We describe a strategy that is being used for the horizontal integration of warfighter intelligence data within the framework of the US Army’s Distributed Common Ground System Standard Cloud (DSC) initiative. The strategy rests on the development of a set of ontologies that are being incrementally applied to bring about what we call the ‘semantic enhancement’ of data models used within each intelligence discipline. We show how the strategy can help to overcome familiar tendencies to stovepiping of intelligence data, and (...) describe how it can be applied in an agile fashion to new data resources in ways that address immediate needs of intelligence analysts. (shrink)

We describe on-going work on IAO-Intel, an information artifact ontology developed as part of a suite of ontologies designed to support the needs of the US Army intelligence community within the framework of the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS-A). IAO-Intel provides a controlled, structured vocabulary for the consistent formulation of metadata about documents, images, emails and other carriers of information. It will provide a resource for uniform explication of the terms used in multiple existing military dictionaries, thesauri and metadata registries, (...) thereby enhancing the degree to which the content formulated with their aid will be available to computational reasoning. (shrink)

This paper examines the logic of conditional obligation, which originates from the works of Hansson, Lewis, and others. Some weakened forms of transitivity of the betterness relation are studied. These are quasi-transitivity, Suzumura consistency, acyclicity and the interval order condition. The first three do not change the logic. The axiomatic system is the same whether or not they are introduced. This holds true under a rule of interpretation in terms of maximality and strong maximality. The interval order condition gives rise (...) to a new axiom. Depending on the rule of interpretation, this one changes. With the rule of maximality, one obtains the principle known as disjunctive rationality. With the rule of strong maximality, one obtains the Spohn axiom (also known as the principle of rational monotony, or Lewis’ axiom CV). A completeness theorem further substantiates these observations. For interval order, this yields the finite model property and decidability of the calculus. (shrink)

Do you know who you are? If the question seems unclear, it might owe to the notion of ‘knowing-wh’ (knowing-who, knowing-what, knowing-when, etc.). Such knowledge contrasts with ‘knowing-that’, the more familiar topic of epistemologists. But these days, knowing-wh is receiving more attention than ever, and here we will survey three current debates on the nature of knowing-wh. These debates concern, respectively, (1) whether all knowing-wh is reducible to knowing-that (‘generalized intellectualism’), (2) whether all knowing-wh is relativized to a contrast proposition (...) (‘contrastivism about knowing-wh’), and (3) whether the context-sensitivity of knowing-wh is a semantic or purely pragmatic phenomenon (‘contextualism vs. invariantism about knowing-wh’). (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to examine stakeholder identification and prioritization by managers using the power, legitimacy, and urgency framework of Mitchell et al. (Academy of Management Review 22, 853–886; 1997). We use a multi-method, comparative case study of two large-scale sporting event organizing committees, with a particular focus on interviews with managers at three hierarchical levels. We support the positive relationship between number of stakeholder attributes and perceived stakeholder salience. Managers’ hierarchical level and role have direct and moderating (...) effects on stakeholder identification and perceived salience. We also found that most stakeholders were definitive, dominant, or dormant types – the other five types were rare. Power has the most important effect on salience, followed by urgency and legitimacy. Based on our case study, we offer several ways to advance the theory of stakeholder identification and salience. (shrink)

_Self-Reflection for the Opaque Mind_ attempts to solve a grave problem about critical self-reflection. Psychological studies indicate not just that we are bad at detecting our own "ego-threatening" thoughts; they also suggest that we are ignorant of even our ordinary thoughts. However, self-reflection presupposes an ability to know one’s own thoughts. So if ignorance is the norm, why attempt self-reflection? While admitting the psychological data, this book argues that we are infallible in a limited range of self-discerning judgments—that in some (...) cases, these judgments are self-fulfilling or self-verifying. Even so, infallibility does not imply indubitability, and the author does not wish to provide a "foundation" for empirical knowledge. The point is rather to explain how self-reflection as a rational activity is possible. The book will be of interest to scholars working on the issue of self-reflection across a wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science. (shrink)

What are mental states? When we talk about people’s beliefs or desires, are we talking about what is happening inside their heads? If so, might cognitive science show that we are wrong? Might it turn out that mental states do not exist? Mental fictionalism offers a new approach to these longstanding questions about the mind. Its core idea is that mental states are useful fictions. When we talk about mental states, we are not formulating hypotheses about people’s inner machinery. Instead, (...) we simply talk "as if" people had certain inner states, such as beliefs or desires, in order to make sense of their behaviour. This is the first book dedicated to exploring mental fictionalism. Featuring contributions from established authors as well as up-and-coming scholars in this burgeoning field, the book reveals the exciting potential of a fictionalist approach to the mind, as well as the challenges it faces. In doing so, it offers a fresh perspective on foundational debates in the philosophy of mind, such as the nature of mental states and folk psychology, as well as hot topics in the field, such as embodied cognition and mental representation. Mental Fictionalism: Philosophical Explorations essential reading for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and professionals alike. (shrink)

Entry on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. A summary of the literature on whether externalism about thought content precludes non-empirical knowledge of one's own thoughts.

Over 115 000 people are waiting for life-saving organ transplants, of whom a small fraction will receive transplants and many others will die while waiting. Existing efforts to expand the number of available organs, including increasing the number of registered donors and procuring organs in uncontrolled environments, are crucial but unlikely to address the shortage in the near future and will not improve donor/recipient compatibility or organ quality. If successful, organ bioengineering can solve the shortage and improve functional outcomes. Studying (...) manufactured organs in animal models has produced valuable data, but is not sufficient to understand viability in humans. Before risking manufactured organ experimentation in living humans, study of bioengineered organs in recently deceased humans would facilitate evaluation of the function of engineered tissues and the complex interactions between the host and the transplanted tissue. Although such studies do not pose risk to human subjects, they pose unique ethical challenges concerning the previous wishes of the deceased, rights of surviving family members, effective operation and fair distribution of medical services, and public transparency. This article investigates the ethical, legal and social considerations in performing engineered organ research on the recently deceased. (shrink)

Here I explore the prospects for fictionalism about the mental, modeled after fictionalism about possible worlds. Mental fictionalism holds that the mental states posited by folk psychology do not exist, yet that some sentences of folk psychological discourse are true. This is accomplished by construing truths of folk psychology as “truths according to the mentalistic fiction.” After formulating the view, I identify five ways that the view appears self-refuting. Moreover, I argue that this cannot be fixed by semantic ascent or (...) by a kind of primitivism. Even so, I also show that the “self-refutation” charges are subtly question-begging. Nevertheless, the reply reveals that a mental fictionalist ought to be a kind of quietist. (shrink)

In this seminal work, acclaimed philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels deals with the problem of the nature of order after the “shattering of the world,” and the loss of the idea of a universal or fundamental order._ _ Order in the Twilight__ unites phenomenological methodology with recent work on the theory of order, normativity, and dialogue, as well as structuralism and Gestalt theory. Philosophically stringent, it expresses a more optimistic attitude than much modern philosophy, especially deconstruction._ Waldenfels passes the question of order (...) through numerous defining aspects, and concludes that there is not one global order, but rather various conflicting domains of order. Whenever the boundary of a vital or experiential domain is crossed, a discourse speaks at the boundary, not about it, and across a threshold without abolishing it. The rest is rationalization, i.e., an attempt to find a place in the respective order for what is to-be-ordered. But why, the author concludes, should a theory be more unambiguous than reality? _ Order in the Twilight__ is an important book at this time, because it may help lift the humanities out of the skeptical, relativistic disarray in which they have been embroiled in recent decades. Waldenfels does not attempt to dictate what reality should be; rather, he is open to any valid evidences. His book offers a solid footing to the human and social sciences as they seek to escape from deconstructive irrationalism. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s rule-following argument suggests that linguistic understanding does not consist in knowing interpretations, whereas Kripkenstein’s version suggests that meaning cannot be metaphysically fixed by interpretations. In the present paper, rule-following considerations are used to suggest that certain ontological questions cannot be answered by interpretations. Specifically, if the aim is to specify the ontology of a language, an interpretation cannot answer what object an expression of L denotes, if the interpretations are themselves L-expressions. Briefly, that’s because the ontology of such interpretations (...) would naturally be in question as much as the expressions they interpret. So in order to settle the question of ontology, the interpretations themselves would need to be interpreted, and thus a regress. I conclude that knowing the answer to what ontology underlies L cannot be a matter of knowing interpretations. The paper ends with a quietist conclusion; the slogan is that empirical science is ontology enough, or rather, it is about all the ontology one should expect. (shrink)

This paper reports completeness results for dyadic deontic logics in the tradition of Hansson’s systems. There are two ways to understand the core notion of best antecedent-worlds, which underpins such systems. One is in terms of maximality, and the other in terms of optimality. Depending on the choice being made, one gets different evaluation rules for the deontic modalities, but also different versions of the so-called limit assumption. Four of them are disentangled, and compared. The main observation of this paper (...) is that, even in the partial order case, the contrast between maximality and optimality is not as significant as one could expect, because the logic remains the same whatever notion of best is used. This is established by showing that, given analogous properties for the betterness relation, the same system is sound and complete with respect to its intended modelling. The chief result of this paper concerns Åqvist’s system F supplemented with the principle of cautious monotony. It is established that, under the maximality rule, F + is sound and complete with respect to the class of models in which the betterness relation is required be reflexive and smooth . From this, a number of spin-off results are obtained. First and foremost, it is shown that a similar determination result holds for optimality; that is, under the optimality rule, F + is also sound and complete with respect to the class of models in which the betterness relation is reflexive and smooth . Other spin-off results concern classes of models in which further constraints are placed on the betterness relation, like totalness and transitivity. (shrink)

In Jacques Lacan's view, a woman is a reduced object of Phallic Power through the sacred path. Women are therefore "not all" in their desire. Lacan undertakes a localisation in the "Name of Father", where wo/man is given the vacuous place in the play of substitutions. Following Lacan, we attempt at an interpretation of the feminine condition.

Descartes held the view that a subject has infallible beliefs about the contents of her thoughts. Here, I first examine a popular contermporary defense of this claim, given by Burge, and find it lacking. I then offer my own defense appealing to a minimal thesis about the compositionality of thoughts. The argument has the virtue of refraining from claims about whether thoughts are “in the head;” thus, it is congenial to both internalists and externalists. The considerations here also illuminate how (...) a subject may have epistemicially priviledged and a priori beliefs about her own thoughts. (shrink)

This paper attacks the modal ontological argument, as advocated by Plantinga among others. Whereas other criticisms in the literature reject one of its premises, the present line is that the argument is invalid. This becomes apparent once we run the argument assuming fictionalism about possible worlds. Broadly speaking, the problem is that if one defines “x” as something that exists, it does not follow that there is anything satisfying the definition. Yet unlike non-modal ontological arguments, the modal argument commits this (...) “existential fallacy” not in relation to the definition of ‘God’. Rather, it occurs in relation to the modal facts quantified over within a Kripkean modal logic. In brief, we can describe the modal facts by whichever logic we prefer—yet it does not follow that there are genuine modal facts, as opposed to mere facts-according-to-the-fiction. A broader consequence of the discussion is that the existential fallacy is an issue for many projects in “armchair metaphysics.”. (shrink)

In “Does Controlled Donation after Circulatory Death Violate the Dead Donor Rule?” the authors maintain that compliance with the dead donor rule (DDR) does not require a valid determination of deat...

« Réfléchir aux similarités entre des répertoires très éloignés dans le temps et l’espace permet parfois de repenser à nouveaux frais les oppositions catégorielles qui nous servent à appréhender les genres musicaux. C’est ce qu’avait fait Simha Arom dans un article sur les parentés inattendues entre polyphonies africaines et polyphonies médiévales. En décal(qu)ant ce rapprochement avec la musique techno née à Detroit dans les années 1980-1990, on propose de montrer que l’opposition entre musiques savantes, traditionnelles et populaires, opérante dans le (...) monde occidental depuis le début du xix e siècle, gagne à être enrichie par d’autres grilles d’analyse pour complexifier la cartographie des objets musicaux qui peuplent le monde de la musique aujourd’hui. ». (shrink)

It is a consequence of Quine’s confirmation holism that the logical laws are in principle revisable. Some have worried this is at odds with another dictum in Quine, viz., that any translation which construes speakers as systematically illogical is ipso facto inadequate. In this paper, I try to formulate exactly what the problem is here, and offer a solution to it by (1) disambiguating the term ‘logic,’ and (2) appealing to a Quinean understanding of ‘necessity.’ The result is that the (...) different theses in Quine’s philosophy of logic are to be situated within different contexts of inquiry. (shrink)

In this essay I advance major criticisms of recent work on the concept of liberty by, Among others, I berlin, G maccallum, H j mccluskey, S I benn, And f oppenheim. Emerging from these critical analyses is a new definition of 'liberty, In the spirit of negative liberalism', Which differentiates it from the related but distinct goods of human autonomy, Opportunity, Ability, Power, And self-Development.

The paper begins with a defence of a new definition of privacy as the absence of undocumented personal knowledge. In the middle section, I criticise alternative accounts of privacy. Finally, I show how my definition can be worked into contemporary American Law.

The aim of this paper is to strengthen the point made by Horty about the relationship between reason holism and moral particularism. In the literature prima facie obligations have been considered as the only source of reason holism. I strengthen Horty’s point in two ways. First, I show that contrary-to-duties provide another independent support for reason holism. Next I outline a formal theory that is able to capture these two sources of holism. While in simple settings the proposed account coincides (...) with Horty’s one, this is not true in more complicated or “realistic” settings in which more than two norms collide. My chosen formalism is so-called input/output logic. A bottom-line example is introduced. It raises the issue of whether the conventional wisdom is right in assuming that normative reasons run parallel to epistemic ones. (shrink)

È questa la prima raccolta completa dei frammenti relativi a questo autore, comprendente anche testimonianze biografiche che precedentemente non erano state prese in considerazione. This is the first comprehensive collection of fragments related to this author, including biographical accounts that had not previously been considered.

Some contemporary philosophers suggest that we know just by introspection that folk psychological states exist. However, such an "armchair refutation" of eliminativism seems too easy. I first attack two strategems, inspired by Descartes, on how such a refutation might proceed. However, I concede that the Cartesian intuition that we have direct knowledge of representational states is very powerful. The rest of this paper then offers an error theory of how that intuition might really be mistaken. The idea is that introspection (...) does not detect any folk psychological states, but rather detects neural states that dispose us to certain sorts of linguistic behavior. Briefly, rather than detecting a mental appearance of the state-of-affairs that I am sitting near the fire, introspection detects a state disposing me to assert "It appears to me that I am sitting by the fire." The nature of this linguistic-dispositional state is then given a connectionist underpinning, where inputs from introspection lead to such assertive behavior. The Cartesian certainty we feel in self-ascribing such appearances is also explained. Even though I do not endorse such an error theory outright, I suggest that its tenability is enough to undercut introspection arguments against eliminativism. (shrink)