Studying the neural correlates of conscious awareness depends on a reliable comparison between activations associated with awareness and unawareness. One particularly difficult confound to remove is task performance capacity, i.e. the difference in performance between the conditions of interest. While ideally task performance capacity should be matched across different conditions, this is difficult to achieve experimentally. However, differences in performance could theoretically be corrected for mathematically. One such proposal is found in a recent paper by Lamy, Salti and Bar-Haim [Lamy (...) D, Salti M, Bar-Haim Y. Neural correlates of subjective awareness and unconscious processing: an ERP study. J Cognitive Neurosci 2009,21:1435-46], who put forward a corrective method for an electroencephalography experiment. We argue that their analysis is essentially grounded in a version of High Threshold Theory, which has been shown to be inferior in general to Signal Detection Theory. We show through a series of computer simulations that their correction method only partially removes the influence of perfor- mance capacity, which can yield misleading results. We present a mathematical correction method based on Signal Detection Theory that is theoretically capable of removing performance capacity confounds. We discuss the limitations of mathemati- cally correcting for performance capacity confounds in imaging studies and its impact for theories about consciousness. (shrink)

Can robots have significant moral status? This is an emerging topic of debate among roboticists and ethicists. This paper makes three contributions to this debate. First, it presents a theory – ‘ethical behaviourism’ – which holds that robots can have significant moral status if they are roughly performatively equivalent to other entities that have significant moral status. This theory is then defended from seven objections. Second, taking this theoretical position onboard, it is argued that the performative threshold (...) that robots need to cross in order to be afforded significant moral status may not be that high and that they may soon cross it (if they haven’t done so already). Finally, the implications of this for our procreative duties to robots are considered, and it is argued that we may need to take seriously a duty of ‘procreative beneficence’ towards robots. (shrink)

Research into artificial intelligence has increased significantly in recent years. However, the fundamental question of what intelligence is and how it works remains open to some extent. Traditional definitions of intelligence are broad and lack clarity regarding its nature and mechanisms. The nature of consciousness is another matter that has been widely explored with multiple theories but for which we do not have a final agreed theory, especially in terms of its relation to intelligence. In this work, we present (...) a preliminary theory of the nature of intelligence and its working mechanisms. We contrast it against observations to show that our theory is consistent with observed reality. We also use our theory of intelligence to offer a theory on the nature of consciousness, as well as its relation to human understanding and intent. We then show that our theories can be consistent with the theory of evolution. Similarly, we explore examples of how our theory applies to specific cases to show its consistency across applications. Lastly, we outline how our theory can pave the way towards artificial general intelligence. Our theory is unproven. (shrink)

Imagine that only the state can meet the need for housing but decides not to do so. Unsurprisingly, participants in a vignette experiment deem this scenario unjust. Hence, justice ratings increase when the living situation improves. To a lesser extent, this also holds beyond the need threshold, understood as the minimum amount necessary for a decent life. Surprisingly, however, the justice evaluation function is highly convex below this point. The resulting S-shaped curve is akin to the value function in (...) prospect theory, with the need threshold providing the point of reference and inflection. A control treatment without needs-information supports this interpretation. Needs-information furthermore compresses the perceived injustice of arbitrary inequality. As in prospect theory, such reference dependency suggests biases in judgment and decision making. A consequence may be that the lot of the poorest in society does not receive the attention it would otherwise get. (shrink)

Relatively few authors attempt to assess individuals’ moral responsibility for collective action within organizations. I draw on fairly technical recent work by Seamus Miller, Christopher Kutz, and Tracy Isaacs in the field of collective responsibility to see what normative lessons can be prepared for people considering entry into large hierarchical, compartmentalized organizations like businesses or the military. I will defend a view shared by Isaacs that group members’ responsibility for collective action depends on intentions to contribute to particular collective actions, (...) against Miller and Kutz’s more inculpating standards. Miller and Kutz fail to achieve their goal of articulating a variable standard for measuring individual responsibility within organizations, for reasons suggesting we might not be able to do better with their theoretical commitments than a threshold warning for all potential entrants to be wary of the groups they enter. Isaacs sketches an approach that is more successful at creating a variable standard for assessing high echelon actors; I build on and refine her theory to argue that organization members can be held responsible for their unique interpretations of the organization mission and unique contributions to their role duties. High echelon actors may share personal responsibility for their subordinates’ behavior when they have created the conditions for those actions through their unique orders. (shrink)

Many healthcare practices expose people to risks of harmful outcomes. However, the major theories of moral philosophy struggle to assess whether, when and why it is ethically justifiable to expose individuals to risks, as opposed to actually harming them. Sven Ove Hansson has proposed an approach to the ethical assessment of risk imposition that encourages attention to factors including questions of justice in the distribution of advantage and risk, people’s acceptance or otherwise of risks, and the scope individuals have to (...) influence the practices that generate risk. This paper investigates the ethical justifiability of preventive healthcare practices that expose people to risks including overdiagnosis. We applied Hansson’s framework to three such practices: an ‘ideal’ breast screening service, a commercial personal genome testing service, and a guideline that lowers the diagnostic threshold for hypertension. The framework was challenging to apply, not least because healthcare has unclear boundaries and involves highly complex practices. Nonetheless, the framework encouraged attention to issues that would be widely recognised as morally pertinent. Our assessment supports the view that at least some preventive healthcare practices that impose risks including that of overdiagnosis are not ethically justifiable. Further work is however needed to develop and/or test refined assessment criteria and guidance for applying them. (shrink)

No two individuals with the autism diagnosis are ever the same—yet many practitioners and parents can recognize signs of ASD very rapidly with the naked eye. What, then, is this phenotype of autism that shows itself across such distinct clinical presentations and heterogeneous developments? The “signs” seem notoriously slippery and resistant to the behavioral threshold categories that make up current assessment tools. Part of the problem is that cognitive and behavioral “abilities” typically are theorized as high-level disembodied and (...) modular functions—that are assessed discretely (impaired, normal, enhanced) to define a spectral syndrome. Even as biology reminds us that organic developing bodies are not made up of independent switches, we remain often seduced by the simplicity of mechanistic and cognitive models. Developmental disorders such as autism have accordingly been theorized as due to different modular dysfunctions—typically of cortical origin, i.e., failures of “theory of mind” (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985), of the “mirror neuron system” (Ramachandran and Oberman, 2006), of “weak central coherence” (Happe and Frith, 2006) or of the balance of “empathizing” and “systemizing” (Baron-Cohen, 2009), just to list a few. -/- The broad array of autonomic (Ming et al., 2005; Cheshire, 2012) and sensorimotor (Damasio and Maurer, 1978; Maurer and Damasio, 1982; Donnellan and Leary, 1995; Leary and Hill, 1996; Donnellan and Leary, 2012; Donnellan et al., 2012) differences experienced and reported by people with autism have by such theories typically been sidelined as “co-morbidities,” possibly sharing genetic causes, but rendered as incidental and decisively behaviorally irrelevant symptoms—surely disconnected from cognition. But what if the development of cortically based mental processes and autonomous control relies on the complexities and proper function of the peripheral nervous systems? Through such an “embodied” lens the heterogeneous symptoms of autism invites new interpretations. We propose here that many behavioral-level findings can be re-defined as downstream effects of how developing nervous systems attempt to cope and adapt to the challenges of having various noisy, unpredictable, and unreliable peripheral inputs. (shrink)

Consciousness is known to be limited in processing capacity and often described in terms of a unique processing stream across a single dimension: time. In this paper, we discuss a purely temporal pattern code, functionally decoupled from spatial signals, for conscious state generation in the brain. Arguments in favour of such a code include Dehaene et al.’s long-distance reverberation postulate, Ramachandran’s remapping hypothesis, evidence for a temporal coherence index and coincidence detectors, and Grossberg’s Adaptive Resonance Theory. A time-bin resonance (...) model is developed, where temporal signatures of conscious states are generated on the basis of signal reverberation across large distances in highly plastic neural circuits. The temporal signatures are delivered by neural activity patterns which, beyond a certain statistical threshold, activate, maintain, and terminate a conscious brain state like a bar code would activate, maintain, or inactivate the electronic locks of a safe. Such temporal resonance would reflect a higher level of neural processing, one that is independent from sensorial or perceptual brain mechanisms. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Simon Baron-Cohen has argued that autism and related developmental disorders (sometimes called “autism spectrum conditions” or “autism spectrum disorders”) can be usefully thought of as the condition of possessing an “extreme male brain.” The impetus for regarding autism spectrum disorders (ASD) this way has been the accepted science regarding the etiology of autism, as developed over that past several decades. Three important features of this etiology ground the Extreme Male Brain theory. First, ASD is disproportionately male (approximately 10:1 (...) in the case of Asperger’s Syndrome or high-functioning autism (HFA) and approximately 4:1 in the case of autistic disorder). Second, ASD is not psychogenic but biological in origin, and hence is not the product of sexist conditioning or childrearing practices, although these may affect the development of the disorder. Third, ASD is regarded as a spectrum developmental disorder, unlike other disorders such as Down Syndrome that are diagnosed by a (nearly) binary criterion. Down Syndrome, for example, is diagnosed by the presence in all or most cells within a given individual of an extra copy of Chromosome 21. Autism, on the other hand, is diagnosed by the presence of a set of symptoms that vary in their intensity and in their milder forms seem to conform to purported sex differences in cognitive, emotional, and social functioning. -/- In this paper, I do not challenge accepted science regarding the etiology of autism, and I do not challenge the idea of ASD as a disorder. Nor do I wish to offer an alternative account of what autism is. Instead, I focus on the usefulness of thinking of a disorder as an extreme version of ordinary sex differences. Does it follow from the fact that a disorder is more often found in men that we should think of it as an extreme form of maleness? If not, what other conditions must be met in order to warrant this way of thinking about ASD? What does it mean to say that ASD is a form of “extreme male brain”? Feminists are rightly skeptical of theories that make claims about male and female brains, so how should we respond to the clear evidence that the differences between typical and ASD individuals are not caused by childrearing practices? I explain what I take to be Baron-Cohen’s central argument that autism should be seen as the extreme male brain, and critique that argument. I conclude that there is no good argument that autistic symptoms should be regarded as an extreme form of male mental traits, and that Baron-Cohen’s claim does not help us to understand autism, women, or men. His claim is a speculative thesis that is readily mobilized for sexist practices. As such it requires a higher threshold for evidentiary support and rigorous argumentation—support and argumentation that does not exist. -/- KEYWORDS: autism, brain, gender, neuroscience, feminism, male . (shrink)

The issue of justice after catastrophe is an enormous challenge to contemporary theories of distributive justice. In the past three decades, the controversy over distributive justice has centered on the ideal of equality. One of intensely debated issues concerns what is often called the “equality of what,” on which there are three primary views: welfarism, resourcism, and the capabilities approach. Another major point of dispute can be termed the “equality or another,” about which three positions debate: egalitarianism, prioritarianism, and sufficientarianism. (...) On these topics of distributive justice, authors are concerned with the current difference between the better-off and the worse-off or the present situation of the badly-off. By contrast, it is essential to take account of the past distribution of well-being as well as the present situation in order to explore questions of post-catastrophe justice. Without looking at the pre-disaster distribution of income, preference satisfaction, or basic capabilities among affected people, no present assessment of the damage caused by the disaster could be correct and no proposed remedy adequate. It is true that luck egalitarians assess the current distribution among people by referring to the decision that each individual made. Yet they pay scant attention to the situation in which each one stayed in the past. Therefore, we can legitimately say that most theorists of distributive justice, including luck egalitarians, have failed to give consideration to the past state of each person. -/- To fill this gap in the literature, the present article explores philosophical questions that arise when we take account of each person’s past and present situations in discussing distributive justice regarding public compensation and assistance to survivors and families of victims of natural and industrial disasters. In addressing these novel questions, I develop and refine various concepts, ideas, and arguments that have been presented in the study of distributive justice in normal settings. I tackle two tasks, the first of which is to explore the foundation and scope of luck egalitarianism. Despite the moral appeal it has in many cases, luck egalitarianism has attracted the so-called harshness objection. Some luck egalitarians attempt to avoid this objection in a pragmatic way by combining the luck egalitarian doctrine with the principle of basic needs satisfaction. However, they do not provide any systematic rationale for this combination. In contrast with such pragmatic responses, I seek to offer a principled argument for holding individuals responsible for their choices only when their basic needs are met, by invoking the ideas of respect for human voluntariness and rescue of human vulnerability. Based on this argument, I propose a form of responsibility-sensitive theory, which considers the pre-disaster distribution of well-being as a default position. The second task I take on is to refine sufficientarianism in the context of post-catastrophe justice. Luck egalitarianism with boundaries set by the basic needs principle seems to indicate the potential for sufficientarianism. But major proponents of this view conceive the welfarist assumption, a considerably high standard of well-being, and the controversial treatment of persons staying below the threshold, all of which seem problematic in the post-disaster situation. I try to construct a new version of sufficientarianism by replacing these current features with more robust ones. (shrink)

Consciousness is known to be limited in processing capacity and often described in terms of a unique processing stream across a single dimension: time. In this paper, we discuss a purely temporal pattern code, functionally decoupled from spatial signals, for conscious state generation in the brain. Arguments in favour of such a code include Dehaene et al.'s long-distance reverberation postulate, Ramachandran's remapping hypothesis, evidence for a temporal coherence index and coincidence detectors, and Grossberg's Adaptive Resonance Theory. A time-bin resonance (...) model is developed, where temporal signatures of conscious states are generated on the basis of signal reverberation across large distances in highly plastic neural circuits. The temporal signatures are delivered by neural activity patterns which, beyond a certain statistical threshold, activate, maintain, and terminate a conscious brain state like a bar code would activate, maintain, or inactivate the electronic locks of a safe. Such temporal resonance would reflect a higher level of neural processing, independent from sensorial or perceptual brain mechanisms. (shrink)

June 2022 A Revolutionary New Metaphysics, Based on Consciousness, and a Call to All Philosophers We are in a unique moment of our history unlike any previous moment ever. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. As I write, the planet is in deep trouble, heat, fires, great storms, and record flooding, (...) weather patterns drastic everywhere. Capitalism has been so successful in supplying us with an endless array of consumer items, that we have never noticed there is a cost. But there is a cost, the cost is the very life of the Earth herself, and now the day of reckoning is here. Days of reckoning are most often days of rath. But I am hoping that this is a day of major Awakening over the entire planet. We have caused a crisis so great for the Earth we can hardly get our minds around it. But I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis are ideas, about who and what the Earth is, Ourselves, and what we are here for. I am proposing that this is a call to all philosophy and philosophers to rethink ourselves from the ground up. The human race has never gotten the Earth right and now we must, for the Earth is the true foundation for civilization. We are in deep trouble with the Earth, and it owes to the fact that the great male thinkers never got the Earth right, they could never make the connection between the life of mind and the life of the Earth. I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis we are in are ideas. And that in fact the planet is in the grip of a false metaphysics, and scientific image of nature that really comes most recently from Descartes. His conviction that matter, and with it the Earth, are simply the weighable, the measurable the extended in space and time, utterly devoid of any inner life of mind thoughts or Consciousness. This view of matter and the Earth goes back to the very dawn of thought, Descartes is just its most recent and comprehensive version of things. This view of matter is really a false metaphysics that dominates most of the modern world and underpins the whole scientific image of nature itself. I am proposing this is a false metaphysics and offering a new version of things based on Consciousness. If there is a single idea fueling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something without Consciousness. When you intend to ravage and savage the planet, turn it into consumer items to be converted into money in the bank, first pretend that all of the bright beings in the natural world are devoid of Consciousness, just “things” you do not have to have any conscious about destroying them. I am proposing that this term Consciousness, that has appeared as term and a problem for modern science, is the key to getting ourselves right with the Earth. I propose this new theory for science will ramify into every other disciplines as well, and the ways we think just about everything. This old paradigm based on a false theory of matter, has run its course, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction. We need new ideas, and we need them now. You will find my recent work in the Scientific God Journal under the title: Consciousness as the Organizing Principle, and a very complete version of my arguments for this term Consciousness, along with radical reinterpretation of modern science itself, on the Galileo Commission site. It is a radical moment for all of the thinkers among us, take this as my small contribution to rethinking ourselves in new terms, based on my understanding that the true basis for the whole of Being, the Universe, the Cosmos, and with them Ourselves, is this term Consciousness. And unpack it. And I predict that with this term Consciousness every intractable human problem in both science and the modern world will go down like a line of dominos before it. And so, here are a few new ideas I would offer you. These are the times of the Reappearance of the Feminine, a great Awakening as of Springtime after a long dark and lonely Winter. We are leaving behind us an old civilization based on male dominance, fear lies and control, now in decay, disease, and death disintegrating all around us. We are moving into a whole new civilization based on Love and Truth. A new civilization requires new basic terms values and first principles. And so, I return to Descartes. 1. Just over 300 years ago a young man travelling with the army found himself stranded in a foreign town in a bare room lit by a candle with nothing to do but think. And in a couple of nights Descartes laid the entire thought foundations for modern science and most of the modern world. It isn’t clear that modern philosophers with their funding sources of grants, their graduate students, their reputation and all the perks and privileges of academia can do any better. Descartes claimed there are just two principles in the Universe, Matter and Mind. God was pure mind; human beings were mind and matter. And we are the only ones on the planet with mind. Everything else all of the bright array of beings who share the planet with us are simply matter. And matter? The weighable the measurable the extended in space and time utterly devoid of any inner life of thoughts, feelings, or Consciousness This classification was a boon for developing science. Scientists did not have to worry about any inner life in nature, ideas or Consciousness, they could just set about weighing and measuring, as they have until the present day. But it was a disaster for the Earth. Earth was once worshiped as a Goddess. With Descartes she became almost overnight “things.” Simply commodities and resources, an endless of supply of consumer items, to be turned into money in the bank. And now Descartes concept of matter is up for us. If there is a single idea that is enabling and driving the destruction of the Earth, it is the conviction that Earth is something without Consciousness. This whole scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is driving the destruction of the Earth, and driving us all insane, and it needs to change. Ever since Descartes formulated Dualism, scientists and philosophers have been trying to get rid of it. They have done this by attempting to make matter the fundamental term of reality, and to explain mind or Consciousness in terms of matter. And now, Consciousness has emerged as term and a problem for modern science. 2. The prevailing Universe picture has been mainly based on the belief that Consciousness appears only at the end of evolution in ourselves and some of the higher animals when matter attains “a certain state of complexity” and it is produced by neurons in the brain. But Consciousness is nothing real in itself, the neurons are doing the work, Consciousness is simply a byproduct of neural activity. As William James summed up this position, not his: Consciousness is to the brain as a shadow to the runner, it runs beside him but never influences his stride. And so, the great problem of neuroscience: How do neurons produce Consciousness? So far, no one has been able to say how. All we have is parallelism. Two processes are running in parallel a train of neural events and a train of Consciousness events. And so, which one is primary? The face of neuroscience and much of the modern world is that the neural events are what is really real, Consciousness is secondary. The conviction that Consciousness is something produced by neurons is so deeply held and has been so for so long, that it seems like an obvious fact. It is in fact an assumption and a theory, and it could all well be the other way around. The scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is now up for us. It has enabled the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a unique place in our own evolution where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, there are the best reasons for rethinking Descartes concepts of matter. Scientists and philosophers have been trying to escape dualism by making matter the fundamental term. And now, this has not worked. In a nutshell: The mind body problem, the “hard problem of Consciousness” ---how do neurons in the brain, atoms and molecules give rise to ideas thoughts and feelings and who what and where is the “I” who sees them? And then, the near-death experience. I remind you of the truth of the near-death experience. The body in the bed is brain dead eeg flat, but the patient, pure Consciousness is hovering at the ceiling watching the doctors work over the body below, able to read dials he could not have seen from the bed, sometimes able to events in the corridor beyond the room, all subsequently confirmed by the doctors. Evidence as good as it gets that the patient really was out of his body. And so, the patient is able to see without eyes, hear without ears and to think and remember without a brain. There is not a single scientific principle that can account for this. And I am proposing that the near-death experience is a threshold and a key for a much deeper understanding of the Universe. These three problems are so hard they cannot be solved by present scientific principles and therefore call all present principles and ways of thought into question. When your axioms cannot account for the data, it is time to drop them and find better fundamental terms. We have not been able to solve the problems of Consciousness with the assumption that matter is the most basic and fundamental term. And so, if Cartesian dualism is to be overcome at all, we need to try it the other way around. 3. We are in the position of Copernicus. Remember Copernicus? He was making his calculations on the assumption that the Earth was the center of the Universe until they became so unwieldy that he decided to try it all the other way around. To make the sun the center, the Earth revolving around it. And lo, all of his data fell neatly into place. I am proposing a whole new Universe picture. Evolution makes us continuous with every other being, Consciousness would not be in us if it were not in them also, and then, in the atoms and molecules and cells that make up living beings. I propose to make Consciousness the most basic term and see what follows. I am in fact, proposing a new Copernican Revolution, that Consciousness is the true basis for the Universe and the right fundamental term, for science itself all other disciplines as well, and the whole of the modern world. And I predict that every intractable problem in science or the modern world, will go down like a line of dominos before it. In a nutshell: Consciousness and not matter is “first and fundamental” in the Universe, it is there from the very “Beginning” everything has it and all of the true causalities, the explanatory principles belong to it. Not to matter. What then is matter? All matter is an Appearance of something much more real, Consciousness. All matter is an expression of Consciousness, even the least little bit of matter contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. And so, we revise the scientific image of nature. Science at present is two termed, matter/energy. It needs to become three termed: Matter/energy/Consciousness, with the recognition that all of the basic principles, the true causalities of events, and of the Universe belong to Consciousness. And now physics. To accommodate this new Universe picture physics needs to alter just one term, energy. All energy contains Consciousness, that idea alone will change our world forever. The animals the trees the plants are just as conscious as we are, as is the Earth herself, a continuum of many forms of Consciousness of which our own is one. The Earth consists of interacting and intersecting forms of Consciousness, Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness. A remarkable work has just appeared entitled “Beyond Words What Animals Feel and Think.” Describing in detail how like ourselves all of the animals are. And the more we can see how like us everything else really is, the harder it will be for us to do them all in, in the interest of turning them into consumer items. And so, here is a new principle of understanding, that entails completely new forms of explanation, and a whole new Universe picture to be spelled out in terms of Consciousness and its various properties. This is a Universe that is aware awake and Enspirited throughout. And so, there is only one principle, not two. And so, how does Consciousness work? There is “no mind/body problem.” My Consciousness is aligning the Consciousness of neurons in the brain, that aligns the Consciousness of all other cells in the body, that aligns the Consciousness of molecules and atoms themselves. Mainly from the top down, but also interactive, and not reduction to the purely physical forces. 4. And so, here is a radical new Universe picture, and with it a new way to think about the Universe itself, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. It requires a complete revision of both of the terms of modern science itself. The problem of the modern world owes in deep measure to Descartes concept of matter as something devoid of interior life. But he is only the most powerful and simple expression of a whole tradition of thought that predates him, that goes back to the very dawn of thought itself. It owes to the conviction of both Plato and Aristotle that the Earth was something devoid of reason, or mind, and therefore something to be held in complete contempt. We are emerging from a civilization based on contempt for the Earth, and down the road, it will become contempt for the body, sex, women, the Native people, and people of color everywhere. And so, this entire tradition is now up for us, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction, and we need to get beyond it. I am proposing that this term Consciousness is the way out. The missing piece of the puzzle and the idea whose time has come. And it will enable us to move into a completely new civilization based on respect for the Earth, women, sex, people of color, that honors everyone and has a place for all. Revolutions in science occur when new data show up that cannot be accounted for by existing paradigms (Thomas Kuhns: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Consciousness, and all the properties and problems of Consciousness are just such data, and they compel a new scientific revolution. But we are a scientific age. A new Copernican revolution in science is such as revolution everywhere. And Consciousness is the key to getting every other reality at all levels and depths right as well. It will enable us finally to get the Earth right, get ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. Archimedes: Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world. I am proposing a new synthesis among our fundamental terms in which this term Consciousness is the new lynchpin. And so, I return once more to Descartes. Descartes in the Mediations was a dualist, they were two realities interacting in the pineal gland mind and body. But Descartes age was high on “Cartesianisms,” on Descartes concept of matter. Animals were simply cleverly wired machines (Hobbes called them automata). Rumor had it that Descartes followers went about kicking dogs reasoning that their howls were not due to any feelings of pain, but simply the wiring of the machine. We have been doing this to the Earth ever since, and now the Earth is not going to stand for it any longer. It is time we all woke up. There is no matter in Descartes sense of it, or in Plato and Aristotle’s sense of it. This old concept of matter is embedded in all of the crisis and catastrophes---fires, drought, pandemics, over population, the disintegrating economies, our ways of life, capitalism and consumerism themselves. All matter is Enspirited, contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. Now I tell you something about Descartes you may not know. In the Mediations was a dualist, there are minds and bodies. But by the end of his life, he knew the truth. Descartes guided his whole life by these vivid dreams, and toward the end of his life he had this dream: He saw the Universe as a giant machine and in the heart of the machine propelling the whole, was Consciousness. And so, out of the shades and shadows and into the light of day. Here is a renewed and a new science, a new cosmology. And with it, a revolutionary new metaphysics. The whole of the modern world is in the grip of a false metaphysics, based on Descartes theory of matter. Here is a new, and finally true metaphysics based on the single term, Consciousness. 5. And in all my works, I spell out this new metaphysics based on Consciousness, and what it means for how we think about virtually everything: The Universe, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. Of who, what and where Spirit is, that we may connect with Spirit everywhere. There is only one term for the Universe, and not two, this single term Consciousness, that manifests itself in two modes: Consciousness in Form, Consciousness Formless. And so, here is a sketch of what this new term Consciousness really means. For four great aspects of the real, four new cornerstones for a whole new civilization on Earth, based on Love and Truth. A. For the Universe: New causalities, all matter is an expression of Consciousness, awake and aware, Enspirited throughout, which has a place for the causalities of love ideas intent plan and purpose, what Aristotle called final causality, that for the sake of which. And it has a place for subjectivity, the greatest mystery in the whole of the Universe, knowable only in ourselves, but there in everything else as well, bedrock in the chain of causalities. The buck stops here. Here are two very different Universe pictures. The Cartesian Universe consists of things, pushed, and pulled around by the physical forces that function blind. The true Universe consists of selves and not things. Selves at least in ourselves, are organized and focused about an I, an I am, or a sense of self in everything, ever other being dear to itself. Just one aspect of subjectivity. And so, it is Consciousness all the way down, and subjectivity all the way down. Science proceeds on the basis of the negligible of what it can leave out as unimportant. Subjectivity is the ultimate animating principle of the Universe. What Descartes really did was to strip from nature what is most essential about it, its animating principle Consciousness. And so, we come out of a long history of “clunk.” The great male thinkers have killed creation. First in concepts and now in the lived life. And so, after centuries of fruitless search, not all of it in vain, finally, and just in time the true basic principle for the Universe has shown up in virtually all disciplines, this term Consciousness. B. And so, the Earth: What does this term Consciousness really mean for the Earth? It means that all of the bright array of beings around us have Consciousness. And the more we can realize how like us they are, the harder it will be to do them all in. Is this what it really means to be “made in the image of Spirit?” To destroy ever other living being? The god of Genesis is a creator god who has created billions and billions of living forms. Man, taking himself to be made in the image of Spirit has destroyed virtually all of it. The Earth is not things, not commodities and resources, not an endless array of consumer goods. The Earth consists of conscious living spiritual beings like ourselves, who need to be honored and respected, nurtured and cared for, to be Loved. And if the human race can finally pull it off and bring Love here and start helping the Earth rather than destroying her, even our vast numbers now at 8 billion, may not matter. Deeply embedded in the modern world is a false cosmology based on the hitherto useful but ultimately false metaphysics of Descartes. In particular it owes to Descartes concepts of matter, and of the Earth, as something devoid of Consciousness. And now this concept is up for us. If there is a single idea enabling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something devoid of Consciousness. And we all have a vested interest in keeping this false concept in place. When you intend to ravage and savage the Earth, to turn it into consumer items, and money in the bank, first pretend she has no Consciousness that way we need not have any conscious about it. We are in deep trouble with the planet. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, here are a few new guiding principles for the planet, based on Consciousness. Consciousness has field properties. The Earth is Consciousness throughout, connected and interconnected throughout, intersecting and interacting fields of Consciousness of which our own is one. To harm one is to harm all. Only this understanding of the Earth can set our destructive technologies, and capitalism, their goals, and their limits. The real problem with capitalism, and with civilization itself is it has no true understanding of the Earth, all the exquisite networks and webworks that connect all beings with one another. Nor it is about to admit that the Earth is our “life support system,” reason gone insane in the modern world. We are destroying our life support system, capitalism is the full expression of the human death wish in the modern world, and it needs to change. And now, let the barriers between ourselves and all other beings go down. C. And so, Ourselves. This new Universe picture based on Consciousness opens into and has a place for new concepts of human identity. In particular, it has a place for reincarnation, a process whereby one Consciousness dons’ bodies again and again and lays them down. This is a process wholly impossible on materialistic theories. This new view of things puts a higher perspective on Freudian determinism, which is a partial knowing in a greater account. We are something more than the victims of genes drives and childhood. We are immortally eternal evolving spiritual beings who take on a cycle of earthly lives in order to achieve certain goals and abilities, and then, our earthly cycle complete, we depart the Earth plane for other areas of the Universe physical or purely spiritual, to continue our evolution elsewhere. The scientific evidence for reincarnation is increasing on all sides, see for example the work of Michael Newton, a mainstream scientist forced to confront the fact of reincarnation. A completely new reincarnational picture is now emerging everywhere. We choose our parents for abilities we could acquire through them. We all come here with reasons for being here, and we all have free will, an original property of Consciousness, and we work out our issues accordingly. We all come here with the same reason for being here. It is to experience the Earth plane and human society at all levels and depths, in every social role, every climate, both sexes male and female and in all races. We are all here to acquire a deep understanding of the Earth plane with all its challenges and all of its present problems. We are not here to devour and consume the Earth, but to honor her for the learning experience she makes available for us. And so, reincarnation is the great equalizer, the fundamental basis for any bill of rights. Many of the problems of the modern world owe to the fact that reincarnation has not been taught in the West. Reincarnation was the center piece of Jesus teachings. It was banned by a fourth century council that decided the populous could best be controlled through fear. They edited all mention of reincarnation from the scriptures, and inserted fear terms instead, a judgmental god, and so on. If reincarnation had been taught, there would have been no suppression of women, but the gift of both sexes would have been honored and developed. And there would have been no reason for contempt for people of color because who they are, we have been or will be. There is no reason to look down on anyone when we know that our own identity includes membership in theirs. The truth of reincarnation needs to be the foundation for getting ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. D. And so, Spirit. This new Universe picture, based on Consciousness, has a place for Spirit as simply Infinite Consciousness. All universes all worlds are formed out of this Consciousness, divine and sacred throughout. And Spirit is everywhere in the Earth and can be connected everywhere. And the Native North American people had things right. Everything has its own Spirit, and without contradiction is also an expression of Spirit. And what I am really doing in terms of concepts of modern science is presenting the Native North American version of the Real. And this new Universe picture has a place for the essential insight of all religions almost smothered by church tradition: Love. Not an emotion but a great Oneness, that can be found everywhere, even in a busy city street. But especially in the Earth, that is levels and depths of Oneness everywhere. And so, for the first time in their long and bitter antagonistic history, science and religion now share a common base with this term Spirit, the lynchpin in a new conceptual framework. And I offer an interpretation of where we are in our history, this present moment of historical grace, and these tumultuous times in which we live, the return of the Goddess and the Divine Feminine, the Reappearance of the Feminine in history, the Advent of Women, this great Awakening, as of Springtime after a long dark Winter, the Awakening, the Second Coming. And so, stay tuned! (shrink)

The link between the high-order metaphysics and abstractions, on the one hand, and choice in the foundation of set theory, on the other hand, can distinguish unambiguously the “good” principles of abstraction from the “bad” ones and thus resolve the “bad company problem” as to set theory. Thus it implies correspondingly a more precise definition of the relation between the axiom of choice and “all company” of axioms in set theory concerning directly or indirectly abstraction: the (...) principle of abstraction, axiom of comprehension, axiom scheme of specification, axiom scheme of separation, subset axiom scheme, axiom scheme of replacement, axiom of unrestricted comprehension, axiom of extensionality, etc. (shrink)

Despite the prominence of thresholds in theories of distributive justice, there is no general account of what sort of role is played by the idea of a threshold within such theories. This has allowed an ongoing lack of clarity and misunderstanding around views that employ thresholds. In this article, I develop an account of the concept of thresholds in distributive justice. I argue that this concept contains three elements, which threshold views deploy when ranking possible distributions. These elements (...) are (i) the level of the threshold, (ii) what constitutes the value of the threshold, and (iii) how benefits above and below the threshold must be allocated. I highlight three contributions that this particular account of thresholds makes: it clarifies the nature of the shift that occurs at the threshold; it resolves a common misunderstanding about headcount principles; and it shows how the arbitrariness objection can be met. (shrink)

The threshold problem is the task of adequately answering the question: “Where does the threshold lie between knowledge and lack thereof?” I start this paper by articulating two conditions for solving it. The first is that the threshold be neither too high nor too low; the second is that the threshold accommodate the significance of knowledge. In addition to explaining these conditions, I also argue that it is plausible that they can be met. Next, I (...) argue that many popular accounts of knowledge cannot meet them. In particular, I lay out a number of problems that standard accounts of knowledge face in trying to meet these conditions. Finally, near the end of this paper, I argue that there is one sort of account that seems to evade these problems. This sort of account, which is called a cluster account of knowledge, says that knowledge is to be accounted for in terms of truth, belief and a cluster of epistemic properties and also that knowledge doesn’t require having all members of the cluster, but merely some subset. (shrink)

South Korean high school students are being taught Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. In this article, I examine the portrayal of this theory in South Korean high school physics textbooks and discuss an alternative method used to solve the analyzed problems. This examination of how these South Korean textbooks present this theory has revealed two main flaws: First, the textbooks’ contents present historically fallacious backgrounds regarding the origin of this theory because of a blind (...) dependence on popular undergraduate textbooks, which ignore the revolutionary aspects of the theory in physics. And second, the current ingredients of teaching this theory are so simply enumerated and conceptually confused that students are not provided with good opportunities to develop critical capacities for evaluating scientific theories. Reviewing textbooks used in South Korea, I will, first, claim that the history of science contributes to understand not merely the origins but also two principles of this theory. Second, in addition to this claim, I argue that we should distinguish not only hypotheses from principles but also phenomena from theoretical consequences and evidence. Finally, I suggest an alternative way in which theory testing occurs in the process of evaluation among competitive theories on the basis of data, not in the simple relation between a hypothesis and evidence. (shrink)

Reinterpretation of our data concerning sleep onset, motivated by the desire to pay close attention to “intra-individual regularities,” suggests that the experience of control might be a key factor in determining the subjective sense that sleep has begun. This loss of control seems akin to what Frith and others have described as “passivity experiences,” which also occur in schizophrenia. Although clearly sleep onset is not a schizophrenic episode, this similarity might help to explain other features of sleep onset. We further (...) speculate that we could build upon the discovery of various “intra-individual regularities” to construct a model of sleep onset and other forms of sleep mentation. (shrink)

I argue that dimensional analysis provides an answer to a skeptical challenge to the theory of model mediated measurement. The problem arises when considering the task of calibrating a novel measurement procedure, with greater range, to the results of a prior measurement procedure. The skeptical worry is that the agreement of the novel and prior measurement procedures in their shared range may only be apparent due to the emergence of systematic error in the exclusive range of the novel measurement (...) procedure. Alternatively: what if the two measurement procedures are not in fact measuring the same quantity? The theory of model mediated measurement can only say that we _assume_ that there is a common quantity. In contrast, I show that the satisfaction of dimensional homogeneity across the metrological extension is independent evidence for the so-called assumption. This is illustrated by the use of dimensional analysis in high pressure experiments. This results in an extension of the theory of model mediated measurement, in which a common quantity in metrological extension is no longer assumed, but hypothesized. (shrink)

We explore consequences of the view that to know a proposition your rational credence in the proposition must exceed a certain threshold. In other words, to know something you must have evidence that makes rational a high credence in it. We relate such a threshold view to Dorr et al.’s :277–287, 2014) argument against the principle they call fair coins: “If you know a coin won’t land tails, then you know it won’t be flipped.” They argue for (...) rejecting fair coins because it leads to a pervasive skepticism about knowledge of the future. We argue that the threshold view of evidence and knowledge gives independent grounds to reject fair coins. (shrink)

It is common practice in intergenerational justice to set fixed thresholds determining what qualifies as justice. Static definitions of how much and what to save for future generations, however, overestimate human epistemological limits and predictive capacity in regard to uncertainty in social- and ecosystems. Long-term predictions cannot account for the inherent range of contingent variables at play, especially according to contemporary theories of punctuated equilibrium. It is argued that policies deliberately testing ecological limits as currently conceived must be excluded from (...) political calculations to minimize current actions from foreclosing future life quality and options. To better reduce harms to present and future generations and support the stability of just institutions (and the stable environments they depend on) as Rawls and others demand, polities can overcompensate resource allocation to environmental sustainability. Focus on reducing environmental harms benefits both current and future generations, reconciling distributive versus intergenerational justice trade-offs. (shrink)

Bayne and Nagasawa have argued that the properties traditionally attributed to God provide an insufficient grounding for the obligation to worship God. They do so partly because the same properties, when possessed in lesser quantities by human beings, do not give rise to similar obligations. In a recent paper, Jeremy Gwiazda challenges this line of argument. He does so because it neglects the possible existence of a threshold obligation to worship, i.e. an obligation that only kicks in when the (...) value of a parameter has crossed a certain threshold. This article argues that there is a serious flaw in Gwiazda’s proposal. Although thresholds may play an important part in how we think about our obligations, their function is distinct from that envisaged by Gwiazda. To be precise, this article argues that thresholds are only relevant to obligations to the extent that they transform a pre-existing imperfect obligation or act of supererogation into a perfect obligation. Since it is not clear that there is an imperfect obligation to worship any being, and indeed since on a certain conception of moral agency it is highly unlikely that there could be, the search for a rational basis for the obligation to worship must continue. (shrink)

According to the perceptual theory of emotions, emotions are perceptions of evaluative properties. The account has recently faced a barrage of criticism recently by critics who point out varies disanalogies between emotion and paradigmatic perceptual experiences. What many theorists fail to note however, is that many of the disanalogies that have been raised to exclude emotions from being perceptual states that represent evaluative properties have also been used to exclude high-level properties from appearing in the content of perception. (...) This suggests that emotions are perceptions of high level properties and perceptual theorists can marshal the arguments used by proponents of high-level perception to defend the perceptual theory. This paper therefore defends an account of emotion as high-level perception. (shrink)

Recently, several theorists have proposed that we can perceive a range of high-level features, including natural kind features (e.g., being a lemur), artifactual features (e.g., being a mandolin), and the emotional features of others (e.g., being surprised). I clarify the claim that we perceive high-level features and suggest one overlooked reason this claim matters: it would dramatically expand the range of actions perception-based theories of action might explain. I then describe the influential phenomenal contrast method of arguing for (...) high-level perception and discuss some of the objections that have been raised against this strategy. Finally, I describe two emerging defenses of high-level perception, one of which appeals to a certain class of perceptual deficits and one of which appeals to adaptation effects. I sketch a challenge for the latter approach. (shrink)

Are color adjectives ("red", "green", etc.) relative adjectives or absolute adjectives? Existing theories of the meaning of color adjectives attempt to answer that question using informal ("armchair") judgments. The informal judgments of theorists conflict: it has been proposed that color adjectives are absolute with standards anchored at the minimum degree on the scale, that they are absolute but have near-midpoint standards, and that they are relative. In this paper we report two experiments, one based on entailment patterns and one based (...) on presupposition accommodation, that investigate the meaning of scalar adjectives. We find evidence confirming the existence of subgroups of the population who operate with different standards for color adjectives. The evidence of interpersonal variation in where standards are located on the relevant scale and how those standards can be adjusted indicates that the existing theories of the meaning of color adjectives are at best only partially correct. We also find evidence that paradigmatic relative adjectives ("tall", "wide") behave in ways that are not predicted by the standard theory of scalar adjectives. We discuss several different possible explanations for this unexpected behavior. We conclude by discussing the relevance of our findings for philosophical debates about the nature and extent of semantically encoded context sensitivity in which color adjectives have played a key role. (shrink)

Some early phase clinical studies of candidate HIV cure and remission interventions appear to have adverse medical risk–benefit ratios for participants. Why, then, do people participate? And is it ethically permissible to allow them to participate? Recent work in decision theory sheds light on both of these questions, by casting doubt on the idea that rational individuals prefer choices that maximise expected utility, and therefore by casting doubt on the idea that researchers have an ethical obligation not to enrol (...) participants in studies with high risk–benefit ratios. This work supports the view that researchers should instead defer to the considered preferences of the participants themselves. This essay briefly explains this recent work, and then explores its application to these two questions in more detail. (shrink)

Disagreement is a pervasive feature of human discourse and a crucial force in shaping our social reality. From mundane squabbles about matters of taste to high-stakes disputes about law and public policy, the way we express and navigate disagreement plays a central role in both our personal and political lives. Legal discourse, in particular, is rife with disagreement - it is the very bread and butter of courtroom argument and legal scholarship alike. Consider a debate between two legal philosophers, (...) Ronald and Herbert, about the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits ‘cruel and unusual punishment’. Ronald asserts: ‘It is the law that capital punishment is prohibited’. In response, Herbert states: ‘It is not the law that capital punishment is prohibited’. We intuitively think Ronald and Herbert are disagreeing, which reveals in the fact that they are licensed to use ex¬pressions like no (it isn’t) and nuh-uh when responding to their opponent’s claim. But despite the ubiquity and significance of legal disagreement, its precise nature remains elusive. This chapter discusses what exactly is going on when two people disagree about what the law requires, and how can hybrid theory may answer this question. (shrink)

We defend hylomorphism against Maegan Fairchild’s purported proof of its inconsistency. We provide a deduction of a contradiction from SH+, which is the combination of “simple hylomorphism” and an innocuous premise. We show that the deduction, reminiscent of Russell’s Paradox, is proof-theoretically valid in classical higher-order logic and invokes an impredicatively defined property. We provide a proof that SH+ is nevertheless consistent in a free higher-order logic. It is shown that the unrestricted comprehension principle of property abstraction on which the (...) purported proof of inconsistency relies is analogous to naïve unrestricted set-theoretic comprehension. We conclude that logic imposes a restriction on property comprehension, a restriction that is satisfied by the ramified theory of types. By extension, our observations constitute defenses of theories that are structurally similar to SH+, such as the theory of singular propositions, against similar purported disproofs. (shrink)

Analyzing geometric properties of high-dimensional loss functions, such as local curvature and the existence of other optima around a certain point in loss space, can help provide a better understanding of the interplay between neural network structure, implementation attributes, and learning performance. In this work, we combine concepts from high-dimensional probability and differential geometry to study how curvature properties in lower-dimensional loss representations depend on those in the original loss space. We show that saddle points in the original (...) space are rarely correctly identified as such in expected lower-dimensional representations if random projections are used. The principal curvature in the expected lower-dimensional representation is proportional to the mean curvature in the original loss space. Hence, the mean curvature in the original loss space determines if saddle points appear, on average, as either minima, maxima, or almost flat regions. We use the connection between expected curvature in random projections and mean curvature in the original space (i.e., the normalized Hessian trace) to compute Hutchinson-type trace estimates without calculating Hessian-vector products as in the original Hutchinson method. Because random projections are not suitable to correctly identify saddle information, we propose to study projections along dominant Hessian directions that are associated with the largest and smallest principal curvatures. We connect our findings to the ongoing debate on loss landscape flatness and generalizability. Finally, for different common image classifiers and a function approximator, we show and compare random and Hessian projections of loss landscapes with up to about 7×10^6 parameters. (shrink)

This article is a comparative study between predictive processing (PP, or predictive coding) and cognitive dissonance (CD) theory. The theory of CD, one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology, is shown to be highly compatible with recent developments in PP. This is particularly evident in the notion that both theories deal with strategies to reduce perceived error signals. However, reasons exist to update the theory of CD to one of “predictive dissonance.” First, (...) the hierarchical PP framework can be helpful in understanding varying nested levels of CD. If dissonance arises from a cascade of downstream and lateral predictions and consequent prediction errors, dissonance can exist at a multitude of scales, all the way up from sensory perception to higher order cognitions. This helps understand the previously problematic dichotomy between “dissonant cognitive relations” and “dissonant psychological states,” which are part of the same perception-action process while still hierarchically distinct. Second, since PP is action-oriented, it can be read to support recent action-based models of CD. Third, PP can potentially help us understand the recently speculated evolutionary origins of CD. Here, the argument is that responses to CD can instill meta-learning which serves to prevent the overfitting of generative models to ephemeral local conditions. This can increase action-oriented ecological rationality and enhanced capabilities to interact with a rich landscape of affordances. The downside is that in today’s world where social institutions such as science a priori separate noise from signal, some reactions to predictive dissonance might propagate ecologically unsound (underfitted, confirmation-biased) mental models such as climate denialism. (shrink)

When you type the word “serendipity” in a word-processor application such as Microsoft Word, the autocorrection engine suggests you choose other words like “luck” or “fate”. This correcting act turns out to be incorrect. However, it points to the reality that serendipity is not a familiar English word and can be misunderstood easily. Serendipity is a very much scientific concept as it has been found useful in numerous scientific discoveries, pharmaceutical innovations, and numerous humankind’s technical and technological advances. Therefore, there (...) have been many books written around the concept. So why do we need this additional book? This is not just another book about serendipity. It has evolved from the Editor’s question lingering for a decade after finishing his widely cited article (coauthored with Prof. Nancy K. Napier of Boise State University, ID, USA) “Serendipity as a strategic advantage?” in T. Wilkinson’s edited volume Strategic Management in the 21st Century, published by Praeger. The Editor and contributing authors have tried to achieve the following in this title. Demystifying the Serendipity Myth The phenomenon of serendipity has always been thought of as a “miracle”. It is the mystery of human innovation and one of the ultimate secrets of our society. But serendipity is not just a lucky coincidence nor any hidden conspiracy. This book explores the science of the information process behind this seemingly miraculous phenomenon. It connects human society with nature, going back to the root of our existence and looking at the flame of survival to discover the harmony in making creativity. Presenting the nuts and bolts of being an adventurer of science The authors present their conceptual investigations into serendipity’s nature and its mechanism by examining interesting real events and stories. The content is thought-provoking, and readers are led to question and explore their own life stories and problems along the journey of reading this book. Catching an elusive high-value target requires great strategies and efforts. But there are no dark secrets here because this is the “way of nature” – how we humans have always strived for innovation without realizing the blueprints behind such processes. Unlike other books on serendipity, this book will show you that a powerful “secret” is closer than you think. Delivering practical uses for different audiences By understanding the conditionality and survival drivers of serendipity, individuals or organizations can make better decisions on creating the right environment to facilitate the encounter and attainment of this valuable phenomenon. For scientists: With clear explanations of the information processes underlying serendipity, flexible theoretical frameworks of mindsponge and the 3D principle of creativity, researchers are provided with the tools they need to dig deeper into their own fields of study and find practical applications, be it psychology, economics, sociology, or anything that involves innovation (which is, in fact, every scientific discipline). For curious casual readers: Everybody needs innovation to make breakthroughs or spice up one’s life. If you think great ideas come to people randomly from an unknown fairy place, this book will convince you otherwise without taking away that awe and wonder. But above all, you will know how to become more creative, scientifically and straightforwardly, with no snake oil and no weird tricks. For ambitious business people: The flame that brought about great successes throughout human history is within you. But you can only use it if you understand it. While others wait for serendipity to come, you will be able to actively hunt for those precious moments. As it has always been: the best hunters triumph, not the passive wanderers. And in this age of information chaos, finding the golden fruits is not easy. Those from information technology know this problem well, and this book is the treasure map that they have been seeking to navigate that stormy ocean looking for jewels. Like a kingfisher tracking its prey through the water, waiting to gracefully strike, with serendipity, a person seizes the prize of creativity amid the chaos of life. ¤ ¤ ¤ Official introduction: The book explores the nature, underlying causes, and the information processing mechanism of serendipity. It proposes that natural or social survival demands drive serendipity, and serendipity is conditional on the environment and the mindset, on both individual and collective levels. From Darwin's evolution theory to Sun Tzu's war tactics, major innovations throughout human history are unified by this key concept. In the rapidly changing world, information is abundant but rather chaotic. The adaptive power of serendipity allows people to notice treasures within this wild sea, but only for those who understand how it works. To increase the probability of encountering and attaining serendipity, one should employ the mindsponge mechanism and the 3D process of creativity, for without these frameworks, serendipity is truly an elusive target. The book also discusses methods to build environments and cultures rich in navigational and useful information to maximize the chance of finding and capitalizing on serendipity. As a skill, serendipity has a resemblance to how kingfishers observe and hunt their prey. (shrink)

Reliabilists hold that a belief is doxastically justified if and only if it is caused by a reliable process. But since such a process is one that tends to produce a high ratio of true to false beliefs, reliabilism is on the face of it applicable to binary beliefs, but not to degrees of confidence or credences. For while beliefs admit of truth or falsity, the same cannot be said of credences in general. A natural question now arises: Can (...) reliability theories of justified belief be extended or modified to account for justified credence? In this paper, I address this question. I begin by showing that, as it stands, reliabilism cannot account for justified credence. I then consider three ways in which the reliabilist may try to do so by extending or modifying her theory, but I argue that such attempts face certain problems. After that, I turn to a version of reliabilism that incorporates evidentialist elements and argue that it allows us to avoid the problems that the other theories face. If I am right, this gives reliabilists a reason, aside from those given recently by Comesaña and Goldman, to move towards such a kind of hybrid theory. (shrink)

There are three main moral theories: virtue ethics, the deontological approach and utilitarianism. The concern here is how they interrelate, why they come into focus at different times and places, and how they are configured in their application to a modern democratic society. Person-oriented virtue ethics was the dominant understanding in Ancient Greece but within the Western tradition this was later subordinated to the monotheism of Ancient Judaism as modified by Christianity. Of growing importance by the eighteenth century was rights (...) theory which was often still situated religiously. Kant’s principle of the categorical imperative has been highly influential but was challenged by the emerging nature of industrial and capitalist society. Utilitarianism, within which the moral rightness of activity resides in its tendency to promote happiness or unhappiness, represented the decisive move from the transcendental to the immanent approach. Although all three approaches to moral theory continue to be relevant to identifiable situations and aspects of modern society, there has been a substantial turn towards a heavily modified utilitarianism associated with parliamentary democracy and market economies founded on property ownership. The root cause of this is the ability of utilitarianism, as opposed to the other approaches, to handle considerations of number and probability. The concept of utility is fundamental in economics but the idea has evolved away from its origins to mean “preference”. There is a sense in which the straightforward appeal of basic utilitarianism has been “leased out” in modified form to a set of institutional arrangements. Certain “pressure points” in a modern society are noted which pose particular problems pertinent to moral theory. Bernard Williams argues persuasively for an appropriately modified form of virtue ethics. (shrink)

The paper seeks to develop an account of indexical phenomena based on the highly general theory of structure and dependence set forth by Husserl in his Logical Investigations. Husserl here defends an Aristotelian theory of meaning, viewing meanings as species or universals having as their instances certain sorts of concrete meaning acts. Indexical phenomena are seen to involve the combination of such acts of meaning with acts of perception, a thesis here developed in some detail and contrasted with (...) accounts of indexicals suggested by Frege, Wittgenstein and by the later Husserl himself in his Ideas I. Implications are drawn also for our understanding of the categorial grammar sketched by Husserl in his 4th Logical Investigation, as also for our understanding of the nature of proper names and other candidate indexical expressions. (shrink)

Limitarianism holds that there is an upper limit to how many resources, such as wealth and income, people can permissibly have. In this article, I examine the conceptual structure of limitarianism. I focus on the upper limit and the idea that resources above the limit are ‘excess resources’. I distinguish two possible limitarian views about such resources: (i) that excess resources have zero moral value for the holder; and (ii) that excess resources do have moral value for the holder but (...) that their claim to such resources is outweighed by other normative concerns. Moreover, I argue that, depending on the values limitarianism seeks to promote, limitarians should care about the number of people with excess resources or the total amount of excess resources (or both), that they can adopt redistributive measures and/or predistributive measures, and that some versions of limitarianism should take into account the distribution of risk among those above the riches line. (shrink)

The field of neutrosophic set theory and its applications has been rapidly expanding, particularly since the introduction of the journal "Neutrosophic Sets and Systems." New theories, techniques, and algorithms are being developed at a very high rate. One of the most notable trends in neutrosophic theory is its hybridization with other set theories such as rough set theory, bipolar set theory, soft set theory, hesitant fuzzy set theory, and more. Various hybrid structures like (...) rough neutrosophic sets, neutrosophic soft set, single valued neutrosophic hesitant fuzzy sets, among others, have been proposed in a short period. Neutrosophic sets have proven to be crucial tools across a wide array of fields including data mining, decision making, e-learning, engineering, medical diagnosis, social sciences, and beyond. -/- The third volume in the series “New Trends in Neutrosophic Theories and Applications” focuses on theories, methods, and algorithms for decision making, as well as applications involving neutrosophic information. Some topics introduce new sets such as the Pythagorean neutrosophic vague soft set, the triangular fuzzy penta-partitioned neutrosophic set, interval-valued neutrosophic b-open sets, and interval-valued neutrosophic b-closed sets. Other topics present applications in medical diagnosis, non-preemptive neutrosophic priority queues with uneven services (labeled as NM/NM/1), AHP in an interval neutrosophic set environment, MAGDM in a triangular fuzzy neutrosophic number environment, MAGDM in a pentapartitioned neutrosophic environment, the entropy-ARAS strategy in a single-valued neutrosophic number environment, and the MABAC strategy in a rough neutrosophic set environment. (shrink)

Cultural attractor theory (CAT) is a highly visible and audacious approach to studying human cultural evolution. However, the explanatory aims and some central explanatory concepts of CAT remain unclear. Here I remedy these problems. I provide a reconstruction of CAT that recasts it as a theory of forces. I then demonstrate how this reinterpretation of CAT has the resources to generate both cultural distribution and evolvability explanations. I conclude by examining the potential benefits and drawbacks of this reconstruction.

I raise two objections against Christian List and Peter Menzies' influential account of high-level causation. Improving upon some of Stephen Yablo's earlier work, I develop an alternative theory which evades both objections. The discussion calls into question List and Menzies' main contention, namely, that the exclusion principle, applied to difference-making, is false.

This paper argues that the future of capabilities approach lies on the theoretical development of the democratic political structure. For this purpose, we take into account Martha Nussbaum’s late theoretical works. Firstly, we argue that the capability approach can be divided into two main models: the top down and the bottom up. Nussbaum, for example, endorses a top-down model, which it begins from an abstractive theory of partial justice and then draws the issue of institutional implementation. On the other (...) hand, Amartya Sem advocates the bottom-up model, which starts from the immanent demands of justice from public sphere and then up to normative and abstract questions (like his “idea of justice”). In the second part of this paper, we present Nussbaum’s partial theory of justice, arguing that it is mainly composed by four issues: (a) the elaboration of the list of capabilities, (b) the process of normative evaluation, (c) arguments for stability, (d) the implementation of the model. About this last topic, we argue in the third part that the current theoretical advance of the capabilities approach lies on the issue of the democratic political structure. In other words, the future of capabilities approach depends on the interaction between its own theory and a theory of democracy. Finally, in the last section we provide a re-elaboration of Nussbaum’s threshold level of capabilities (the list) in order to make it more adherent with the democratic political structure. (shrink)

Standard decision theory has trouble handling cases involving acts without finite expected values. This paper has two aims. First, building on earlier work by Colyvan (2008), Easwaran (2014), and Lauwers and Vallentyne (2016), it develops a proposal for dealing with such cases, Difference Minimizing Theory. Difference Minimizing Theory provides satisfactory verdicts in a broader range of cases than its predecessors. And it vindicates two highly plausible principles of standard decision theory, Stochastic Equivalence and Stochastic Dominance. The (...) second aim is to assess some recent arguments against Stochastic Equivalence and Stochastic Dominance. If successful, these arguments refute Difference Minimizing Theory. This paper contends that these arguments are not successful. (shrink)

Suppose a person lives in a sub-Saharan country that has won its independence from colonial powers in the last 50 years or so. Suppose also that that person has become a high-ranking government official who makes decisions on how to allocate goods, such as civil service jobs and contracts with private firms. Should such a person refrain from considering any particulars about potential recipients or might it be appropriate to consider, for example, family membership, party affiliation, race or revolutionary (...) stature as reasons to benefit certain individuals at some cost to the general public? Which of these factors should be considered unjust, or even corrupt, as a basis on which to allocate state goods and which should not? This chapter outlines an attractive moral theory with African content that forbids both impartialism and a strong form of partialism that would permit government officials to favour members of their families or political parties. Between these two extremes, a moderate partialism is prescribed. This permits government agents to occasionally favour veterans and victims of state injustices at some cost to the general public. This chapter seeks to provide a new, unified explanation of why sub-Saharan values permit some forms of partiality, such as the preferential hiring of those who struggled against colonialism, but prohibit other nepotistic forms of partiality. (shrink)

Error Management Theory (EMT) suggests that cognitive adaptations evolve to minimize the cost of false negative and false positive errors in detections of consequential environmental conditions. These adaptations manifest as biases tailored to specific environmental conditions. This paper proposes that the same selection pressure fostered the evolution of a self-biasing ability, allowing us to minimize such costs based on experience and culturally transmitted information. The research indicates that this ability specifically applies to productions of belief or doubt about the (...) existence of an environmental condition that is not adequately perceptible to the senses, e.g., doubt that the man is being honest. A model of this self-biasing process, rooted in signal detection theory, is developed and its explanatory reach is demonstrated through many diverse examples from epistemological and social psychological literatures. These examples feature an evidentiary standard for belief that appears too high or low, or seems to have modulated. This study aims to correct and to significantly enhance EMT by introducing this evolved self-biasing ability. (shrink)

There has been much interest in conspiracy theories (CTs) amongst philosophers in recent years. The aim of this paper will be to apply some of the philosophical research to issues in political theory. I will first provide an overview of some of the philosophical discussions about CTs. While acknowledging that particularism is currently the dominant position in the literature, I will contend that the ‘undue scepticism problem’, a modified version of an argument put forward by Brian Keeley, is an (...) important general objection to many CTs. This in turn leads to some substantial conclusions for liberal political philosophy, as the undue scepticism problem sets up a strong argument against non-liberal alternatives to liberal thought. I shall argue that we are justified in having far more doubt about the reliability of official sources in non-liberal societies, and it is legitimate to be more sceptical about claims designed to bolster non-liberal politics. Moreover, because scepticism is often more warranted in non-liberal societies, this may provide the possibility for the state to be stable, even if it is highly tyrannical or ineffective. These considerations are not intended to be decisive, but raise unresolved questions about the viability of non-liberal politics. (shrink)

In this volume Axel Honneth deepens and develops his highly influential theory of recognition, showing how it enables us both to rethink the concept of justice and to offer a compelling account of the relationship between social reproduction and individual identity formation. Drawing on his reassessment of Hegel’s practical philosophy, Honneth argues that our conception of social justice should be redirected from a preoccupation with the principles of distributing goods to a focus on the measures for creating symmetrical relations (...) of recognition. This theoretical reorientation has far-reaching implications for the theory of justice, as it obliges this theory to engage directly with problems concerning the organization of work and with the ideologies that stabilize relations of domination. In the final part of this volume Honneth shows how the theory of recognition provides a fruitful and illuminating way of exploring the relation between social reproduction and identity formation. Rather than seeing groups as regressive social forms that threaten the autonomy of the individual, Honneth argues that the ‘I’ is dependent on forms of social recognition embodied in groups, since neither self-respect nor self-esteem can be maintained without the supportive experience of practising shared values in the group. This important new book by one of the leading social philosophers of our time will be of great interest to students and scholars in philosophy, sociology, politics and the humanities and social sciences generally. (shrink)

The problem addressed in this paper is “the main epistemic problem concerning science”, viz. “the explication of how we compare and evaluate theories [...] in the light of the available evidence” (van Fraassen, BC, 1983, Theory comparison and relevant Evidence. In J. Earman (Ed.), Testing scientific theories (pp. 27–42). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Sections 1– 3 contain the general plausibility-informativeness theory of theory assessment. In a nutshell, the message is (1) that there are two values a (...) theory should exhibit: truth and informativeness—measured respectively by a truth indicator and a strength indicator; (2) that these two values are conflicting in the sense that the former is a decreasing and the latter an increasing function of the logical strength of the theory to be assessed; and (3) that in assessing a given theory by the available data one should weigh between these two conflicting aspects in such a way that any surplus in informativeness succeeds, if the shortfall in plausibility is small enough. Particular accounts of this general theory arise by inserting particular strength indicators and truth indicators. In Section 4 the theory is spelt out for the Bayesian paradigm of subjective probabilities. It is then compared to incremental Bayesian confirmation theory. Section 4 closes by asking whether it is likely to be lovely. Section 5 discusses a few problems of confirmation theory in the light of the present approach. In particular, it is briefly indicated how the present account gives rise to a new analysis of Hempel’s conditions of adequacy for any relation of confirmation (Hempel, CG, 1945, Studies in the logic of comfirmation. Mind, 54, 1–26, 97–121.), differing from the one Carnap gave in § 87 of his Logical foundations of probability (1962, Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Section 6 adresses the question of justification any theory of theory assessment has to face: why should one stick to theories given high assessment values rather than to any other theories? The answer given by the Bayesian version of the account presented in section 4 is that one should accept theories given high assessment values, because, in the medium run, theory assessment almost surely takes one to the most informative among all true theories when presented separating data. The concluding section 7 continues the comparison between the present account and incremental Bayesian confirmation theory. (shrink)

Harmonizing materials and practices of senior high school teachers in the contextualization of various learning areas are crucial in the current curriculum. The study determined how teachers in the senior high school harmonize materials and practices in teaching the various subjects and analyzed the contextualization across the K12 curriculum. Qualitative research was employed in the study specifically grounded theory. Eleven participants were included in the study where five were grade 12 students and six were senior high (...) school teachers. Purposive sampling was employed in the conduct of the study and has employed key informant interviews and the focus group discussion. In analyzing the data, Grounded theory Analysis as modeled by Charmaz (2006), as well as Glasser and Strauss (2017), was employed. Relevance, coherence, and appropriateness as contextualization connectivity are considered in harmonizing materials and practices in the contextualization of lessons in senior high school. The themes culled were sources of contextualized materials, conceptualizing contextualized materials, teachers contextualized materials and practices, coherence, relevance, and appropriateness in contextualization. Formulation of the conceptual paradigm vis-à-vis contextualization across curricula emerged in the study. (shrink)

The fine structure constant appears in several fields of physics and its value is experimentally obtained with a high accuracy. Its physical origin however is unsolved long-standing problem. Richard Feynman expressed the idea that it could be similar to the natural irrational numbers, pi, and e. Amongst the proposed theoretical expressions with values closer to the experimental one is the formula of I. Gorelik which is based on rotating dipole with two empirically suggested coefficients, while the physical origin is (...) unknown. BSM-Supergravitation Unified Theory suggests a physical mechanism defining the fine structure constant. The mathematical expression is based on a spatial precession mode of vibrations in a tetrahedron of spheres with specific properties. The value from the derived expression differs from the CODATA 98 value by 0.000008% only. The conclusion is that the fine structure constant is a natural irrational number. While the irrational number pi, is defined in a 2D space, the fine structure constant is related to a vibration property of a specific formation in 3D space. (shrink)

South Africa is a highly distributively unequal country, and its inequality continues to be largely along racial lines. Such circumstances call for assessment from the perspective of contemporary theories of distributive justice. Three such theories—Rawlsian justice, utilitarianism, and luck egalitarianism—are described and applied. Rawls' difference principle recommends that the worst off be made as well as they can be, a standard which South Africa clearly falls short of. Utilitarianism recommends the maximization of overall societal well-being, a goal which South Africa (...) again fails to achieve given its severe inequality and the fact of the diminishing marginal value of money—that a given amount of money tends to produce more utility for a poor person than it does for a rich person. The final theory, luck egalitarianism, aims to make distributions sensitive to individual exercises of responsibility. This view also objects to South Africa's inequality, this time on the basis that the poor are overwhelmingly worse off through no fault or choice of their own. These major theories of distributive justice therefore all propose large-scale redistribution to the benefit of the (predominantly black) poor. Perhaps more surprisingly, all three views also provide support for socio-economic affirmative action, as opposed to South Africa's race-based Black Economic Empowerment. (shrink)

This is a two-volume set that provides an introduction to non-cooperative Game Theory. Volume 1 covers the basic concepts, while Volume 2 is devoted to advanced topics. The book is richly illustrated with approximately 400 figures. It is suitable for both self-study and as the basis for an undergraduate course in game theory as well as a first-year graduate-level class. It is written to be accessible to anybody with high-school level knowledge of mathematics. At the end of (...) each chapter there is a collection of exercises accompanied by detailed answers. The book contains approximately 180 exercises. (shrink)

Proactive educational institutions have introduced entrepreneurship education in their curricula to improve the employability of their learners. Using learners as the lens, the aim of this paper was to assess the efficacy of such programmes in the context of South African high schools and taking into consideration the ethnic and income dynamics of such schools. We argue in this paper that entrepreneurial intention should be complemented with other measures such as frequent enterprise visits and school business projects, especially in (...) the context of junior learners. Purposive sampling was used to select the schools for the case study. Learners (N=403) were drawn from high, medium and low-income schools for the study. Quantifying and non-quantifying data analysis methods were used to interpret the data. Descriptive and inferential statistical techniques were implored to analyse the survey data. The data set was subjected to chi-square tests and multivariate analysis using the SPSS software. It was revealed that an overwhelming majority (62%) of the respondents indicated that they would like to start up a business after their studies. Of these numbers, the overwhelming majority (81%) were black learners. It is also worth noting that a significant proportion (73%) of those that want to become entrepreneurs actually came from the middle income schools. (shrink)