To fully embrace situations of radical uncertainty, we argue that the theory should abandon the requirements that narratives, in general, must lead toaffective evaluation, and that they have toexplain(and potentiallysimulate) all or even the bulk of the current decisional context. Evidence from studies of incidental learning show that narrative schemata can bias decisions while remaining fragmentary, insufficient for prediction, and devoid of utility values.

The parallel distributed processing (PDP) perspective brings forward the important point that all semantic phenomena are based on analog underlying mechanisms, involving the weighted summation of multiple inputs by individual neurons. It falls short of indicating, however, how the essentially discrete nature of semantic processing may emerge at the cognitive level. Bridging this gap probably requires attractor networks.

Where the isocortex comes from is an important question, but even more important is understanding what it leads to – that is, what advantage is afforded by its peculiar organization in layers of distinct neuronal types. A computational hypothesis accounts for granulation and for the differentiation between supra- and infragranular pyramidal layers, as quantitatively advantageous to support fine topography in sensory maps.

What exactly is going on via fornical connections? Aggleton & Brown's target article correctly stresses their importance, but a detailed understanding of their role in memory appears to require fresh research approaches.

A series of intriguing experiments has emphasized the need to understand synchronization effects. Information theory is proving to be an important tool for understanding the computations performed by cortical circuits. Nevertheless, Phillips & Singer's target article fails to provide a convincing correlation between synchronous firing and information transmission, which could well prove to be anticorrelated.

Rather than a natural product, a computational analysis leads us to characterize déjà vu as a failure of memory retrieval, linked to the activation in neocortex of familiar items from a compositional memory in the absence of hippocampal input, and to a misappropriation by the self of what is of others.

The target article demonstrates how neurocognitive modellers should not be intimidated by challenges such as Jackendoff's and should explore neurally plausible implementations of linguistic constructs. The next step is to take seriously insights offlered by neuroscience, including the robustness allowed by analogue computation with distributed representations and the power of attractor dynamics in turning analogue into nearly discrete operations.

Striedter's book offers precious insight into the comparative neuroanatomy of vertebrate brains, but it stops short of addressing what their evolution is all about: how effectively neural networks process information important for survival. To understand the principles of brain evolution, neuroanatomy needs to be combined not only with genetics, neurophysiology, and ethology, but also with quantitative network analyses.

We show that, given extensive exploration of a three-dimensional volume, grid units can form with the approximate periodicity of a face-centered cubic crystal, as the spontaneous product of a self-organizing process at the single unit level, driven solely by firing rate adaptation.

During the twentieth century, the view that assertions and norms are valid insofar as they respond to principles independent of all local and temporal contexts came under attack from two perspectives: the partiality of translation and the intersubjective constitution of the self, understood as responsive to recognition. Defenses of universalism have by and large taken the form of a thinning out of substantive universalism into various forms of proceduralism. Alessandro Ferrara instead launches an entirely different strategy for transcending the (...) particularity of context without contradicting our pluralistic intuitions: a strategy centered on the exemplary universalism of judgment. Whereas exemplarity has long been thought to belong to the domain of aesthetics, this book explores the _other_ uses to which it can be put in our philosophical predicament, especially in the field of politics. After defining exemplarity and describing how something unique can possess universal significance, Ferrara addresses the force exerted by exemplarity, the nature of the judgment that discloses exemplarity, and the way in which the force of the example can bridge the difference between various contexts. Drawing not only on Kant's _Critique of the Power of Judgment_ but also on the work of Hannah Arendt, John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and Jürgen Habermas, Ferrara outlines a view of exemplary validity that is applicable to today's central philosophical issues, including public reason, human rights, radical evil, sovereignty, republicanism and liberalism, and religion in the public sphere. (shrink)

Qu’a donc « voulu dire » l’artiste? Qu’a-t-il recherché? Cette question peut sembler dépassée ou naïve, comme si l’œuvre se suffisait à elle-même. Pour Alessandro Pignocchi, il est impossible de comprendre nos relations aux œuvres d’art sans s’interroger sur les intentions de l’artiste. Les avancées récentes en sciences cognitives suggèrent en effet que chaque aspect de notre expérience d’une œuvre est façonné par les intentions que nous attribuons, pour la plupart inconsciemment, à l’artiste. Nous percevons par exemple, à notre (...) insu, de nombreuses propriétés des œuvres d’art – les traits d’un dessin, certains aspects de la structure des films ou des phrases d’un roman – comme le fruit d’intentions et d’actions que nous aurions nous-mêmes pu produire. Réflexion pluridisciplinaire, cet ouvrage revisite des thèmes classiques de la philosophie de l’art – le concept d’œuvre, la place de l’auteur, du contexte, le rapport de l’œuvre au temps, le statut du jugement artistique – et élabore une série d’outils de pensée visant à enrichir nos relations aux œuvres d’art. Alessandro Pignocchi est docteur de l’EHESS en philosophie et en sciences cognitives, membre de l’Institut Jean-Nicod. Il est aussi illustrateur. (shrink)

The field of AI safety aims to prevent increasingly capable artificially intelligent systems from causing humans harm. Research on moral alignment is widely thought to offer a promising safety strategy: if we can equip AI systems with appropriate ethical rules, according to this line of thought, they'll be unlikely to disempower, destroy or otherwise seriously harm us. Deontological morality looks like a particularly attractive candidate for an alignment target, given its popularity, relative technical tractability and commitment to harm-avoidance principles. I (...) argue that the connection between moral alignment and safe behavior is more tenuous than many have hoped. In general, AI systems can possess either of these properties in the absence of the other, and we should favor safety when the two conflict. In particular, advanced AI systems governed by standard versions of deontology need not be especially safe. (shrink)

Philosophers have rightly condemned lookism—that is, discrimination in favor of attractive people or against unattractive people—in education, the justice system, the workplace and elsewhere. Surprisingly, however, the almost universal preference for attractive romantic and sexual partners has rarely received serious ethical scrutiny. On its face, it’s unclear whether this is a form of discrimination we should reject or tolerate. I consider arguments for both views. On the one hand, a strong case can be made that preferring attractive partners is bad. (...) The idea is that choosing partners based on looks seems essentially similar to other objectionable forms of discrimination. (In particular, the preference for attractive partners is arguably both unfair and harmful to a significant degree.) One can try to resist this conclusion in several ways. I consider three possible replies. The first has to do with the possibility of controlling our partner preferences. The second pertains to attractiveness and “good genes”. The last attempts to link certain aspects of attractiveness to a prospective partner’s personality and values. I argue that the first two replies fail conclusively, while the third only amounts to a limited defense of a particular kind of attractiveness preference. So the idea that we should often avoid preferring attractive partners is compelling. (shrink)

The New Alexandrian Library is to be inaugurated at the end of 1998 on the royal site of the great ancient metropolis, that is, on the site of the Museum founded by Ptolemy I to enclose his mythical collection of books. This ambitious project of a “public research library “ was undertaken on the initiative of the Egyptian government and has, since 1986, received the support of UNESCO.

As people look for a way to ground their judgments of moral, political, aesthetic claims in the face of the postmodernists who claim nothing can be grounded, Reflective Authenticity attempts to rescue some of the critical ideals of the Enlightenment without falling prey to those who say that the Enlightenment's tenets of objectivity, reason, liberalism makes this impossible and in the face of multiculturalism, difference, and the death of subject, are outdated. Alessandro Ferrara suggests that the notion of reflective (...) authenticity offers the key to a new kind of exemplary universalism which, different from the generalizing universalism typical of modern thought, does not fall under the critique of foundationalism articulated by postmodernist thinkers. (shrink)

This contributed volume aims to reconsider the concept of individuation, clarifying its articulation with respect to contemporary problems in perceptual, neural, developmental, semiotic and social morphogenesis. The authors approach the ontogenetical issue by taking into account the morphogenetical process, involving the concept of individuation proposed by Gilbert Simondon and Gilles Deleuze. The target audience primarily comprises experts in the field but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students. The challenge of the genesis and constitution of "units" has always (...) been at the center of philosophical and scientific research. This ontogenetical issue is common to every discipline but it is articulated in different ways: in phenomenology of perception the constitution of perceptual units is at the base of gestalt field theories, in theoretical neuroscience synchronized neural assemblies are considered as correlates of conscious processes, in developmental embryogenesis the constitution of organs is the principle outcome of morphodynamic evolution while in social morphogenesis the constitution of coherent units is common to segmentary, gerarchic and functional differentiation. (shrink)

Much recent work on mathematical explanation has presupposed that the phenomenon involves explanatory proofs in an essential way. I argue that this view, ‘proof chauvinism’, is false. I then look in some detail at the explanation of the solvability of polynomial equations provided by Galois theory, which has often been thought to revolve around an explanatory proof. The article concludes with some general worries about the effects of chauvinism on the theory of mathematical explanation. 1Introduction 2Why I Am Not a (...) Proof Chauvinist 2.1Proof chauvinism and mathematical practice 2.2Proof chauvinism and philosophy 3An Example: Galois Theory and Explanatory Proof 4Conclusion. (shrink)

Philosophers of science since Nagel have been interested in the links between intertheoretic reduction and explanation, understanding and other forms of epistemic progress. Although intertheoretic reduction is widely agreed to occur in pure mathematics as well as empirical science, the relationship between reduction and explanation in the mathematical setting has rarely been investigated in a similarly serious way. This paper examines an important particular case: the reduction of arithmetic to set theory. I claim that the reduction is unexplanatory. In defense (...) of this claim, I offer evidence from mathematical practice, and I respond to contrary suggestions due to Steinhart, Maddy, Kitcher and Quine. I then show how, even if set-theoretic reductions are generally not explanatory, set theory can nevertheless serve as a legitimate foundation for mathematics. Finally, some implications of my thesis for philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science are discussed. In particular, I suggest that some reductions in mathematics are probably explanatory, and I propose that differing standards of theory acceptance might account for the apparent lack of unexplanatory reductions in the empirical sciences. (shrink)

Mathematicians distinguish between proofs that explain their results and those that merely prove. This paper explores the nature of explanatory proofs, their role in mathematical practice, and some of the reasons why philosophers should care about them. Among the questions addressed are the following: what kinds of proofs are generally explanatory (or not)? What makes a proof explanatory? Do all mathematical explanations involve proof in an essential way? Are there really such things as explanatory proofs, and if so, how do (...) they relate to the sorts of explanation encountered in philosophy of science and metaphysics? (shrink)

A great deal of work in analytic philosophy of art is related to defining what counts as art. So far, cognitive approaches to art have almost entirely ignored this literature. In this paper I discuss the role of intuition in analytic philosophy of art, to show how an empirical research program on art could take advantage of existing work in analytic philosophy. I suggest that the first step of this research program should be to understand how people intuitively categorize something (...) as art. Drawing on results from cognitive science and analytic philosophy, I show that the intuitive categorization of an artifact as art rests on the intentions attributed (frequently implicitly) to the creator of the artifact based both on its appearance and on background knowledge. I discuss how the issue of categorization is related to other empirical issues concerning our relationship to works of art, such as perception, appreciation, interpretation and evaluation. (shrink)

What has been called the new mechanistic philosophy conceives of mechanisms as the main providers of biological explanation. We draw on the characterization of the p53 gene in molecular oncology, to show that explaining a biological phenomenon implies instead a dynamic interaction between the mechanistic level—rendered at the appropriate degree of ontological resolution—and far more general explanatory tools that perform a fundamental epistemic role in the provision of biological explanations. We call such tools “explanatory frameworks”. They are called frameworks to (...) stress their higher level of generality with respect to bare mechanisms; on the other hand, they are called explanatory because, as we show in this paper, their importance in explaining biological phenomena is not secondary with respect to mechanisms. We illustrate how explanatory frameworks establish selective and local criteria of causal relevance that drive the search for, characterisation and usage of biological mechanisms. Furthermore, we show that explanatory frameworks allow for changes of scientific perspective on the causal relevance of mechanisms going beyond the account provided by the new mechanistic philosophy. (shrink)

semantic minimalism and moderte contextualism.

Keenan (1987) observed that trivial determiners built from basic existential determiners (e.g.,either zero or else more than zero) are allowed inthere-insertion contexts, and that trivial determiners built from basic non-existential determiners (e.g.,either all or else not all) are not. This result is unexpected under the analyses ofthere-sentences proposed in Barwise and Cooper (1981), Higginbotham (1987), and Keenan (1987). I argue that the class of NPs barred from the postverbal position ofthere-sentences (strong NPs) is correctly characterized in presuppositional terms, as suggested (...) in de Jong and Verkuyl (1985) and Lumsden (1988). According to this characterization, strong NPs share one of the defining components of definiteness proposed in Heim (1982), namely the Descriptive Content Condition (DCC). How to derive the prohibition against strong NPs inthere-insertion contexts (definiteness effect) from the fact that strong NPs meet the DCC is not obvious, however. I argue that accounting for this prohibition involves regarding the XP-coda in [there be NP XP] as providing the contextual domain for the interpretation of the postverbal NP. (shrink)

Alessandro Iorio untersucht Heideggers "Geschichte des Seins" unter den Voraussetzungen von verschiedenen Narrativitätstheorien. Einschlägige Arbeiten von Genette, Ricœur, Bachtin und Propp werden zum Ausgangspunkt einer narrativitätslogischen Analyse verschiedener Manuskripte gemacht (darunter auch die bisher veröffentlichten "Schwarzen Hefte"). Mit dieser Methode kann Iorio Momente von Heideggers Geschichts-Verständnis verdeutlichen, die in seinen bisherigen Interpretationen ausgespart wurden. Er zeigt ein Denken, das sich seiner erzählerischen Dynamik überlässt, ohne sich für reale historische Geschehnisse zu interessieren. Gerade in der "mytho-logischen" Überbietung real-historischer Ereignisse, betont (...) Heidegger, liege der eigentliche Anspruch der Philosophie. (shrink)

We show that the semi-linear ordering principle for continuous functions implies the determinacy of all Wadge and Lipschitz games.

In a recent series of important papers, Søren Overgaard has defended a disjunctivist reading of Edmund Husserl’s theory of perception. According to Overgaard, Husserl commits to disjunctivism when arguing that hallucination intrinsically differs from perception because only experiences of the latter kind carry singular content and, thereby, pick out individuals. This paper rejects that interpretation by invoking the theory of intentionality developed by Husserl in the Logical Investigations. It is claimed that this theory not only lacks the notion of singular (...) content, but it also entails the idea that perceptions and hallucinations belong to the same kind of experience. If that is correct, a commitment to conjuctivism on Husserl’s end follows, pace Overgaard. (shrink)

A number of companies allocate ownership rights to stakeholders different from shareholders, despite the fact that the law attributes these rights to the equity holders. This article contributes to an understanding of this evidence by developing a contingency model for the allocation of ownership rights. The model sheds light on why companies, despite pressures from the law, vary in their allocation of ownership rights. The model is based on the assumption that corporations increase their chance to survive and prosper if (...) the stakeholders supplying “critical contributions” receive the ownership rights. According to the model, “critical” contributions involve (1) contractual problems due to specific investments, long-term relationships, and low measurability; (2) the assumption of the uncertainty resting on the company; and (3) the supply of scarce and valuable resources. The model is dynamic because it also provides a basis for understanding why the allocation of ownership rights changes with time. Finally, the article presents the strategies companies can use to realize an efficient distribution of ownership rights among their stakeholders. (shrink)

An influential theory has it that metaphysical indeterminacy occurs just when reality can be made completely precise in multiple ways. That characterization is formulated by employing the modal apparatus of ersatz possible worlds. As quantum physics taught us, reality cannot be made completely precise. I meet the challenge by providing an alternative theory which preserves the use of ersatz worlds but rejects the precisificational view of metaphysical indeterminacy. The upshot of the proposed theory is that it is metaphysically indeterminate whether (...) p just in case it is neither true nor false that p, and no terms in ‘p’ are semantically defective. In other words, metaphysical indeterminacy arises when the world cannot be adequately described by a complete set of sentences defined in a semantically nondefective language. Moreover, the present theory provides a reductive analysis of metaphysical indeterminacy, unlike its influential predecessor. Finally, I argue that any adequate logic of a language with an indeterminate subject matter is neither compositional nor bivalent. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to expatiate on the poetic function of language on the basis of considerations by Jakobson and Waugh. I try to bring in the consideration that pragmatics plays an important role in elucidating the poetic function of language. Contextualism allows us to interpret a poem: referents must be fixed or need not be fixed due to the requirements of the discourse; citations are brought in through pragmatic ways; polyphony is achieved by taking into account the context (...) of previous analyses of a poetic text; the vicinity of a certain word, or concept or line is likely to affect the interpretation of a certain expression; the poetic text can take different forms, from graffiti to discourse at the market place, to discourse between lovers. All these forms of poetic text would not exist if the notion of poetry did not include the idea of semantic/pragmatic compression which is matched, in interpretation, by expansions. (shrink)

The way we represent the world in thought and language is shot through with indeterminacy: we speak of red apples and yellow apples without thereby committing to any sharp cutoff between the application of the predicate ‘red’ and of the predicate ‘yellow’. But can reality itself be indeterminate? In other words, can indeterminacy originate in the mind-independent world, and not only in our representations? If so, can the phenomenon also arise at the microscopic scale of fundamental physics? Section 1 of (...) this Element provides a brief overview of the question of indeterminacy. Section 2 discusses the thesis that the world is comprised of indeterminate objects, whereas Section 3 focuses on the thesis that there are indeterminate states of affairs. Finally, Section 4 is devoted to the case study of indeterminacy in quantum physics. (shrink)

The role of personal background knowledge—in particular knowledge about the context of production of an artwork—has been only marginally taken into account in cognitive approaches to art. Addressing this issue is crucial to enhancing these approaches’ explanatory power and framing their collaboration with the humanities (Bullot and Reber 2012). This paper sketches a model of the experience of artworks based on the mechanisms of intention attribution, and shows how this model makes it possible to address the issue of personal background (...) knowledge empirically. I claim that the role of intention attribution in art experience has been incorrectly accounted in the literature because of an overly narrow definition of “intention.” I suggest that the observer can recover not only the artist’s abstract projects, but any kind of mental states that have played a causal role during the production of the work. In addition, I suggest that this recovery occurs in large part unconsciously and/or implicitly. I provide support for these claims by distinguishing three families of psychological mechanisms of intention attribution that are activated by artworks: one involved in the cognition of artifacts, one devoted to communication, and one involved in action perception. (shrink)

Some computational phenomena rely essentially on pragmatic considerations, and seem to undermine the independence of the specification from the implementation. These include software development, deviant uses, esoteric languages and recent data-driven applications. To account for them, the interaction between pragmatics, epistemology and ontology in computational artefacts seems essential, indicating the need to recover the role of the language metaphor. We propose a User Levels (ULs) structure as a pragmatic complement to the Levels of Abstraction (LoAs)-based structure defining the ontology and (...) epistemology of computational artefacts. ULs identify a flexible hierarchy in which users bear their own semantic and normative requirements, possibly competing with the logical specification. We formulate a notion of computational act intended in its pragmatic sense, alongside pragmatic versions of implementation and correctness. (shrink)