Crime-preventing neurointerventions (CPNs) are increasingly being used or advocated for crime prevention. There is increasing use of testosterone-lowering agents to prevent recidivism in sexual offenders, and strong political and scientific interest in developing pharmaceutical treatments for psychopathy and anti-social behaviour. Recent developments suggest that we may ultimately have at our disposal a range of drugs capable of suppressing violent aggression, and it is not difficult to imagine possible applications of such drugs in crime prevention. But should neurointerventions be used in (...) crime prevention, and may the state ever permissibly impose CPNs as part of the criminal justice process? It is widely thought that preventing recidivism is one of the aims of criminal justice, yet existing means of pursuing this aim are often poorly effective, restrictive of basic freedoms, and harmful. Incarceration, for example, tends to be disruptive of personal relationships and careers, detrimental to physical and mental health, highly restrictive of freedom of movement and association, and rarely more than modestly effective at preventing recidivism. Neurointerventions hold the promise of preventing recidivism in ways that are more effective and more humane, but the use of CPNs in criminal justice raises several ethical concerns. CPNs could be highly intrusive and may threaten fundamental human values, such as bodily integrity and freedom of thought, and humanity has a track record of misguided, harmful, and unwarrantedly coercive use of neurotechnological ‘solutions’ to criminality. This collection brings together original contributions from emerging scholars and internationally renowned moral and political philosophers to address these issues. (shrink)

Most philosophers discuss the Repugnant Conclusion as an objection to total utilitarianism. But this focus on total utilitarianism seems to be one-sided. It conceals the important fact that other competing moral theories are also subject to the Repugnant Conclusion. The primary aim of this paper is to demonstrate that versions of egalitarianism are subject to the Repugnant Conclusion and other repugnant conclusions.

About 80 % of all convicted have had a prior record of conviction. But how should the state punish repeat offenders (with a prior conviction) as compared with first-time offenders who are convicted? The law in all jurisdictions, a large swathe of public opinion, and the general trend within criminal justice ethics all seem to accept what we may call: -/- Asymmetry A The punishment of repeat offenders should be harsher than the punishment of first-time offenders. -/- This asymmetry is (...) obviously just a rough structure. It leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Several retributivists have argued for progressive loss of mitigation (PLM). On this view, a first-time offender receives a discount on punishment that is gradually lost if he re-offends. When the discount is lost the offender receives the full punishment, and re-offending from that point on will be punished equally. However, recently some retributivists have argued in favour of a cumulative principle (CP) according to which an offender will progressively be punished more severely the more convictions he has accumulated. In sum, in the theoretical literature on the subject, Asymmetry A has been the mantra for several prominent retributivists. The aim of this paper is to point to an all but overlooked logical point in the discussion of punishment and recidivism. This is the point that it follows, from retributivism, that there is a reason - at least in some situations, as we shall see - to support what we may call: -/- Asymmetry B The punishment of repeat offenders should be more lenient than the punishment of first-time offenders. (shrink)

Five arguments are presented in favour of the proposal that people who opt in as organ donors should receive a tax break. These arguments appeal to welfare, autonomy, fairness, distributive justice and self-ownership, respectively. Eight worries about the proposal are considered in this paper. These objections focus upon no-effect and counter-productiveness, the Titmuss concern about social meaning, exploitation of the poor, commodification, inequality and unequal status, the notion that there are better alternatives, unacceptable expense, and concerns about the veto of (...) relatives. The paper argues that none of the objections to the proposal is very telling. (shrink)

The aim of this critical commentary is to distinguish and analytically discuss some important variations in which legal moralism is defined in the literature. As such, the aim is not to evaluate the most plausible version of legal moralism, but to find the most plausible definition of legal moralism. As a theory of criminalization, i.e. a theory that aims to justify the criminal law we should retain, legal moralism can be, and has been, defined as follows: the immorality of an (...) act of type A is a sufficient reason for the criminalization of A, even if A does not cause someone to be harmed. In what follows, I critically examine some of the key definitions and proposals that have, unfortunately, not always been carefully distinguished. Finally, I propose a definition that seems to capture the essence of what many philosophers refer to when they talk about legal moralism, while also providing more clarity. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss the plausibility of a certain position in the philosophical literature within which the Repugnant Conclusion is treated, not as repugnant, but as an acceptable implication of the total welfare principle. I will confine myself to focus primarily on Törbjörn Tännsjö’s presentation. First, I reconstruct Tännsjö’s view concerning the repugnance of the RC in two arguments. The first argument is criticized for (a) addressing the wrong comparison, (b) relying on the controversial claim that (...) the privileged people in our actual world only have lives barely worth living and (c) that Tännsjö’s identification between Z-lives and privileged lives is restricted to certain versions of the notion ‘barely worth living’ – a restriction that weakens the force of the argument. The second argument is criticized because some of it premises entailed (b) and (d) for its implausible claim that non-imaginable outcomes cannot be compared. (shrink)

Birks and Buyx (2018) claim that, at least in the foreseeable future, nonconsensual neurointerventions will almost certainly suppress some valuable mental states and will thereby impose an objectionable harm to mental integrity—a harm that it is pro tanto wrong to impose. Of course, incarceration also interferes with valuable mental states, so might seem to be objectionable in the same way. However, Birks and Buyx block this result by maintaining that the negative mental effects of incarceration are merely foreseen, whereas those (...) of neurointerventions are intended. We dispute Birks and Buyx’s characterization of the descriptive difference between these effects. In both cases, the negative effects are caused, not constituted, by the act in question. (shrink)

How should we punish criminal offenders? One prima facie attractive punishment is administering a mandatory neurointervention—interventions that exert a physical, chemical or biological effect on the brain in order to diminish the likelihood of some forms of criminal offending. While testosterone-lowering drugs have long been used in European and US jurisdictions on sex offenders, it has been suggested that advances in neuroscience raise the possibility of treating a broader range of offenders in the future. Neurointerventions could be a cheaper, and (...) more effective method of punishment. They could also be more humane. Nevertheless, in this paper we provide an argument against the use of mandatory neurointerventions on offenders. We argue that neurointerventions inflict a significant harm on an offender that render them a morally objectionable form of punishment in a respect that incarceration is not. Namely, it constitutes an objectionable interference with the offender’s mental states. However, it might be thought that incarceration also involves an equally objectionable interference with the offender’s mental states. We show that even if it were the case that the offender is harmed to the same extent in the same respect, it does not follow that the harms are morally equivalent. We argue that if one holds that intended harm is more difficult to justify than harm that is unintended but merely foreseen, this means neurointerventions could be morally objectionable in a significant respect that incarceration is not. (shrink)

Paternalistic behaviour directed towards a person’s informed and competent decisions is often thought to be morally impermissible. This view is supported by what we can call the Anti-Paternalism Principle. While APP might seem plausible when employed to show the wrongness of paternalism by the state, there are some cases of paternalistic behaviour between private, informed, and competent individuals where APP seems mistaken. This raises a difficulty for supporters of APP. Either they need to reject APP to accommodate our intuitions in (...) these cases, or provide grounds for thinking that paternalistic behaviour between certain private individuals is different in a morally relevant sense. In this paper, I explore several possible morally relevant differences, and find all of them unsatisfactory as grounds for maintaining the plausibility of APP. (shrink)

According to some philosophers, a necessary condition of morally permissible punishment is that it communicates deserved censure for the offender’s wrongdoing. The author calls this the Communicative Condition of punishment. The chapter considers whether the use of mandatory crime-preventing neurointerventions is compatible with the Communicative Condition. The author argues that it is not. If we accept the Communicative Condition, it follows that it is impermissible to administer mandatory neurointerventions on offenders as punishment. The author then considers whether it is permissible (...) to offer an offender a neurointervention as a replacement for incarceration or in exchange for a shorter sentence. He notes that this could meet the Communicative Condition, although, somewhat oddly, only in cases where the neurointerventions have harmful effects. (shrink)

Incompatibilists believe free will is impossible if determinism is true, and they often claim that this view is supported by ordinary intuitions. We challenge the claim that incompatibilism is intuitive to most laypersons and discuss the significance of this challenge to the free will debate. After explaining why incompatibilists should want their view to accord with pretheoretical intuitions, we suggest that determining whether incompatibilism is in fact intuitive calls for empirical testing. We then present the results of our studies, which (...) put significant pressure on the claim that incompatibilism is intuitive. Finally, we consider and respond to several potential objections to our approach. (shrink)

This paper discusses three relevant logics that obey Component Homogeneity - a principle that Goddard and Routley introduce in their project of a logic of significance. The paper establishes two main results. First, it establishes a general characterization result for two families of logic that obey Component Homogeneity - that is, we provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for their consequence relations. From this, we derive characterization results for S*fde, dS*fde, crossS*fde. Second, the paper establishes complete sequent calculi (...) for S*fde, dS*fde, crossS*fde. Among the other accomplishments of the paper, we generalize the semantics from Bochvar, Hallden, Deutsch and Daniels, we provide a general recipe to define containment logics, we explore the single-premise/single-conclusion fragment of S*fde, dS*fde, crossS*fdeand the connections between crossS*fde and the logic Eq of equality by Epstein. Also, we present S*fde as a relevant logic of meaninglessness that follows the main philosophical tenets of Goddard and Routley, and we briefly examine three further systems that are closely related to our main logics. Finally, we discuss Routley's criticism to containment logic in light of our results, and overview some open issues. (shrink)

Recent scholarship in intellectual humility (IH) has attempted to provide deeper understanding of the virtue as personality trait and its impact on an individual's thoughts, beliefs, and actions. A limitations-owning perspective of IH focuses on a proper recognition of the impact of intellectual limitations and a motivation to overcome them, placing it as the mean between intellectual arrogance and intellectual servility. We developed the Limitations-Owning Intellectual Humility Scale to assess this conception of IH with related personality constructs. In Studies 1 (...) (n= 386) and 2 (n = 296), principal factor and confirmatory factor analyses revealed a three-factor model – owning one's intellectual limitations, appropriate discomfort with intellectual limitations, and love of learning. Study 3 (n = 322) demonstrated strong test-retest reliability of the measure over 5 months, while Study 4 (n = 612) revealed limitations-owning IH correlated negatively with dogmatism, closed-mindedness, and hubristic pride and positively with openness, assertiveness, authentic pride. It also predicted openness and closed-mindedness over and above education, social desirability, and other measures of IH. The limitations-owning understanding of IH and scale allow for a more nuanced, spectrum interpretation and measurement of the virtue, which directs future study inside and outside of psychology. (shrink)

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

Every day, thousands of polls, surveys, and rating scales are employed to elicit the attitudes of humankind. Given the ubiquitous use of these instruments, it seems we ought to have firm answers to what is measured by them, but unfortunately we do not. To help remedy this situation, we present a novel approach to investigate the nature of attitudes. We created a self-transforming paper survey of moral opinions, covering both foundational principles, and current dilemmas hotly debated in the media. This (...) survey used a magic trick to expose participants to a reversal of their previously stated attitudes, allowing us to record whether they were prepared to endorse and argue for the opposite view of what they had stated only moments ago. The result showed that the majority of the reversals remained undetected, and a full 69% of the participants failed to detect at least one of two changes. In addition, participants often constructed coherent and unequivocal arguments supporting the opposite of their original position. These results suggest a dramatic potential for flexibility in our moral attitudes, and indicates a clear role for self-attribution and post-hoc rationalization in attitude formation and change. (shrink)

The most contentious tenet of Husserl's phenomenology of feelings is his conclusion that there is an analogy between axiological reason and theoretical reason. Simply, Husserl asserts that the axiological validation of feelings is analogical to the theoretical validation of judgments. While the scholarship has debated the merits of Husserl's analogy over the last 120 years, this paper presents a new accurate interpretation, because it is the first to highlight how Husserl develops this analogy by most often comparing the fulfillment of (...) judgments to the fulfillment of wish feeling intentions. Specifically, I examine how Husserl analogizes wish fulfillment to theoretical fulfillment at different times; in the 1901 Logical Investigations, in his 1908 Lectures on Ethics, and in 1910 manuscripts from Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins. In light of this original interpretation, I conclude by arguing – contra popular readings – that Husserl does not over‐intellectualize feelings and their validation. (shrink)

We examine some of Connes’ criticisms of Robinson’s infinitesimals starting in 1995. Connes sought to exploit the Solovay model S as ammunition against non-standard analysis, but the model tends to boomerang, undercutting Connes’ own earlier work in functional analysis. Connes described the hyperreals as both a “virtual theory” and a “chimera”, yet acknowledged that his argument relies on the transfer principle. We analyze Connes’ “dart-throwing” thought experiment, but reach an opposite conclusion. In S , all definable sets of reals are (...) Lebesgue measurable, suggesting that Connes views a theory as being “virtual” if it is not definable in a suitable model of ZFC. If so, Connes’ claim that a theory of the hyperreals is “virtual” is refuted by the existence of a definable model of the hyperreal field due to Kanovei and Shelah. Free ultrafilters aren’t definable, yet Connes exploited such ultrafilters both in his own earlier work on the classification of factors in the 1970s and 80s, and in Noncommutative Geometry, raising the question whether the latter may not be vulnerable to Connes’ criticism of virtuality. We analyze the philosophical underpinnings of Connes’ argument based on Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, and detect an apparent circularity in Connes’ logic. We document the reliance on non-constructive foundational material, and specifically on the Dixmier trace −∫ (featured on the front cover of Connes’ magnum opus) and the Hahn–Banach theorem, in Connes’ own framework. We also note an inaccuracy in Machover’s critique of infinitesimal-based pedagogy. (shrink)

In the Summa Theologiae, I, q. 5, art. 4, Thomas argues that the good has the ratio of the final cause.1 This thesis is problematic because there seems to be a difference between the definitions and uses of “good” and “final cause.” If Thomas is arguing that the good and the final cause are in no way distinct, then why might we plausibly describe something as good even if it has no causal role? If not, then what does (...) it mean for the ratio of goodness to be the same as that of final causality? Later Thomists disagree over the precise relationship between goodness and final causality, and their disagreement is reflected in their different interpretations of the argument and conclusion of this text. Few hold that Thomas merely means to say that goodness is the fundament of being an end, or that being an end is something like a proper passion of goodness. But they disagree over what the additional connection between the two might be. (shrink)

The work of Thomas White represents a systematic attempt to combine the best of the new science of the seventeenth century with the best of Aristotelian tradition. This attempt earned him the criticism of Hobbes and the praise of Leibniz, but today, most of his attempts to navigate between traditions remain to be explored in detail. This paper does so for his ontology of accidents. It argues that his criticism of accidents in the category of location as entities over (...) and above substances was likely aimed at Francisco Suárez, and shows how White’s worries about the analysis of location were linked with his broader cosmological views. White rejects real qualities, but holds that the quantity of a substance is somehow distinct from its bearer. This reveals a common ground with some of his scholastic interlocutors, but lays bare a deep disagreement with thinkers like Descartes on the nature of matter. (shrink)

Despite the recent proliferation of scientific, clinical, and narrative accounts of auditory verbal hallucinations, the phenomenology of voice hearing remains opaque and undertheorized. In this article, we outline an interdisciplinary approach to understanding hallucinatory experiences which seeks to demonstrate the value of the humanities and social sciences to advancing knowledge in clinical research and practice. We argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH utilizes rigorous and context-appropriate methodologies to analyze a wider range of first-person accounts of AVH (...) at 3 contextual levels: cultural, social, and historical; experiential; and biographical. We go on to show that there are significant potential benefits for voice hearers, clinicians, and researchers. These include informing the development and refinement of subtypes of hallucinations within and across diagnostic categories; “front-loading” research in cognitive neuroscience; and suggesting new possibilities for therapeutic intervention. In conclusion, we argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH can nourish the ethical core of scientific enquiry by challenging its interpretive paradigms, and offer voice hearers richer, potentially more empowering ways to make sense of their experiences. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy is the name for a recent movement whose participants use the methods of experimental psychology to probe the way people think about philosophical issues and then examine how the results of such studies bear on traditional philosophical debates. Given both the breadth of the research being carried out by experimental philosophers and the controversial nature of some of their central methodological assumptions, it is of no surprise that their work has recently come under attack. In this paper we (...) respond to some criticisms of experimental philosophy that have recently been put forward by Antti Kauppinen. Unlike the critics of experimental philosophy, we do not think the fledgling movement either will or should fall before it has even had a chance to rise up to explain what it is, what it seeks to do (and not to do), and exactly how it plans to do it. Filling in some of the salient details is the main goal of the present paper. (shrink)

Is it possible for an individual that has gone out of being to come back into being again? The English Aristotelian, Thomas White, argued that it is not. Thomas Hobbes disagreed, and used the case of the Ship of Theseus to argue that individuals that have gone out of being may come back into being again. This paper provides the first systematic account of their arguments. It is doubtful that Hobbes has a consistent case against White. Still his (...) criticism may have prompted White to clarify his views on identity over time in his later work. (shrink)

Intuitively, many people seem to hold that engaging in acts of virtual murder in videogames is morally permissible, whereas engaging in acts of virtual child molestation is morally impermissible. The Gamer’s Dilemma (Luck in Ethics Inf Technol 11:31–36, 2009) challenges these intuitions by arguing that it is unclear whether there is a morally relevant difference between these two types of virtual actions. There are two main responses in the literature to this dilemma. First, attempts to resolve the dilemma by defending (...) an account of the relevant moral differences between virtual murder and virtual child molestation. Second, attempts to dissolve the dilemma by undermining the intuitions that ground it. In this paper, we argue that a narrow version of the Gamer’s Dilemma seems to survive attempts to resolve or dissolve it away entirely, since neither approach seems to be able to solve the dilemma for all cases. We thus provide a contextually sensitive version of the dilemma that more accurately tracks onto the intuitions of gamers. However, we also argue that the intuitions that ground the narrow version of the Dilemma may not have a moral foundation, and we put forward alternative non-moral normative foundations that seem to better account for the remaining intuitive difference between the two types of virtual actions. We also respond to proposed solutions to the Gamer’s Dilemma in novel ways and set out areas for future empirical work in this area. (shrink)

Typically, nudging is a technique for steering the choices of people without giving reasons or using enforcement. In benevolent cases, it is used when people are insufficiently responsive to reason. The nudger triggers automatic cognitive mechanisms – sometimes even biases – in smart ways in order to push irrational people in the right direction. Interestingly, this technique can also be applied to doxastic attitudes. Someone who is doxastically unresponsive to evidence can be nudged into forming true beliefs or doxastic attitudes (...) that are propositionally justified. When doxastic nudging uses non-rational mechanisms, the worry is that nudging cannot result in justified beliefs or knowledge, as the resulting doxastic attitudes lack the right kind of basis. In this paper, I will argue that given the right background views about knowledge, justified beliefs and the relevant processes, epistemic nudging is possible even in these cases. That is, all kinds of nudging can – in appropriate circumstances – produce justified beliefs or knowledge in the nudgee. (shrink)

Introduction to the Inaugural Issue of the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics.

The claim that common sense regards free will and moral responsibility as compatible with determinism has played a central role in both analytic and experimental philosophy. In this paper, we show that evidence in favor of this “natural compatibilism” is undermined by the role that indeterministic metaphysical views play in how people construe deterministic scenarios. To demonstrate this, we re-examine two classic studies that have been used to support natural compatibilism. We find that although people give apparently compatibilist responses, this (...) is largely explained by the fact that people import an indeterministic metaphysics into deterministic scenarios when making judgments about freedom and responsibility. We conclude that judgments based on these scenarios are not reliable evidence for natural compatibilism. (shrink)

Theories of explanation need to account for a puzzling feature of our explanatory practices: the fact that we prefer explanations that are relatively abstract but only moderately so. Contra Franklin-Hall ([2016]), I argue that the interventionist account of explanation provides a natural and elegant explanation of this fact. By striking the right balance between specificity and generality, moderately abstract explanations optimally subserve what interventionists regard as the goal of explanation, namely identifying possible interventions that would have changed the explanandum.

According to the so-called Classical Theory, concepts are mentally represented by individually necessary and jointly sufficient application conditions. One of the principal empirical objections against this view stems from evidence that people judge some instances of a concept to be more typical than others. In this paper we present and discuss four empirical studies that investigate the extent to which this ‘typicality effect’ holds for the concept of basic needs. Through multiple operationalizations of typicality, our studies yielded evidence for a (...) strong effect of this kind: Participants tended to recall the same core examples of the concept in a free-listing task. They judged some basic needs to be more typical than others. The items that were judged to be more typical were listed more frequently in the free-listing task. These items were listed earlier on in the free-listing task. Typical basic needs, as well as non needs, were classified faster than atypical basic needs in a reaction time study. These findings suggest that the concept of basic needs may have a non-classical structure. If so, the quest for a simple and robust intensional analysis of the concept may be futile. (shrink)

In Rahul Banerjee and Bikas K. Chakrabarti (eds.), Progress in Brain Research, 168: 215-246. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Electronic offprint available upon request.

In a series of pre-registered studies, we explored (a) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about deterministic scenarios, (b) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about neurodeterministic scenarios (that is, scenarios where the determinism is described at the neurological level), (c) the difference between people’s intuitions about neutral scenarios (e.g., walking a dog in the park) and their intuitions about negatively valenced scenarios (e.g., murdering a stranger), and (d) the difference (...) between people’s intuitions about free will and responsibility in response to first-person scenarios and third-person scenarios. We predicted that once we focused participants’ attention on the two different abilities to do otherwise available to agents in indeterministic and deterministic scenarios, their intuitions would support natural incompatibilism—the view that laypersons judge that free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism. This prediction was borne out by our findings. (shrink)

According to the recent Perceptual Confidence view, perceptual experiences possess not only a representational content, but also a degree of confidence in that content. The motivations for this view are partly phenomenological and partly epistemic. We discuss both the phenomenological and epistemic motivations for the view, and the resulting account of the interface between perceptual experiences and degrees of belief. We conclude that, in their present state of development, orthodox accounts of perceptual experience are still to be favoured over the (...) perceptual confidence view. (shrink)

Although ethics is an essential component of undergraduate medical education, research suggests current medical ethics curricula face considerable challenges in improving students’ ethical reasoning. This paper discusses these challenges and introduces a promising new mode of graduate and professional ethics instruction for overcoming them. We begin by describing common ethics curricula, focusing in particular on established problems with current approaches. Next, we describe a novel method of ethics education and assessment for medical students that we have devised, the Medical Ethics (...) Bowl. Finally, we suggest pedagogical advantages to MEBs when compared to other ethics curricula. (shrink)

We can cause windows to break and we can break windows; we can cause villages to flood and we can flood villages; and we can cause chocolate to melt and we can melt chocolate. Each time these can come apart: if, for example, A merely instructs B to break the window, then A causes the window to break without breaking it herself. Each instance of A breaking/flooding/melting/burning/killing/etc. something, is an instance of what I call making. I argue that making is (...) an independent, theoretically important notion—akin but irreducible to causing—and metaphysicians should pay attention to it. (shrink)

Amazon Book Review Series of “Meandering Sobriety”.

ليس بالتفكير نخلق العوالم، بل بفهم العالم نتعلم التفكير. "الرؤية الكونية" هو مصطلح يجب أن يعني مجموعة من الأسس التي تنبثق منها فهم منهجي للكون، ومكوناته كالحياة، والعالم الذي نعيش فيه، والطبيعة، والظواهر البشرية، وعلاقاتها. إنه، بالتالي، مجال من الفلسفة التحليلية يغذيه العلوم، وهدفه هو هذا المعرفة المجمعة والمستدامة معرفيًا عن كل ما نحن عليه ونحتويه، وما يحيط بنا، وما يرتبط بنا بأي شكل من الأشكال. إنه شيء قديم قدم الفكر البشري، وبالإضافة إلى استخدام عناصر من علم الكونيات العلمي، فإنه (...) يشمل كل شيء في الفلسفة والعلوم الذي يشير إلى الكون والحياة. الرؤية الكونية ليست مجموعة من الأفكار والفرضيات والافتراضات بل هي نظام قائم على الملاحظة والتحليل والدليل والتوضيح. لا تهدف أي رؤية كونية إلى التعريف أو التأسيس أو الاقتراح بل فقط إلى الفهم والتحليل والتفسير. كل منا يبني وينقل رؤيته الكونية طوال حياته، دون إنشاء أشكال، كخلفية لتفكيرنا وسلوكنا. لغويًا، قد يشتق مصطلح "الرؤية الكونية" من الألمانية، ويعادل مفهوم "Weltanschauung"، كما استخدمه عدة فلاسفة. ومع ذلك، فإن هذه العلاقة اللغوية غير قابلة للتطبيق لأنها تتعارض مع ما نقترحه كرؤية كونية. تشير هذه الكلمة الألمانية إلى رؤية واقعية قبل منطقية أو أولية، ذات سياق حدسي وبعيدة عن المعرفة النقدية التي لم تكن موجودة بعد في وقت صياغتها. بلا شك، تحتوي الرؤى الكونية، بالمعنى الذي نفهمها، وتستخدم هذه العناصر الأولية أو قبل المنطقية التي تشمل التاريخ واللاوعي الجماعي وكل النماذج التي نحملها. ومع ذلك، في المفهوم الذي نطبقه هنا، تتجاوز الرؤية الكونية هذا المحتوى بكثير، أولاً من خلال إخضاعه باستمرار للتفكير النقدي الحالي، وأخيرًا من خلال جعل التجربة التحليلية (وليس التفكير نفسه أو الحدس) كونها الفعلي. يعرض أنطونيو لوبيس اتساع هذا المحتوى: "الرؤى الكونية ليست نتاج الفكر. لا تنبع من الرغبة البسيطة في المعرفة. إن استيعاب الواقع هو لحظة مهمة في تكوينها، ولكن، مع ذلك، هي واحدة فقط. إنها تأتي من السلوك الحيوي، ومن تجربة تقييم الحياة، ومن هيكل كليتنا النفسية. إن رفع الحياة إلى الوعي في معرفة الواقع، وفي التقييم، وفي الواقع الإرادي هو العمل البطيء والشاق الذي قامت به الإنسانية في تطوير مفاهيم الحياة. (ديلتاي، 1992 [1911]: 120)"(1) في هذا العمل، نسعى إلى تحديد رؤية كونية تستند إلى الحقائق التي تقدمها العلوم اليوم. لا نقترح، في أي وقت، أن نقوم بالعلم؛ أو نظري الفلسفة، لكننا سنسعى دائمًا لأن ندعم بها أو، على الأقل، نحتمي بها من التشوهات المعرفية التي نحملها عادة. (shrink)

ليس بالتفكير نخلق العوالم، بل بفهم العالم نتعلم التفكير. "الرؤية الكونية" هو مصطلح يجب أن يعني مجموعة من الأسس التي تنبثق منها فهم منهجي للكون، ومكوناته كالحياة، والعالم الذي نعيش فيه، والطبيعة، والظواهر البشرية، وعلاقاتها. إنه، بالتالي، مجال من الفلسفة التحليلية يغذيه العلوم، وهدفه هو هذا المعرفة المجمعة والمستدامة معرفيًا عن كل ما نحن عليه ونحتويه، وما يحيط بنا، وما يرتبط بنا بأي شكل من الأشكال. إنه شيء قديم قدم الفكر البشري، وبالإضافة إلى استخدام عناصر من علم الكونيات العلمي، فإنه (...) يشمل كل شيء في الفلسفة والعلوم الذي يشير إلى الكون والحياة. الرؤية الكونية ليست مجموعة من الأفكار والفرضيات والافتراضات بل هي نظام قائم على الملاحظة والتحليل والدليل والتوضيح. لا تهدف أي رؤية كونية إلى التعريف أو التأسيس أو الاقتراح بل فقط إلى الفهم والتحليل والتفسير. كل منا يبني وينقل رؤيته الكونية طوال حياته، دون إنشاء أشكال، كخلفية لتفكيرنا وسلوكنا. لغويًا، قد يشتق مصطلح "الرؤية الكونية" من الألمانية، ويعادل مفهوم "Weltanschauung"، كما استخدمه عدة فلاسفة. ومع ذلك، فإن هذه العلاقة اللغوية غير قابلة للتطبيق لأنها تتعارض مع ما نقترحه كرؤية كونية. تشير هذه الكلمة الألمانية إلى رؤية واقعية قبل منطقية أو أولية، ذات سياق حدسي وبعيدة عن المعرفة النقدية التي لم تكن موجودة بعد في وقت صياغتها. بلا شك، تحتوي الرؤى الكونية، بالمعنى الذي نفهمها، وتستخدم هذه العناصر الأولية أو قبل المنطقية التي تشمل التاريخ واللاوعي الجماعي وكل النماذج التي نحملها. ومع ذلك، في المفهوم الذي نطبقه هنا، تتجاوز الرؤية الكونية هذا المحتوى بكثير، أولاً من خلال إخضاعه باستمرار للتفكير النقدي الحالي، وأخيرًا من خلال جعل التجربة التحليلية (وليس التفكير نفسه أو الحدس) كونها الفعلي. يعرض أنطونيو لوبيس اتساع هذا المحتوى: "الرؤى الكونية ليست نتاج الفكر. لا تنبع من الرغبة البسيطة في المعرفة. إن استيعاب الواقع هو لحظة مهمة في تكوينها، ولكن، مع ذلك، هي واحدة فقط. إنها تأتي من السلوك الحيوي، ومن تجربة تقييم الحياة، ومن هيكل كليتنا النفسية. إن رفع الحياة إلى الوعي في معرفة الواقع، وفي التقييم، وفي الواقع الإرادي هو العمل البطيء والشاق الذي قامت به الإنسانية في تطوير مفاهيم الحياة. (ديلتاي، 1992 [1911]: 120)"(1) في هذا العمل، نسعى إلى تحديد رؤية كونية تستند إلى الحقائق التي تقدمها العلوم اليوم. لا نقترح، في أي وقت، أن نقوم بالعلم؛ أو نظري الفلسفة، لكننا سنسعى دائمًا لأن ندعم بها أو، على الأقل، نحتمي بها من التشوهات المعرفية التي نحملها عادة. (shrink)

This paper intends to further the understanding of the formal properties of (higher-order) vagueness by connecting theories of (higher-order) vagueness with more recent work in topology. First, we provide a “translation” of Bobzien's account of columnar higher-order vagueness into the logic of topological spaces. Since columnar vagueness is an essential ingredient of her solution to the Sorites paradox, a central problem of any theory of vagueness comes into contact with the modern mathematical theory of topology. Second, Rumfitt’s recent topological reconstruction (...) of Sainsbury’s theory of prototypically defined concepts is shown to lead to the same class of spaces that characterize Bobzien’s account of columnar vagueness, namely, weakly scattered spaces. Rumfitt calls these spaces polar spaces. They turn out to be closely related to Gärdenfors’ conceptual spaces, which have come to play an ever more important role in cognitive science and related disciplines. Finally, Williamson’s “logic of clarity” is explicated in terms of a generalized topology (“locology”) that can be considered an alternative to standard topology. Arguably, locology has some conceptual advantages over topology with respect to the conceptualization of a boundary and a borderline. Moreover, in Williamson’s logic of clarity, vague concepts with respect to a notion of a locologically inspired notion of a “slim boundary” are (stably) columnar. Thus, Williamson’s logic of clarity also exhibits a certain affinity for columnar vagueness. In sum, a topological perspective is useful for a conceptual elucidation and unification of central aspects of a variety of contemporary accounts of vagueness. (shrink)

Much attention has recently been paid to the idea, which I label ‘External World Acquaintance’ (EWA), that the phenomenal character of perceptual experience is partially constituted by external features. One motivation for EWA which has received relatively little discussion is its alleged ability to help deal with the ‘Explanatory Gap’ (e.g. Fish 2008, 2009, Langsam 2011, Allen 2016). I provide a reformulation of this general line of thought, which makes clearer how and when EWA could help to explain the specific (...) phenomenal nature of visual experience. In particular, I argue that by focusing on the different kinds of perceptual actions that are available in the case of visual spatial vs. colour perception, we get a natural explanation for why we should expect the specific nature of colour phenomenology to remain less readily intelligible than the specific nature of visual spatial phenomenology. (shrink)

The 2013 Rostock Symposium on Systems Biology and Bioinformatics in Aging Research was again dedicated to dissecting the aging process using in silico means. A particular focus was on ontologies, as these are a key technology to systematically integrate heterogeneous information about the aging process. Related topics were databases and data integration. Other talks tackled modeling issues and applications, the latter including talks focussed on marker development and cellular stress as well as on diseases, in particular on diseases of kidney (...) and skin. (shrink)

A key source of support for the view that challenging people’s beliefs about free will may undermine moral behavior is two classic studies by Vohs and Schooler (2008). These authors reported that exposure to certain prompts suggesting that free will is an illusion increased cheating behavior. In the present paper, we report several attempts to replicate this influential and widely cited work. Over a series of five studies (sample sizes of N = 162, N = 283, N = 268, N (...) = 804, N = 982) (four preregistered) we tested the relationship between (1) anti-free-will prompts and free will beliefs and (2) free will beliefs and immoral behavior. Our primary task was to closely replicate the findings from Vohs and Schooler (2008) using the same or highly similar manipulations and measurements as the ones used in their original studies. Our efforts were largely unsuccessful. We suggest that manipulating free will beliefs in a robust way is more difficult than has been implied by prior work, and that the proposed link with immoral behavior may not be as consistent as previous work suggests. (shrink)

Abstract. The aim of this paper is to present a topological method for constructing discretizations (tessellations) of conceptual spaces. The method works for a class of topological spaces that the Russian mathematician Pavel Alexandroff defined more than 80 years ago. Alexandroff spaces, as they are called today, have many interesting properties that distinguish them from other topological spaces. In particular, they exhibit a 1-1 correspondence between their specialization orders and their topological structures. Recently, a special type of Alexandroff spaces was (...) used by Ian Rumfitt to elucidate the logic of vague concepts in a new way. According to his approach, conceptual spaces such as the color spectrum give rise to classical systems of concepts that have the structure of atomic Boolean algebras. More precisely, concepts are represented as regular open regions of an underlying conceptual space endowed with a topological structure. Something is subsumed under a concept iff it is represented by an element of the conceptual space that is maximally close to the prototypical element p that defines that concept. This topological representation of concepts comes along with a representation of the familiar logical connectives of Aristotelian syllogistics in terms of natural settheoretical operations that characterize regular open interpretations of classical Boolean propositional logic. In the last 20 years, conceptual spaces have become a popular tool of dealing with a variety of problems in the fields of cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics and philosophy, mainly due to the work of Peter Gärdenfors and his collaborators. By using prototypes and metrics of similarity spaces, one obtains geometrical discretizations of conceptual spaces by so-called Voronoi tessellations. These tessellations are extensionally equivalent to topological tessellations that can be constructed for Alexandroff spaces. Thereby, Rumfitt’s and Gärdenfors’s constructions turn out to be special cases of an approach that works for a more general class of spaces, namely, for weakly scattered Alexandroff spaces. This class of spaces provides a convenient framework for conceptual spaces as used in epistemology and related disciplines in general. Alexandroff spaces are useful for elucidating problems related to the logic of vague concepts, in particular they offer a solution of the Sorites paradox (Rumfitt). Further, they provide a semantics for the logic of clearness (Bobzien) that overcomes certain problems of the concept of higher2 order vagueness. Moreover, these spaces help find a natural place for classical syllogistics in the framework of conceptual spaces. The crucial role of order theory for Alexandroff spaces can be used to refine the all-or-nothing distinction between prototypical and nonprototypical stimuli in favor of a more fine-grained gradual distinction between more-orless prototypical elements of conceptual spaces. The greater conceptual flexibility of the topological approach helps avoid some inherent inadequacies of the geometrical approach, for instance, the so-called “thickness problem” (Douven et al.) and problems of selecting a unique metric for similarity spaces. Finally, it is shown that only the Alexandroff account can deal with an issue that is gaining more and more importance for the theory of conceptual spaces, namely, the role that digital conceptual spaces play in the area of artificial intelligence, computer science and related disciplines. Keywords: Conceptual Spaces, Polar Spaces, Alexandroff Spaces, Prototypes, Topological Tessellations, Voronoi Tessellations, Digital Topology. (shrink)

Die Übernahme des KI-Unternehmens DeepMind durch Google für rund eine halbe Milliarde US-Dollar signalisierte vor einem Jahr, dass von der KI-Forschung vielversprechende Ergebnisse erwartet werden. Spätestens seit bekannte Wissenschaftler wie Stephen Hawking und Unternehmer wie Elon Musk oder Bill Gates davor warnen, dass künstliche Intelligenz eine Bedrohung für die Menschheit darstellt, schlägt das KI-Thema hohe Wellen. Die Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus (EAS, vormals GBS Schweiz) hat mit der Unterstützung von Experten/innen aus Informatik und KI ein umfassendes Diskussionspapier zu den Chancen (...) und Risiken der künstlichen Intelligenz verfasst und geht darin auf aktuelle, mittel- und langfristige Herausforderungen im Bereich der KI-Entwicklung ein. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical and scienti .c discussions of mind developed from a 'proto-concept of mind ',a mythical,tradition- alistic,animistic and quasi-sensory theory about what it means to have a mind. It can be found in many di .erent cultures and has a semantic core corresponding to the folk-phenomenological notion of a 'soul '.It will be argued that this notion originates in accurate and truthful .rst-person reports about the experiential content of a special neurophenomenological state-class called 'out-of-body experiences '.They can be undergone by (...) every human being and seem to possess a culturally invariant cluster of functional and phenomenal core properties similar to the proto-concept of mind. The common causal factor in the emergence and development of the notion of the soul and the proto-concept of mind may consist in a yet to be determined set of properties realized by the human brain, underlying the cluster of phenomenal properties described in the relevant first-person reports. This hypothesis suggests that such a neurofunctional substrate ed human beings at different times, and in widely varying cultural contexts, to postulate the existence of a soul and to begin developing a theory of mind. (shrink)