The aim of this paper is reconstruct the proto-epistemology and the experience of knowledge in the boreoafroasiatic languages, with a special emphasis in Egyptians and Semitics. Our framework is the works by Ehret (1995) and the HSED edited by Orel & Stolbova (1995). So, we will analyze the roots *ken, *mɜʕ and *hq for reconstruct the proto-categories and the different kinds of cognoscitive experience.

Although the relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is, this is the first full-length study of this key concept. Showing that mereology, or the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology, Simons surveys and critiques previous theories--especially the standard extensional view--and proposes a new account that encompasses both temporal and modal considerations. Simons's revised theory not only allows him to offer fresh solutions to long-standing problems, but also has far-reaching consequences for (...) our understanding of a host of classical philosophical concepts. (shrink)

We argue that all comparative expressions in natural language obey a principle that we call Comparability: if x and y are at least as F as themselves, then either x is at least as F as y or y is at least as F as x. This principle has been widely rejected among philosophers, especially by ethicists, and its falsity has been claimed to have important normative implications. We argue that Comparability is needed to explain the goodness of several patterns (...) of inference that seem manifestly valid, that the purported failures of Comparability would have absurd consequences, and that the influential arguments against Comparability are less compelling than they may have initially seemed. (shrink)

Deep learning may transform health care, but model development has largely been dependent on availability of advanced technical expertise. The aim of this study is to develop a deep learning model to predict the gender from retinal fundus images. The proposed model was based on the Xception pre-trained model. The proposed model was trained on 20,000 retinal fundus images from Kaggle depository. The dataset was preprocessed them split into three datasets (training, validation, Testing). After training and cross-validating the proposed model, (...) it was evaluated using the testing dataset. The result of testing, the area under receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of the model was 0.99, precision, recall, f1-score and accuracy were 99%, precision, recall, f1-score and accuracy were 96.83%, 96.83%, 96.82% and 96.83% respectively.. Clinicians are presently unaware of dissimilar retinal feature variants between females and males, stressing the importance of model explain ability for the prediction of gender from retinal fundus images. The proposed deep learning may enable clinician-driven automated discovery of novel visions and disease biomarkers. (shrink)

This paper argues that, by construing emotion as epistemologically subversive, the Western tradition has tended to obscure the vital role of emotion in the construction of knowledge. The paper begins with an account of emotion that stresses its active, voluntary, and socially constructed aspects, and indicates how emotion is involved in evaluation and observation. It then moves on to show how the myth of dispassionate investigation has functioned historically to undermine the epistemic authority of women as well as other social (...) groups associated culturally with emotion. Finally, the paper sketches some ways in which the emotions of underclass groups, especially women, may contribute to the development of a critical social theory. (shrink)

Is well-being the kind of thing that can be summed across individuals? This paper takes a measurement-theoretic approach to answering this question. To make sense of adding well-being, we would need to identify some natural "concatenation" operation on the bearers of well-being that satisfies the axioms of extensive measurement and can therefore be represented by the arithmetic operation of addition. I explore various proposals along these lines, involving the concatenation of segments within lives over time, of entire lives led alongside (...) one another or in sequence, and of evaluatively basic propositions via conjunction. All of these proposals turn out to carry highly controversial commitments about the good. I do not claim that these commitments are unacceptable. But they suggest that we cannot simply take for granted, as many philosophers do, that there is any such thing as the sum of well-being. (shrink)

It is crucial to actively detect the risks of transactions in a financial company to improve customer experience and minimize financial loss. In this study, we compare different machine learning algorithms to effectively and efficiently predict the legitimacy of financial transactions. The algorithms used in this study were: MLP Repressor, Random Forest Classifier, Complement NB, MLP Classifier, Gaussian NB, Bernoulli NB, LGBM Classifier, Ada Boost Classifier, K Neighbors Classifier, Logistic Regression, Bagging Classifier, Decision Tree Classifier and Deep Learning. The dataset (...) was collected from Kaggle depository. It consists of 6362620 rows and 10 columns. The best classifier with unbalanced dataset was the Random Forest Classifier. The Accuracy 99.97%, precession 99.96%, Recall 99.97% and the F1-score 99.96%. However, the best classifier with balanced dataset was the Bagging Classifier. The Accuracy 99.96%, precession 99.95%, Recall 99.98% and the F1-score 99.96%. (shrink)

I defend the following version of the ought-implies-can principle: (OIC) by virtue of conceptual necessity, an agent at a given time has an (objective, pro tanto) obligation to do only what the agent at that time has the ability and opportunity to do. In short, obligations correspond to ability plus opportunity. My argument has three premises: (1) obligations correspond to reasons for action; (2) reasons for action correspond to potential actions; (3) potential actions correspond to ability plus opportunity. In the (...) bulk of the paper I address six objections to OIC: three objections based on putative counterexamples, and three objections based on arguments to the effect that OIC conflicts with the is/ought thesis, the possibility of hard determinism, and the denial of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. (shrink)

Automatic detection of diseases and anatomical landmarks in medical images by the use of computers is important and considered a challenging process that could help medical diagnosis and reduce the cost and time of investigational procedures and refine health care systems all over the world. Recently, gastrointestinal (GI) tract disease diagnosis through endoscopic image classification is an active research area in the biomedical field. Several GI tract disease classification methods based on image processing and machine learning techniques have been proposed (...) by diverse research groups in the recent past. However, yet effective and comprehensive deep ensemble neural network-based classification model with high accuracy classification results is not available in the literature. In this thesis, we review ways and mechanisms to use deep learning techniques to research on multi-disease computer-aided detection about gastrointestinal and identify these images. We re-trained five state-of-the-art neural network architectures, VGG16, ResNet, MobileNet, Inception-v3, and Xception on the Kvasir dataset to classify eight categories that include an anatomical landmark (pylorus, z-line, cecum), a diseased state (esophagitis, ulcerative colitis, polyps), or a medical procedure (dyed lifted polyps, dyed resection margins) in the Gastrointestinal Tract. Our models have showed results with a promising accuracy which is a remarkable performance with respect to the state-of-the-art approaches. The resulting accuracies achieved using VGG, ResNet, MobileNet, Inception-v3, and Xception were 98.3%, 92.3%, 97.6%, 90% and 98.2%, respectively. As it appears, the most accurate result has been achieved when retraining VGG16 and Xception neural networks with accuracy reache to 98% due to its high performance on training on ImageNet dataset and internal structure that support classification problems. (shrink)

Background: The castor bean is a large grassy or semi-wooden shrub or small tree. Any part of the castor plant parts can suffering from a disease that weakens the ability to grow and eliminates its production. Therefore, in this paper will identify the pests and diseases present in castor culture and detect the symptoms in each disease. Also images is showing the symptom form in this disease. Objectives: The main objective of this expert system is to obtain appropriate diagnosis of (...) the disease. Methods: In this paper, the expert system is designed for the ability of agricultural engineers to detect and diagnose disease of castor like as: seeding blight, alternaria blight, cercospora leaf spot, powdery mildew and wilt. This system presents the disease symptoms, survival and spread, favorable conditions and image for each disease. Clips and Delphi expert system languages are used for designing and implementing the proposed expert system. Results: The expert system in the diagnosis of castor diseases was assessed by farmers and agricultural engineers and they were satisfied and accepted with its quality of performance. Conclusions: The expert system is easy for farmers and people have experience in the plant of castor to detect and diagnosis the symptoms that may face this plant from several disease. (shrink)

The terms ‘compatibilism’ and ‘incompatibilism’ were introduced in the mid-20th century to name conflicting views about the logical relationship between the thesis of determinism and the thesis that someone has free will. These technical terms were originally introduced within a specific research paradigm, the classical analytic paradigm. This paradigm is now in its final stages of degeneration and few free-will theorists still work within it (i.e. using its methods, granting its substantive background assumptions, etc.). This chapter discusses how the ambiguity (...) of the terms ‘incompatibilism’ and ‘compatibilism’ took root as the classical analytic paradigm declined and why this matters to the contemporary debate. Among other things, I explain why the ambiguity of these anachronistic terms, though relatively innocuous when they were first introduced, is now encouraging theorists to tolerate and perpetuate serious philosophical errors (e.g. to conflate relations as different in kind and importance as correlation and causation, to promote uncontentiously invalid arguments, and to equivocate in ways that keep the free-will debate mired in pseudo-stalemates). I also suggest a new framework for anyone looking for relief from the confusion and deadlock created by quixotic attempts to redefine classical narratives and jargon so that they adequately describe the dialectical contours of the contemporary free-will debate. In addition, this new framework allows philosophers to start cross-pollinating work on free will and other problems, e.g. the paradox of moral luck. -/- A selection from the publication is available to download here. For full version, please gmail me, username: kristin.mickelson.42 -/- . (shrink)

What are words? What makes two token words tokens of the same word-type? Are words abstract entities, or are they (merely) collections of tokens? The ontology of words tries to provide answers to these, and related questions. This article provides an overview of some of the most prominent views proposed in the literature, with a particular focus on the debate between type-realist, nominalist, and eliminativist ontologies of words.

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

The van Wijngaarden grammars are two-level grammars that present many interesting properties. In the present article I elaborate on six of these properties, to wit, (i) their being constituted by two grammars, (ii) their ability to generate (possibly infinitely many) strict languages and their own metalanguage, (iii) their context-sensitivity, (iv) their high descriptive power, (v) their productivity, or the ability to generate an infinite number of production rules, and (vi) their equivalence with the unrestricted, or Type-0, Chomsky grammars.

Foundational ontologies, central constructs in ontological investigations and engineering alike, are based on ontological categories. Firstly proposed by Aristotle as the very ur- elements from which the whole of reality can be derived, they are not easy to identify, let alone partition and/or hierarchize; in particular, the question of their number poses serious challenges. The late medieval philosopher Dietrich of Freiberg wrote around 1286 a tutorial that can help us today with this exceedingly difficult task. In this paper, I discuss (...) ontological categories and their importance for foundational ontologies from both the contemporary perspective and the original Aristotelian viewpoint, I provide the translation from the Latin into English of Dietrich's De origine II with an introductory elaboration, and I extract a foundational ontology–that is in fact a single-category one–from this text rooted in Dietrich's specification of types of subjecthood and his conception of intentionality as causal operation. (shrink)

In order to better understand the topic of hope, this paper argues that two separate theories are needed: One for hoping, and the other for hopefulness. This bifurcated approach is warranted by the observation that the word ‘hope’ is polysemous: It is sometimes used to refer to hoping and sometimes, to feeling or being hopeful. Moreover, these two senses of 'hope' are distinct, as a person can hope for some outcome yet not simultaneously feel hopeful about it. I argue that (...) this distinction between hoping and hopefulness is not always observed or fully appreciated in the literature and has consequently caused much confusion. This paper then sketches what theorizing about hope looks like in light of this clarification and discusses some of its implications. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an area of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines or software that work and react like humans. Some of the activities computers with artificial intelligence are designed for include, Speech, recognition, Learning, Planning and Problem solving. Deep learning is a collection of algorithms used in machine learning, It is part of a broad family of methods used for machine learning that are based on learning representations of data. Deep learning is a technique used (...) to produce Pneumonia detection and classification models using x-ray imaging for rapid and easy detection and identification of pneumonia. In this thesis, we review ways and mechanisms to use deep learning techniques to produce a model for Pneumonia detection. The goal is find a good and effective way to detect pneumonia based on X-rays to help the chest doctor in decision-making easily and accuracy and speed. The model will be designed and implemented, including both Dataset of image and Pneumonia detection through the use of Deep learning algorithms based on neural networks. The test and evaluation will be applied to a range of chest x-ray images and the results will be presented in detail and discussed. This thesis uses deep learning to detect pneumonia and its classification. (shrink)

It has been widely argued that words are analogous to species such that words, like species, are natural kinds. In this paper, I consider the metaphysics of word-kinds. After arguing against an essentialist approach, I argue that word-kinds are homeostatic property clusters, in line with the dominant approach to other biological and psychological kinds.

Multicellular organisms contain numerous symbiotic microorganisms, collectively called microbiomes. Recently, microbiomic research has shown that these microorganisms are responsible for the proper functioning of many of the systems (digestive, immune, nervous, etc.) of multicellular organisms. This has inclined some scholars to argue that it is about time to reconceptualise the organism and to develop a concept that would place the greatest emphasis on the vital role of microorganisms in the life of plants and animals. We believe that, unfortunately, there is (...) a problem with this suggestion, since there is no such thing as a universal concept of the organism which could constitute a basis for all biological sciences. Rather, the opposite is true: numerous alternative definitions exist. Therefore, comprehending how microbiomics is changing our understanding of organisms may be a very complex matter. In this paper we will demonstrate that this pluralism proves that claims about a change in our understanding of organisms can be treated as both true and untrue. Mainly, we assert that the existing concepts differ substantially, and that only some of them have to be reconsidered in order to incorporate the discoveries of microbiomics, while others are already flexible enough to do so. Taking into account the plurality of conceptualisations within different branches of modern biology, we will conduct our discussion using the developmental and the cooperation–conflict concepts of the organism. Then we will explain our results by referring to the recent philosophical debate on the nature of the concept of the organism within biology. (shrink)

This project was provoked by the almost nonexistent pushback from the Democratic liberal establishment to the (2020) exoneration of Kyle Rittenhouse, despite his acknowledged killing of two Black Lives Matters protesters against the police murder of George Floyd. It builds on three prior articles arguing for the revival of ancient Dionysian practice, Haitian Vodou, and Indigenous South American shamanism to empower leftist revolution. In essence, I propose an assemblage of spiritual practices that are accessible today for the neo-colonized 99% of (...) the global population, by synthesizing and reconstructing three democratic, lower-SES, Indigenous religions, all of which share a militant defiance of their respective tyrannical plutocracies. To avoid cultural appropriation, I center these reconstructed spiritual practices on the figure of the “mage,” a psychosocial healer loosely analogous to a shaman. And the mage’s signature activity, “magic,” I redefine naturalistically as free interpersonal performative action, practiced using two theoretical disciplines (philosophy and psychology) and two practical disciplines chosen by each mage. More precisely, Spirit/Dance channels the “spirits” of dead ancestors, historical figures, legendary heroes, mythical beings, and fictional characters, into the three ultimate objectives of “mindfulness” for psyches/souls, “liberation” for mindful bodies, and “social justice” for liberated communities, indirectly empowering long-term revolution. (shrink)

Twentieth century philosophers introduced the distinction between “objective rightness” and “subjective rightness” to achieve two primary goals. The first goal is to reduce the paradoxical tension between our judgments of (i) what is best for an agent to do in light of the actual circumstances in which she acts and (ii) what is wisest for her to do in light of her mistaken or uncertain beliefs about her circumstances. The second goal is to provide moral guidance to an agent who (...) may be uncertain about the circumstances in which she acts, and hence is unable to use her standard moral principle directly in deciding what to do. This paper distinguishes two important senses of “moral guidance”; proposes criteria of adequacy for accounts of subjective rightness; canvasses existing definitions for “subjective rightness”; finds them all deficient; and proposes a new and more successful account. It argues that each comprehensive moral theory must include multiple principles of subjective rightness to address the epistemic situations of the full range of moral decision-makers, and shows that accounts of subjective rightness formulated in terms of what it would reasonable for the agent to believe cannot provide that guidance. -/- . (shrink)

*As mentioned in Peter Coy's NYT essay "When Being Good Is Just a Matter of Being Lucky" (2023) -/- ----- -/- How is the problem of free will related to the problem of moral luck? In this essay, I answer that question and outline a new solution to the paradox of moral luck, the source-paradox solution. This solution both explains why the paradox arises and why moral luck does not exist. To make my case, I highlight a few key connections (...) between the paradox of moral luck and two related problems, namely the problem of free will and determinism and the paradox of self-creation. Piecing together intuitions, arguments, and insights from recent work on each of these three problems, I argue that the type of control necessary for moral responsibility can only be had by someone who is a genuine source of his own actions, but the relevant notion of sourcehood admits no coherent characterization. If our commonsense view of moral responsibility is incoherent, it is unsurprising that our commitment to the existence of morally responsible agents commits us to some paradoxical things—e.g. to both the existence and impossibility of moral luck. For more information about this article, please write to gmail account: kristin.mickelson.42. (shrink)

Imperatives cannot be true, but they can be obeyed or binding: `Surrender!' is obeyed if you surrender and is binding if you have a reason to surrender. A pure declarative argument — whose premisses and conclusion are declaratives — is valid exactly if, necessarily, its conclusion is true if the conjunction of its premisses is true; similarly, I suggest, a pure imperative argument — whose premisses and conclusion are imperatives — is obedience-valid (alternatively: bindingness-valid) exactly if, necessarily, its conclusion is (...) obeyed (alternatively: binding) if the conjunction of its premisses is. I argue that there are two kinds of bindingness, and that a vacillation between two corresponding variants of bindingness-validity largely explains conflicting intuitions concerning the validity of some pure imperative arguments. I prove that for each of those two variants of bindingness-validity there is an equivalent variant of obedience-validity. Finally, I address alternative accounts of pure imperative inference. (shrink)

Imperatives cannot be true or false, so they are shunned by logicians. And yet imperatives can be combined by logical connectives: "kiss me and hug me" is the conjunction of "kiss me" with "hug me". This example may suggest that declarative and imperative logic are isomorphic: just as the conjunction of two declaratives is true exactly if both conjuncts are true, the conjunction of two imperatives is satisfied exactly if both conjuncts are satisfied—what more is there to say? Much more, (...) I argue. "If you love me, kiss me", a conditional imperative, mixes a declarative antecedent ("you love me") with an imperative consequent ("kiss me"); it is satisfied if you love and kiss me, violated if you love but don't kiss me, and avoided if you don't love me. So we need a logic of three -valued imperatives which mixes declaratives with imperatives. I develop such a logic. (shrink)

3rd ed, 2021. A circumscription of the classical theory of computation building up from the Chomsky hierarchy. With the usual topics in formal language and automata theory.

Background: Mint is a grassy, perennial plant, belonging to the oral platoon, fast growing and spreading, its leaves are green in color, fragrant, tart, refreshing, square-shaped leg, bifurcated, erect, ranging in height from (10 - 201 cm). Home to Europe and Asia. The mint plant has many benefits, the most important of which are pain relief, treatment of gallbladder disorders, the expulsion of gases, anti-inflammatory, and relaxing nerves. While the mint plant is the ideal option for the start of gardens, (...) it is prone to some common diseases that affect the plant's growth. Objectives: The main goal of this expert system is to get the appropriate diagnosis of disease and the correct treatment. Methods: In this paper, the design of the proposed Expert System was produced to help Farmers and those interested in agriculture in diagnosing many of the Mint diseases such as Mint rust, Verticillium wilt, Anthracnose, Powdery mildew, Black Stem Rot, Stem and stolon canker, Septoria leaf spot. The proposed expert system presents an overview of mint diseases are given, the cause of diseases outlined and the treatment of disease whenever possible is given out. CLIPS Expert System language was used for designing and implementing the proposed expert system. Results: The proposed Mint diseases diagnosis expert system was evaluated by Agricultural Students at AL Azhar University and some friends interested in agriculture and they were satisfied with its performance. Conclusions: The proposed expert system is very useful for Farmers and those interested in agriculture. (shrink)

Why does classical equilibrium statistical mechanics work? Malament and Zabell (1980) noticed that, for ergodic dynamical systems, the unique absolutely continuous invariant probability measure is the microcanonical. Earman and Rédei (1996) replied that systems of interest are very probably not ergodic, so that absolutely continuous invariant probability measures very distant from the microcanonical exist. In response I define the generalized properties of epsilon-ergodicity and epsilon-continuity, I review computational evidence indicating that systems of interest are epsilon-ergodic, I adapt Malament and Zabell’s (...) defense of absolute continuity to support epsilon-continuity, and I prove that, for epsilon-ergodic systems, every epsilon-continuous invariant probability measure is very close to the microcanonical. (shrink)

This contribution aims to explore the historical predecessors of the Five Percenter model of self-realization, as popularized by Hip Hop artists such as Supreme Team, Rakim Allah, Brand Nubian, Wu-Tang Clan, or Sunz of Man. As compared to frequent considerations of the phenomenon as a creative mythological background for a socio-political struggle, Five Percenter teachings shall be discussed as contemporary interpretations of historical models of self-realization in various philosophical, religious, and esoteric systems. By putting the coded system of the tenfold (...) Supreme Mathematics as one of its core teachings in context with the Pythagorean Tetractys, an arrangement of ten points in four lines, the commonalities between the sequence and concepts attributed to the respective numbers will be demonstrated. (shrink)

"Surrender; therefore, surrender or fight" is apparently an argument corresponding to an inference from an imperative to an imperative. Several philosophers, however (Williams 1963; Wedeking 1970; Harrison 1991; Hansen 2008), have denied that imperative inferences exist, arguing that (1) no such inferences occur in everyday life, (2) imperatives cannot be premises or conclusions of inferences because it makes no sense to say, for example, "since surrender" or "it follows that surrender or fight", and (3) distinct imperatives have conflicting permissive presuppositions (...) ("surrender or fight" permits you to fight without surrendering, but "surrender" does not), so issuing distinct imperatives amounts to changing one's mind and thus cannot be construed as making an inference. In response I argue inter alia that, on a reasonable understanding of 'inference', some everyday-life inferences do have imperatives as premises and conclusions, and that issuing imperatives with conflicting permissive presuppositions does not amount to changing one's mind. (shrink)

In the early part of the paper, I attempt to explain a dispute between two parties who endorse the compositionality of language but disagree about its implications: Paul Horwich, and Jerry Fodor and Ernest Lepore. In the remainder of the paper, I challenge the thesis on which they are agreed, that compositionality can be taken for granted. I suggest that it is not clear what compositionality involves nor whether it obtains. I consider some kinds of apparent counterexamples, and compositionalist responses (...) to them in terms of covert indexicality and unspecific meanings. I argue that the last option is the best for most of the cases I consider. I conclude by stressing, as against Horwich and Fodor and Lepore, that the appropriate question concerns the extent to which compositionality obtains in a natural language, rather than whether it obtains or not, so that the answer is essentially messy, requiring detailed consideration of a wide range of examples. (shrink)

In Morality & Mathematics, Justin Clarke-Doane argues that it is hard to imagine being "a realist about, for example, the standard model of particle physics, but not about mathematics." I try to explain how that seems very possible from the perspective of a physicist. What is real is the physical world; mathematics starts from descriptions of the natural world and extrapolates from there, but that extrapolation does not imply any independent reality. -/- Submitted to an Analysis Reviews symposium on Clarke-Doane's (...) Morality & Mathematics. (shrink)

Not focusing on the history of classical logic, this book provides discussions and quotes central passages on its origins and development, namely from a philosophical perspective. Not being a book in mathematical logic, it takes formal logic from an essentially mathematical perspective. Biased towards a computational approach, with SAT and VAL as its backbone, this is an introduction to logic that covers essential aspects of the three branches of logic, to wit, philosophical, mathematical, and computational.

The paper argues that intensional phenomena can be explained without appealing to "exotic" entities: one that don't exist, are merely possible, or are essentially abstract.

Criticism of big data has focused on showing that more is not necessarily better, in the sense that data may lose their value when taken out of context and aggregated together. The next step is to incorporate an awareness of pitfalls for aggregation into the design of data infrastructure and institutions. A common strategy minimizes aggregation errors by increasing the precision of our conventions for identifying and classifying data. As a counterpoint, we argue that there are pragmatic trade-offs between precision (...) and ambiguity that are key to designing effective solutions for generating big data about biodiversity. We focus on the importance of theory-dependence as a source of ambiguity in taxonomic nomenclature and hence a persistent challenge for implementing a single, long-term solution to storing and accessing meaningful sets of biological specimens. We argue that ambiguity does have a positive role to play in scientific progress as a tool for efficiently symbolizing multiple aspects of taxa and mediating between conflicting hypotheses about their nature. Pursuing a deeper understanding of the trade-offs and synthesis of precision and ambiguity as virtues of scientific language and communication systems then offers a productive next step for realizing sound, big biodiversity data services. (shrink)

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

I argue that the three strongest arguments against metaphysical libertarianism—the randomness objection, the constitutive luck objection, and the physicalist objection—are actually unsuccessful and therefore that metaphysical libertarianism is more plausible than the common philosophical wisdom allows. My more positive thesis, what I will refer to as “Agent Exceptionalism,” is that, when making decisions and performing actions, human beings can indeed satisfy the four conditions of metaphysical libertarianism: the control condition, the rationality condition, the ultimacy condition, and the physicalism condition.

Three-dimensionalists , sometimes referred to as endurantists, think that objects persist through time by being “wholly present” at every time they exist. But what is it for something to be wholly present at a time? It is surprisingly difficult to say. The threedimensionalist is free, of course, to take ‘is wholly present at’ as one of her theory’s primitives, but this is problematic for at least one reason: some philosophers claim not to understand her primitive. Clearly the three-dimensionalist would be (...) better off if she could state her theory in terms accessible to all. We think she can. What is needed is a definition of ‘is wholly present at’ that all can understand. in this paper, we offer one. (shrink)

Reasoning over our knowledge bases and theories often requires non-deductive inferences, especially – but by no means only – when commonsense reasoning is the case, i.e. when practical agency is called for. This kind of reasoning can be adequately formalized via the notion of supraclassical consequence, a non-deductive consequence tightly associated with default and non-monotonic reasoning and featuring centrally in abductive, inductive, and probabilistic logical systems. In this paper, we analyze core concepts and problems of these systems in the light (...) of supraclassical consequence. (shrink)

Genera, typically hand-in-hand with their branching species, are essential elements of vocabulary-based information constructs, in particular scientific taxonomies. Should they also feature in formal ontologies, the highest of such constructs? I argue in this article that the answer is “Yes” and that the question posed in its title also has a Yes-answer: The way medieval ontologists sliced up the world into genera does matter to formal ontology. More specifically, the way Dietrich of Freiberg, a Latin scholastic, conceived and applied strictly (...) generic criteria to slice up the world into its entities can provide some guidelines to the field of formal ontology with respect to not only its contents, but also its scope. In particular, Dietrich's information criterion plays here a central role. (shrink)

This is an earlier version of the argument presented as the appendix to the author's final book, Peri Physeos.

Racial epithets are terms used to characterize people on the basis of their race, and are often used to harm the people that they target. But what do racial epithets mean, and how do they work to harm in the way that they do? In this essay I set out to answer these questions by offering a pragmatic view of racial epithets, while contrasting my position with Christopher Hom's semantic view.

Contemporary studies in unconscious cognition are essentially founded on dissociation, i.e., on how it dissociates with respect to conscious mental processes and representations. This is claimed to be in so many and diverse ways that one is often lost in dissociation. In order to reduce this state of confusion we here carry out two major tasks: based on the central distinction between cognitive processes and representations, we identify and isolate the main dissociation paradigms; we then critically analyze their key tenets (...) and reported findings. (shrink)

Alix Cohen argues that the function of feeling in Kantian psychology is to appraise and orient activity. Thus she sees feeling and agency as importantly connected by Kant’s lights. I endorse this broader claim, but argue that feeling, on her account, cannot do the work of orientation that she assigns to it.

Software piracy is older than the PC and has been the subject of several studies, which have found it to be a widespread phenomenon in general, and among university students in particular. An earlier study by Cohen and Cornwell from a decade ago is replicated, adding questions about downloading music from the Internet. The survey includes responses from 224 students in entry-level courses at two schools, a nondenominational suburban university and a Catholic urban college with similar student profiles. The study (...) found that there has been few if any changes in student opinions regarding the unauthorized duplication of copy- righted materials. Students generally felt that copying commercial software and downloading music from the Internet was acceptable and found that there was no significant correlation between student attitudes and their school’s religious affiliation or lack thereof. Additionally, the study found that a small but significant percentage of respondents considered the other questionable behaviors as ethically acceptable. Finally, the reasons for these attitudes are discussed as well as what colleges can do to correct the situation. (shrink)

In this article I offer an interpretation of the fundamental problem of phenomenology in terms of a philosophy of revelation proposing in this way the renewal of the last important development of Western philosophy both in terms of its metaphysical aspiration and scientific relevance. After the general introduction, I outline the philosophical problem of revelation. I show how this philosophy influenced early phenomenology. I explain the underlying subject matter in the history of phenomenology, i.e. the notion of disclosure. I also (...) outline what I term “apocalyptic phenomenology” in order to focus on the understanding of revelation. In this part I offer details of the notion of newness and the appropriate method applied here. Finally, I summarize the scientific relevance of my approach in the context of logic, methodology, disciplinarity with a special emphasis on the study of religion. (shrink)

Recent theorizing argues that online communication technologies provide powerful, although precarious, means of emotional regulation. We develop this understanding further. Drawing on subjective reports collected during periods of imposed social restrictions under COVID-19, we focus on how this precarity is a source of emo-tional dysregulation. We make our case by organizing responses into five distinct but intersecting dimensions wherein the precarity of this regulation is most relevant: infrastructure, functional use, mindful design (individual and social), and digital tact. Analyzing these reports, (...) along with examples of mediating technologies (i.e., self-view) and common interactive dynamics (e.g., gaze coordination), we tease out how breakdowns along these dimensions are sources of affective dysregulation. We argue that the adequacy of available technological resources and competencies of various kinds matter greatly to the types of emotional experiences one is likely to have online. Further research into online communication technologies as modula-tors of both our individual and collective well-being is urgently needed, especially as the echoes of the digital push that COVID-19 initiated are set to continue rever-berating into the future. (shrink)

An analysis of--yet another--case of academic failure in multi- and interdisciplinarity. An editorial of the Journal of Knowledge Structures & Systems.

Patient-funded trials are gaining traction as a means of accelerating clinical translation. However, such trials sidestep mechanisms that promote rigor, relevance, efficiency, and fairness. We recommend that funding bodies or research institutions establish mechanisms for merit review of patient-funded trials, and we offer some basic criteria for evaluating PFT protocols.