According to Charles S. Peirce and to Mariano Artigas, science is the collective and cooperative activity of all those whose lives are animated by the desire to discover the truth. The particular sciences are branches of a common tree. The unity of science is not achieved by the reduction of the special sciences to more basic ones: the new name for the unity of the sciences is cross-disciplinarity. This is not a union of the sciences themselves, but rather (...) the unity and dialogue of scientists, the real inquirers into the truth. In the light of Peirce’s and Artigas’s teachings, we can see that philosophers are in just the right place to call for this unity of sciences. This call should not be seen as promoting a return to the old scientism, but seeks a deep dialogue between the particular sciences and philosophy in order to deal with the presuppositions of the scientific enterprise. The key to the cross-disciplinarity of knowledge is not revolution, but rather shared efforts in a unique mixture of continuity and fallibilism, of affection and reason, of the attempt to understand others’ disciplines as well as our own. (shrink)

In a world of ever growing specialization, the idea of a unity of science is commonly discarded, but cooperative work involving cross-disciplinary points of view is encouraged. The aim of this paper is to show with some textual support that Charles S. Peirce not only identified this paradoxical situation a century ago, but he also mapped out some paths for reaching a successful solution. A particular attention is paid to Peirce's classification of the sciences and to his conception of (...) science as a collective and cooperative activity of all those whose lives are animated by the desire to discover the truth. -/- . (shrink)

In a world of ever growing specialization, the issue of complexity attracts a good amount of attention from cross-disciplinary points of view as this Congress provides evidence. Charles S. Peirce's thought may help us not only to shoulder once again philosophical responsibility which has been largely abdicated by much of 20th century philosophy, but also to tackle some of the most stubborn contemporary problems. The founder of pragmatism identified one century ago most of these problems, and he also mapped (...) out some paths that we could follow to overcome the poverty of contemporary scientistic reductionism. One of these paths is related with the issue of complexity, that lies at the heart of all his conception. -/- Along this line, the aim of my paper is to describe what Peirce can teach about complexity to semioticians coming from very different scientific backgrounds. The lecture will be divided in three sections: 1) a presentation of Peirce, stressing his personal authority as a scientist philosopher, providing also some biographical details; 2) the theory of categories as the heart of complexity according to Peirce and, finally, 3) some consequences of Peirce's notion of complexity in relation with abduction and creativity, semiosis, cross-disciplinarity and communication. -/- . (shrink)

This collection addresses two different audiences: 1) historians and philosophers of the life sciences reflecting on collaborations across disciplines, especially as regards defining and addressing Grand Challenges; 2) researchers and other stakeholders involved in cross-disciplinary collaborations aimed at tackling Grand Challenges in the life and medical sciences. The essays collected here offer ideas and resources both for the study and for the practice of goal-driven cross-disciplinary research in the life and medical sciences. We organise this introduction in three (...) sections. The first section provides some background and context. The second motivates our take on this topic and then outlines the central ideas of each paper. The third section highlights the specificity and significance of this approach by considering: a) how this collection departs from existing literature on inter- and trans-disciplinarity, b) what is characteristic about this approach, and c) what role this suggests for the history and philosophy of the life sciences in addressing Grand Challenges. (shrink)

The five studies of this special section investigate the role of models and similar representational tools in interdisciplinarity. These studies were all written by philosophers of science, who focused on interdisciplinary episodes between disciplines and sub-disciplines ranging from physics, chemistry and biology to the computational sciences, sociology and economics. The reasons we present these divergent studies in a collective form are three. First, we want to establish model-exchange as a kind of interdisciplinary event. The five case studies, which are summarized (...) in Section 2 below, show the relevance of this kind. Arguing for the relative unity of these cases will, we hope, re-orient the current debate over interdisciplinarity so as to reflect more appropriately the importance of this kind. We discuss our view of the current state of the debate in Section 3. The evidence from these cases also helps us to develop a taxonomy of interdisciplinary model exchanges in Section 4da taxonomy, we would like to add, that might be useful for the discussion of interdisciplinary exchanges beyond the context of models and their transfer. The second reason for presenting these studies together is that they provide an important source of evidence for the philosophy of science. Over the last three decades, philosophy of science has increasingly differentiated into philosophies of various disciplines. This differentiation in our view has greatly increased our understanding of the scientific practices of the respective disciplines, including the epistemological and methodological standards and conventions on which these practices are based and by which they are evaluated. But it has also made it harder to compare these practices and standards across disciplines. The studies we present here are case studies of interdisciplinary exchange: they focus on the transfer, collaborative construction or parallel use of models and similar representational tools. They therefore provide a unique opportunity to investigate various disciplinary treatments of the same or at least similar representational tools. This allows the identification and comparison of different disciplinary practices and their underlying conventions as well as of the respective normative standards of their evaluation. By tracing the paths along which models travel between disciplines and research fields we can observe to which extent discipline-external practices associated with an adopted tool are retained or replaced by disciplineinternal practices. This generates invaluable information about both disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. We develop this argument further in Section 5. The third reason for presenting these studies in collective form is that their philosophical analysis also has important normative implications for the notion of interdisciplinarity itself. Too often in the current (non-philosophical) discourse is interdisciplinarity cast as an exclusively integrative project: interdisciplinary exchange is often claimed to be successful only if the involved disciplines become mutually more integrated as a consequence of this process. In contrast to this, many of the cases presented here show that interdisciplinary exchange can be scientifically highly successful, even if at the end of the exchange disciplinary borders remain fully intact. Indeed, borders can be fruitfully crossed without any integration across these borders. Such considerations of divergence in scientific practices and tools offer arguments against a naïve plea for unitarian or non-pluralist versions of interdisciplinarity. Disciplinary divergences may have their justifications, and attempting exchanges that require the reduction of these divergences may consequently not be justified. We pursue this argument further in Section 6. (shrink)

This paper discusses how theories of definition and probabilistic theories of categorization could help distinguish between translation and adaptation, and eventually between translation and adaptation studies. Part I suggests readopting the common parlance definition of “translation” as the accurate rendition of the meaning of a verbal expression in another natural language, and “adaptation” as change that leads to better fit. Readopting these common parlance definitions entails categorical implications. The author discusses three parameters: whereas “translation” represents an invariance-oriented, semiotically invested, (...) class='Hi'>cross-lingual phenomenon, “adaptation” refers to a variance-oriented phenomenon, which is not semiotically invested, and entails better fit. Part II discusses how theories of categorization could help distinguish between TS and LFAS. The study of the disciplinarization of knowledge involves epistemic and socio-political conditioners. This section concludes that medium specificity, i.e., the linguistic versus lit-film paradigm, plays a major role in separating TS from LFAS. Another player that deserves more attention is the Romantic as opposed to the Classicist value system. (shrink)

Resolving to finish reading a novel, staying true to your punk style, or dedicating your life to an artistic project: these are examples of aesthetic commitments. I develop an account of the nature of such commitments, and I argue that they are significant insofar as they help us manage the temporally extended nature of our aesthetic agency and our relationships with aesthetic objects. At the same time, focusing on aesthetic commitments can give us a better grasp on the nature of (...) aesthetic normativity; this is because, in making aesthetic commitments, we are capable of giving aesthetic concerns the weight of obligation. I argue that appealing to aesthetic commitments allows us to account for the existence of aesthetic obligations as well as their grounding. I conclude by arguing that, although the aesthetic domain is a domain of play and freedom of choice, there is nevertheless an important place in it for both aesthetic commitments and the aesthetic obligations they generate. (shrink)

The following is not a successful skeptical scenario: you think you know you have hands, but maybe you don't! Why is that a failure, when it's far more likely than, say, the evil genius hypothesis? That's the question.<br><br>This is an earlier draft.

Most recent discussions of reasons in art criticism focus on reasons that justify beliefs about the value of artworks. Reviving a long-neglected suggestion from Paul Ziff, I argue that we should focus instead on art-critical reasons that justify actions—namely, particular ways of engaging with artworks. I argue that a focus on practical rather than theoretical reasons yields an understanding of criticism that better fits with our intuitions about the value of reading art criticism, and which makes room for a nuanced (...) distinction between criticism that aims at universality and criticism that is resolutely personal. (shrink)

Reductionists about dispositions must either say the natural properties are all dispositional or individuate properties hyperintensionally. Lewis stands in as an example of the sort of combination I think is incoherent: properties individuated by modal profile + categoricalism.

The aesthetic domain is a social one. We coordinate our individual acts of creation, appreciation, and performance with those of others in the context of social aesthetic practices. More strongly, many of the richest goods of our aesthetic lives are constitutively social; their value lies in the fact that individuals are engaged in joint aesthetic agency, participating in cooperative and collaborative project that outstrips what can be realized alone. I provide an account of nature and value of two such social (...) aesthetic goods—aesthetic communities and aesthetic traditions—and further argue that such goods are a core constituent of an aesthetically good life. At the same time, I argue that the ideals of the dominant theory of aesthetic value, aesthetic value hedonism, are incompatible with a full commitment to these social aesthetic goods; the hedonist is thereby alienated from the other participants within aesthetic communities and traditions. This sets up a dilemma for the hedonist: either the hedonist must bite the bullet, accepting that the theory leads to a problematic form of aesthetic alienation; or, we must reject aesthetic value hedonism and adopt a different theory of aesthetic value which accommodates the value of social aesthetic goods. I argue that we should take the second horn of the dilemma. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is now capable of generating sophisticated and compelling images from simple text prompts. In this paper, I focus specifically on how artists might make use of AI to create art. Most existing discourse analogizes AI to a tool or collaborator; this focuses our attention on AI’s contribution to the production of an artistically significant output. I propose an alternative approach, the exploration paradigm, which suggests that artists instead relate to AI as a participant: artists create a space for (...) interaction with the AI algorithm by way of their prompts, thereby allowing them to explore the way that the algorithm “sees” and “represents.” AI art practiced in this fashion bears a striking resemblance to contemporary conceptual and participatory art. Viewing AI art in this way has implications for the appreciation of style in AI art; concerns about novelty and originality; and the assignment of artistic credit and copyright. (shrink)

This article explains and defends a novel idea about how people can be misled by a discussion topic, even if the discussion itself does not explicitly involve the making of false claims. The crucial aspect of this idea is that people are liable to infer, from the fact that a particular topic is being discussed, that this topic is important. As a result, they may then be led to accept certain beliefs about the state of the world they consider necessary (...) for the topic’s importance. What the article calls “importance misrepresentation” occurs when these beliefs about the state of the world are false or otherwise mistaken. The article explores different ways in which importance misrepresentation can occur, and it uses this idea to help clarify and strengthen some well‐known criticisms of the topic choices of academic philosophers. (shrink)

Some writers appear to believe that a theory of justice must somehow pick people up by the scruff of the neck and force them to behave justly, regardless of their beliefs or inclinations. This is an absurd demand... (B. Barry, Justice as Impartiality).

In recent years, an increasing number of contemporary artists have incorporated live animals into their work. Although this development has attracted a great deal of attention in the artworld and among animal rights activists, it has not been much discussed in the philosophy of art—which is quite remarkable, given the serious ethical and artistic questions that these artworks prompt. I focus on answering two such questions. First, is the use of animals in these artworks ethically objectionable? Or are such artworks (...) instead morally permissible or even laudable? Second, what might be the distinctive value or good of incorporating animals into artworks in this way? In response to both questions, I argue that one distinctive value of some of the artworks I discuss is their ability to facilitate a relationship of moral concern and respect on the part of an audience toward the animals that are a part of the artwork. Insofar as artworks facilitate such relationships, they are not simply artistically important; they are also, to that extent, morally good. (shrink)

An extended critical investigation of Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism (EAAN). -/- I wrote this a couple of years ago as a way of thinking through the argument, but now lack the ambition to revise it into a paper. (It's too long to be a paper, too short and too narrowly focused on one person's argument to be a book.) Rather than let it age in private, I'm sharing it publicly for anyone interested in Plantinga's argument.

Bu çalışma, dağarcık ağı tekniği kullanılarak, Türkiye'deki 20 Müslüman ilâhiyat öğretim görevlisinin?gerçek' Müslümanların arzu edilir vasışarı ile ilgili bilişsel kurgularını ortaya koyma denemesidir. Verilerin faktör analizi ve diğer istatistikî yöntem ve teknikler, öğretim görevlilerinin arzu edilen Müslüman niteliklerini temsil eden 200 bilişsel kurgusuna ve bunlardan da 18 bilişsel kurgu grubuna ulaşılmasını sağlamıştır. Bu 18 nitelikler grubu "Diğerkâmlık"tan "Sıkı Çalışkanlık"a ve "Bilişsel Dindarlık"tan "Samimiyet"e kadar dindarlıkla ilgili çeşitli konuları kapsamaktadır. Bu gruplardan önemli olanları, diğerkâmlık, bilişsel dindarlık, dürüstlük ve samimiyet, içtenlik olarak (...) ortaya çıkmıştır. Yazarlar, bu şekilde algılanan İslâmî dindarlık niteliklerinin modern çoğulcu toplumların değer yargılarıyla uzlaşma içinde olup olmadıklarını değerlendirdiler. (shrink)

Cross entropy measure is one of the best way to calculate the divergence of any variable from the priori one variable. We define a new cross entropy measure under interval neutrosophic set environment.

In “Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions”, Weinberg, Nichols and Stich famously argue from empirical data that East Asians and Westerners have different intuitions about Gettier -style cases. We attempted to replicate their study about the Car case, but failed to detect a cross - cultural difference. Our study used the same methods and case taken verbatim, but sampled an East Asian population 2.5 times greater than NEI’s 23 participants. We found no evidence supporting the existence of cross - cultural (...) difference about the intuition concerning the Gettier car case. Taken together with the failures of both of the existing replication studies, our results provide strong evidence that the purported cross - cultural difference in Gettier intuitions does not exist. (shrink)

This paper provides a categorization of cross-modal experiences. There are myriad forms. Doing so allows us to think clearly about the nature of different cross-modal experiences and allows us to clearly formulate competing hypotheses about the kind of experiences involved in different cross-modal phenomena.

We provide new findings that add to the growing body of empirical evidence that important epistemic intuitions converge across cultures. Specifically, we selected three recent studies conducted in the US that reported surprising effects of knowledge attribution among English speakers. We translated the vignettes used in those studies into Mandarin Chinese and Korean and then ran the studies with participants in Mainland China, Taiwan, and South Korea. We found that, strikingly, all three of the effects first obtained in the US (...) also emerged in the East Asian cultures we studied. Our findings not only cohere with but also provide—at least moderate—support for the existence of extensive convergences of important epistemic intuitions across cultures. (shrink)

A student's self-efficacy—defined as their belief in their capacity to succeed in particular circumstances—is a critical factor in their food decisions. Also a university’s overall environment, including the presence of fast-food outlets and the nature of food marketing on campus, can shape undergraduate students' eating habits and self-efficacy. The primary purpose of this cross-sectional correlational study was to investigate eating self-efficacy in Nigerian public university students. A sample of 400 undergraduate students were surveyed at a Nigerian public university using (...) validated instruments to assess their level of eating self-efficacy and identify the relationships between their eating self-efficacy and eating habits. The Eating Self-Efficacy Brief Scale (ESEBS)–8 items was used to assess students' level of difficulty in resisting the desire to eat. The researcher utilized the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT)–16 items to evaluate the students’ eating habits. Statistical analysis was conducted at a significance level of p<.05. The results revealed that mean eating self-efficacy score (ESEBS-8) of 2.21 (SD=0.68). Regression analysis showed that gender, school environment, peer factor, and parental factor significantly predicted eating self-efficacy, F(4,398)=9.17, p<.001. Eating self-efficacy (ESEBS-8) was strongly positively correlated with eating habits (EAT-16), r=.861, p<. 001. Regression analysis showed that ESEBS-8 significantly predicted EAT-16 scores, B=1.399, β=.861, t=33.68, p<.001. The findings highlight significant correlations between various factors and eating self-efficacy through the lenses of gender, school environment, peer influence, and parental factors, as well as the relationship between eating self-efficacy and eating habits. (shrink)

This paper connects recent findings from experimental epistemology to several major themes in classical Indian epistemology. First, current evidence supports a specific account of the ordinary knowledge concept in contemporary anglophone American culture. According to this account, known as abilism, knowledge is a true representation produced by cognitive ability. I present evidence that abilism closely approximates Nyāya epistemology’s theory of knowledge, especially that found in the Nyāya-sūtra. Second, Americans are more willing to attribute knowledge of positive facts than of negative (...) facts, especially when such facts are inferred and even when the positive and negative “facts” are logically equivalent. Similar suspicions about knowledge of negative facts seemingly occur in classical Indian epistemology, suggesting that the asymmetry might not be an American quirk but instead reflect a cross-culturally robust tendency in knowledge attributions. Each of these themes—abilism and the positive/negative asymmetry—presents an exciting opportunity for further research in experimental cross-cultural epistemology. (shrink)

If someone unintentionally breaks the rules, do they break the rules? In the abstract, the answer is obviously “yes.” But, surprisingly, when considering specific examples of unintentional, blameless rule-breaking, approximately half of people judge that no rule was broken. This effect, known as excuse validation, has previously been observed in American adults. Outstanding questions concern what causes excuse validation, and whether it is peculiar to American moral psychology or cross-culturally robust. The present paper studies the phenomenon cross-culturally, focusing (...) on Korean and American adults, and proposes a new explanation of why people engage in excuse validation, in terms of competing forces in human norm-psychology. The principal findings are that Americans and Koreans engaged in excuse validation at similar levels, and older adults were more likely to engage in excuse validation. (shrink)

A social fact S is grounded by some plurality of grounds. And the fact that S has the grounding-conditions it does is anchored by some set of anchors. Epstein has recently suggested (2019) that the anchoring relation is a cross-world determination relation. In this paper we put forward three arguments against this view. First, we argue from the analogy between social and non-social kinds: there is no cross-world determination involved in non-social natural kinds. Secondly, we take issue with (...) the very idea of cross-world determination: no determination relation in our current metaphysical toolkit can have relata that occupy different possible worlds (in the relevant sense). Thirdly, we argue that cross-world anchoring generates an indeterminacy problem: if S holds in an anchorless world w, and there are distinct anchors (for S) holding at w1 and w2 respectively, then it is indeterminate whether S’s grounding-conditions hold in virtue of the w1-anchors or the w2-anchors. (shrink)

The research focused on the cross-boundary impacts of ecological changes on the livelihood of communities in three villages in Stung Treng province, Cambodia. The research objectives were to analyze river ecological changes and their drivers, and to explore the impacts of these changes on the livelihood of the communities. The research was conducted in Kraom, Kaoh Snaeng, and Tonsang villages. The study found that there have been significant changes in the environment of these villages. The fishery resources have declined (...) between 2019 and 2022 due to factors such as population growth, illegal fishing, loss of flooded forests, and the presence of hydropower dams. The extent of flooded forests has also significantly decreased, negatively impacting fish populations and the overall ecosystem. Water level fluctuations have become irregular since 2018, with lower water levels during the rainy season compared to previous years. Riverbank landslides have been a concern, posing threats to safety and livelihoods. Excessive algae growth in the rivers has also been observed. The research findings indicate a decline in income from fish catch in all three villages, with varying levels of stability. Expenses for food have also varied. Migration patterns have been observed, with individuals seeking better opportunities elsewhere due to the decline in fish stocks. Crop damages have been attributed to irregular flooding and fluctuating water levels, leading to a decrease in crop cultivation. Changes in water quality, including the presence of lime and algae, have impacted the well-being of the residents. Overall, the research highlights the need for interventions and support to address the economic challenges faced by the communities, mitigate the loss of equipment and housing, and improve water quality. (shrink)

In PI 189, Wittgenstein's interlocutor asks, ‘But are the steps then not determined by the algebraic formula?’. Wittgenstein responds, ‘The question contains a mistake’. What is the mistake contained in the interlocutor's question? Wittgenstein's elaboration is neither explicit nor its intended upshot transparent. In this paper, I offer a reading on which the interlocutor's question arises from illicitly crossing different pictures of ‘determination’. I begin by working through Wittgenstein's machine analogy in PI 193, which illustrates picture‐crossing in our ways of (...) talking about a machine. Using the lessons from this analogy, I show how the interlocutor's ‘mistake’ can be diagnosed in similar terms: their confusion about the power of a rule to determine its applications rests on mistakenly crossing a behavioural and a mathematical sense of ‘determine’—thereby concocting a mystifying picture of rule‐following. (shrink)

Linguistic data are commonly considered a defeasible source of evidence from which it is legitimate to draw philosophical hypotheses and conclusions. Traditionally epistemologists have relied almost exclusively on linguistic data from western languages, with a primary focus on contemporary English. However, in the last two decades there has been an increasing interest in cross-linguistic studies in epistemology. In this entry, we provide a brief overview of cross-linguistic data discussed by contemporary epistemologists and the philosophical debates they have generated.

The World Economic Forum notes that there is an economic gap between Indonesia and Malaysia every year as seen from GDP per capita. The economic disparity between the two countries caused differences in available employment opportunities. Limited employment opportunities in Indonesia cause an increase in unemployment in Indonesia. The high unemployment rate in West Kalimantan is the main cause of the migration of Indonesians to Malaysia with the aim of carrying out economic and trade activities in the Serikin Market which (...) is located in Sarawak, East Malaysia. The market only takes about 15 minutes from the Jagoi Babang. This study used primary data collected by using in-depth interview and observation techniques which was analyzed qualitatively. The study found that in general the migration patterns of Indonesian traders who traded in the Serikin Market practiced non-permanent mobility patterns. The opportunities of cross-border trade carried out by Indonesian traders are reducing unemployment, facilitating product marketing, increasing income. While the challenges faced are the inadequacy of the road infrastructure, the quality of merchandise that is not good, the unavailability of lodging for Indonesian traders in the border area of Jagoi Babang, shop rental prices are relatively expensive. Basically, this research is to provide empirical data regarding to opportunities and challenges of cross-border traders that will be able to be used for future research related to strategies in managing cross-border trade Hopefully, this research will contribute significantly to generate an effective migration policy in order to minimize transnational crimes. (shrink)

According to Leininger, presentists and growing blockers cannot explain why past and present regularities persist in the future. In order to do so, they would have to appeal to enforcers, such as causation, laws or dispositions. But in a world with no future, these enforcers are powerless and cannot guarantee future regularity. I disagree and argue that Leininger’s coordination problem can be met by distinguishing type- from token-level necessitation. Whereas token-level necessitation is cross-temporal and subject to Leininger’s coordination problem, (...) type-level necessitation is atemporal and immune to the coordination problem. For this solution to work, though, type-level necessitation must be ontologically prior to token-level necessitation. This forces us to adopt a Platonist position according to which universals are transcendent, and not immanent. (shrink)

While standard first-order modal logic is quite powerful, it cannot express even very simple sentences like “I could have been taller than I actually am” or “Everyone could have been smarter than they actually are”. These are examples of cross-world predication, whereby objects in one world are related to objects in another world. Extending first-order modal logic to allow for cross-world predication in a motivated way has proven to be notoriously difficult. In this paper, I argue that the (...) standard accounts of cross-world predication all leave something to be desired. I then propose an account of cross-world predication based on quantified hybrid logic and show how it overcomes the limitations of these previous accounts. I will conclude by discussing various philosophical consequences and applications of such an account. (shrink)

This draft Chapter 4 of the book “In the Beginning was Chiasmus: On the Epistemology of Non-quantified Modelling, describes how Plato’s method of divisions and collections (diairesis) accommodates both linear hierarchal classification and combinatoric cross-classification. It presents Plato’s and the early Neoplatonists’ use of cross-classificatory (chiastic) modelling as an ancient prototype of contemporary typological and morphological modelling.

This essay is a defense of the social construction of racialism. I follow a standard definition of “racialism” which is the belief that “there are heritable characteristics, possessed by members of our species, that allow us to divide them into a small set of races, in such a way that all the members of these races share certain traits and tendencies with each other that they do not share with other members of any other race”. In particular I want to (...) defend the “radical” social-constructive thesis that holds “the concept of race is exclusively the product of historical and cultural causes. It claims that humans do not tend to classify people into races when groups with different phenotypes meet, save for particular historical circumstances”. The quoted position is the consensus view among historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists who study racialism but has recently been criticized by philosophical defenders of cognitive/evolutionary psychological approaches to racialism. Drawing on developmental studies as well as historical and contemporary cross-cultural research, CEP philosophers point to similarities of racialism across time and space. They hold that social constructionist approaches to racialism cannot explain these similarities. I hold that SC approaches do explain these similarities and that such similarities actually pose a significant challenge to the proposed CEP research program on racialism. (shrink)

Debates about God’s personhood, or lack thereof, are central to philosophy of religion. This paper aims to advance these debates by presenting the “greatness of personhood argument” for God’s personhood and a dilemma for those who deny God’s personhood. I also consider various objections to this argument and this dilemma and argue that they fail. Notably, my reasoning in defence of personal theism is cross-cultural insofar as personal theists across various religious traditions can use it. Thus, this paper defends (...) personal theism in a manner that can bring Western and non-Western theists into closer dialogue regarding the topic of God’s personhood. (shrink)

Rooth & Partee (1982) and Rooth (1985) have shown that the English-specific rule-by-rule system of PTQ can be factored out into function application plus two transformations for resolving type mismatch (type lifting and variable binding). Building on these insights, this article proposes a universal system for type-driven translation, by adding two more innovations: local type determination for gaps (generalizing Montague 1973) and a set of semantic filters (extending Cooper 1983). This system, dubbed Cross-Linguistic Semantics (XLS), is shown to account (...) for various phenomena — including scope relations in English and Greenlandic Eskimo, internally headed relative clauses in Lakhota, serial verbs in Yoruba and VP ellipsis in English. (shrink)

I present a new problem for the tense realist concerning the evaluation of cross-temporal claims, such as ‘John is now taller than Michael was in 1984’. Time can play two different roles in the evaluation of an utterance of a sentence: either as an element that completes the content expressed by the utterance (the completion role), or as part of the circumstances against which the content is evaluated (the evaluation role). It is this latter role that time plays in (...) the realist view of tenses. I argue that if the content of a cross-temporal sentence is taken at face value (as an ascription of a crosstemporally instantiated relation), time does not play the evaluation role. Therefore, the world of the tense realist seems to leave no room for cross-temporality. (shrink)

Nobody doubts that culture plays a decisive role in understanding human forms of life. But it is unclear how this decisive role should be integrated into a comprehensive explanatory model of human behaviour that brings together naturalistic and social-scientific perspectives. Cultural difference, cultural learning, cultural determination do not mix well with the factors that are normally given full explanatory value in the more naturalistic approaches to the study of human behaviour. My purpose in this paper is to alert to some (...) of the theoretical vulnerabilities or concerns that the cross-cultural study of mind and behaviour might entail. I classify these theoretical concerns into three, loosely defined, categories: epistemological, ontological and ethical. The first have to do with what in anthropology was once labelled as ‘butterfly collecting’. What kind of supplementary, or additional, general theoretical knowledge do we produce when we add to the research different, particularistic, culturally determined, ways of knowing? Ontological concerns refer to the underlying reality that those ways of knowing are meant to disclose. If there are so many ways of knowing the world, where is the reality to be known? Ethical concerns are those entailed in the forms of ‘othering’ that unqualified cross-cultural research is likely to produce in research participants. (shrink)

The aim of the Validation Theory (VT) as a meta-empirical construct is to introduce a new vista in the reorganization of the neuroscience, in its role of a science of the Mind-and-Brain unification. The present study focuses on existing discrepancies and contradictions between the methods of basic neurosciences and those prescribed by the psychological science. Our view is that these discrepancies are based on a high penetration of traditional neuroscience methods into the biological processes, coupled with low extrapolation (experimenting with (...) animal models) and vice versa for the psychological and psychopathological methods. A novel epistemological model for integrating psychological and neuroscientific knowledge is proposed. It is represented as a simultaneous investigation of the brain activity with penetrating high resolution functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and in extenso application of set of psychological tests for exploring correspondence (cross-validation) between their compounds. The proposed approach leads to a revision of the neuroscientific and psychological terms, methods and data, followed by a revision of their relative interplay. This would make possible a practical exchange of expensive but objective fMRI with the lower costing psychological instruments (effect of "minimization"). The approaches proceeding from VT will infiltrate diagnostics and prevention in psychiatry. On a further stage the pharmaco-psychological monitoring will uncover new opportunities. This proofs' based research and practice represents an integral counterpart of the values-based mental health care. In conclusion VT is an evolutionary corner stone in order to traverse the stage of a Brain-Brain paradigm and to reach the point of development of the Mind-Brain paradigm. (shrink)

Despite pervasive variation in the content of laws, legal theorists and anthropologists have argued that laws share certain abstract features and even speculated that law may be a human universal. In the present report, we evaluate this thesis through an experiment administered in 11 different countries. Are there cross‐cultural principles of law? In a between‐subjects design, participants (N = 3,054) were asked whether there could be laws that violate certain procedural principles (e.g., laws applied retrospectively or unintelligible laws), and (...) also whether there are any such laws. Confirming our preregistered prediction, people reported that such laws cannot exist, but also (paradoxically) that there are such laws. These results document cross‐culturally and –linguistically robust beliefs about the concept of law which defy people's grasp of how legal systems function in practice. (shrink)

For many causal endeavors, such as measuring, predicting, and explaining, individuating causal systems plays a crucial role. In this chapter, we focus on the individuation of a specific type of causal systems, what we call cross-cutting systems. These are systems that lack natural boundaries and that are not restricted to the spatiotemporal region of the individuals to which they belong. Based on examples taken from cognitive science and behavioral ecology, we explore how scientists individuate such cross-cutting causal systems.

The thesis of this paper is that the capacity to think of one’s perceptions as cross-modally integrated is incompatible with a reductionist account of the self. In §2 I distinguish three versions of the argument from cross-modality. According to the ‘unification’ version of the argument, what needs to be explained is one’s capacity to identify an object touched as the same as an object simultaneously seen. According to the ‘recognition’ version, what needs to be explained is one’s capacity, (...) having once seen an object, to reidentify that same object by touch alone. According to the ‘objectivity’ version, what needs to be explained is one’s capacity to think of one’s perceptions in different modalities as perceptions of one and the same object. The third version seems to establish that one must conceive of oneself substantially, as the numerically identical owner of one’s experiences, a conclusion in agreement with recent work in developmental psychology claiming to show that an infant’s cross-modal capacities are essentially implicated in their development of a sense of self. There is further work to be done if this is to be tumed into an argument against reductionism: there is no swift route from the epistemology of self-consciousness to the metaphysics of the self. In the §3, I will claim that there is, nevertheless, an argument linking the two. What I propose is an argument derived, not from the token-reflexive rule for the first-person, but resting on its anaphoric behaviour spanning intensional operators. (shrink)

Socrates' cross-examination of Callicles in the 'Gorgias' has traditionally been viewed as a paradigm of the Socratic method. I argue that, when he cross examines Callicles, Socrates behaves out of character. In fact, he acts like a Sophist and violates the very principles of persuasion that he advocates in the 'Gorgias'. I offer an explanation of Socrates' temporary transformation into a Sophist, and suggest that his role-reversal reinforces Plato's representation of Socrates as the model of the virtuous philosopher.

The tenth volume of the Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy focuses on the theme of “transition,” dealing with transitory and intermediary phenomena and practices such as translation, transmission, and transformation. Written in English, German and Japanese, the contributions explore a wide range of topics, crossing disciplinary borders between phenomenology, linguistics, feminism, epistemology, aesthetics, political history, martial arts, spiritual practice and anthropology, and bringing Japanese philosophy into cross-cultural dialogue with other philosophical traditions. As exercises in “thinking in transition,” the essays reveal (...) novel modes of doing philosophy as a way of boundary crossing that takes transition not only as an object of inquiry, but also as a method of philosophical practice itself. (shrink)

Crossing the cultural divide, half a century after C.P. Snow.

Divers (2014) argues that a Lewisian theory of modality which includes both counterpart theory and modal realism cannot account for the truth of certain intuitively true modal sentences involving cross-world comparatives. The main purpose of this paper is to defend the Lewisian theory against Divers’s challenge by developing a response strategy based on a degree-theoretic treatment of comparatives and by showing that this treatment is compatible with the theory.

In this brief reply I respond to criticisms of my book, The referential mechanism of proper names, from Michael Devitt and Nicolo D'Agruma. I focus on the question of whether the perspectivism advocated in the book explains the empirical results there detailed.