This scoping review addresses the issues of responsible conduct of research (RCR) that can arise in the practice of research-creation (RC), an emergent, interdisciplinary, and heterogeneous field at the interface of academic research and creative activities. Little is yet known about the nature and scope of RCR issues in RC, so our study examined three questions: (1) What are the specific issues in RC in relation to RCR? (2) How does the specificity of RC influence the understanding and practice of (...) RCR? (3) What recommendations could help address the issues highlighted in the literature To answer these questions, we conducted a scoping review of the academic literature (n = 181 texts) dealing with RCR in RC. We found that researcher-creators faced some very different RCR challenges in comparison with their colleagues in the rest of academia. Addressing these issues is important for both the RCR and RC communities in order to ensure that the rapid development of this field occurs in line with the norms of RCR which, nonetheless, should be adapted to respect the particularities of RC and allow its contributions to the academic world. (shrink)

Critical notice assessing the use of information theory in the attempt to build a design inference, and to re-establish some aspects of the program of natural theology, as carried out in this third major monograph devoted to the subject of intelligent design theory by mathematician and philosopher William A. Dembski, after The Design Inference (1998) and No Free Lunch (2002).

Die Moralphilosophie des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts hat mit Konsequentialismus, Deontologie, Kontraktualismus und Tugendethik nicht nur höchst einflussreiche Theorieparadigmen produktiv weiterentwickelt, sondern auch eine Reihe wichtiger neuer Probleme aufgeworfen. Der vorliegende Band versammelt zentrale Beiträge der analytischen Moralphilosophie, u. a. von David Gauthier, Shelly Kagan, Frances Kamm, Thomas Nagel, Michael Slote, Christine Swanton und Susan Wolf, die für ein Verständnis gegenwärtiger Diskussionen in der normativen Ethik unabdingbar sind. -/- Inhaltsverzeichnis: Vorwort Einleitung: Analytische Moralphilosophie der Gegenwart -/- 1. Konsequentialismus Shelly Kagan: (...) Ein Plädoyer gegen die Alltagsmoral Peter Railton: Entfremdung, Konsequentialismus und die Anforderungen der Moral -/- 2. Deontologie Thomas Nagel: Ethik William David Ross: Was macht richtige Handlungen richtig? -/- 3. Kontraktualismus David Gauthier: Warum Kontraktualismus? Thomas Scanlon: Die Struktur des Kontraktualismus -/- 4. Tugendethik Christine Swanton: Eine tugendethische Theorie des richtigen Handelns Michael Slote: Akteursbasierte Tugendethik -/- 5. Moralische Aggregation John Taurek: Zählt die Anzahl? Frances M. Kamm: Aggregation und zwei moralphilosophische Methoden -/- 6. Das Prinzip der Doppelwirkung Jonathan Bennett: Vorhergesehene Nebenwirkungen vs. beabsichtigte Folgen Ralph Wedgwood: Zur Verteidigung der Lehre von der Doppelwirkung -/- 7. Moralische Rechte H. L. A. Hart: Gibt es natürliche Rechte? Joseph Raz: Über die Beschaffenheit von Rechten -/- 8. Moralischer Zufall Thomas Nagel: Moralischer Zufall Susan Wolf: Die Moral des moralischen Zufalls. (shrink)

Preliminary Material /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- Kosmos & Kontingenz /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- "De la théorie à la pratique“ /Eva Marie Noller -- Mittelalterliche Kosmologie und Kontingenz /Cornelia Selent -- Kontingenz der Stimmen im Kosmos der Lettern -,Atomologie', Technologie und William Baldwins Beware the Cat /Ronja Bodola -- Hypothese, Abweichung und Traum Keplers Ellipsen /Reto Rössler -- "Nur leerer Raum und Schatten“ /Hartmut Böhme -- Gewissheit als sentiment /Christian Reidenbach -- Poiesis (...) im "Gegenhalt“ der anderen Welten: Epistemische und kosmologische Kontingenz bei Breitinger und Brockes /Johannes Wankhammer -- Ungereimtheit - Poesie und Prosa um 1755 /Wolfgang Hottner -- "Es giebt freylich unzähliche Welten“ /Tim Sparenberg -- Kontingenz, Ordnung und realer Grund bei Kant /Thijs Menting -- Im Grunde das Regellose /Philipp Weber -- Kontingenz und Latenz /Helmut Müller-Sievers -- Revolution in Permanenz: Auguste Blanquis Ewigkeit durch die Sterne /Alexandra Heimes -- "Kosmische Gesetze“? /Elisa Ronzheimer -- Vom unendlichen Universum zur Dialektik der Kontingenz /Thomas Ebke -- Stetigkeit im kosmischen Diskontinuum /Timothy Attanucci -- Versuch einer Kosmologie des Performativen in der Kunst /Maximilian Haas -- Kosmopolitismus und Internationalismus: Zwei Modelle, zwei Erbschaften /Étienne Balibar -- Vom kontingenten Kosmos zur Kosmopolitik /Karin Harrasser -- Auswahlbibliographie /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- Begriffsregister /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- Autorinnen und Autoren /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss the “Austro-American” logical empiricism proposed by physicist and philosopher Philipp Frank, particularly his interpretation of Carnap’s Aufbau, which he considered the charter of logical empiricism as a scientific world conception. According to Frank, the Aufbau was to be read as an integration of the ideas of Mach and Poincaré, leading eventually to a pragmatism quite similar to that of the American pragmatist William James. Relying on this peculiar interpretation, Frank intended to (...) bring about a rapprochement between the logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle in exile and American pragmatism. In the course of this project, in the last years of his career, Frank outlined a comprehensive, socially engaged philosophy of science that could serve as a “link between science and philosophy”. (shrink)

The influence of surrealism and Philippe Soupault on William Carlos Williams' poetry.

The second volume in the Homo Mimeticus mini-series advances the emerging transdisciplinary field of mimetic studies. After the linguistic and the affective turns, the new materialist and the performative turns, the cognitive and the posthuman turns, it is now time to re-turn to the ancient, yet also modern and still contemporary realization that humans are mimetic creatures. In this second installment of the Homo Mimeticus series, international scholars working in philosophy, literary theory, classics, cultural studies, sociology, political theory, and the (...) neurosciences engage creatively with Nidesh Lawtoo's Homo Mimeticus: A New Theory of Imitation to further the transdisciplinary field of mimetic studies. Agonistic critical engagements with precursors like Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Bataille, Irigaray, and Girard, involving contributions by leading international thinkers such as Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, William E. Connolly, Henry Staten, and Vittorio Gallese, among many others, reveal the urgency to rethink mimesis beyond realism. From imitation to identification, mimicry to affective contagion, techne to simulation, mirror neurons to biomimicry, homo mimeticus casts a shadow—but also a light—on the present and future, from social media to the Anthropocene. (shrink)

The chapter traces the history of psychiatric ethics with a focus on the emergence of autonomy and how assumptions and thresholds surrounding informed consent and decision-making capacity have changed over the centuries. Innovators like Philippe PInel and William Tuke are featured in this account of how the 'mad' and the abuses of the 'domestication paradigm' of madness eventually gave way to more humanitarian approaches of treating the 'mad', like moral treatment. The chapter closes with a brief reflection regarding (...) the limits of autonomy and the decline of paternalism in psychiatric ethics. (shrink)

Mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers of physics often look to the symmetries of an object for insight into the structure and constitution of the object. My aim in this paper is to explain why this practice is successful. In order to do so, I present a collection of results that are closely related to (and in a sense, generalizations of) Beth’s and Svenonius’ theorems.

Mathematicians often describe the importance of well-developed intuition to productive research and successful learning. But neither education researchers nor philosophers interested in epistemic dimensions of mathematical practice have yet given the topic the sustained attention it deserves. The trouble is partly that intuition in the relevant sense lacks a usefully clear characterization, so we begin by offering one: mature intuition, we say, is the capacity for fast, fluent, reliable and insightful inference with respect to some subject matter. We illustrate the (...) role of mature intuition in mathematical practice with an assortment of examples, including data from a sequence of clinical interviews in which a student improves upon initially misleading covariational intuitions. Finally, we show how the study of intuition can yield insights for philosophers and education theorists. First, it contributes to a longstanding debate in epistemology by undermining epistemicism, the view that an agent’s degree of objectual understanding is determined exclusively by their knowledge, beliefs and credences. We argue on the contrary that intuition can contribute directly and independently to understanding. Second, we identify potential pedagogical avenues towards the development of mature intuition, highlighting strategies including adding imagery, developing associations, establishing confidence and generalizing concepts. (shrink)

According to a widespread view in metaphysics and philosophy of science, all explanations involve relations of ontic dependence between the items appearing in the explanandum and the items appearing in the explanans. I argue that a family of mathematical cases, which I call “viewing-as explanations”, are incompatible with the Dependence Thesis. These cases, I claim, feature genuine explanations that aren’t supported by ontic dependence relations. Hence the thesis isn’t true in general. The first part of the paper defends this claim (...) and discusses its significance. The second part of the paper considers whether viewing-as explanations occur in the empirical sciences, focusing on the case of so-called fictional models. It’s sometimes suggested that fictional models can be explanatory even though they fail to represent actual worldly dependence relations. Whether or not such models explain, I suggest, depends on whether we think scientific explanations necessarily give information relevant to intervention and control. Finally, I argue that counterfactual approaches to explanation also have trouble accommodating viewing-as cases. (shrink)

We present a theory of human artistic experience and the neural mechanisms that mediate it. Any theory of art has to ideally have three components. The logic of art: whether there are universal rules or principles; The evolutionary rationale: why did these rules evolve and why do they have the form that they do; What is the brain circuitry involved? Our paper begins with a quest for artistic universals and proposes a list of ‘Eight laws of artistic experience’ -- a (...) set of heuristics that artists either consciously or unconsciously deploy to optimally titillate the visual areas of the brain. One of these principles is a psychological phenomenon called the peak shift effect: If a rat is rewarded for discriminating a rectangle from a square, it will respond even more vigorously to a rectangle that is longer and skinnier that the prototype. We suggest that this principle explains not only caricatures, but many other aspects of art. Example: An evocative sketch of a female nude may be one which selectively accentuates those feminine form-attributes that allow one to discriminate it from a male figure; a Boucher, a Van Gogh, or a Monet may be a caricature in ‘colour space’ rather than form space. Even abstract art may employ ‘supernormal’ stimuli to excite form areas in the brain more strongly than natural stimuli. Second, we suggest that grouping is a very basic principle. The different extrastriate visual areas may have evolved specifically to extract correlations in different domains , and discovering and linking multiple features into unitary clusters -- objects -- is facilitated and reinforced by direct connections from these areas to limbic structures. In general, when object-like entities are partially discerned at any stage in the visual hierarchy, messages are sent back to earlier stages to alert them to certain locations or features in order to look for additional evidence for the object . Finally, given constraints on allocation of attentional resources, art is most appealing if it produces heightened activity in a single dimension rather than redundant activation of multiple modules. This idea may help explain the effectiveness of outline drawings and sketches, the savant syndrome in autists, and the sudden emergence of artistic talent in fronto-temporal dementia. In addition to these three basic principles we propose five others, constituting a total of ‘eight laws of aesthetic experience’. (shrink)

Iglesias et al. (2025) argue that “some of the aims or ostensible goods of person-span expansion could plausibly be fulfilled in part by creating a digital doppelgänger”—that is, an AI system desig...

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

Individuals tend to judge bad side effects as more intentional than good side effects (the Knobe or side- effect effect). Here, we assessed how widespread these findings are by testing eleven adult cohorts of eight highly contrasted cultures on their attributions of intentional action as well as ratings of blame and praise. We found limited generalizability of the original side-effect effect, and even a reversal of the effect in two rural, traditional cultures (Samoa and Vanuatu) where participants were more likely (...) to judge the good side effect as intentional. Three follow-up experiments indicate that this reversal of the side-effect effect is not due to semantics and may be linked to the perception of the status of the protagonist. These results highlight the importance of factoring cultural context in our understanding of moral cognition. (shrink)

Alongside existing research into the social, political and economic impacts of the Web, there is a need to study the Web from a cognitive and epistemic perspective. This is particularly so as new and emerging technologies alter the nature of our interactive engagements with the Web, transforming the extent to which our thoughts and actions are shaped by the online environment. Situated and ecological approaches to cognition are relevant to understanding the cognitive significance of the Web because of the emphasis (...) they place on forces and factors that reside at the level of agent–world interactions. In particular, by adopting a situated or ecological approach to cognition, we are able to assess the significance of the Web from the perspective of research into embodied, extended, embedded, social and collective cognition. The results of this analysis help to reshape the interdisciplinary configuration of Web Science, expanding its theoretical and empirical remit to include the disciplines of both cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The police are required to establish probable cause before engaging in custodial interrogation. Much custodial interrogation relies on a fraudulent epistemic environment (FEE) in which the police knowingly use deception and dishonesty to gain an advantage over a suspect regarding a material issue, injuring the interests of the suspect. Probable cause, then, is a sort of evidentiary and epistemic standard that legally justifies the police’s use of deceptive and dishonest custodial interrogation tactics that are on par with fraud. However, there (...) are both deontological and consequentialist considerations that show why the police’s use of an FEE is often unjustified. Accordingly, the paper argues that even if the use of an FEE is based on probable cause, there are other (non-epistemic) reasons to think evidence with probative value (such as a confession) should be excluded when derived from an FEE and there is no acute threat of harm to others. (shrink)

The police are routinely recognized for displaying heroic virtues associated with combat. I take a contrarian position in this paper. Part I begins with the claim that if bravery is to be prioritized in policing, then bravery should be part of the police’s routine roles and responsibilities. However, bravery is not central to what the police do every day, and, therefore, shouldn’t be prioritized (in recruiting, training, and so on). Conversely, Part II claims that if the virtue of honesty is (...) centrally connected to the police role, then it should be prioritized in policing. Because honesty is deeply connected to the police’s routine roles and responsibilities, it should be prioritized. By turning away from misconceptions about the police, the hope is that we will be in a better position to see both the practical and the moral importance of virtue in policing. (shrink)

The problem of truth in fiction concerns how to tell whether a given proposition is true in a given fiction. Thus far, the nearly universal consensus has been that some propositions are ‘implicitly true’ in some fictions: such propositions are not expressed by any explicit statements in the relevant work, but are nevertheless held to be true in those works on the basis of some other set of criteria. I call this family of views ‘implicitism’. I argue that implicitism faces (...) serious problems, whereas the opposite view is much more plausible than has previously been thought. After mounting a limited defence of explicitism, I explore a difficult problem for the view and discuss some possible responses. (shrink)

Philosophers of science since Nagel have been interested in the links between intertheoretic reduction and explanation, understanding and other forms of epistemic progress. Although intertheoretic reduction is widely agreed to occur in pure mathematics as well as empirical science, the relationship between reduction and explanation in the mathematical setting has rarely been investigated in a similarly serious way. This paper examines an important particular case: the reduction of arithmetic to set theory. I claim that the reduction is unexplanatory. In defense (...) of this claim, I offer evidence from mathematical practice, and I respond to contrary suggestions due to Steinhart, Maddy, Kitcher and Quine. I then show how, even if set-theoretic reductions are generally not explanatory, set theory can nevertheless serve as a legitimate foundation for mathematics. Finally, some implications of my thesis for philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science are discussed. In particular, I suggest that some reductions in mathematics are probably explanatory, and I propose that differing standards of theory acceptance might account for the apparent lack of unexplanatory reductions in the empirical sciences. (shrink)

There is a growing sense that many liberal states are in the midst of a shift in legal and political norms—a shift that is happening slowly and for a variety of reasons relating to security. The internet and tech booms—paving the way for new forms of electronic surveillance—predated the 9/11 attacks by several years, while the police’s vast use of secret informants and deceptive operations began well before that. On the other hand, the recent uptick in reactionary movements—movements in which (...) the rule of law seems expendable—began many years after 9/11 and continues to this day. One way to describe this book is an examination of the moral limits on modern police practices that flow from the basic legal and political tenets of the liberal tradition. The central argument is that policing in liberal states is constrained by a liberal conception of persons coupled with particular rule of law principles. Part I consists of three chapters that constitute the book’s theoretical foundation, including an overview of the police’s law enforcement role in the liberal polity and a methodology for evaluating that role. Part II consists of three chapters that address applications of the theory, including the police’s use of informants, deceptive operations, and surveillance. The upshot is that policing in liberal societies has become illiberal in light of its response to both internal and external threats to security. The book provides an account of what it might mean to retrieve policing that is consistent with the basic tenets of liberalism and the limits imposed by those tenets. [This is an uncorrected draft of the book's preface and introduction, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.]. (shrink)

Neurological syndromes in which consciousness seems to malfunction, such as temporal lobe epilepsy, visual scotomas, Charles Bonnet syndrome, and synesthesia offer valuable clues about the normal functions of consciousness and ‘qualia’. An investigation into these syndromes reveals, we argue, that qualia are different from other brain states in that they possess three functional characteristics, which we state in the form of ‘three laws of qualia’. First, they are irrevocable: I cannot simply decide to start seeing the sunset as green, or (...) feel pain as if it were an itch; second, qualia do not always produce the same behaviour: given a set of qualia, we can choose from a potentially infinite set of possible behaviours to execute; and third, qualia endure in short-term memory, as opposed to non-conscious brain states involved in the on-line guidance of behaviour in real time. We suggest that qualia have evolved these and other attributes because of their role in facilitating non-automatic, decision-based action. We also suggest that the apparent epistemic barrier to knowing what qualia another person is experiencing can be overcome by using a ‘bridge’ of neurons; and we offer a hypothesis about the relation between qualia and one's sense of self. (shrink)

In his famous 1982 paper, Allen Newell [22, 23] introduced the notion of knowledge level to indicate a level of analysis, and prediction, of the rational behavior of a cognitive arti cial agent. This analysis concerns the investigation about the availability of the agent knowledge, in order to pursue its own goals, and is based on the so-called Rationality Principle (an assumption according to which "an agent will use the knowledge it has of its environment to achieve its goals" [22, (...) p. 17]. By using the Newell's own words: "To treat a system at the knowledge level is to treat it as having some knowledge, some goals, and believing it will do whatever is within its power to attain its goals, in so far as its knowledge indicates" [22, p. 13]. In the last decades, the importance of the knowledge level has been historically and system- atically downsized by the research area in cognitive architectures (CAs), whose interests have been mainly focused on the analysis and the development of mechanisms and the processes governing human and (arti cial) cognition. The knowledge level in CAs, however, represents a crucial level of analysis for the development of such arti cial general systems and therefore deserves greater research attention [17]. In the following, we will discuss areas of broad agree- ment and outline the main problematic aspects that should be faced within a Common Model of Cognition [12]. Such aspects, departing from an analysis at the knowledge level, also clearly impact both lower (e.g. representational) and higher (e.g. social) levels. (shrink)

Philosophers have predominantly regarded morality and aesthetics judgments as fundamentally different. However, whether this claim is empirically founded has remained unclear. In a novel task, we measured brain activity of participants judging the aesthetic beauty of artwork or the moral goodness of actions depicted. To control for the content of judgments, participants assessed the age of the artworks and the speed of depicted actions. Univariate analyses revealed whole-brain corrected, content-controlled common activation for aesthetics and morality judgments in frontopolar, dorsomedial and (...) ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Temporoparietal cortex showed activation specific for morality judgments, occipital cortex for aesthetics judgments. Multivariate analyses revealed both common and distinct whole-brain corrected representations for morality and aesthetics judgments in temporoparietal and prefrontal regions. Overall, neural commonalities are more pronounced than predominant philosophical views would predict. They are compatible with minority accounts that stress commonalities between aesthetics and morality judgments, such as sentimentalism and a valuation framework. (shrink)

The psychological literature now differentiates between two types of psychopath:successful (with little or no criminal record) and unsuccessful (with a criminal record). Recent research indicates that earlier findings of reduced autonomic activity, reduced prefrontal grey matter, and compromised executive activity may only be true of unsuccessful psychopaths. In contrast, successful psychopaths actually show autonomic and executive function that exceeds that of normals, while having no difference in prefrontal volume from normals. We argue that many successful psychopaths are legally responsible for (...) their actions, as they have the executive capacity to choose not to harm (and thus are legally rational). However, many unsuccessful psychopaths have a lack of executive function that should at least partially excuse them from criminal culpability. Although a successful psychopath's increased executive function may occur in conflict with, rather than in consonance with their increased autonomic activity - producing a cognitive style characterized by self deception and articulate-sounding, but unsound reasoning - they may be capable of recognizing and correcting their lack of autonomic data, and thus can be held responsible. (shrink)

This article seeks the origin, in the theories of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), Descartes, and Berkeley, of two-stage theories of spatial perception, which hold that visual perception involves both an immediate representation of the proximal stimulus in a two-dimensional ‘‘sensory core’’ and also a subsequent perception of the three dimensional world. The works of Ibn al-Haytham, Descartes, and Berkeley already frame the major theoretical options that guided visual theory into the twentieth century. The field of visual perception was the first area (...) of what we now call psychology to apply mathematics, through geometrical models as used by Euclid, Ptolemy, Ibn al-Haytham, and Descartes (among others). The article shows that Kepler’s discovery of the retinal image, which revolutionized visual anatomy and entailed fundamental changes in visual physiology, did not alter the basic structure of theories of spatial vision. These changes in visual physiology are advanced especially in Descartes' Dioptrics and his L'Homme. Berkeley develops a radically empirist theory vision, according to which visual perception of depth is learned through associative processes that rely on the sense of touch. But Descartes and Berkeley share the assertion that there is a two-dimensional sensory core that is in principle available to consciousness. They also share the observation that we don't usually perceived this core, but find depth and distance to be phenomenally immediate, a point they struggle to accommodate theoretically. If our interpretation is correct, it was not a change in the theory of the psychology of vision that engendered the idea of a sensory core, but rather the introduction of the theory into a new metaphysical context. (shrink)

A wide variety of ontologies relevant to the biological and medical domains are available through the OBO Foundry portal, and their number is growing rapidly. Integration of these ontologies, while requiring considerable effort, is extremely desirable. However, heterogeneities in format and style pose serious obstacles to such integration. In particular, inconsistencies in naming conventions can impair the readability and navigability of ontology class hierarchies, and hinder their alignment and integration. While other sources of diversity are tremendously complex and challenging, agreeing (...) a set of common naming conventions is an achievable goal, particularly if those conventions are based on lessons drawn from pooled practical experience and surveys of community opinion. We summarize a review of existing naming conventions and highlight certain disadvantages with respect to general applicability in the biological domain. We also present the results of a survey carried out to establish which naming conventions are currently employed by OBO Foundry ontologies and to determine what their special requirements regarding the naming of entities might be. Lastly, we propose an initial set of typographic, syntactic and semantic conventions for labelling classes in OBO Foundry ontologies. Adherence to common naming conventions is more than just a matter of aesthetics. Such conventions provide guidance to ontology creators, help developers avoid flaws and inaccuracies when editing, and especially when interlinking, ontologies. Common naming conventions will also assist consumers of ontologies to more readily understand what meanings were intended by the authors of ontologies used in annotating bodies of data. (shrink)

Defense of an account of intrinsic properties in terms of (what is now called) grounding rather than naturalness.

Almost everyone who has a limb amputated will experience a phantom limb--the vivid impression that the limb is not only still present, but in some cases, painful. There is now a wealth of empirical evidence demonstrating changes in cortical topography in primates following deafferentation or amputation, and this review will attempt to relate these in a systematic way to the clinical phenomenology of phantom limbs. With the advent of non-invasive imaging techniques such as MEG (magnetoencephalogram) and functional MRI, topographical reorganization (...) can also be demonstrated in humans, so that it is now possible to track perceptual changes and changes in cortical topography in individual patients. We suggest, therefore, that these patients provide a valuable opportunity not only for exploring neural plasticity in the adult human brain but also for understanding the relationship between the activity of sensory neurons and conscious experience. We conclude with a theory of phantom limbs, some striking demonstrations of phantoms induced in normal subjects, and some remarks about the relevance of these phenomena to the question of how the brain constructs a 'body image.'. (shrink)

This paper considers the practical question of why people do not behave in the way they ought to behave. This question is a practical one, reaching both into the normative and descriptive domains of morality. That is, it concerns moral norms as well as empirical facts. We argue that two main problems usually keep us form acting and judging in a morally decent way: firstly, we make mistakes in moral reasoning. Secondly, even when we know how to act and judge, (...) we still fail to meet the requirements due to personal weaknesses. This discussion naturally leads us to another question: can we narrow the gap between what people are morally required to do and what they actually do? We discuss findings from neuroscience, economics, and psychology, considering how we might bring our moral behavior better in line with moral theory. Potentially fruitful means include nudging, training, pharmacological enhancement, and brain stimulation. We conclude by raising the question of whether such methods could and should be implemented. (shrink)

Drawing on findings from the study of prejudice and prejudice reduction, we identify a number of mechanisms through which religious communities may influence the intergroup attitudes of their members. We hypothesize that religious participation could in principle either reduce or promote prejudice with respect to any given target group. A religious community’s influence on intergroup attitudes will depend upon the specific beliefs, attitudes, and practices found within the community, as well as on interactions between the religious community and the larger (...) social environment in which it is embedded. Basing our proposals on findings from the literature on prejudice formation and prejudice reduction allows us to outline useful directions for future studies of religion and prejudice. (shrink)

Explanatory pluralism holds that the sorts of comprehensive theoretical and ontological economies, which microreductionists and New Wave reductionists envision and which antireductionists fear, offer misleading views of both scientific practice and scientific progress. Both advocates and foes of employing reductionist strategies at the interface of psychology and neuroscience have overplayed the alleged economies that interlevel connections (including identities) justify while overlooking their fundamental role in promoting scientific research. A brief review of research on visual processing provides support for the explanatory (...) pluralist=s general model of cross-scientific relations and discloses the valuable heuristic role hypothetical identities play in cross-scientific research. That model also supplies grounds for hesitation about the correlation objection to the psycho-physical identity theory and complaints about an explanatory gap in physicalist accounts of consciousness. These takes on psycho-neural connections miss both the sorts of considerations that motivate hypothetical identities in science and their fundamental contribution to progressive research. Thus, their focus on the contributions of research at multiple levels of analysis does not bar explanatory pluralists from considering heuristic identity theory (HIT). Arguably, it encourages it. (shrink)

For each positive n , two alternative axiomatizations of the theory of strings over n alphabetic characters are presented. One class of axiomatizations derives from Tarski's system of the Wahrheitsbegriff and uses the n characters and concatenation as primitives. The other class involves using n character-prefixing operators as primitives and derives from Hermes' Semiotik. All underlying logics are second order. It is shown that, for each n, the two theories are definitionally equivalent [or synonymous in the sense of deBouvere]. It (...) is further shown that each member of one class is synonymous with each member of the other class; thus that all of the theories are definitionally equivalent with each other and with Peano arithmetic. Categoricity of Peano arithmetic then implies categoricity of each of the above theories. (shrink)

As much as assumptions about mechanisms and mechanistic explanation have deeply affected psychology, they have received disproportionately little analysis in philosophy. After a historical survey of the influences of mechanistic approaches to explanation of psychological phenomena, we specify the nature of mechanisms and mechanistic explanation. Contrary to some treatments of mechanistic explanation, we maintain that explanation is an epistemic activity that involves representing and reasoning about mechanisms. We discuss the manner in which mechanistic approaches serve to bridge levels rather than (...) reduce them, as well as the different ways in which mechanisms are discovered. Finally, we offer a more detailed example of an important psychological phenomenon for which mechanistic explanation has provided the main source of scientific understanding. (shrink)

Chapin reviewed this 1972 ZEITSCHRIFT paper that proves the completeness theorem for the logic of variable-binding-term operators created by Corcoran and his student John Herring in the 1971 LOGIQUE ET ANALYSE paper in which the theorem was conjectured. This leveraging proof extends completeness of ordinary first-order logic to the extension with vbtos. Newton da Costa independently proved the same theorem about the same time using a Henkin-type proof. This 1972 paper builds on the 1971 “Notes on a Semantic Analysis of (...) Variable Binding Term Operators” (Co-author John Herring), Logique et Analyse 55, 646–57. MR0307874 (46 #6989). A variable binding term operator (vbto) is a non-logical constant, say v, which combines with a variable y and a formula F containing y free to form a term (vy:F) whose free variables are exact ly those of F, excluding y. Kalish-Montague 1964 proposed using vbtos to formalize definite descriptions “the x: x+x=2”, set abstracts {x: F}, minimization in recursive function theory “the least x: x+x>2”, etc. However, they gave no semantics for vbtos. Hatcher 1968 gave a semantics but one that has flaws described in the 1971 paper and admitted by Hatcher. In 1971 we give a correct semantic analysis of vbtos. We also give axioms for using them in deductions. And we conjecture strong completeness for the deductions with respect to the semantics. The conjecture, proved in this paper with Hatcher’s help, was proved independently about the same time by Newton da Costa. (shrink)

Ever since its inception, the theory of evolution has been reified into an “-ism”: Darwinism. While biologists today tend to shy away from the term in their research, the term is still actively used in the broader academic and societal contexts. What exactly is Darwinism, and how precisely are its various uses and abuses related to the scientific theory of evolution? Some call for limiting the meaning of the term “Darwinism” to its scientific context; others call for its abolition; yet (...) others claim the term refers to a myth-like story. In this paper we propose a conceptually grounded overview of the term. We show how the scientific dimension of Darwinism feeds into, and is influenced by, guises of Darwinism as a methodology and as an ethically and politically charged “worldview”. The full meaning of Darwinism, as well as how this meaning has changed over time, can only be understood through the complex interaction between these three dimensions. (shrink)

Short online essay on the state of policing in liberal societies, discussing how executive discretionary power has grown to such a degree that it has trended toward illiberal practices and policies.

Essay exploring the extent to which certain agreements between the police and informants are an affront (both procedurally and substantively) to basic tenets of the liberal tradition in legal and political philosophy.

Philosophers often focus on topics such as death and old age, and much less on other stages of life. The British-American philosopher Kienan Setiya (2017) has recently taken on the topic of middle age from a philosophical perspective and offered suggestions for dealing with the angst often associated with mid-age. His suggestions are based on both his own experiences and practical thoughts based on his readings of other philosophers during their mid-life periods. My own contribution is to describe his thoughts (...) and add a few observations of my own. (shrink)

Experimenters claim some nonhuman mammals have metacognition. If correct, the results indicate some animal minds are more complex than ordinarily presumed. However, some philosophers argue for a deflationary reading of metacognition experiments, suggesting that the results can be explained in first-order terms. We agree with the deflationary interpretation of the data but we argue that the metacognition research forces the need to recognize a heretofore underappreciated feature in the theory of animal minds, which we call Unity. The disparate mental states (...) of an animal must be unified if deflationary accounts of metacognition are to hold and untoward implications avoided. Furthermore, once Unity is acknowledged, the deflationary interpretation of the experiments reveals an elevated moral standing for the nonhumans in question. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I argue that commonsense morality is best understood as an agent-relative consequentialist theory, that is, as a theory according to which agents ought always to bring about what is, from their own individual perspective, the best available state of affairs. I argue that the agent-relative consequentialist can provide the most plausible explanation for why it is wrong to commit a rights violation even in order to prevent a number of other agents from committing comparable rights violations: agents (...) bear a special responsibility for their own actions and consequently a state of affairs where an agent has herself committed a rights violation is worse, from her perspective, than a state of affairs where a number of other agents have committed comparable rights violations. I also argue that agent-relative consequentialism can accommodate moral options despite being a theory which requires agents always to do the best they can. (shrink)

False belief tasks have enjoyed a monopoly in the research on children’s development of a theory of mind. They have been granted this status because they promise to deliver an unambiguous assessment of children’s understanding of the representational nature of mental states. Their poor cousins, true belief tasks, have been relegated to occasional service as control tasks. That this is their only role has been due to the universal assumption that correct answers on true belief tasks are inherently ambiguous regarding (...) the level of the child’s understanding of mental states. It has also been due to the universal assumption that nothing in the child’s developing theory of mind would lead to systematically incorrect answers on true belief tasks. We review new findings that 4- and 5-year-olds do err, systematically and profoundly, on the true belief versions of all the extant belief tasks. This reveals an intermediate level of understanding in the development of children’s theory of mind. Researchers have been unaware of this intermediate level because it produces correct answers in false belief tasks. A simple two-task battery—one true belief task and one false belief task—is sufficient to remove the ambiguity from each task. The new findings show that children do not acquire an understanding of beliefs, and hence a representational theory of mind, until after 6 years of age, or 2 years later than most developmental psychologists have concluded. This raises the question of how to interpret other new findings that infants are able to pass false belief tasks. We review these new infant studies, as well as recent studies on chimpanzees, in light of older children’s failure on true belief tasks, and end with some speculation about how all of these new findings might be reconciled. (shrink)

SNePS, the Semantic Network Processing System 45, 54], has been designed to be a system for representing the beliefs of a natural-language-using intelligent system (a \cognitive agent"). It has always been the intention that a SNePS-based \knowledge base" would ultimatelybe built, not by a programmeror knowledge engineer entering representations of knowledge in some formallanguage or data entry system, but by a human informing it using a natural language (NL) (generally supposed to be English), or by the system reading books or (...) articles that had been prepared for human readers. Because of this motivation, the criteria for the development of SNePS have included: it should be able to represent anything and everything expressible in NL; it should be able to represent generic, as well as speci c information; it should be able to use the generic and the speci c information to reason and infer information implied by what it has been told; it cannot count on any particular order among the pieces of information it is given; it must continue to act reasonably even if the information it is given includes circular de nitions, recursive rules, and inconsistent information. (shrink)

Cognitive agents, whether human or computer, that engage in natural-language discourse and that have beliefs about the beliefs of other cognitive agents must be able to represent objects the way they believe them to be and the way they believe others believe them to be. They must be able to represent other cognitive agents both as objects of beliefs and as agents of beliefs. They must be able to represent their own beliefs, and they must be able to represent beliefs (...) as objects of beliefs. These requirements raise questions about the number of tokens of the belief representation language needed to represent believers and propositions in their normal roles and in their roles as objects of beliefs. In this paper, we explicate the relations among nodes, mental tokens, concepts, actual objects, concepts in the belief spaces of an agent and the agent's model of other agents, concepts of other cognitive agents, and propositions. We extend, deepen, and clarify our theory of intensional knowledge representation for natural-language processing, as presented in previous papers and in light of objections raised by others. The essential claim is that tokens in a knowledge-representation system represent only intensions and not extensions. We are pursuing this investigation by building CASSIE, a computer model of a cognitive agent and, to the extent she works, a cognitive agent herself. CASSIE's mind is implemented in the SNePS knowledge-representation and reasoning system. (shrink)

Deliberate contextual vocabulary acquisition (CVA) is a reader’s ability to figure out a (not the) meaning for an unknown word from its “context”, without external sources of help such as dictionaries or people. The appropriate context for such CVA is the “belief-revised integration” of the reader’s prior knowledge with the reader’s “internalization” of the text. We discuss unwarranted assumptions behind some classic objections to CVA, and present and defend a computational theory of CVA that we have adapted to a new (...) classroom curriculum designed to help students use CVA to improve their reading comprehension. (shrink)

In the TACITUS project for using commonsense knowledge in the understanding of texts about mechanical devices and their failures, we have been developing various commonsense theories that are needed to mediate between the way we talk about the behavior of such devices and causal models of their operation. Of central importance in this effort is the axiomatization of what might be called commonsense metaphysics. This includes a number of areas that figure in virtually every domain of discourse, such as granularity, (...) scales, time, space, material, physical objects, shape, causality, functionality, and force. Our effort has been to construct core theories of each of these areas, and then to define, or at least characterize, a large number of lexical items in terms provided by the core theories. In this paper we discuss our methodological principles and describe the key ideas in the various domains we are investigating. (shrink)

Dretske’s theory of self-knowledge is interesting but peculiar and can seem implausible. He denies that we can know by introspection that we have thoughts, feelings, and experiences. But he allows that we can know by introspection what we think, feel, and experience. We consider two puzzles. The first puzzle, PUZZLE 1, is interpretive. Is there a way of understanding Dretske’s theory on which the knowledge affirmed by its positive side is different than the knowledge denied by its negative side? The (...) second puzzle, PUZZLE 2, is substantive. Each of the following theses has some prima facie plausibility: there is introspective knowledge of thoughts, knowledge requires evidence, and there are no experiences of thoughts. It is unclear, though, that these claims form a consistent set. These puzzles are not unrelated. Dretske’s theory of self-knowledge is a potential solution to PUZZLE 2 in that Dretske’s theory is meant to show how,, and can all be true. We provide a solution to PUZZLE 1 by appeal to Dretske’s early work in the philosophy of language on contrastive focus. We then distinguish between “Closure” and “Transmissibility”, and raise and answer a worry to the effect that Dretske’s theory of self-knowledge runs counter to Transmissibility. These results help to secure Dretske’s theory as a viable solution to PUZZLE 2. (shrink)

Racist beliefs express value judgments. According to an influential view, value judgments are subjective, and not amenable to rational adjudication. In contrast, we argue that the value judgments expressed in, for example, racist beliefs, are false and objectively so. Our account combines a naturalized, philosophical account of meaning inspired by Donald Davidson, with a prominent social-psychological theory of values pioneered by the social-psychologist Milton Rokeach. We use this interdisciplinary approach to show that, just as with beliefs expressing descriptive judgments, beliefs (...) expressing value judgments have empirical content, or can be inferentially linked to beliefs that do; the truth or falsity of that content can be objectively assigned; and that assignment is amenable to rational assessment. While versions of this objective view of value judgments have been defended by moral realists of various metaphysical stripes, our argument has the virtue of appealing, instead, to accounts that are as naturalistically informed as possible. And, unlike the influential subjective view of value judgments, and racist beliefs more particularly, our arguments are better able to account for instances where rational, persuasive strategies have been effective in reducing the ubiquity of racism in American culture. (shrink)