Delineating the framework for a fundamental model of long-range coherence in biological systems is said to rely on principles beyond parameters addressed by current physical science. Just as phenomena of quantum mechanics lay beyond tools of classical Newtonian mechanics we must now enter a 3rd regime of unified field, UF mechanics. In this paper we present a battery of nine empirical protocols for manipulating long-range coherence in complex self-organized living systems (SOLS) in a manner (...) surmounting the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum uncertainty (space-quantization) thereby allowing empirical access to underlying coherent biophysical principles driving self-organization. Interestingly, while the UF is not indicative of a 5th fundamental force in the usual phenomenal sense of quantal transfer during field interactions; it does however provide an inherent ‘force of coherence’ in an energyless ontological sense by a process called ‘topological switching’ of higher dimensional (HD) brane dynamics. It is this putative inherent property that produces long-range coherence and leads to the possibility of its direct experimental mediation. (shrink)

Team reasoning gives a simple, coherent, and rational explanation for human cooperative behavior. This paper investigates the robustness of team reasoning as an explanation for cooperative behavior, by assessing its long-run viability. We consider an evolutionary game theoretic model in which the population consists of team reasoners and ‘conventional’ individual reasoners. We find that changes in the ludic environment can affect evolutionary outcomes, and that in many circumstances, team reasoning may thrive, even under conditions that, at first glance, may (...) seem unfavorable. We also pursue several extensions that augment the basic account, and conclude that team reasoning is an evolutionarily viable mechanism with the potential to explain behavior in a range of human interactions. (shrink)

Brincat and Westheimer [Journal of Neurophysiology 83 (2000) 1900] have reported facilitating interactions in the discrimination of spatially separated target orientations and co-linear inducing orientations by human observers. With smaller gaps between stimuli (short-range effects), facilitating interactions were found to depend on the contrast polarity of the stimuli. With larger gaps (longrange effects), only co-linearity of the stimuli seemed necessary to produce facilitation. In our study, the dependency of facilitating interactions on the intensity (luminance) of line stimuli is investigated (...) by measuring detection thresholds for a target line separated from the end of an inducing line by co-axial gaps ranging from 5 to 200 min of visual arc. We find facilitating interactions between target and inducing orientations, producing short-range and long-range effects similar to those reported by Brincat and Westheimer. In addition, detection thresholds as a function of the co-axial separation between target and inducing line reveal an interaction between the spatial regime of facilitating effects and the luminance of the stimuli. Short-range effects are found to be sensitive to changes in local intensity while long-range effects remain unaffected. (shrink)

In the late 19th century Husserl studied our internal sense of time passing, maintaining that its deep connections into experience represent prima facie evidence for it as the basis for all investigations in the sciences: Phenomenology was born. Merleau-Ponty focused on perception pointing out that any theory of experience must in accord with established aspects of biology i.e. embodied. Recent analyses suggest that theories of experience require non-reductive, integrative information, together with a specific property connecting them to experience. Here we (...) elucidate a new class of information states with just such properties found at the loci of control of complex biological systems, including nervous systems. Complexity biology concerns states satisfying self-organized criticality. Such states are located at critical instabilities, commonly observed in biological systems, and thought to maximize information diversity and processing, and hence to optimize regulation. Major results for biology follow: why organisms have unusually low entropies; and why they are not merely mechanical. Criticality states form singular self-observing systems, which reduce wave packets by processes of perfect self-observation associated with feedback gain g=1. Analysis of their information properties leads to identification of a new kind of information state with high levels of internal coherence, and feedback loops integrated into their structure. The major idea presented here is that the integrated feedback loops are responsible for our ‘sense of self’, and also the feeling of continuity in our sense of time passing. Long-range internal correlations guarantee a unique kind of non-reductive, integrative information structure enabling such states to naturally support phenomenal experience. Being founded in complexity biology, they are ‘embodied’; they also fulfill the statement that ‘The self is a process’, a singular process. High internal correlations and RenéThom-style catastrophes support non-digital forms of information, gestalt cognition, and information transfer via quantum teleportation. Criticality in complexity biology can ‘embody’ cognitive states supporting gestalts, and phenomenology’s senses of ‘self,’ time passing, existence and being. (shrink)

Across various fields it is argued that the self in part consists of an autobiographical self-narrative and that the self-narrative has an impact on agential behavior. Similarly, within action theory, it is claimed that the intentional structure of coherent long-term action is divided into a hierarchy of distal, proximal, and motor intentions. However, the concrete mechanisms for how narratives and distal intentions are generated and impact action is rarely fleshed out concretely. We here demonstrate how narratives and distal intentions (...) can be generated within cognitive agents and how they can impact agential behavior over long time scales. We integrate narratives and distal intentions into the LIDA model,and demonstrate how they can guide agential action in a manner that is consistent with the Global Workspace Theory of consciousness. This paper serves both as an addition to the LIDA cognitive architecture and an elucidation of how narratives and distal intention emerge and play their role in cognition and action. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

It is usually accepted that deductions are non-informative and monotonic, inductions are informative and nonmonotonic, abductions create hypotheses but are epistemically irrelevant, and both deductions and inductions can’t provide new insights. In this article, I attempt to provide a more cohesive view of the subject with the following hypotheses: (1) the paradigmatic examples of deductions, such as modus ponens and hypothetical syllogism, are not inferential forms, but coherence requirements for inferences; (2) since any reasoner aims to be coherent, any (...) inference must be deductive; (3) a coherent inference is an intuitive process where the premises should be taken as sufficient evidence for the conclusion, which on its turn should be viewed as necessary evidence for the premises in some modal range; (4) inductions, properly understood, are abductions, but there are no abductions beyond the fact that in any inference the conclusion should be regarded as necessary evidence for the premises; (5) monotonicity is not only compatible with the retraction of past inferences given new information, but it is a requirement for it; (6) this explanation of inferences holds true for discovery processes, predictions and trivial inferences. (shrink)

A. A. Long, one of the world's leading writers on ancient philosophy, presents eighteen essays on the philosophers and schools of the Hellenistic and Roman periods--Epicureans, Stoics, and Sceptics. The discussion ranges over four centuries of innovative and challenging thought in ethics and politics, psychology, epistemology, and cosmology.

Bayesians standardly claim that there is rational pressure for agents’ credences to cohere across time because they face bad (epistemic or practical) consequences if they fail to diachronically cohere. But as David Christensen has pointed out, groups of individual agents also face bad consequences if they fail to interpersonally cohere, and there is no general rational pressure for one agent's credences to cohere with another’s. So it seems that standard Bayesian arguments may prove too much. Here, we agree with Christensen (...) that there is no general rational pressure to diachronically cohere, but we argue that there are particular cases in which there is rational pressure to diachronically cohere, as well as particular cases in which interpersonal probabilistic coherence is rationally required. More generally, we suggest that Bayesian arguments for coherence apply whenever a collection (of agents or time slices) has a shared dimension of value and an ability to coordinate their actions in a range of cases relevant to that value. Typically, this shared value and ability to coordinate is very strong across the time slices of one human being, and very weak across different human beings, but there are special cases where these can switch—i.e., some groups of humans will have as much reason for their beliefs to cohere across a particular range of cases as the time slices of one human usually do, but some time slices of a human will have as much freedom to differ in their beliefs from the others as the members of a group usually do. (shrink)

Coherentism in epistemology has long suffered from lack of formal and quantitative explication of the notion of coherence. One might hope that probabilistic accounts of coherence such as those proposed by Lewis, Shogenji, Olsson, Fitelson, and Bovens and Hartmann will finally help solve this problem. This paper shows, however, that those accounts have a serious common problem: the problem of belief individuation. The coherence degree that each of the accounts assigns to an information set (or the (...) verdict it gives as to whether the set is coherent tout court) depends on how beliefs (or propositions) that represent the set are individuated. Indeed, logically equivalent belief sets that represent the same information set can be given drastically different degrees of coherence. This feature clashes with our natural and reasonable expectation that the coherence degree of a belief set does not change unless the believer adds essentially new information to the set or drops old information from it; or, to put it simply, that the believer cannot raise or lower the degree of coherence by purely logical reasoning. None of the accounts in question can adequately deal with coherence once logical inferences get into the picture. Toward the end of the paper, another notion of coherence that takes into account not only the contents but also the origins (or sources) of the relevant beliefs is considered. It is argued that this notion of coherence is of dubious significance, and that it does not help solve the problem of belief individuation. (shrink)

A standard way to challenge convergence-based accounts of inductive success is to claim that they are too weak to constrain inductive inferences in the short run. We respond to such a challenge by answering some questions raised by Juhl (1994). When it comes to predicting limiting relative frequencies in the framework of Reichenbach, we show that speed-optimal convergence—a long-run success condition—induces dynamic coherence in the short run.

Descartes wants to show that clear and distinct ideas are trustworthy. However, his argument seems circular. For his premise that God is trustworthy depends on clear and distinct insight. Descartes’ reaction to the circularity reproach can be interpreted in two ways. The first is a psychological one. Clear and distinct insights are coercing. Thus they cannot be doubted as long as one attends to them. The argument is only meant to extend this instantaneous coercion to the whole range (...) of psychological states. This reaction does not fit Descartes’ aim of more reliable beliefs. The second interpretation integrates this aim of reliability into the demands of clarity and distinctness. Clear and distinct insights are to bridge the gap between internal accessibility and external reliability. Yet in this interpretation the invocation of God’s trustworthiness seems superfluous. Departing from contemporary epistemological ideas two possibilities to nevertheless make sense of this invocation are discussed. The first is that the argument of God’s trustworthiness provides a gain in reflective coherence. However, this reasoning conflicts with the situation of methodic doubt which involves suspending one’s whole system of belief. The second, more promising possibility is that it is an epistemic aim to provide an account of origin and purpose of our cognitive faculties. (shrink)

Our concept of the universe and the material world is foundational for our thinking and our moral lives. In an earlier contribution to the URAM project I presented what I called 'the ultimate organizational principle' of the universe. In that article (Grandpierre 2000, pp. 12-35) I took as an adversary the wide-spread system of thinking which I called 'materialism'. According to those who espouse this way of thinking, the universe consists of inanimate units or sets of material such as atoms (...) or elementary particles. Against this point of view on reality, I argued that it is 'logic', which exists in our inner world as a function of our mind, that is the universal organizing power of the universe. The present contribution builds upon this insight. Then I focussed on rationality; now I am interested in the responsibility that is the driving force behind our effort to find coherence and ultimate perspectives in our cosmos. It is shown that biology fundamentally differs from physics. Biology has its own fundamental principle, which is formulated for the first time in history in a scientific manner by Ervin Bauer. This fundamental principle is the cosmic life principle. I show that if one considers the physical laws as corresponding to reality, as in scientific realism, than physicalism becomes fundamentally spiritual because the physical laws are not material. I point out that the physical laws originate from the fundamental principle of physics which is the least action principle. I show that the fundamental principle of physics can be considered as the "instinct of atoms". Our research has found deep and meaningful connections between the basic principle of physics and the ultimate principles of the universe: matter, life and reason. Therefore, the principle of least action is not necessarily an expression of sterile inanimateness. On the contrary, the principle of physics is related to the life principle of the universe, to the world of instincts behind the atomic world, in which the principles of physics, biology, and psychology arise from the same ultimate principle. Our research sheds new light to the sciences of physics, biology, and psychology in close relation to the basic principles. These ultimate principles have a primary importance in our understanding of the nature of Man and the Universe, together with the relations between Man and Nature, Man and the Universe. The results offer new foundations for our understanding our own role in the Earth, in the Nature and in the Universe. Even the apparently inanimate world of physics shows itself to be animate on long timescales and having a kind of pre- human consciousness in its basic organisation. This hypothesis offers a way to understand when and how the biological laws may direct physical laws, and, moreover, offers a new perspective to study and understand under which conditions can self-consciousness govern the laws of biology and physics. This point of view offers living beings and humans the possibility of strengthening our natural identity, and recognising the wide perspective arising from having access to the deepest ranges of our own human resources and realising the task for which human and individual life has been created. (shrink)

The urgent need to address climate change poses a range of complex moral and practical concerns, not least because rising to the challenge will require cooperation among countries that differ greatly in their wealth, the extent of their contributions to the problem, and their vulnerability to environmental and economic shocks. This thesis by publication in the field of climate ethics aims to characterise a range of national responsibilities associated with acting on climate change (Part I), and to identify (...) proposals for fulfilling those responsibilities through fair and feasible institutional arrangements (Part II). I aim not only to address substantive gaps in scholarly understanding of those responsibilities, but also to strengthen the ability of climate ethics to engage meaningfully with climate policy. Chapter 2 addresses the question of whether wealthy countries owe a “climate debt” to poor countries. It finds that even if climate debt (suitably interpreted) may provide a coherent and morally plausible concept, its political value as a discursive frame that can provide a basis for cooperation is limited. Chapter 3 investigates the role that equity may play in negotiations on a long-term climate change agreement. It argues that developed and developing countries may reach a “principled bargain” if both converge on a way of differentiating their responsibilities that places less emphasis on a rigid dichotomy between the two groups and more emphasis on objective criteria relating to their contribution to the problem and capacity to address it. Chapter 4 explores a question largely overlooked in climate ethics, namely whether wealthy countries owe compensation to those who are adversely affected by the climate policies which they enact. I find that enacting countries have responsibilities to compensate both domestic and foreign citizens who would suffer disproportionate losses from the effects of policies. Chapter 5 assesses whether wealthy countries may legitimately adopt unilateral (or “fragmented”) rather than multilaterally coordinated approaches to raising climate finance for developing countries. It finds that coordinated target-setting, effort sharing and oversight arrangements are essential, but that a mix of unilateral and coordinated approaches to raising funds will be necessary for securing legitimacy. In Chapter 6, through addressing the broader question of what should count as official aid, I consider whether wealthy countries may draw on aid budgets to support developing countries’ efforts to address climate change. I find that the current definition of official aid should be retained but supplemented by specified exclusions from eligibility in order to preserve the aid regime’s integrity. Nevertheless, some climate finance may justifiably be counted as aid provided that concerns relating to the diversion of aid funding are addressed. In addressing these research questions, the thesis seeks not only to make original theoretical contributions to climate ethics but also to strengthen broader scholarly understanding of the ways in which ethics and international public policy may inform one another, particularly by highlighting the role of framing considerations (Chapter 2), feasibility considerations (Chapter 3), and the ways in which principles of fairness and legitimacy map onto institutional functions (Chapters 4, 5 and 6). (shrink)

This study, presenting a history of the measurement of light intensity from its first hesitant emergence to its gradual definition as a scientific subject, explores two major themes. The first concerns the adoption by the evolving physics and engineering communities of quantitative measures of light intensity around the turn of the twentieth century. The mathematisation of light measurement was a contentious process that hinged on finding an acceptable relationship between the mutable response of the human eye and the more easily (...) stabilised, but less encompassing, techniques of physical measurement. -/- A second theme is the exploration of light measurement as an example of ‘peripheral science’. Among the characteristics of such a science, I identify the lack of a coherent research tradition and the persistent partitioning of the subject between disparate groups of practitioners. Light measurement straddled the conventional categories of ‘science’ and ‘technology’, and was influenced by such distinct factors as utilitarian requirements, technological innovation, human perception and bureaucratisation. Peripheral fields such as this, which may be typical of much of modern science and technology, have hitherto received little attention from historians. -/- These themes are pursued with reference to the social and technological factors which were combined inextricably in the development of the subject. The intensity of light gained only sporadic attention until the late nineteenth century. Measured for the utilitarian needs of the gas lighting industry from the second half of the century, light intensity was appropriated by members of the nascent electric lighting industry, too, in their search for a standard of illumination. By the turn of the century the ‘illuminating engineering movement’ was becoming an organised, if eclectic, community which promoted research into and standards for the measurement of light intensity. -/- The twentieth-century development of the subject was moulded by organisation and institutionalisation. Between 1900 and 1920, the new national and industrial laboratories in Britain, America and Germany were crucial in stabilising the subject. In the inter-war period, committees and international commissions sought to standardise light measurement and to promote research. Such government- and industry-supported delegations, rather than academic institutions, were primarily responsible for the ‘construction’ of the subject. Practitioners increasingly came to interpret the three topics of photometry (visible light measurement), colorimetry (the measurement of colour) and radiometry (the measurement of invisible radiations) as aspects of a broader study, and enthusiastically applied them to industrial and scientific problems. -/- From the 1920s, the long-established visual methods of observation were increasingly replaced by physical means of light measurement, a process initially contingent on scientific fashion more than demonstrated superiority. New photoelectric techniques for measuring light intensity engendered new commercial instruments, a trend which accelerated in the following decade when photometric measurement was applied with limited success to a range of industrial problems. Seeds sowed in the 1920s – namely commercialisation and industrial application, the transition from visual to ‘physical’ methods, and the search for fundamental limitations in light measurement – gave the subject substantially the form it was to retain over the next half-century. (shrink)

Highlights: -/- • Breastfeeding and breastfeeding support can contribute to mitigating climate change. • Achieving global nutrition targets will save more emissions than fuel-switching. • Breastfeeding support programmes support a just transition. • This work can support the expansion of mitigation options in energy system models. -/- Abstract: -/- Renewable gas has been proposed as a solution to decarbonise industrial processes, specifically heat demand. As part of this effort, the breast-milk substitutes industry is proposing to use renewable gas as a (...) substitute for fossil natural gas. However, decarbonising the industrial processing of breast-milk substitutes can increase social license for these products, potentially undermining breastfeeding. World Health Organisation nutrition targets aim to increase exclusive breastfeeding to at least 50% globally by 2025 to improve maternal, infant, and young child health and nutrition. This target will have implications for the energy transition. A weakness of existing energy models is that demands for end-use products such as breast-milk substitutes are typically not considered explicitly. This paper develops an analytical framework for explicitly representing infant feeding methods in energy systems models. We compare the emissions saved in Ireland from decarbonising the industrial processing of breast-milk substitutes with renewable gas with the emissions saved by an increase in exclusive breastfeeding to 50% in both Ireland and a key export market, China. We demonstrate that the emissions saved from achieving the minimum global breastfeeding target are greater than when renewable gas is used to displace natural gas in the production of breast-milk substitutes in Ireland. We discuss the decarbonisation of breast-milk substitutes in relation to the principle of justice as non-maleficence, a principle based on the commitment to avoid harm, a novel application of a principle of justice. We conclude that breastfeeding support can be considered a demand-side measure for mitigating climate change by reducing the demand for energy services to produce breast-milk substitutes. A key recommendation is to position breastfeeding support as both a public health and a climate justice issue that is relevant for a just transition. The framework developed for this paper could be applied to support the inclusion of a wider range of mitigation options with social justice outcomes in energy system models. [Open access]. (shrink)

Green New Deal policies are proposed to tackle the climate emergency. These policies focus on driving climate innovation through unprecedented financial policy levers. However, while the macro-level financing dynamics are clear, the influence of niche level dynamics of sustainable innovation financing remain unexplored within these policy settings. Through the context of the European Green Deal and a focus on the agri-tech start-up sector in the Netherlands, we identify factors likely to reduce the efficacy of these policies from an innovation management (...) perspective—such as project matching issues, socio-ethical factors or the characteristics of agri-food climate innovations. We go on to conceptualise that these challenges represent a range of asymmetries—from classic information asymmetries to less common value and objective asymmetries—between climate innovators and private investors and financers. Many remedies for asymmetries involve costs, likely to further inhibit the efficacy of the European Green Deal and similar policies. A partnering approach is proposed, where the non-financial resources of incumbent actors are harnessed and leveraged to enhance climate innovation performance. (shrink)

Berkeley, Hume, and Russell rejected the traditional analysis of substances in terms of qualities which are supported by an "unknowable substratum." To them the proper alternative seemed obvious. Eliminate the substratum in which qualities are alleged to inhere, leaving a bundle of coexisting qualities--a view that we may call the Bundle Theory or BT. But by rejecting only part of the traditional substratum theory instead of replacing it entirely, Bundle Theories perpetuate certain confusions which are found in the Substratum Doctrine. (...) I examine two major types of BT developed by Russell and by G. F. Stout with the intention of showing that (1) the seemingly innocuous concept of "a quality" employed by these versions cannot be used to state their theories coherently, and (2) the fatal problems that the BT encounters point to a more satisfactory and interesting alternative to both the Substratum Doctrine and the BT. This is a view that I call the Qualified Particulars Theory. In a final section I draw morals from this discussion that apply to the analogous Humean view that a mind is a "bundle of perceptions and sensations.". (shrink)

Tradition compels me to write dissertation acknowledgements that are long, effusive, and unprofessional. Fortunately for me, I heartily endorse that tradition.

In 2012, the politician Todd Akin caused a firestorm by suggesting, in the context of an argument about the moral permissibility of abortion, that some forms of rape were. This seemed to imply that other forms of rape must not be legitimate. In response, several commentators pointed out that rape is a and that there are. While the intention of these commentators was clear, I argue that they may have played into the very stereotype of rape endorsed by Akin. Such (...) a response, I claim, actually obscures a range of sexual harms, including some that may not rise to the level of being a crime. I also offer some thoughts on the moral psychology behind anti-abortion arguments of the kind advanced by Akin. (shrink)

Origin of a dissipative structure in a chemical dynamic system: occurs under the following constraints: 1) Affinity must be high. (The system must be far from equilibrium.); 2) There must be an auto-catalytic process; 3) A process that reduces the concentration of the auto-catalyst must operate; 4) The relevant parameters (rate constants, etc.) must lie in a range corresponding to a limit cycle trajectory. That is, there must be closure of the network of reaction such that a state sufficiently (...) close to the prior condition is achieved at the corresponding part of each oscillation. If these constraints continue to be met interactions of the system with the rest of the world are quite different in the presence of the dissipative structure than they would be in the absence of that self-organized coherence. Closure of a network of relationships which gives rise to a dissipative structure is a 'unit-determining' feature. The effects of the structure as a whole are the resultants of the effects of the components, but the concentrations of the components at any instant are effects of the closure of the limit cycle. This is an influence on components arising from what those components constitute --- downward causation. (shrink)

Call a quantifier ‘unrestricted’ if it ranges over absolutely all objects. Arguably, unrestricted quantification is often presupposed in philosophical inquiry. However, developing a semantic theory that vindicates unrestricted quantification proves rather difficult, at least as long as we formulate our semantic theory within a classical first-order language. It has been argued that using a type theory as framework for our semantic theory provides a resolution of this problem, at least if a broadly Fregean interpretation of type theory is assumed. (...) However, the intelligibility of this interpretation has been questioned. In this paper I introduce a type-free theory of properties that can also be used to vindicate unrestricted quantification. This alternative emerges very naturally by reflecting on the features on which the type-theoretic solution of the problem of unrestricted quantification relies. Although this alternative theory is formulated in a non-classical logic, it preserves the deductive strength of classical strict type theory in a natural way. The ideas developed in this paper make crucial use of Russell’s notion of range of significance. (shrink)

The collaboration of Language and Computing nv (L&C) and the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (IFOMIS) is guided by the hypothesis that quality constraints on ontologies for software ap-plication purposes closely parallel the constraints salient to the design of sound philosophical theories. The extent of this parallel has been poorly appreciated in the informatics community, and it turns out that importing the benefits of phi-losophical insight and methodology into application domains yields a variety of improvements. L&C’s LinKBase® (...) is one of the world’s largest medical domain ontologies. Its current primary use pertains to natural language processing ap-plications, but it also supports intelligent navigation through a range of struc-tured medical and bioinformatics information resources, such as SNOMED-CT, Swiss-Prot, and the Gene Ontology (GO). In this report we discuss how and why philosophical methods improve both the internal coherence of LinKBase®, and its capacity to serve as a translation hub, improving the interoperability of the ontologies through which it navigates. (shrink)

Debunking arguments in ethics contend that our moral beliefs have dubious evolutionary, cultural, or psychological origins—hence concluding that we should doubt such beliefs. Debates about debunking are often couched in coarse-grained terms—about whether our moral beliefs are justified or not, for instance. In this paper, I propose a more detailed Bayesian analysis of debunking arguments, which proceeds in the fine-grained framework of rational confidence. Such analysis promises several payoffs: it highlights how debunking arguments don’t affect all agents, but rather only (...) those agents who updated on their intuitions using a specific range of evidentiary weights; it underscores how the debunkers shouldn’t conclude that we should reduce confidence beyond some threshold, but rather only that we should reduce confidence by some amount; and it proposes a method of integrating different kinds of evidence—about the kinds of epistemic flaws at play, about the different possible origins of our moral beliefs, about the background normative assumptions we’re entitled to make—in order to arrive at a rational moral credence in light of debunking. (shrink)

I argue that, in an important range of cases, judging that one disagrees with an epistemic peer requires attributing, either to one's peer or to oneself, a failure of rationality. There are limits, however, to how much irrationality one can coherently attribute, either to oneself or to another. I argue that these limitations on the coherent attribution of rational error put constraints on permissible responses to peer disagreement. In particular, they provide reason to respond to one-off disagreements with a (...) single peer by maintaining one's beliefs, and they provide reason to moderate one's beliefs when faced with repeated disagreement, or disagreement with multiple peers. Finally, I argue that, though peer disagreement is rare, the occasions on which it does occur tend to be especially important, and the kind of response supported here is correspondingly important. In particular, how leading researchers spend their time and effort depends, in part, on how they respond to peer disagreement. And only a response of the kind supported here strikes the right balance between allowing individual researchers to freely pursue what seems to them to be worthwhile projects, and requiring that they pursue those research projects that the community of experts as a whole believes to be likely to yield significant results. (shrink)

Among the terrestrial species, the majority 332 species is represented by small Volant and non Volant species belonging to the orders Vandeleuria is a small genus of rodent also known long-tailed climbing mouse. Vandeleuria Nilagirica is a Subspecies of Vandelueuria Olaracia species is divided by geographical variations and morphological characterized described namely dumeticola Hodgson, Nilagirica Jerodon, Spandicea Ryley, Rubida Thomas, Modesta Thomas, and Nolthenii Phillips as its Sub Species and the synonymized wrought on Ryley with the nominate sub species (...) and Provensis Hodgson, badius Blyth and marica Thomas with dumesticola Hodgson (V.V Agarwal and Chakraborty 1980). Vandeleuria nilagirica is longer tails, arboreal,It is very shy Nocturnal and omnivore, feeding is usually the spruce leaves and small flower sand buds of small plants that includes small insects also. IUCN status of this species is Endangered. This species is Endamic to the tropical forest along the Northern Western Ghats, Nilgiri Hills (Musses & Carleton 2005). Species altitudinal range is 900 to 2100 M. Theses are found in mountainous areas where there is no hassle. It is Listed as a under scheduled ‘V’ of the Indian wild life Act. As compared to other zones, the frequency of occurrence of F. pennanti and B. bandicota was found to be very low at all the localities in southeastern Rajasthan. Some of the hills have been afforested and the plantations have a very low herbaceous ground cover. This may be one of the reasons of low occurrence of the long-tailed tree mouse, Vandeleuriaoleracea. Suncus stoliczkanus, the Anderson’s shrew was found to be absent in this zone (Ishwar prakash & Himmat Singh 2001). In Thar desert Maximum number of Vandeleuria oleracea 66.6% Species Was observed ( Prakash I,PratapSingh 2005) .Human Disturbance, floods, habitat loss & degradation found to be major threat to these species. This small mammal is plays in important role in the Environment. (shrink)

This paper examines the origin, range and meaning of the Principle of Action and Reaction in Kant’s mechanics. On the received view, it is a version of Newton’s Third Law. I argue that Kant meant his principle as foundation for a Leibnizian mechanics. To find a ‘Newtonian’ law of action and reaction, we must look to Kant’s ‘dynamics,’ or theory of matter. I begin, in part I, by noting marked differences between Newton’s and Kant’s laws of action and reaction. (...) I argue that these are explainable by Kant’s allegiance to a Leibnizian mechanics. I show (in part II) that Leibniz too had a model of action and reaction, at odds with Newton’s. Then I reconstruct how Jakob Hermann and Christian Wolff received Leibniz’s model. I present (in Part III) Kant’s early law of action and reaction for mechanics. I show that he devised it so as to solve extant problems in the Hermann-Wolff account. I reconstruct Kant’s views on ‘mechanical’ action and reaction in the 1780s, and highlight strong continuities with his earlier, pre-Critical stance. I use these continuities, and Kant’s earlier engagement with post-Leibnizians, to explain the un-Newtonian features of his law of action and reaction. (shrink)

The current COVID-19 pandemic and the previous SARS/MERS outbreaks of 2003 and 2012 have resulted in a series of major global public health crises. We argue that in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs and to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechenisms it is necessary to integrate the large and exponentially growing body of heterogeneous coronavirus data. Ontologies play an important role in standard-based knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. Accordingly, we initiated the (...) development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology in early 2020. -/- As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. CIDO is aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology and Viral Infectious Disease Ontology. CIDO has imported terms from over 30 OBO ontologies. For example, CIDO imports all SARS-CoV-2 protein terms from the Protein Ontology, COVID-19-related phenotype terms from the Human Phenotype Ontology, and over 100 COVID-19 terms for vaccines (both authorized and in clinical trial) from the Vaccine Ontology. CIDO systematically represents variants of SARS-CoV-2 viruses and over 300 amino acid substitutions therein, along with over 300 diagnostic kits and methods. CIDO also describes hundreds of host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the drugs that target proteins in these PPIs. CIDO has been used to model COVID-19 related phenomena in areas such as epidemiology. The scope of CIDO was evaluated by visual analysis supported by a summarization network method. CIDO has been used in various applications such as term standardization, inference, natural language processing (NLP) and clinical data integration. We have applied the amino acid variant knowledge present in CIDO to analyze differences between SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants. CIDO's integrative host-coronavirus PPIs and drug-target knowledge has also been used to support drug repurposing for COVID-19 treatment. -/- CIDO represents entities and relations in the domain of coronavirus diseases with a special focus on COVID-19. It supports shared knowledge representation, data and metadata standardization and integration, and has been used in a range of applications. (shrink)

This article introduces an experimental paradigm to selectively probe the multiple levels of visual processing that influence the formation of object contours, perceptual boundaries, and illusory contours. The experiments test the assumption that, to integrate contour information across space and contrast sign, a spatially short-range filtering process that is sensitive to contrast polarity inputs to a spatially long-range grouping process that pools signals from opposite contrast polarities. The stimuli consisted of thin subthreshold lines, flashed upon gaps between (...) collinear inducers which potentially enable the formation of illusory contours. The subthreshold lines were composed of one or more segments with opposite contrast polarities. The polarity nearest to the inducers was varied to differentially excite the short-range filtering process. The experimental results are consistent with neurophysiological evidence for cortical mechanisms of contour processing and with the Boundary Contour System model, which identifies the short-range filtering process with cortical simple cells, and the long-range grouping process with cortical bipole cells. (shrink)

In so far as long-range tele-operated weapons, such as the United States’ Predator and Reaper drones, allow their operators to fight wars in what appears to be complete safety, thousands of kilometres removed from those whom they target and kill, it is unclear whether drone operators either require courage or have the opportunity to develop or exercise it. This chapter investigates the implications of the development of tele-operated warfare for the extent to which courage will remain central to (...) the role of the warrior and for the future culture of the armed services in the age of drone warfare. (shrink)

The paper addresses the formation of striking patterns within originally near-homogenous tissue, the process prototypical for embryology, and represented in particularly purist form by cut sections of hydra regenerating, by internal reorganisation of the pre-existing tissue, a complete animal with head and foot. The essential requirements are autocatalytic, self-enhancing activation, combined with inhibitory or depletion effects of wider range – “lateral inhibition”. Not only de-novo-pattern formation, but also well known, striking features of developmental regulation such as induction, inhibition, and (...) proportion regulation can be explained on this basis. The theory provides a mathematical recipe for the construction of molecular models with criteria for the necessary non-linear interactions. It has since been widely applied to different developmental processes. (shrink)

Spatial facilitation has been observed with luminance-defined, achromatic stimuli on achromatic backgrounds as well as with targets and inducers defined by colour contrast. This paper reviews psychophysical results from detection experiments with human observers showing the conditions under which spatially separated contour inducers facilitate the detection of simultaneously presented target stimuli. The findings point towards two types of spatial mechanisms: (i) Short-range mechanisms that are sensitive to narrowly spaced stimuli of small size and, at distinct target locations, selective to (...) the contrast polarity of targets and inducers. (ii) Long-range mechanisms that are triggered by longer stimuli, generate facilitation across wider spatial gaps between targets and inducers, and are insensitive to their contrast polarity. Spatial facilitation with chromatic stimuli requires a longer inducer exposure than spatial facilitation with achromatic stimuli, which is already fully effective at inducer exposures of 30 ms. This difference in temporal dynamics indicates some functional segregation between mechanisms for colour and luminance contrast in the perception of space. (shrink)

Unlike conceptual analysis, conceptual engineering does not aim to identify the content that our current concepts do have, but the content which these concepts should have. For this method to show the results that its practitioners typically aim for, being able to change meanings seems to be a crucial presupposition. However, certain branches of semantic externalism raise doubts about whether this presupposition can be met. To the extent that meanings are determined by external factors such as causal histories or microphysical (...) structures, it seems that they cannot be changed intentionally. This paper gives an extended discussion of this ‘externalist challenge’. Pace Herman Cappelen’s recent take on this issue, it argues that the viability of conceptual engineering crucially depends on our ability to bring about meaning change. Furthermore, it argues that, contrary to first appearance, causal theories of reference do allow for a sufficient degree of meaning control. To this purpose, it argues that there is a sense of what is called ‘collective long-range control’, and that popular versions of the causal theory of reference imply that people have this kind of control over meanings. (shrink)

This paper makes the case for arms control regimes to govern the development and deployment of autonomous weapon systems and long range uninhabited aerial vehicles.

En 1968 Raquel Carson comenzaba una revolución en el pensamiento, quizá una de las de mayor peso en la actualidad. En su libro "La primavera silenciosa" acusaba del deterioro ambiental al poder ilimitado del ser humano. La creencia surgida en la modernidad de que todo lo que el hombre decidía era en sí mismo lo mejor por haber sido fruto de una voluntad libérrima, daba primacía y legitimidad absoluta a su acción sobre la naturaleza. Surgieron con gran fuerza numerosos grupos (...) ecologistas que adoptaron un pensamiento que responde al nombre de "ecología profunda" o "Deep Ecology" descrito por primera vez por Arme Naess en un artículo publicado por la revista Inquiry y titulado "The Shallow and the Deep, Long Range Ecology Movement". Los principios que proponía este movimiento (Naess 1984) pueden ser resumidos en ocho grandes puntos: 1) la vida de los seres no humanos es un valor en sí: 2) la riqueza y la diversidad de estas formas de vida son también valores en sí; 3) los seres humanos no pueden intervenir de manera destructiva en la vida; 4) a este respecto, la intervención humana actual es eminentemente excesiva; 5) por consiguiente, las reglas de juego deben ser radicalmente modificadas; 6) esta modificación radical debe hacerse tanto a nivel de las estructuras económicas como de las estructuras ideológicas y culturales; 7) a nivel ideológico, el cambio principal consiste en apreciar más la calidad de la vida que el goce de los bienes materiales; 8) las personas que acepten estos principios tienen la obligación de contribuir, directa o indirectamente a la realización de los cambios fundamentales que aquellos implican. (shrink)

There is a long tradition in formal epistemology and in the psychology of reasoning to investigate indicative conditionals. In psychology, the propositional calculus was taken for granted to be the normative standard of reference. Experimental tasks, evaluation of the participants’ responses and psychological model building, were inspired by the semantics of the material conditional. Recent empirical work on indicative conditionals focuses on uncertainty. Consequently, the normative standard of reference has changed. I argue why neither logic nor standard probability theory (...) provide appropriate rationality norms for uncertain conditionals. I advocate coherence based probability logic as an appropriate framework for investigating uncertain conditionals. Detailed proofs of the probabilistic non-informativeness of a paradox of the material conditional illustrate the approach from a formal point of view. I survey selected data on human reasoning about uncertain conditionals which additionally support the plausibility of the approach from an empirical point of view. (shrink)

A number of recent and influential accounts of military ethics have argued that there exists a distinctive “role morality” for members of the armed services—a “warrior code.” A “good warrior” is a person who cultivates and exercises the “martial” or “warrior” virtues. By transforming combat into a “desk job” that can be conducted from the safety of the home territory of advanced industrial powers without need for physical strength or martial valour, long-range robotic weapons, such as the “Predator” (...) and “Reaper” drones fielded by the United States, call the relevance of the “martial virtues” into question. This chapter investigates the implications of these developments for conceptions of military virtue and, consequently, for the future of war. (shrink)

Recent evidence points to widespread underconnectivity in autistic brains owing to deviant white matter, the fibers that make long connections between areas of the cortex. Subjects with autism show measurably fewer long-range connections between the parietal and prefrontal cortices. These findings may help shed light on the current debate in the consciousness literature about whether conscious states require both prefrontal and parietal/temporal components. If it can be shown that people with autism have conscious states despite such underconnectivity, (...) this would constitute an argument for the claim that conscious states can exist in posterior cortex without associated prefrontal activity. This in turn lends support to a class of theories according to which microconsciousness is possible—consciousness in small areas of cortex without active connections to the prefrontal cortex, as opposed to the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness, according to which conscious states can only occur when posterior cortical areas (in the parietal or temporal lobes) have active connections to the prefrontal cortex. In this chapter, after listing several candidate examples of consciousness without accompanying prefrontal connections, I will argue that autism provides yet another such example. I will also examine a recent version of the higher-order theory that acknowledges these cases of consciousness without prefrontal activity and, instead depicts consciousness as requiring higher-order thoughts located in posterior cortex. In the final section, I will examine the consequences of these views for our understanding of the metaphysical nature of consciousness itself—the classic mind-body problem. (shrink)

The thresholds of human observers detecting line targets improve significantly when the targets are presented in a spatial context of collinear inducing stimuli. This phenomenon is referred to as spatial facilitation, and may reflect the output of long-range interactions between cortical feature detectors. Spatial facilitation has thus far been observed with luminance-defined, achromatic stimuli on achromatic backgrounds. This study compares spatial facilitation with line targets and collinear, edge-like inducers defined by luminance contrast to spatial facilitation with targets and (...) inducers defined by color contrast. The results of a first experiment show that achromatic inducers facilitate the detection of achromatic targets on gray and colored backgrounds, but tend to suppress the detection of chromatic targets. Chromatic inducers facilitate the detection of chromatic targets on gray and colored backgrounds, but tend to suppress the detection of achromatic targets. Chromatic spatial facilitation appears to be strongest when inducers and background are isoluminant. The results of a second experiment show that spatial facilitation with chromatic targets and inducers requires a longer exposure duration of the inducers than spatial facilitation with achromatic targets and inducers, which is already fully effective at an inducer exposure of 30 ms only. The findings point towards two separate mechanisms for spatial facilitation with collinear form stimuli: one that operates in the domain of luminance, and one that operates in the domain of color contrast. These results are consistent with neural models of boundary and surface formation which suggest that achromatic and chromatic visual cues are represented on different cortical surface representations that are capable of selectively attracting attention. Multiple copies of these achromatic and chromatic surface representations exist corresponding to different ranges of perceived depth from an observer, and each can attract attention to itself. Color and contrast differences between inducing and test stimuli, and transient responses to inducing stimuli, can cause attention to shift across these surface representations in ways that sometimes enhance and sometimes interfere with target detection. (shrink)

In the United States, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues has proposed deliberative democracy as an approach for dealing with ethical issues surrounding synthetic biology. Deliberative democracy might similarly help us as we update the regulation of human subjects research. This paper considers how the values that deliberative democratic engagement aims to realize can be realized in a human subjects research context. Deliberative democracy is characterized by an ongoing exchange of ideas between participants, and an effort to (...) justify decisions that bind participants by appeal to reasons that the participants can understand and share. Even when unanimous agreement is not reached, the active participation of everyone along with the requirement that reasons be made accessible enhances the legitimacy of the ultimate outcome. Importantly, deliberative democratic structures avoid strict hierarchies and place participants, as much as possible, in the position of equals. Human subjects research has some features that may make deliberative democratic principles seem initially unappealing. For one, there are asymmetries in knowledge between expert researchers conducting the research and participants in the research process. For another, statistical validity is made easiest by research paradigms that produce standardized, quantitative data, which can be difficult to achieve if research participants are given the power to deliberatively reshape the research design as it progresses. These and other problems have tended to produce a human subjects research process where subjects do not actively participate in shaping research, but rather consent to a predefined set of interventions designed by expert researchers and vetted by Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). In this paper, I suggest some ways in which human subjects research could do more to realize deliberative democratic values, and, in particular, how a revised Common Rule might help to realize these values. First, research participants could be treated not as passive subjects but instead involved in research design, ethical review, and the ongoing conduct and dissemination of research. Such participation might involve, for instance, including people who have served as research subjects on IRBs, or replacing IRB oversight for certain forms of research exempted from IRB oversight under a revised Common Rule with oversight by a body of community members or research subjects. It might also involve having the oversight of research that uses more participatory models be more participatory and less hierarchical in nature. I also raise questions about the exemption of research on public benefit programs from any research-level oversight and from consent requirements. While IRBs are likely not the correct overseers, there may be good reason to view such research with a critical eye, because of its potential for long-range impacts on the lives of participants. By giving research subjects a greater voice in research that aims at fine-tuning public benefit programs on which subjects rely, a deliberative oversight process has the potential to recast research participation as a form of active democratic participation and to address a “democratic deficit” in public health. Numerous proposals regarding health care have called for greater participation by laypeople and a more nonhierarchical approach to setting health priorities. Involving lay research subjects in the conduct of public benefits research and other forms of public health research may help to further these goals. (shrink)

In a recent article appearing in this journal, Theresa Scavenius compellingly argues that the traditional “rational-individualistic” conception of responsibility is ill-suited to accounting for the sense in which moral agents share in responsibility for both contributing to the causes and, proactively, working towards solutions for climate change. Lacking an effective moral framework through which to make sense of individual moral responsibility for climate change, many who have good intentions and the means to contribute to solutions for climate change tend to (...) dismiss or put off addressing the root causes. With this tendency arises the practical problem that climate change calls for urgent global collective action, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation, in order to prevent global temperature rise from exceeding 2C and avoid worst case climate scenarios. In this paper, I develop a phenomenological theory of ecological responsibility which addresses the conceptual problem Scavenius brings out and contributes to clarifying the sense in which moral agents share responsibility for both the causes and solutions for climate change. To develop this theory, I draw from, combine, and transform insights from the late work of Husserl on open horizons, transcendental intersubjectivity, and genetic phenomenology with breakthroughs from Emmanuel Levinas in articulating an original, asymmetrical theory of unlimited, diachronic responsibility. In drawing from Husserl, I show how what Levinas describes as the source of a demand for unlimited, diachronic responsibility can be phenomenologically reinterpreted in terms of a horizon of indeterminacy. I then show how horizons of indeterminacy arise in phenomenological descriptions of both human and nonhuman entities in such a way that discloses the demand for responsibility as a broad-ranging demand for unlimited, diachronic ecological responsibility. An important implication of this phenomenological theory of ecological responsibility is that it contributes to clarifying the sense in which individual moral agents share in responsibility for long range collective moral problems such as climate change. (shrink)

Bacteria do many things as organized populations. We have recently learned much about the molecular basis of intercellular communication among prokaryotes. Colonies display bacterial capacities for multicellular coordination which can be useful in nature where bacteria predominantly grow as films, chains, mats and colonies. E. coli colonies are organized into differentiated non-clonal populations and undergo complex morphogenesis. Multicellularity regulates many aspects of bacterial physiology, including DNA rearrangement systems. In some bacterial species, colony development involves swarming (active migration of cell groups). (...) Swarm colony development displays precise geometrical controls and periodic phenomena. Motile E. coli cells in semi-solid media form organized patterns due to chemotactic autoaggregation. On poor media, B. subtilis forms branched colonies using group motility and long-range chemical signalling. The significances of bacterial colony patterns thus reside in a deeper understanding of prokaryotic biology and evolution and in experimental systems for studying self-organization and morphogenesis. (shrink)

There is a broad consensus, within the interlocking system of art institutions, on the goals viewed as worth achieving. Artists, for example, will strive to realize broadly formalist values in their work; critics will strive to discern and articulate the achievement of such values; dealers will strive to discover and promote artists whose work successfully reflects these standards; and collectors will strive to acquire and exchange such work.The long-range effect of this tightly defended consensus is that the art (...) practitioners who share it determine - through their shared values and practices, and the economic and social factors that determine them - the criteria of critical evaluation for all art that aspires to entry into existing art institutions. I shall describe this as a state of critical hegemony. That is, the socioeconomically determined aesthetic interests of these individuals define not only what counts as "good" and "bad" art, but what counts as art, period. (shrink)

Starting with the results of Li et al. in 1992 there is valuable interest in finding long range correlations in DNA sequences since it raises questions about the role of introns and intron-containing genes. In the present paper we studied two sequences that are the human T-cell receptor alpha/delta locus, Gen-Bank name HUMTCRADCV, a noncoding chromosomal fragment of M = 97630 bases (composed of less than 10% of coding regions), and the Escherichia Coli K12, Gen-Bank name ECO110K, a (...) genomic fragment with M = 111401 bases consisting of mostly coding regions and containing more that 80% of coding regions. We attributed the value (+1) to the purines and the value (-1) to the pirimidines and to such reconstructed random walk we applied the method of the Recurrence Quantification Analysis(RQA) that was introduced by Zbilut and Webber in 1994. By using dimension D=1 and Embedded Dimensions D=3 and D=5, we obtain some indicative results. Also by a simple eye examination of the reconstructed maps, the differences between coding and non coding regions are evident and impressive and consist in the presence in noncoding regions of long patches of the same colour that are absent in the coding sequence. At first sight this suggests a simple explanation to the concept of „long-range‟ correlation. On the quantitative plane, we used the %Rec., the %Det., the Ratio, the Entropy, the %Lam., and the Lmax that, as explained in detail in the text, represent the basic variables of RQA. The significant result that we have here is that both Lmax and Laminarity exhibit very large values in HUMTCRADCV and actually different in values respect to ECO110K where such variables assume more modest values. Therefore we suggest that there is the observed difference between HUMTCRADCV and ECO110K. The claimed higher long-range correlations of introns respect to exons from many authors may be explained here in reasonof such found higher values of Lmax and of Laminarity in HUMTCRADCV respect to ECO110K. (shrink)

Some economists, notably Gary Becker, claim that economic analysis is applicable to any decision, ethical or otherwise. Ethical principles within Objectivist Ethics are based on long-range success— life being the measure of success. This paper examines these different approaches to decision-making. Decision theory and Rand's Benevolent Universe Premise form the basis for the analysis.

A range of developing countries and international advocacy organizations have argued that wealthy countries, as a result of their greater historical contribution to human-induced climate change, owe a ?climate debt? to poor countries. Critics of this argument have claimed that it is incoherent or morally objectionable. In this essay we clarify the concept of climate debt and assess its value for conceptualizing responsibilities associated with global climate change and for guiding international climate negotiations. We conclude that the idea of (...) a climate debt can be coherently formulated, and that while some understandings of the idea of climate debt could lead to morally objectionable conclusions, other accounts would not. However, we argue that climate debt nevertheless provides an unhelpful frame for advancing global justice through international climate negotiations ? the only existing means of resolving political conflict over the collective action problems posed by human-induced climate change ? due to its retrospective and potentially adversarial emphasis, and to problems of measurement. (shrink)

This article aims to clarify how aspects of current chemical understanding relate to some important contemporary problems of philosophy. The first section points out that the long-running philosophical debates concerning how properties stay together in substances have neglected the important topic of structure-determining closure. The second part describes several chemically-important types of closure and the third part shows how such closures ground the properties of chemical substances. The fourth section introduces current discussions of structural realism (SR) and contextual emergence: (...) the final sections reconsider the coherence of the properties of substances and concludes that recognition that structures qualify as determinants of specific outcomes—as ‘causes’ as that designation is used in Standard English—clarifies how properties stay together in chemical entities, and by analogy, how characteristics cohere in ordinary items. (shrink)

This essay concerns a philosophical examination of the nature of mind and the relevant implications for mental health. Traditionally, realism and constructivism are regarded as two contrastive positions in explaining the nature of mind. While realists take discovery of reality as the main function of mind, constructivists regard it as creation of reality. Hence, epistemologically, realists emphasize on correspondence to reality as the criterion of validity or truth of the mind's contents, whereas constructivists regard the inner coherence of constructs (...) as the main criterion. inner coherence of constructs or resolving inner conflicts; capability of constructs for adaption to problematic situations; and correspondence to reality as an ideal in the long run are the discussions and aims of this paper. (shrink)

There is a non-trivial chance that sometime in the (perhaps somewhat distant) future, someone will build an artificial general intelligence that will surpass human-level cognitive proficiency and go on to become "superintelligent", vastly outperforming humans. The advent of superintelligent AI has great potential, for good or ill. It is therefore imperative that we find a way to ensure-long before one arrives-that any superintelligence we build will consistently act in ways congenial to our interests. This is a very difficult challenge (...) in part because most of the final goals we could give an AI admit of so-called "perverse instantiations". I propose a novel solution to this puzzle: instruct the AI to love humanity. The proposal is compared with Yudkowsky's Coherent Extrapolated Volition, and Bostrom's Moral Modeling proposals. (shrink)

Philosophers have long been interested in a series of interrelated questions about natural kinds. What are they? What role do they play in science and metaphysics? How do they contribute to our epistemic projects? What categories count as natural kinds? And so on. Owing, perhaps, to different starting points and emphases, we now have at hand a variety of conceptions of natural kinds—some apparently better suited than others to accommodate a particular sort of inquiry. Even if coherent, this situation (...) isn’t ideal. My goal in this article is to begin to articulate a more general account of ‘natural kind phenomena’. While I do not claim that this account should satisfy everyone—it is built around a certain conception of the epistemic role of kinds and has an obvious pragmatic flavour—I believe that it has the resources to go further than extant alternatives, in particular the homeostatic property cluster view of kinds. (shrink)