Mathematical cognition is one of the most important cognitive functions of human beings. The latest brain and cognitive research have shown that mathematical cognition is a system with multiple components and subsystems. It has phylogenetic root, also is related to ontogenetic development and learning, relying on a large-scale cerebral network including parietal, frontal and temporal regions. Especially, the parietal cortex plays an important role during mathematical cognitive processes. This indicates that language and visuospatial functions are both key to mathematical cognition. (...) All of those advances have important implications for basic mathematical education. (shrink)

The concept of vulnerability has been renewed in meaning and importance over recent decades. Scholars such as Judith Butler, Martha Fineman and Pamela Sue Anderson have endeavored to redeem vulnerability from its traditional signification as a negative individual condition, and to reveal the positive meaning of vulnerability as a transformative call for solidarity, equality and love. In this paper we examine the newly constructed positive understanding of vulnerability, and argue that the current way of pursuing this positive understanding affirms a (...) merely functional positivity. In the recent accounts, vulnerability is still a status to avoid, yet functions positively as a corrective force to the environment that produces vulnerability. We will try to find an essential way of designating the positivity of vulnerability by revisiting the philosophical discussion on vulnerability in Emmanuel Levinas. We will argue that Levinas’s notion of vulnerability is positive in a sense which goes beyond the purely functional; it is seen as essential for his definition of humanity. Yet compared to the contemporary discussion, Levinas’s notion of vulnerability lacks a direct social political meaning. We will tentatively explore how the essential positivity drawn from Levinas can provide a new way to construct the political significance of vulnerability. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to clarify the notion of semantic presupposition and to refute Böer and Lycan's critique of that notion. The author presents a feasible and coherent formal definition of semantic presupposition after examining several popular definitions of the notion. In terms of this definition, two central arguments against semantic presupposition presented by Böer and Lycan are analyzed and responded to with care. It is concluded that the notion of semantic presupposition is not empty but rather is philosophically (...) interesting and fruitful. (shrink)

Sora from Open AI has shown exceptional performance, yet it faces scrutiny over whether its technological prowess equates to an authentic comprehension of reality. Critics contend that it lacks a foundational grasp of the world, a deficiency V-JEPA from Meta aims to amend with its joint embedding approach. This debate is vital for steering the future direction of Artificial General Intelligence(AGI). We enrich this debate by developing a theory of productive imagination that generates a coherent world model based on Kantian (...) philosophy. We identify three indispensable components in the coherent world model that enable genuine world understanding: latent representations of isolated objects, an a priori law of change across space and time, and Kantian categories. Our analysis reveals that Sora is limited because of its oversight of the a priori law of change and Kantian categories, flaws that are not rectifiable through scaling up the training. V-JEPA learns the context-dependent aspect of the a priori law of change. Yet it fails to fully comprehend Kantian categories and incorporate experience, leading us to conclude that neither system currently achieves a comprehensive world understanding. Nevertheless, each system has developed components essential to advancing an integrated AI productive imagination-understanding engine. Finally, we propose an innovative training framework for an AI productive imagination-understanding engine, centered around a joint embedding system designed to transform disordered perceptual input into a structured, coherent world model. Our philosophical analysis pinpoints critical challenges within contemporary video AI technologies and a pathway toward achieving an AI system capable of genuine world understanding, such that it can be applied for reasoning and planning in the future. (shrink)

There has been a movement aiming to teach agents about their privilege by making the information about their privilege as costless as possible. However, some argue that in risk-sensitive frameworks, such as Lara Buchak’s (2013), it can be rational for privileged agents to shield themselves from learning about their privilege, even if the information is costless and relevant. This threatens the efficacy of these information-access efforts in alleviating the problem of elite-group ignorance. In response, I show that even within the (...) same framework, in this case David Kinney and Liam Kofi Bright’s (2021), the rationality of this information avoidance rests on shaky ground in practice. In this framework, whether an agent should avoid information depends on the precise details of (1) how relevant they expect the information to be, (2) their priors about the value of various options, and (3) their risk attitudes. The model suggests that the rationality of elite-group ignorance is a function of structural factors that are pervasive but nonetheless not insurmountable, thus offering a way out of pessimism about elite group education. (shrink)

Kuhn's alleged taxonomic interpretation of incommensurability is grounded on an ill defined notion of untranslatability and is hence radically incomplete. To supplement it, I reconstruct Kuhn's taxonomic interpretation on the basis of a logical-semantic theory of taxonomy, a semantic theory of truth-value, and a truth-value conditional theory of cross-language communication. According to the reconstruction, two scientific languages are incommensurable when core sentences of one language, which have truth values when considered within its own context, lack truth values when considered within (...) the context of the other due to the unmatchable taxonomic structures underlying them. So constructed, Kuhn's mature interpretation of incommensurability does not depend upon the notion of truth-preserving translatability, but rather depends on the notion of truth-value-status-preserving cross-language communication. The reconstruction makes Kuhn's notion of incommensurability a well grounded, tenable and integrated notion.Author Keywords: Incommensurability; Thomas Kuhn; Taxonomic structures; Lexicons; Truth-value; Untranslatability; Cross-language communication. (shrink)

The gradation of know-how is a prominent challenge to intellectualism. Know-how is prima facie gradable, whereas know-that is not, so the former is unlikely to be a species of the latter. Recently, Pavese refuted this challenge by explaining the gradation of know-how as concerning either the quantity or the quality of practical answers one knows to a question. Know-how per se remains absolute. This paper argues, however, that in addition to the quantity and quality of practical answers, know-how also differs (...) in how reliably the agent is supposed to fulfil the task given her default constitution. Intellectualism is still troubled by the gradability challenge. (shrink)

Against ideas of dualism, logocentrism, anthropocentrism, animism, panpsychism, biocentrism, neurocentrism, foundationalism, computationalism, especially substantialism, reductionism and even physicalism, the author argues that life may be the only non-reductive concept, even the only ontological concept, with which we may explain our consciousness, intelligence and language. Life, as defined in this article, explains but not only human brains, and even not only biological organisms. Still, the mind, also as defined in this article, is the only one it explains. No mind may exist (...) if not be a life or lives, and no life may exist if not be a mind or a part of it. If it is the mind that needs to be explained, it must finally and fundamentally be explained as a life or lives. If the question is about the origin of the mind, a life or lives must be the ultimate answer. In other words, life is the only attribute of mind, and mind also the only attribute of life, and therefore, consciousness, intelligence and language must be the properties of all the living systems, including non-biological living systems. A model of mind is hypothesized based on the analysis of two kinds of lives and their relationship with matter and energy. It may be deduced from this model: 1. All the memories of a living brain are its intelligence. 2. Both consciousness and nonconscious are only meaningless languages used in the communication among lives in an awakened brain. 3. Life is the only meaning of all those memories and languages. Ontologically, life may even be the only meaning of all matter and energy. -/- (A version of this article was published by the Journal of NeuroPhilosophy on 26.10.2022). (shrink)

Stephen Yablo’s notion of proportionality, despite controversies surrounding it, has played a significant role in philosophical discussions of mental causation and of high-level causation more generally. In particular, it is invoked in James Woodward’s interventionist account of high-level causation and explanation, and is implicit in a novel approach to constructing variables for causal modeling in the machine learning literature, known as causal feature learning (CFL). In this article, we articulate an account of proportionality inspired by both Yablo’s account of proportionality (...) and the CFL account of variable construction. The resulting account has at least three merits. First, it illuminates an important feature of the notion of proportionality, when it is adapted to a probabilistic and interventionist framework. The feature is that at the center of the notion of proportionality lies the concept of “determinate intervention effects.” Second, it makes manifest a virtue of (common types of) high-level causal/explanatory statements over low-level ones, when relevant intervention effects are determinate. Third, it overcomes a limitation of the CFL framework and thereby also addresses a challenge to interventionist accounts of high-level causation. (shrink)

In this article I give a critical evaluation of the use and limitations of null-model-based hypothesis testing as a research strategy in the biological sciences. According to this strategy, the null model based on a randomization procedure provides an appropriate null hypothesis stating that the existence of a pattern is the result of random processes or can be expected by chance alone, and proponents of other hypotheses should first try to reject this null hypothesis in order to demonstrate their own (...) hypotheses. Using as an example the controversy over the use of null hypotheses and null models in species co-occurrence studies, I argue that null-model-based hypothesis testing fails to work as a proper analog to traditional statistical null-hypothesis testing as used in well-controlled experimental research, and that the random process hypothesis should not be privileged as a null hypothesis. Instead, the possible use of the null model resides in its role of providing a way to challenge scientists’ commonsense judgments about how a seemingly unusual pattern could have come to be. Despite this possible use, null-model-based hypothesis testing still carries certain limitations, and it should not be regarded as an obligation for biologists who are interested in explaining patterns in nature to first conduct such a test before pursuing their own hypotheses. (shrink)

This dissertation is a collection of standalone papers about a novel version of the deep self view of moral responsibility. Taken on its own, each chapter deals with a different thesis. But as the title of my dissertation reveals, taken together, the three chapters in it constitute the groundwork for my deep self view of moral responsibility. In Chapter 1, I develop and defend the thesis of responsibility for the deep self. In Chapter 2, I argue for a sufficient condition (...) for responsibility for one’s self that centers on the idea of aspiration. Drawing upon resources form the first two chapters, in Chapter 3, I further develop and defend a thesis of responsibility for what one does and its downstream consequences. -/- Here is a summary of my view. I argue that an agent acts freely and is morally responsible for what she does in the accountability sense only if she has a deep self for which she is responsible. How is one responsible for one’s deep self? To be responsible for the deep self, one must have a history where one was afforded the unimpeded opportunity to develop and exercise the ability to shape one’s own self. Exercise that ability in what way? I suggest that a critical way in which an agent shapes her own self is when she engages with various activities that I call aspirational self-shaping. Nevertheless, an agent needs not exercise the ability to shape her self and thus engage with aspirational self-shaping every time she acts freely. Indeed, being responsible for what she does is consistent with her failing to exercise that ability when she acts freely and responsibly. -/- Standard deep self views in the literature say something much stronger. They contend that an agent acts freely and responsibly for what she does if and only if her actions or omissions issue from, and so express, her deep self. Counterexamples proliferate. By offering a necessary condition for accountability drawing upon resources from responsibility for the deep self, my view escapes counterexamples that standard views face, while retains the core of the deep self view. Indeed, an agent may be blameworthy for her wrongdoing without it issuing from, and so expressing, her deep self. And yet, she must have a deep self for which she is responsible to be blameworthy for her wrongdoing. All of this is ultimately achieved by paying closer attention to the historical dimension of the deep self than other deep self proponents have. (shrink)

Why is mutual understanding between two substantially different comprehensive language communities often problematic and even unattainable? To answer this question, the author first introduces a notion of presuppositional languages. Based on the semantic structure of a presuppositional language, the author identifies a significant condition necessary for effective understanding of a language: the interpreter is able to effectively understand a language only if he/she is able to recognize and comprehend its metaphysical presuppositions. The essential role of the knowledge of metaphysical presuppositions (...) in understanding is further strengthened by developing a truth-value conditional theory of understanding. It is concluded that if the interpreter approaches an incompatible alien language from the standpoint of the interpreter's own language by projecting the metaphysical presuppositions of his/her own language upon the alien language, then the mutual understanding between the two language communities is doomed to failure. (shrink)

The Cartesian thesis that some justifications are infallible faces a gradation puzzle. On the one hand, infallible justification tolerates absolutely no possibility for error. On the other hand, infallible justifications can vary in evidential force: e.g. two persons can both be infallible regarding their pains while the one with stronger pain is nevertheless more justified. However, if a type of justification is gradable in strength, why can it always be absolute? This paper explores the potential of this gradation challenge by (...) rejecting Fumerton's recent ‘semantic decision' solution. On Fumerton's suggestion, the putative gradation of infallible justifications is essentially semantic. It concerns only how we use the relevant term but not how well we perceive the truth. Regardless of its intuitive appeal, Fumerton's solution does not cover all the related situations. There is an irreducibly epistemic sense in which infallible justifications vary in degrees. (shrink)

What the authors attempt to address in this paper is a Kantian question: not whether, but how is cross -cultural understanding possible? And specifically, what is a more effective approach for cross -cultural understanding? The answer lies in an analysis of two different models of cross -cultural understanding, that is, propositional and hermeneutic understanding. To begin with, the author presents a linguistic interpretation of culture, i.e., a culture as a linguistically formulated and transmitted symbolic system with its conceptual core as (...) a scheme of basic cultural presuppositions, which it referred to as a cultural language. After exploring the essential role of cultural presuppositions in cross -cultural understanding, the author discusses the traditional model of cross -cultural understanding, namely, the propositional model. Through critically examining the two popular versions of the propositional model, i.e., the projective approach and the adoptive approach to cross -cultural understanding, it is found that cross -cultural propositional understanding is doomed to failure. To move us beyond the absolutism -relativism trap embedded within propositional understanding, the author first introduces and discusses Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutic understanding, and then applies Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutic model of understanding to cross -cultural understanding. It is finally concluded that cross -cultural understanding is essentially hermeneutic—including the case of cultural learning, not propositional. Therefore, cross -cultural understanding is hermeneutically possible. (shrink)

What is the ontological status of facts? Are facts linguistic or extra-linguistic entities? If facts are extra-linguistic entities, are they mind-independent or relative to languages, theories or conceptual schemes? Based on a minimal definition of facts, the author argues that what are specified by true statements are not identical to true propositions expressed, so facts are not linguistic entities. Furthermore, what are specified by true statements are not to which a true statement corresponds, so facts are not mind-independent, either as (...) concrete entities in the universe or as abstract entities in the world as it is. Last, the author presents an internal factual realist answer: although facts are neither in the world as it is, nor in a language, facts are real and exist in a world under consideration. A fact, as a non-linguistic correlate of a true statement of a language, exists in a world specified by the language. (shrink)

According to the accepted translation-failure interpretation, the problem of incommensurability involves the nature of the meaning-referential relation between scientific languages. The incommensurability thesis is that some competing scientific languages are mutually untranslatable due to the radical variance of meaning or/and reference of the terms they employ. I argue that this interpretation faces many difficulties and cannot give us a tenable, coherent, and integrated notion of incommensurability. It has to be rejected. ;On the basis of two case studies, I find that (...) the confrontations between many classical incommensurable languages are not confrontations between two untranslatable languages with different distribution of truth values, but rather the confrontations between incompatible fundamental presuppositions at the ontological level. We can always identify a truth-value gap between two incommensurable languages. Such a truth-value gap indicates a communication breakdown between the two language communities on the one hand, and is caused by the incompatible fundamental presuppositions underlying them on the other. ;I thereby identify the truth-value functional relationship between sentences, instead of the meaning-referential relationship between terms, as the dominant semantic relation between two incommensurable languages. According to my presuppositional interpretation of incommensurability, the real secret of incommensurability lies in the ontological setup of two competing presuppositional languages. When two presuppositional languages with incompatible factual commitments encounter with each other, the confrontation leads to a truth-value gap, and consequently a communication breakdown between them. Formally put, two scientific languages are incommensurable when core sentences of one language, which have truth values when considered within its own context, lack truth values when considered within the context of the other due to an ontological gap between them. ;The presuppositional interpretation makes many significant contributions to the discussion of the issue of incommensurability and the related metaphysical and epistemological issues: It confirms the existence of the phenomenon of incommensurability and makes it metaphysically and epistemologically significant. It establishes the tenability and integrity of the notion of incommensurability. It avoids many alleged unattractive epistemological and metaphysical consequences of the translation-failure interpretation. (shrink)

Neutrosophic set is a new mathematical tool for handling problems involving imprecise, indetermi nacy and inconsistent data. Pseudo-BCI algebra is a kind of non-classical logic algebra in close connection with various non-commutative fuzzy logics. Recently, we applied neutrosophic set theory to pseudo-BCI al gebras. In this paper, we study neutrosophic filters in pseudo-BCI algebras. The concepts of neutrosophic regular filter, neutrosophic closed filter and fuzzy regular filter in pseudo-BCI algebras are introduced, and some basic properties are discussed. Moreover, the relationships (...) among neutrosophic regular filter, fuzzy filters and anti-grouped neutrosophic filters are prese nted, and the results are proved: a neutrosophic filter (fuzzy filter) is a neutrosophic regular filter (fuzzy regular filter), if and only if it is both a neutrosophic closed filter (fuzzy closed filter) and an anti-grouped neutrosophic filter (fuzzy anti-grouped filter). (shrink)

The emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) and advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) offer an opportunity for computational social science research at scale. Building upon prior explorations of LLM agent design, our work introduces a simulated agent society where complex social relationships dynamically form and evolve over time. Agents are imbued with psychological drives and placed in a sandbox survival environment. We conduct an evaluation of the agent society through the lens of Thomas Hobbes's seminal Social Contract Theory (SCT). We (...) analyze whether, as the theory postulates, agents seek to escape a brutish "state of nature" by surrendering rights to an absolute sovereign in exchange for order and security. Our experiments unveil an alignment: Initially, agents engage in unrestrained conflict, mirroring Hobbes's depiction of the state of nature. However, as the simulation progresses, social contracts emerge, leading to the authorization of an absolute sovereign and the establishment of a peaceful commonwealth founded on mutual cooperation. This congruence between our LLM agent society's evolutionary trajectory and Hobbes's theoretical account indicates LLMs' capability to model intricate social dynamics and potentially replicate forces that shape human societies. By enabling such insights into group behavior and emergent societal phenomena, LLM-driven multi-agent simulations, while unable to simulate all the nuances of human behavior, may hold potential for advancing our understanding of social structures, group dynamics, and complex human systems. (shrink)

Based on the ontological proposition, “life is the only attribute of mind, and mind also the only attribute of life”, a model of the human mind is hypothesized in this article. It may be deduced from the proposition and the model: 1. All the structures of a brain are the potentials of its intelligence. 2. Consciousness is only the language used in the communication of an awakened brain. 3. Qualia are the same mental language manipulated by different memories. 4. Life (...) is the only meaning of all mental languages. -/- . (shrink)

Mystical religious experiences typically purport to engage with the transcendent and often claim to involve encounters with spiritual entities or a detachment from the material world. Daoism diverges from this paradigm. This paper examines Daoist mystical experiences of bodily transformations and explores their epistemological implications. Specifically, we defend the justificatory power of Daoist somatic experiences against the disanalogy objection. The disanalogy objection posits that mystical experiences, in contrast to sense perceptions, are not socially verifiable and thereby lack prima facie epistemic (...) value. We argue that some Daoist mystical bodily states, being essentially spatiotemporal, are exempt from this challenge. This leads to a broader understanding of mysticism and offers a partial resolution to the disanalogy objection. (shrink)

It seems to the author that, though it is possible to reach an explanation of consciousness, there is no direct way for us to go. In other words, the author believes that, only through a detour, through an understanding of everything outside mind, we may and can and will finally reach an understanding of those inside. The author tries in this article to discuss some details of such a detour, first from the understanding of Being and being, universe and life, (...) organism and human, and finally to the understanding of the mind and the mystery of our consciousness. Here, to understand Being is the core activities of the whole detour, and there the being is understandably the source and the nature of life and consciousness. (shrink)

Empirical adaptationism is often said to be an empirical claim about nature, which concerns the overall relative causal importance of natural selection in evolution compared with other evolutionary factors. Philosophers and biologists who have tried to clarify the meaning of empirical adaptationism usually share, explicitly or implicitly, two assumptions: (1) Empirical adaptationism is an empirical claim that is scientifically testable; (2) testing empirical adaptationism is scientifically valuable. In this article, I challenge these two assumptions and argue that both are unwarranted (...) given how empirical adaptationism is currently formulated. I identify a series of conceptual and methodological difficulties that makes testing empirical adaptationism in a biologically non-arbitrary way virtually impossible. Moreover, I show that those in favor of testing empirical adaptationism have yet to demonstrate the distinctive value and necessity of conducing such a test. My analysis of the case of empirical adaptationism also provides reasons for scientists to reconsider the value and necessity of engaging in scientific debates involving the notion of overall relative causal importance. (shrink)

This paper addresses the concept of play concerning human formation, especially as manifested in the philosophies of Gadamer and Schiller. Gadamer depicted understanding as an organic motion that unfolds through seeing differences and characterized play as a flexible back-and-forth movement or interplay between possibilities and transformations. Schiller structured play as the playful impulse similarly as an interactive moving force that connects the two seemingly oppositional impulses of reason and sensation and lets the two affect the other dialogically. Both Gadamer and (...) Schiller suggest that play, as in essence an inter-play, orients us into seeing more possibilities of making a refreshing sense of our intellectual and perceptual abilities and thereby transfiguring our living being into richer and fuller meaningfulness. (shrink)

A popular solution to the causal exclusion problem in the non-reductive physicalist camp is the trope identity solution. But this solution is haunted by the “quausation problem” which charges that the trope only confers causal powers qua physical, not qua mental. Although proponents of the trope solution have responded to the problem by denying the existence of properties of tropes, I do not find their reply satisfactory. Rather, I believe they have missed the core presupposition behind the quausation problem. I (...) will argue that the presupposition is the generalist notion of causation. Then, for the trope theorists to solve the quausation problem, they need to abandon the generalist notion and adopt the singularist notion of causation. However, making that move will lead them to a new quausation problem, rendering irreducible mental types causally irrelevant and mental causal explanations reducible. Either adopting a generalist notion or a singularist notion of causation, a quausation problem awaits the trope solution. Given this dilemma, my conclusion is that the trope identity solution cannot solve the exclusion problem in a non-reductive way. Moreover, the dilemma can be generalized, showing that token physicalism is a shaky position. (shrink)

The ability to access and share data is key to optimizing and streamlining any industrial production process. Unfortunately, the manufacturing industry is stymied by a lack of interoperability among the systems by which data are produced and managed, and this is true both within and across organizations. In this paper, we describe our work to address this problem through the creation of a suite of modular ontologies representing the product life cycle and its successive phases, from design to end of (...) life. We call this suite the Product Life Cycle (PLC) Ontologies. The suite extends proximately from The Common Core Ontologies (CCO) used widely in defense and intelligence circles, and ultimately from the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), which serves as top level ontology for the CCO and for some 300 further ontologies. The PLC Ontologies were developed together, but they have been factored to cover particular domains such as design, manufacturing processes, and tools. We argue that these ontologies, when used together with standard public domain alignment and browsing tools created within the context of the Semantic Web, may offer a low-cost approach to solving increasingly costly problems of data management in the manufacturing industry. (shrink)

Duncan Pritchard recently proposed a Wittgensteinian solution to closure-based skepticism. According to Wittgenstein, all epistemic systems assume certain truths. The notions that we are not disembodied brains, that the Earth has existed for a long time and that one’s name is such-and-such all function as “hinge commitments.” Pritchard views a hinge commitment as a positive propositional attitude that is not a belief. Because closure principles concern only knowledge-apt beliefs, they do not apply to hinge commitments. Thus, from the fact that (...) a subject knows that he is sitting in a room, and the fact that the subject’s sitting in a room entails his bodily existence, it does not follow that the subject also knows that he is not an envatted brain. This paper rejects Pritchard’s non-belief reading of hinge commitments. I start by showing that the non-belief reading fails to solve the skeptical paradox because the reasons that Pritchard uses to support the non-belief reading do not exempt hinge propositions from closure principles. I then proceed to argue that the non-belief reading is false as it claims that hinge commitments, unlike ordinary beliefs, are rationally unresponsive—with the help of a scenario in which a subject’s experience is internally chaotic, we can safely conclude that the hinge commitment that one is not systematically mistaken about the world is equally responsive to one’s evidential situations. (shrink)

Truth pluralism is the view that there is more than one truth property. The strong version of it (i.e. strong pluralism) further contends that no truth property is shared by all true propositions. In this paper, I help strong pluralism solve two pressing problems concerning mixed discourse: the problem of mixed inferences (PI) and the problem of mixed compounds (PC). According to PI, strong pluralism is incompatible with the truth- preservation notion of validity; according to PC, strong pluralists cannot find (...) any appropriate truth property for mixed compound propositions, whose atomic constituents are from different domains of discourse (e.g., <sky is blue and chocolate is tasty>). I argue that the strong pluralist is motivated to take the truth predicate in truth-involving universal statements to be deflationary to avoid the two pressing problems. Such a move entails that the truth predicate in the platitude of validity (V) for any argument, it is valid if and only if necessarily its conclusion is true when its premises are all true does not denote any substantive truth property. Instead, it is merely an expressive device to help people generalize instances of (V) to (V). Analogous stories hold for the truth predicate in the platitudes of compound (e.g., conjunction). The upshot is that, the strong pluralist can solve PI and PC by further conceding that mixed compounds are true/false in a deflationary way. (shrink)

Meritocracy claims to reward the meritorious with more resources, thereby achieving social efficiency and justice in a level playground. This article argues that the rise of meritocracy in a society is the institutional consequence of adopting progressive humanism, an ideal-type worldview that advocates the harmonious co-realization of individual achievement and social contribution. However, meritocracy is a self-defeating illusion because, even in a level playground, it only rewards conspicuous and wasteful display of ‘merit’ rather than genuine contributions to society. Similar to (...) the promise of an afterlife to Catholicism, the illusion of meritocracy constitutes an indispensable theodicy to progressive humanism. For societies holding such worldviews, meritocracy is a necessary illusion that cannot be dispelled by institutional reforms or political movements. (shrink)

Wang Xuanlan criticized the view of time defined by Xin (心) through the way of Chongxuan xue (Twofold Mystery) in Xuanzhulu, and advocated a view of time from the perspective of Dao (道). The core proposition of the time of Xin is expressed as “in the pure Xin, all of the past and the present are included”. The whole content of the time of Xin is the “three periods” constituted by the past, present and future. Wang's criticism of the time (...) of Xin is consistent with that of worldly law such as Xin, words and knowledge. However, the criticism cannot be completed in one step. The result of criticism is not clinging to no-Xin, no-words and non-knowledge, but completely denying all worldly law. In this way, the Dao in the basic position could manifest itself. The view of the time of Dao is expressed as ”the Dao has no birth and death, and the time in it is infinite“. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to clarify the notion of semantic presupposition and to refute Böer and Lycan's critique of that notion. The author presents a feasible and coherent formal definition of semantic presupposition after examining several popular definitions of the notion. In terms of this definition, two central arguments against semantic presupposition presented by Böer and Lycan are analyzed and responded to with care. It is concluded that the notion of semantic presupposition is not empty but rather is philosophically (...) interesting and fruitful. (shrink)

Deep self views of moral responsibility suggest that an agent fully satisfies the freedom condition for responsibility if and only if her actions or omissions issue from, and so express, her deep self. This analysis generates both false negatives and false positives regarding people's responsibility, and counterexamples proliferate. I defend a novel version of the deep self view by offering a necessary condition for accountability while retaining the core of deep self views. Indeed, an agent may be blameworthy for her (...) wrongdoing without it issuing from, and so expressing, her deep self. And yet, I argue that she must have a deep self for which she is responsible. This is achieved by paying closer attention to history than standard views have. Focusing on history then reveals a less discussed problem for standard views: the ahistorical features of them make them less equipped to explain cases of blameworthiness that is undermined. (shrink)

In Appearance and Explanation, McCain and Moretti propose a novel internalist account of epistemic justification called phenomenal explanationism, which combines phenomenal conservatism and explanationism. I argue that the current version of phenomenal explanationism faces a dilemma: either it omits the awareness requirement but implies an implausible form of logical-mathematical omniscience, or it preserves the requirement but leads to a vicious regress. I suggest how phenomenal explanationism might be revised to avoid this dilemma.

The author argues that consciousness and its meaning may only be defined and explained within an ontological system. Such a system is proposed in this article, with matter, energy, and life as its components, and with all its components defined as changes. The systematic relations between matter and energy and the semantic relations among all its components together may define and explain what and how consciousness is, why there is consciousness, where and when it may occur, and what is its (...) significance or meaning. (shrink)

Valuing something is complicated. Philosophers have offered different stories about what we do when we value something. However, we have not paid enough attention to the thought that, sometimes, valuing something is what makes us the kind of practical agents we are. In this paper, I offer a novel account of valuing, which I call thick valuing, to capture this special phenomenon in which our valuing makes us who we are. This requires us to recognize that the cognitive, motivational, and (...) affective components of thick valuing do not merely co-occur. More importantly, it is key to focusing on how thickly valuing something partially constitutes, and indeed crucially expresses, our practical identities. Beyond that, the account sheds new light on how we can better understand inauthenticity—to act without authenticity is to act from what one thickly values but where that which one thickly values are not values of one’s own. (shrink)

With this article, the author argues that in reality nothing is or isn’t itself, that everything is both a relative proof and an absolute proof of God’s existence, and that our language, such as “nature” or “god”, is the only obstacle between Nature and God.

The Planteome project provides a suite of reference and species-specific ontologies for plants and annotations to genes and phenotypes. Ontologies serve as common standards for semantic integration of a large and growing corpus of plant genomics, phenomics and genetics data. The reference ontologies include the Plant Ontology, Plant Trait Ontology, and the Plant Experimental Conditions Ontology developed by the Planteome project, along with the Gene Ontology, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest, Phenotype and Attribute Ontology, and others. The project also provides (...) access to species-specific Crop Ontologies developed by various plant breeding and research communities from around the world. We provide integrated data on plant traits, phenotypes, and gene function and expression from 95 plant taxa, annotated with reference ontology terms. (shrink)

In order to have an effective and reliable understanding of the basic moral concepts, moral propositions and moral reasoning in Daoist ethical thoughts, it is necessary to use the methods of doing philosophy and doing ethics to engage in research work, and thus draw an intellectual conclusion about Daoist ethics. The methods of Daoist ethics mainly include analysis, explanation and comparison. The method of analysis focuses on logical analysis and language analysis of moral language in the classic texts of Daoist (...) ethics. The method of interpretation focuses on effective translation and understanding of moral language with unclear meaning in Daoist ethics. The method of comparison focuses on critical dialogue between ancient Daoist ethical thoughts and contemporary ethical theories and comparison between Confucian, Buddhist and Daoist ethics. Explaining the method of doing Daoist ethics clearly will promote the dialogue and understanding between Daoist ethics and contemporary ethics. (shrink)

This paper sums up the fundamental features of intelligence through the common features stated by various definitions of "intelligence": Intelligence is the ability of achieving systematic goals (functions) of brain and nerve system through selecting, and artificial intelligence or machine intelligence is an imitation of life intelligence or a replication of features and functions. Based on the definition mentioned above, this paper discusses and summarizes the development routes of ideas on computable intelligence, including Godel's "universal recursive function", the computation activities (...) of "selection", recursive function and Turing machine, mathematical expression of computable intelligence, core nature of computable intelligence, and computability and strong artificial intelligence. At the end of this paper is the conclusion drawn by the authors. (shrink)

According to Donald Davidson, an akratic action is opposed to the agent’s better judgment if the agent act freely and intentionally. Davidson says akratic actions are possible and all akratic actions are irrational. However, although akratic actions are possible, akratic actions could be rational. The reasons are that some of these actions are rational; these rational akratic actions are caused by some emotions sometimes, while some emotions cannot make akratic actions rational, including excessive negative emotions, recalcitrant emotions, etc. Therefore, it (...) is reasonable to explain akratic actions caused by these emotions and these emotions not play a rational role in akratic actions. (shrink)

Based on the dispute between Protagoras and Socrates on the origin of ethics, one can ask the question of whether the principle of ethics is reason orfeeling/emotion, or whether ethics is grounded on reason or feeling/emotion. The development of Kant’s thoughts on ethics shows the tension between reason and feeling/emotion. In Kant’s final critical ethics, he held to a principle of “rational a priori.” On the one hand, this is presented as the rational a priori principle being the binding principle (...) of judgment. On the other hand, it is presented as the doctrine of “rational fact” as the ultimate argument of his ethics. Husserl believed that Kant’s doctrine of a rational a priori totally disregarded the a priori essential laws of feeling. Like Husserl, Scheler criticized Kant’s doctrine of a rational a priori, and therefore developed his own theory of an “emotional a priori”. Both of them focused their critiques on the grounding level of ethics. Scheler, however, did not follow Husserl all the way, but criticized him and reflected on his thoughts. At last, he revealed the primary status of a phenomenological material ethics of value. (shrink)

The author argues that consciousness may never be defined or explained with entities or their properties. As an alternative, the author proposes a system with matter, energy, and lives as its components, and with all its components defined as changes. Based on the relationships among these three components, a triple definition or explanation of consciousness is reached: • Ontologically, consciousness is universal, since it is the distinction between matter and energy. • Epistemologically, consciousness is unique, since it is the energy (...) formalized, qualified, or diversified by the matter. • Semantically, consciousness is a meaningless language with lives as its only meaning. Many theories of consciousness have neglected such a universality or uniqueness and even ignored lives as the only cause or effect of consciousness. -/- . (shrink)

On the one hand, Scheler's critique of Kant's concept of a priori benefits from Husserl to a large extent, and it complements and deepens Husserl's. On the other hand, Scheler also critiques Husserl's definition of a priori. Husserl's material a priori as ideal object primarily thanks to his so-called "Bolzano- turn". In this connection, Scheler grabs hold of the relation of Husserl to Bolzano from the very beginning. For Scheler, Husserl thinks in a "platonic" way, and still falls in a (...) new type of "Platonism", or rather, logical Platonism, although he correctly refuses the ordinary Platonism. In Scheler's view, Husserl's phenomenological reduction is "not purely" executed, and therefore his phenomenological experience is problematic, or more precisely, the relation between categorial intuition and sensuous intuition is problematic. The final aim of Scheler's critique of Husserl's phenomenological understanding of "objective a priori" is to win the primary position of categorial intuition and its content , ethical insight and its correlate , and ultimately of phenomenological ethics of material value.Einerseits nimmt Schelers Kritik an Kant bezüglich des Begriffs des Apriori die Einsichten Husserls in großem Umfang auf. Schelers Kritik an Kant ergänzt und vertieft die Husserlsche Kant-Kritik. Andererseits kritisiert er aber auch Husserls Bestimmung des Apriori. Vor allem verdankt sich das materiale Apriori als idealer Gegenstand bei Husserl der sogenannten “Bolzano’schen Wendung”. Von Anfang an kritisiert Scheler Husserl in diesem Punkt, indem er dem Verhältnis zwischen Bolzano und Husserl immer präziser nachging. Für Scheler unterliegt Husserl mit Recht keinem platten Platonismus. Aber dennoch verfahre Husserl immerhin “platonistisch”, er unterliege einem “Neoplatonismus”, bzw. einem logischen Platonismus. Weil die phänomenologische Reduktion bei Husserl nach Schelers Meinung “nicht reinlich” durchgeführt wird, ist die phänomenologische Erfahrung bei Husserl problematisch, genauer gesagt ist das Verhältnis zwischen der kategorialen Anschauung und der sinnlichen Anschauung problematisch. Der Endzweck von Schelers Kritik an der phänomenologischen Auffassung des gegenständlichen Apriori bei Husserl besteht darin, die primäre Stelle der kategorialen Anschauung und ihrer Gehalte , sowie der sittlichen Einsicht und ihrer Korrelate und zuletzt der phänomenologisch materialen Wertethik zu gewinnen.S jedne strane, Schelerova kritika Kantova pojma a priori u velikoj mjeri duguje Husserlu, te dopunjuje i produbljuje Husserlovu. S druge strane, Scheler kritizira i Husserlovu definiciju apriorija. Husserlov materijalni a priori kao idealni predmet prvenstveno proizlazi iz njegova takozvanog bolzanovskog obrata. Prema Scheleru, Husserl razmišlja na "platonski" način te upada u novi tip "platonizma" ili, točnije, logičkog platonizma, iako s pravom odbacuje obični platonizam. Scheler smatra da Husserlova fenomenološka redukcija nije izvedena "čisto" te da je stoga njegovo fenomenološko iskustvo proble- matično ili, točnije, problematičan je odnos između kategorijalnog zora i osjetilnog zora. Krajnji cilj Schelerove kritike Husserlova fenomenološkog shvaćanja "objektivnog a priori" jest zadobivanje primarne pozicije kategorijalnog zora i njegova sadržaja , etičkog uvida i njegova korelata te, na koncu, fenomenološke etike materijalne vrijednosti. (shrink)

In the remainder of this article, we will disarm an important motivation for epistemic contextualism and interest-relative invariantism. We will accomplish this by presenting a stringent test of whether there is a stakes effect on ordinary knowledge ascription. Having shown that, even on a stringent way of testing, stakes fail to impact ordinary knowledge ascription, we will conclude that we should take another look at classical invariantism. Here is how we will proceed. Section 1 lays out some limitations of previous (...) research on stakes. Section 2 presents our study and concludes that there is little evidence for a substantial stakes effect. Section 3 responds to objections. The conclusion clears the way for classical invariantism. (shrink)

In pedestrian detection, occlusions are typically treated as an unstructured source of noise and explicit models have lagged behind those for object appearance, which will result in degradation of detection performance. In this paper, a hierarchical co-occurrence model is proposed to enhance the semantic representation of a pedestrian. In our proposed hierarchical model, a latent SVM structure is employed to model the spatial co-occurrence relations among the parent–child pairs of nodes as hidden variables for handling the partial occlusions. Moreover, the (...) visibility statuses of the pedestrian can be generated by learning co-occurrence relations from the positive training data with large numbers of synthetically occluded instances. Finally, based on the proposed hierarchical co-occurrence model, a pedestrian detection algorithm is implemented to incorporate visibility statuses by means of a Random Forest ensemble. The experimental results on three public datasets demonstrate the log-average miss rate of the proposed algorithm has 5% improvement for pedestrians with partial occlusions compared with the state-of-the-arts. (shrink)

Generic statements, such as "Bees are striped" are thought to be a central vehicle by which essentialist beliefs are transmitted. But work on generics and essentialism almost never focuses on the type of properties mentioned in generic statements. We test the hypothesis that teleological properties, what something is for, affect categorization judgments more strongly than behavioral, biological, or social properties. In Experiment 1, participants categorized properties as being either behavioral, biological, social, or teleological. In Experiment 2, we used the top (...) four properties from each group to describe a generic noun or a specific individual. Participants then categorized creatures that had one of their properties transformed. We found that changes to teleological properties had the strongest impact on categorization judgments. In Experiment 3, we also found that teleological properties mattered more in an induction task. We suggest that teleological properties play this privileged role in categorization because they are treated as essential properties. (shrink)

The explanatory challenge of sentience is known as the “hard problem of consciousness”: How does subjective experience arise from physical objects and their relations? Despite some optimistic claims, the perennial struggle with this question shows little evidence of imminent resolution. In this article I focus on the “why” rather than on the “how” of sentience. Specifically, why did sentience evolve in organic lifeforms? From an evolutionary perspective this question can be framed: “What adaptive problem(s) did organisms face in their evolutionary (...) past and how were those challenges met? I argue that sentience was a critical component of the adaptive solution (i.e., adopting an agentic stance) to increasingly complex and unpredictable demands placed on vertebrates approximately 500 million years ago (the so-called Cambrian explosion). One consequence of taking an agentic stance is that it freed the organism from its neural moorings, positioning it within phenomenal space outside its brain. (shrink)

Consciousness may not only be a problem how to know the brain but also a problem how to understand what known. Understanding is always an ontological system created as the explanation of what known by us. And, if all brains, including human brains, may be defined as the mind, consciousness must be part of our understanding of the mind. The author argues that no mind may exist if not be a life or lives, no life may exist if not be (...) a mind or a part of it, and, if it is the mind that needs to be explained, it must finally and fundamentally be explained as a life or a living system. An ontological definition of life is proposed first in this article, which is also applicable to fields such as physics, biology, psychology, and sociology. Based on an analysis of two kinds of lives and their relationship with matter and energy, a living system is modeled as the organization of two system relations, which explains not only consciousness but also wakefulness, emotion, intelligence, language and mind-body relationship. And finally, a semantic theory is reached, which takes lives as the only meaning of all symmetrical and conservative changes, such as the location changes or form changes of consciousness, or the state changes of memories. The concept of life, the model of living systems and the semantic theory together provide a framework for us to understand what and how consciousness is, why there is consciousness, where and when consciousness occurs. (shrink)

The year 2020 and 2021 have been decimated by the pandemic, leading to outbound vacations largely scrapped. Staycation, a typical domestic journal, has then been adopted by those who are tired of self-isolation for so long. This study aims to explore and assess the drivers exerting impact on attitude of tourists toward staycation and the interrelationship among the research constructs is also examined. A quantitative analysis is employed for evaluating the roles of reduced risk perception, benign envy, and perceived benefits (...) as they exert the effect on attitude toward staycation. An online questionnaire survey was used, and a total of 213 samples were collected from target respondents in Hong Kong, which were still under lockdown at the time of the study. The results of the study showed that reduced risk perception, benign envy as well as perceived benefits will influence tourists’ attitude toward staycation. The managerial and theoretical implications of the results are discussed based on the significant relationships identified in the study. (shrink)

Currently, little is known about the mechanism of how university students’ attitudes toward entrepreneurship education (ATEE) affect entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) in the post-pandemic entrepreneurial environment. Based on the existing research, this study explores the relationship between ATEE, the post-pandemic entrepreneurship environment, and ESE through a questionnaire survey. A total of 910 university students from three universities in Zhejiang Province, China participated, with an effective rate of 92.9%. The data collection focused on the period from August to December 2020. In this (...) study, Stepwise Multiple regression analysis was used to analyze university students' ATEE and its impact on ESE, as well as the moderating effect of the post-pandemic entrepreneurial environment. (shrink)

Reading science fiction in China as a science project, this paper articulates a philosophical reflection on the ontology and ethics of truth that stems from the world of China. Through the reading of various texts of and about science fiction in China, from the Republican to the contemporary period, this article analyzes the situation of science fiction in China. Since science fiction was originally conceived as a science novel—a literary form that meant to convey scientific truth in order to create (...) a self-determining Chinese public—the history of science fiction in China is punctuated with the political question of what scientific truth is and what it does. Reading though such a milieu and Liu Cixin’s short novel, Hearing Dao in the Morning, this article will demonstrate that science fiction in China offers science a different modality of truth, that evokes an ethic of truth based on the curiosity towards the “unknown unknown.” The “unknown unknown” truth is significant because it re-structures the relationship between science fiction, truth, self-determination and the public. (shrink)