceptual psychology. Such evidence is provided by studies of shape discriminability, (...) apparent motion, multiple-object tracking, and structure-from-motion. Recent neuroscientific work has also corroborated this psychophysical evidence. Finally, I draw out implications of the layered view for processes of concept acquisition. 1 Introduction2 Metric Properties andShape Properties3 Metric Views4 Against Metric Views of Visual Shape Experience5 The Visual System Uses Abstract Shape Properties6 Against Metric Views of Visual Shape Representation7 Neural Underpinnings of Abstract Shape Perception8 Implications. (shrink)

There is a widespread belief that for their own safety and for the protection of wildlife, cats should be permanently kept indoors. Against this view, I argue that cat guardians have a duty to provide their feline companions with outdoor access. The argument is based on a sophisticated hedonistic account of animal well-being that acknowledges that the performance of species-normal ethological behavior is especially pleasurable. Territorial behavior, which requires outdoor access, is a feline-normal ethological behavior, so when a cat is (...) permanently confined to the indoors, her ability to flourish is impaired. Since cat guardians have a duty not to impair the well-being of their cats, the impairment of cat flourishing via confinement signifies a moral failing. Although some cats assume significant risks and sometimes kill wild animals when roaming outdoors, these important considerations do not imply that all cats should be deprived of the opportunity to access the outdoors. Indeed, they do not, by themselves, imply that any cat should be permanently kept indoors. (shrink)

Traditional approaches to conflict are oriented towards establishing (or re-establishing) consensus, either in the form of a resolution of the conflict or in the form of an ‘agree-to-disagree’ standstill between the stakeholders. In this paper, we criticize these traditional approaches, each for specific reasons, and we propose and develop the agonistic approach to conflict. Based on Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic democratic theory, the agonistic approach to conflict is more welcoming of dissensus, replacing discussion stoppers with discussion starters and replacing standstills with (...) contestation. We illustrate such replacements and develop this approach, we analyse technological conflicts in a concrete R&D setting: the global hydrogen economy. From this context, we focus on the conflict between the proponents of blue hydrogen (drawn from fossil fuels) and those of green hydrogen (created through electrolysis). We conclude by highlighting the advantage of the agonistic approach but also drawing attention to its own specific risk, namely, antagonism. (shrink)