In this paper, I provide an explication and defense of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of concept formation. I argue that at the core of this theory is a distinction between concepts proper and the kinds of generalities characteristic of perceptual experience, which I call “pre-conceptual generalities.” According to Merleau-Ponty, concepts are developed through a two-stage process: first, the establishment of such pre-conceptual generalities, and second, the clarification of these generalities into concepts. I provide phenomenological evidence for the existence of (...) pre-conceptual generalities and explain how they can serve to ground concept formation. To motivate Merleau-Ponty’s account, I consider objections raised by Husserl, Cassirer, and Sellars to the classical philosophical account of empirical concept formation, abstraction. I show that Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between concepts and pre-conceptual generalities provides a philosophically viable account of the formation of empirical concepts while avoiding the problems faced by accounts that rely on abstraction. (shrink)

This article presents two learning processes in order to explain how children at an early age can transform a complex sensory input to concepts and categories. The first process constructs the perceptual structures that emerge in children’s cognitive development by detecting invariants in the sensory input. The invariant structures involve a reduction in dimensionality of the sensory information. It is argued that this process generates the primary domains of space, objects and actions and that these domains can be represented as (...) conceptual spaces. Once the primary domains have been established, the second process utilizes covariances between different dimensions of the domains in order to identify natural clusters of entities. The clusters are then are used to determine concepts as regions in the spaces. As an application, the processes are used to resolve the so-called ‘complex first paradox’ that emerges from the fact that children, in general, learn nouns earlier than adjectives, even though nouns are semantically more complex than adjectives. (shrink)

The first main topic of this paper is a weak second-order theory that sits between firstorder Peano Arithmetic PA1 and axiomatized second-order Peano Arithmetic PA2 – namely, that much-investigated theory known in the trade as ACA0. What I’m going to argue is that ACA0, in its standard form, lacks a cogent conceptual motivation. Now, that claim – when the wraps are off – will turn out to be rather less exciting than it sounds. It isn’t that all the work (...) that has been done on ACA0 has been hopelessly misplaced: that would be a quite absurd suggestion. The mistake, if that’s what it is, has been a relatively small one. Still, we really ought to try to put things into conceptual good order here. That’s part of what philosophers are for. Here’s the structure of my main claim. On the one hand, interesting work on ACA0 actually only uses part of the strength of the theory: or as we might put it, the interesting work is actually carried on in a cut-down theory I’ll call ACA!. This theory, I’ll be claiming, does have a good conceptual motivation – it is in fact the theory that the putative conceptual grounding for ACA0 actually underpins. On the other hand, I’ll be arguing that original-strength ACA0 inductively inflates. I mean, to put it more carefully, that anyone who accepts ACA0 as a cogent theory can have no reason not to accept a certain significantly stronger theory, with a stronger induction principle. This stronger theory is standardly known as plain ACA. So, my claim comes to this: you can either go for the cut-down theory ACA!; or you can go for the much richer theory ACA. What you can’t do is – I mean, what you can’t have a stable conceptual motivation for doing – is to rest content with the intermediate strength ACA0 in its standard presentation. Yet in much of the literature, in particular in Simpson’s encyclopedic book Subsystems of Second-Order Arithmetic (1991), neither ACA! nor full ACA gets so much as a mention, and the conceptually unstable theory ACA0 gets all the glory. Why is my claim at all interesting? For at least two reasons.. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate strong logics of first and second order that have certain absoluteness properties. We begin with an investigation of first order logic and the strong logics ω-logic and β-logic, isolating two facets of absoluteness, namely, generic invariance and faithfulness. It turns out that absoluteness is relative in the sense that stronger background assumptions secure greater degrees of absoluteness. Our aim is to investigate the hierarchies of strong logics of first and second order that are generically invariant (...) and faithful against the backdrop of the strongest large cardinal hypotheses. We show that there is a close correspondence between the two hierarchies and we characterize the strongest logic in each hierarchy. On the first-order side, this leads to a new presentation of Woodin's Ω-logic. On the second-order side, we compare the strongest logic with full second-order logic and argue that the comparison lends support to Quine's claim that second-order logic is really set theory in sheep's clothing. (shrink)

Cornelius Castoriadis is one of the very few social and political philosophers – modern and ancient – for whom a concept of imagination is truly central. In his work, however, the role of imagination is so overarching that it becomes difficult to grasp its workings and consequences in detail, in particular in its relation to democracy as the political form in which autonomy is the core imaginary signification. This article will proceed by first suggesting some clarifications about Castoriadis’s employment of (...) the concept. This preparatory exploration will allow us in a second step to discuss why the idea of democracy is closely linked to tragedy, and why this linkage in turn is dependent on the centrality of imagination for human action. In a third conceptual step, finally, we suggest that any concept of imagination will need to take into account the plurality and diversity of the outcomes of the power of imagination. Thus, the question of the nature of the novelty that imagination creates needs to be addressed as well as the one of the agon in the face of different imagined innovations in a given democratic political setting. As a consequence of this shift in emphasis, to be elaborated further, one will be able to say more about one question of which Castoriadis was well aware, which he never addressed himself in detail, though: the decline and end of polities and political forms, the question of political mortality. (shrink)

Provided here is an account, both syntactic and semantic, of first-order and monadic second-order quantification theory for domains that may be non-atomic. Although the rules of inference largely parallel those of classical logic, there are important differences in connection with the identification of argument places and the significance of the identity relation.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toward the Materiality of Aesthetic ExperiencePeter de Bolla (bio)Over the last twenty years or so it has become a commonplace in discussions of "aesthetics" or of "art" in the most general sense to note that the term "aesthetics" was only very recently invented by Alexander Baumgarten in 1735, where it appears in his Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus [see Menke 40; Dickie; Eagleton]. But the force of (...) this observation in regard to the relative youth of the concept is rarely, if ever, commented upon. As many philosophers and critics have pointed out, Baumgarten's use of the term was not primarily angled at what today might be unproblematically called "artworks"—say, paintings in the European grand master tradition—since his new kind of investigation was to be a "science of sensual recognition," that is, a general inquiry into how we come to know the world from the evidence of our senses. But, as is also frequently remarked, early on in the tradition of speculation now associated with "aesthetics as the study of art" the mutual attraction (to put it in the most anodyne terms) of "art" and "aesthetics" seems to have been extremely strong. As Jonathan Ree remarks, "the real begetter of the philosophical doctrine connecting the arts with the empirical senses—what we might call the aesthetic theory of the arts—was Gotthold Ephraim Lessing" [58]. From this point on (for heuristic purposes it may be identified with the date of publication of Lessing's Laokoon in 1766), artworks, which heretofore had not required a specific branch of inquiry in order for them to make sense or be conceptually grounded as art, are almost universally assumed to require "aesthetic" contemplation or appreciation.1 It is curious, then, that before 1766 such a mode of experiencing artworks had not been felt to be lacking.One might understand this observation both historically and philosophically, and both approaches, it seems to me, are needed. In the case of the first, a number of material effects conspired across mid-eighteenth-century Europe to produce what was in essence the modern art market. These include the legal establishment of copyright, first in England in 1709 but only by the end of the century in France and Germany; the foundation of various institutions whose primary purpose was the promotion and establishment of the fine arts: academies of painting, sculpture, or letters either with or without royal patronage; the public exhibition of paintings (from 1737 in France and 1761 in England); the opening of royal collections to public view (during the second half of the century in London, Paris, Munich, Vienna and Rome); the development of public concerts of secular music (in small scale from the 1670s in England but only becoming fully integrated in fashionable social life by mid-century); the construction of purpose-built concert venues (the Gewandthaus in Leipzig, a former cloth merchant's hall, was remodeled in 1781 in order to accommodate a resident orchestra, in effect becoming the first dedicated concert hall in Europe); the foundation of literary periodicals and review media; the emergence of social spaces and rituals encompassing polite discussion of [End Page 19] literature (coffeehouses, the construction of dedicated library rooms in domestic settings); and the promotion of architecture to a fine art through various societies, competitions, and the public display of architectural drawings in exhibition contexts (the Royal Academy yearly show included both drawings and models). These and other material conditions helped define the fine arts and construct a market in and for them.2 By the 1770s the category of the "fine arts" was well established in Britain, Germany, and France: Charles Batteux's Les beaux arts reduit a un meme principe, first published in France in 1746, was quickly translated into English as The Polite Arts; or, a Dissertation on Poetry,Painting, Musick, Architecture, and Eloquence in 1749 and into German in 1751. By 1771 a four-volume General Theory of the Fine Arts had been published for the German public by J. G. Sulzer.All of this points to the fact that the concept of the "artwork" is subject to both historical and material pressures. Prior to the mid-eighteenth... (shrink)

In this paper, we describe the conceptual elusiveness of the notion of function as used in engineering practice. We argue that it should be accepted as an ambiguous notion, and then review philosophical argumentations in which engineering functions occur in order to identify the consequences of this ambiguity. Function is a key notion in engineering, yet is used by engineers systematically in a variety of meanings. First, we demonstrate that this ambiguous use is rational for engineers by considering the (...) role of functions in design methods and by analysing the ambiguity in terms of Kuhn’s notion of methodological incommensurability. Second, we discuss ontological and mereological analyses of engineering functions and describe a proof that subfunctions cannot formally be taken as parts of the functions they decompose. Engineering functions figure sometimes in philosophical work and are then typically taken as having an unambiguous, well-defined meaning. Finally, we therefore revisit work in philosophy of technology on the dual nature of technical artefacts, in philosophy of science on functional and mechanistic explanations, and in philosophy of biology on biological functions, and explore the consequences of the fact that engineering function is an ambiguous notion. It is argued that one of these consequences may be that also the notion of biological function has an ambiguous meaning. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction R. S. Peters and Analytic Philosophy of Education Revisiting First‐Order Ordinary Language‐Use Conclusion Notes References.

In this paper, we describe the conceptual elusiveness of the notion of function as used in engineering practice. We argue that it should be accepted as an ambiguous notion, and then review philosophical argumentations in which engineering functions occur in order to identify the consequences of this ambiguity. Function is a key notion in engineering, yet is used by engineers systematically in a variety of meanings. First, we demonstrate that this ambiguous use is rational for engineers by considering the (...) role of functions in design methods and by analysing the ambiguity in terms of Kuhn’s notion of methodological incommensurability. Second, we discuss ontological and mereological analyses of engineering functions and describe a proof that subfunctions cannot formally be taken as parts of the functions they decompose. Engineering functions figure sometimes in philosophical work and are then typically taken as having an unambiguous, well-defined meaning. Finally, we therefore revisit work in philosophy of technology on the dual nature of technical artefacts, in philosophy of science on functional and mechanistic explanations, and in philosophy of biology on biological functions, and explore the consequences of the fact that engineering function is an ambiguous notion. It is argued that one of these consequences may be that also the notion of biological function has an ambiguous meaning. (shrink)

The question of toleration matters more than ever. The politics of the twenty-first century is replete with both the successes and, all too often, the failures of toleration. Yet a growing number of thinkers and practitioners have argued against toleration. Some believe that liberal democracies are better served by different principles, such as respect of, or recognition for, people's ways of life. Others argue that because the liberal state should be entirely neutral or indifferent towards people's ways of life, it (...) can no longer be tolerant - it has no grounds on which it can object, and so there is nothing left to tolerate.Respecting Toleration provides a new, original, and provocative take on the question of toleration and its application to the politics of contemporary diversity. The volume demonstrates how toleration - despite its critics - is essential to any liberal political order. Peter Balint argues that from a conceptual viewpoint, toleration is entirely compatible with liberal politics; and from a normative viewpoint, it is utterly essential. The volume argues that if one cares about people living divergent lives, then it is liberal toleration that should be respected by legislators and policy makers, and not people's differences. It is a book that will shape the debate and demand a response from all who are interested in which political structures most fairly accommodate the competing ways of life that characterise contemporary diversity.Key Features:Develops a new framework of political tolerationProvides a clear demonstration and analysis of complex concepts and argumentsProvides extensive practical and theoretical examples. (shrink)

George Boolos's employment of plurals to give an ontologically innocent interpretation of monadic higher‐order quantification continues and extends a minority tradition in thinking about quantification and ontological commitment. An especially prominent member of that tradition is Stanislaw Leśniewski, and shall first draw attention to this work and its relation to that of Boolos. Secondly I shall stand up briefly for plurals as logically respectable expressions, while noting their limitations in offering ontologically deflationary accounts of higher‐order quantification. Thirdly I shall focus (...) on the key idea of ontological commitment and investigate its connection with the idea of truth‐making. Fourthly I shall consider how different interpretations of quantification may sideline Boolos's work, but finally I shall largely support his analysis of quantification involving nominal expressions, while arguing, in the spirit of Arthur Prior, that non‐nominal quantification is non‐committing. (shrink)

Two expressive limitations of an infinitary higher-order modal language interpreted on models for higher-order contingentism – the thesis that it is contingent what propositions, properties and relations there are – are established: First, the inexpressibility of certain relations, which leads to the fact that certain model-theoretic existence conditions for relations cannot equivalently be reformulated in terms of being expressible in such a language. Second, the inexpressibility of certain modalized cardinality claims, which shows that in such a language, higher-order contingentists cannot (...) express what is communicated using various instances of talk of ‘possible things’, such as ‘there are uncountably many possible stars’. (shrink)

Dennis Cato; Getting Clearer about ‘Getting Clearer’: R. S. Peters and second-order conceptual analysis, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 21, Issue 1.

Church’s type theory, aka simple type theory, is a formal logical language which includes classical first-order and propositional logic, but is more expressive in a practical sense. It is used, with some modifications and enhancements, in most modern applications of type theory. It is particularly well suited to the formalization of mathematics and other disciplines and to specifying and verifying hardware and software. It also plays an important role in the study of the formal semantics of natural language. When utilizing (...) it as a meta-logic to semantically embed expressive non-classical logics further topical applications are enabled in artificial intelligence and philosophy. A great wealth of technical knowledge can be expressed very naturally in it. With possible enhancements, Church’s type theory constitutes an excellent formal language for representing the knowledge in automated information systems, sophisticated automated reasoning systems, systems for verifying the correctness of mathematical proofs, and a range of projects involving logic and artificial intelligence. Some examples and further references are given in Sections 1.2.2 and 5 below. Type theories are also called higher-order logics, since they allow quantification not only over individual variables, but also over function, predicate, and even higher order variables. Type theories characteristically assign types to entities, distinguishing, for example, between numbers, sets of numbers, functions from numbers to sets of numbers, and sets of such functions. As illustrated in Section 1.2.2 below, these distinctions allow one to discuss the conceptually rich world of sets and functions without encountering the paradoxes of naive set theory. Church’s type theory is a formulation of type theory that was introduced by Alonzo Church in Church 1940. In certain respects, it is simpler and more general than the type theory introduced by Bertrand Russell in Russell 1908 and Whitehead & Russell 1927a. Since properties and relations can be regarded as functions from entities to truth values, the concept of a function is taken as primitive in Church’s type theory, and the λ-notation which Church introduced in Church 1932 and Church 1941 is incorporated into the formal language. Moreover, quantifiers and description operators are introduced in a way so that additional binding mechanisms can be avoided, λ-notation is reused instead. λ-notation is thus the only binding mechanism employed in Church’s type theory. (shrink)

In what sense do people doubt their understanding of reality when subject to gaslighting? I suggest that an answer to this question depends on the linguistic order at which a gaslighting exchange takes place. This marks a distinction between first-order and second-order gaslighting. The former occurs when there is disagreement over whether a shared concept applies to some aspect of the world, and where the use of words by a speaker is apt to cause hearers to doubt their interpretive abilities (...) without doubting the accuracy of their concepts. The latter occurs when there is disagreement over which concept should be used in a context, and where the use of words by a speaker is apt to cause hearers to doubt their interpretive abilities in virtue of doubting the accuracy of their concepts. Many cases of second-order gaslighting are unintentional: its occurrence often depends on contingent environmental facts. I end the article by focusing on the distinctive epistemic injustices of second-order gaslighting: metalinguistic deprivation, conceptual obscuration, and perspectival subversion. I show how each reliably has sequelae in terms of psychological and practical control. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article will take up the first two questions. With the first question, invited commentators express a range of opinion regarding the nature of psychiatric disorders, loosely divided into a realist position that the diagnostic categories represent real diseases that we can accurately name and know with our perceptual abilities, a middle, nominalist position that psychiatric disorders do exist in the real world but that our diagnostic categories are constructs that may or may not accurately represent the disorders out there, and finally a purely constructivist position that the diagnostic categories are simply constructs with no evidence of psychiatric disorders in the real world. The second question again offers a range of opinion as to how we should define a mental or psychiatric disorder, including the possibility that we should not try to formulate a definition. The general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

How can we know what really happened in the distant past in places like ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Greece, and Rome, especially since the evidence is fragmentary and ancient cultures are so different from our own frame of reference? Scholars may examine historical documents and archaeological artifacts, and then make reasonable inferences. But in the final analysis there can be no absolute certainty about events far removed from present reality, and the past must be reconstructed by means of hypotheses that (...) coherently organize all available data. Knowledge claims about the past, and about many areas of science as well, rest on a network of interdependence between theory and evidence, and between interpretation and data. In this fascinating study of epistemology, philosopher Peter Kosso argues for a coherence model of epistemic justification. In the first part, the conceptual argument, he proposes a model of knowledge of the past. In the second part he presents three detailed case studies drawn from the work of historians and archaeologists. These studies are used to support and fine-tune the model outlined in the first part. Kosso presents many insights into the limits of knowledge and our ability to know the mental as well as the physical past. Historians, archaeologists, philosophers, and students interested in epistemology will find this accessible work to be of great value. (shrink)

Traditionally the intentionality of consciousness has been understood as the idea that many conscious states are about something, that they have objects in a broad sense - including states of affairs - which they represent, and it is on account of being representational that they are said to have contents. It has also been claimed, more controversially, that conscious intentional contents must be available to the subject as reasons for her judgments or actions, and that they are therefore necessarily (...) class='Hi'>conceptual. This paper challenges the assumptions that all conscious intentional contents are representations of objects, and that they are essentially conceptual. Both assumptions will be shown to be intimately connected. The first main part of the paper offers an account of conscious intentionality that is not prejudicial on the issue of whether all intentional contents of conscious mental states represent objects which the mental state can be said to be about. The author then shows that many personal-level perceptual contents, including those involved in our evaluative stance towards aspects of the world, have non-conceptual components even on a wide construal of the conceptual sphere , allowing for demonstrative concepts. In the second main part of the paper it is argued that experiences themselves, as contrasted with what they are experiences of, are non-conceptual contents. To this purpose the author reconstructs and develops some suggestive observations found in the phenomenology of Husserl to the effect that experiences as directly presented or 'lived through' are not objects of consciousness. It is argued that this thesis, properly understood, is true and that it entails that experiences as directly presented in consciousness are themselves non-conceptual intentional contents. Husserl's thesis is illuminating and important, allowing among other things a more satisfactory account of the elusive phenomenon of depth we normally attribute to the conscious self - the idea that there is always more to our experienced selves at any moment than what we are capable of articulating at the time. (shrink)

First published in 1974, this book presents a coherent collection of major articles by Richard Stanley Peters. It displays his work on psychology and philosophy, with special attention given to the areas of ethical development and human understanding. The book is split into four parts. The first combines a critique of psychological theories, especially those of Freud, Piaget and the Behaviourists, with some articles on the nature and development of reason and the emotions. The second looks in historical order at (...) ethical development. The third part combines a novel approach to the problem of understanding other people, whilst the fourth part is biographical in an unusual way. The volume can be viewed as a companion to the author’s _Ethics and Education _and will appeal to students and teachers of education, philosophy and psychology, as well as to the interested non-specialist reader. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson has argued that in the debate on modal ontology, the familiar distinction between actualism and possibilism should be replaced by a distinction between positions he calls contingentism and necessitism. He has also argued in favor of necessitism, using results on quantified modal logic with plurally interpreted second-order quantifiers showing that necessitists can draw distinctions contingentists cannot draw. Some of these results are similar to well-known results on the relative expressivity of quantified modal logics with so-called inner and outer (...) quantifiers. The present paper deals with these issues in the context of quantified modal logics with generalized quantifiers. Its main aim is to establish two results for such a logic: Firstly, contingentists can draw the distinctions necessitists can draw if and only if the logic with inner quantifiers is at least as expressive as the logic with outer quantifiers, and necessitists can draw the distinctions contingentists can draw if and only if the logic with outer quantifiers is at least as expressive as the logic with inner quantifiers. Secondly, the former two items are the case if and only if all of the generalized quantifiers are first-order definable, and the latter two items are the case if and only if first-order logic with these generalized quantifiers relativizes. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with a propositional modal logic with operators for necessity, actuality and apriority. The logic is characterized by a class of relational structures defined according to ideas of epistemic two-dimensional semantics, and can therefore be seen as formalizing the relations between necessity, actuality and apriority according to epistemic two-dimensional semantics. We can ask whether this logic is correct, in the sense that its theorems are all and only the informally valid formulas. This paper gives outlines of two (...) arguments that jointly show that this is the case. The first is intended to show that the logic is informally sound, in the sense that all of its theorems are informally valid. The second is intended to show that it is informally complete, in the sense that all informal validities are among its theorems. In order to give these arguments, a number of independently interesting results concerning the logic are proven. In particular, the soundness and completeness of two proof systems with respect to the semantics is proven (Theorems 2.11 and 2.15), as well as a normal form theorem (Theorem 3.2), an elimination theorem for the actuality operator (Corollary 3.6), and the decidability of the logic (Corollary 3.7). It turns out that the logic invalidates a plausible principle concerning the interaction of apriority and necessity; consequently, a variant semantics is briefly explored on which this principle is valid. The paper concludes by assessing the implications of these results for epistemic two-dimensional semantics. (shrink)

'Modern History' views claim that in order for a trait X to have the proper function F, X must have been recently favored by natural selection for doing F (Griffiths 1992, 1993; Godfrey-Smith 1994). For many traits with prototypical proper functions, however, such recent selection may not have occurred, since traits may have been maintained owing to lack of variation or selection for other effects. I explore this flaw in Modern History accounts and offer an alternative etiological theory, which I (...) call the 'Continuing Usefulness' account. According to my view, a trait has the proper function F if and only if, first, the trait was favored by selection for doing F at some point (perhaps far in the past), and, secondly, the trait has recently contributed to survival and reproduction by doing F. This separates the requirement involving natural selection from the one involving the recent past, two issues that the Modern History account conflates. The clear separation allows a detailed analysis of the causal judgments and form of adaptationism that ground the etiological approach to function. (shrink)

This paper sketches a solution to a problem which has been emphasized by Fodor. This is the problem of how to explain distinctively-human flexible cognition in modular terms. There are three aspects to the proposed account. First, it is suggested that natural language sentences might serve to integrate the outputs of a number of conceptual modules. Second, a creative sentence-generator, or supposer, is postulated. And third, it is argued that a set of principles of inference to the best explanation (...) can be constructed from already-extant aspects of linguistic testimony and discourse interpretation. Most importantly, it is suggested that the resulting architecture should be implementable in ways that are computationally tractable. (shrink)

The existence of social learning has been confirmed in diverse taxa, from apes to guppies. In order to advance our understanding of the consequences of social transmission and evolution of behavior, however, we require statistical tools that can distinguish among diverse social learning strategies. In this paper, we advance two main ideas. First, social learning is diverse, in the sense that individuals can take advantage of different kinds of information and combine them in different ways. Examining learning strategies for different (...) information conditions illuminates the more detailed design of social learning. We construct and analyze an evolutionary model of diverse social learning heuristics, in order to generate predictions and illustrate the impact of design differences on an organism’s fitness. Second, in order to eventually escape the laboratory and apply social learning models to natural behavior, we require statistical methods that do not depend upon tight experimental control. Therefore we examine strategic social learning in an experimental setting.. (shrink)

Situating Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s thought on historically actualized ideas with reference to a range of classical thinkers, this article examines his intriguing philosophical theory about how ideas become progressively actualized in history. This cultural growth can be understood as contemplation-in-action, although it occurs through mainly fumbling – or else overenthusiastic – human agents. I distinguish Coleridgean first-order, transcendent ideas (such as God, infinity, the good, the soul) from second-order, historical ones (such as church, state, the constitution). It has been argued (...) that Coleridge’s theory of ideas develops from Bacon’s inductive method for discovering laws of nature through experiment and natural law through common law. I further claim that Coleridge upholds the reality of “Forms” in science, and of rights in ethics and politics; that his later political thought is inherently more progressive than is generally admitted; and that his account differs from Schelling’s and Hegel’s respective theories by maintaining the transcendence of ideas above the immanence of their evolving historical actualizations. Coleridge’s philosophy is therefore, whether political or metaphysical, ultimately an ontological defence of the transcendence of ideas above the immanence of their progressive but imperfect actualization. (shrink)

As one of the few philosophers to subject civilisation and barbarism to close analysis, Collingwood was acutely aware of the interrelationship between philosophy and history. This book combines historical, biographical and philosophical discussion in order to illuminate Collingwood's thinking and create the first in-depth analysis of Collingwood's responses to the Second World War.

Is science getting at the truth? The sceptics – those who spread doubt about science – often employ a simple argument: scientists were sure in the past, and then they ended up being wrong. Such sceptics draw on dramatic quotes from eminent scientists such as Lord Kelvin, who reportedly stated at the turn of the 20th century “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now,” shortly before physics was dramatically transformed. They ask: given the history of science, wouldn’t (...) it be naïve to think that current scientific theories reveal ‘the truth’, and will never be discarded in favour of other theories? Through a combination of historical investigation and philosophical-sociological analysis, Identifying Future-Proof Science defends science against such potentially dangerous scepticism. It is argued that we can confidently identify many scientific claims that are future-proof: they will last forever, so long as science continues. How do we identify future-proof claims? This appears to be a new question for science scholars, and not an unimportant one. It is argued that the best way to identify future-proof science is to avoid any attempt to analyse the relevant first-order scientific evidence, instead focusing purely on second-order evidence. Specifically, a scientific claim is future-proof when the relevant scientific community is large, international, and diverse, and at least 95% of that community would describe the claim as a ‘scientific fact’. In the entire history of science, no claim meeting these criteria has ever been overturned, despite enormous opportunity. (shrink)

Within analytic philosophy, induction has been seen as a problem concerning inferences that have been analysed as relations between sentences. In this article, we argue that induction does not primarily concern relations between sentences, but between properties and categories. We outline a new approach to induction that is based on two theses. The first thesis is epistemological. We submit that there is not only knowledge-how and knowledge-that, but also knowledge-what. Knowledge-what concerns relations between properties and categories and we argue that (...) it cannot be reduced to knowledge-that. We support the partition of knowledge by mapping it onto the long-term memory systems: procedural, semantic and episodic memory. The second thesis is that the role of inductive reasoning is to generate knowledge-what. We use conceptual spaces to model knowledge-what and the relations between properties and categories involved in induction. (shrink)

Within analytic philosophy, induction has been seen as a problem concerning inferences that have been analysed as relations between sentences. In this article, we argue that induction does not primarily concern relations between sentences, but between properties and categories. We outline a new approach to induction that is based on two theses. The first thesis is epistemological. We submit that there is not only knowledge-how and knowledge-that, but also knowledge-what. Knowledge-what concerns relations between properties and categories and we argue that (...) it cannot be reduced to knowledge-that. We support the partition of knowledge by mapping it onto the long-term memory systems: procedural, semantic and episodic memory. The second thesis is that the role of inductive reasoning is to generate knowledge-what. We use conceptual spaces to model knowledge-what and the relations between properties and categories involved in induction. (shrink)

Peter Szondi´s pathbreaking work is a succinct and elegant argument for distinguishing between a philosophy of the tragic and the poetics of tragedy espoused by Aristotle. The first of the book´s two parts consists of a series of commentaries on philosophical and aesthetic texts from twelve thinkers and poets between 1795 and 1915: Schelling, Hölderlin, Hegel, Solger, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Vischer, Kierkegaard, Hebbel, Nietzsche, Simmel, and Scheler. The various definitions of tragedy are read not so much in terms of their specific (...) philosophies, but rather in the way their views assist in analyzing tragedies with an aim to establish a general concept of the tragic. The second part presents exemplary analyses of eight tragedies: Sophocles’Oedipus Rex, Calderon´s Life Is a Dream, Shakespeare´s Othello, Gryphius´ Leo Armenius, Racine´s Phaedra, Schiller´s Demetrius, Kleist’s The Schroffenstein Family and Büchner’s Danton's Death. The readings neither presuppose a concept of the tragic determined by context (as in Hegel's idea of the conflict between two orders of right), nor do they focus exclusively on the texts´ explicit contents. Instead, they elaborate the dialectical or aporetic structures at the heart of the tragic. The works analyzed represent the four great epochs of tragic poetry: the age of Greek tragedy; the Baroque era in Spain, England, and Germany; French Classicism; and the age of Goethe. (shrink)

In a series of recent papers, I have made three arguments about how to define “disease” and evaluate and apply possible definitions. First, I have argued that definitions should not be seen as traditional conceptual analyses, but instead as proposals about how to define and use the term “disease” in the future. Second, I have pointed out and attempted to address a challenge for dysfunction-requiring accounts of disease that I call the “line-drawing” problem: distinguishing between low-normal functioning and dysfunctioning. (...) Finally, I have used a dysfunction-requiring approach to argue that some extremely prevalent conditions, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and ductal carcinoma in situ, are not diseases, but instead are risk factors. Four of the papers in this issue directly engage my previous work. In this commentary, I applaud the advances these authors make, address points of disagreement, and make suggestions about where the discussion should go next. (shrink)

The standard argument against ordered tuples as propositions is that it is arbitrary what truth-conditions they should have. In this paper we generalize that argument. Firstly, we require that propositions have truth-conditions intrinsically. Secondly, we require strongly equivalent truth-conditions to be identical. Thirdly, we provide a formal framework, taken from Graph Theory, to characterize structure and structured objects in general. The argument in a nutshell is this: structured objects are too fine-grained to be identical to truth-conditions. Without identity, there is (...) no privileged mapping from structured objects to truth-conditions, and hence structured objects do not have truth-conditions intrinsically. Therefore, propositions are not structured objects. (shrink)

This article identifies civilizational analysis as one response to a recent crisis in the sociology of large-scale social configurations and explores how far the concept of civilization can go in analyzing the contemporary global social constellation. The reasoning proceeds in four steps. First, a brief review of the recent conceptual debate in social theory and historical sociology leads to the conclusion that concepts such as ‘civilization’ and ‘modernity’ still work with too strong presuppositions about continuity and commonality of patterns (...) of world interpretation. Second, a proposal is made to distinguish several basic problématiques that all human collectivities need to address and to suggest that such a distinction lends itself to research-oriented disentangling of various aspects of social phenomena. In an explorative manner, third, this approach will be applied to South Africa and Brazil, two social configurations that can fruitfully be studied as collectivities but lend themselves much less to civilizational analysis. By way of conclusion, finally, the trajectories of these non-European modernities will briefly be compared to the European one to illustrate the potential of this approach for a global sociology of plural trajectories of modernity. (shrink)

This paper argues for a re-evaluation of the relationship between Berkeley and his predecessor, the neo-Aristotelian thinker John Sergeant. In the literature to date, the relationship between these two thinkers has received attention for two reasons. First, because some commentators have attempted to establish a causal connection between them – specifically, by focusing on the fact that both thinkers develop a theory of ‘notions’. Second, because both Berkeley and Sergeant develop ‘anti-representationalist’ arguments against Locke’s epistemology. The first issue has received (...) much greater attention, particularly from commentators seeking an explanation for Berkeley’s use of the term ‘notion’. Only one scholar, G. A. Johnston (in 1923), has considered Berkeley and Sergeant’s anti-representationalism in any depth. In this paper, I argue that the weight given to the causal connection between Berkeley and Sergeant’s ‘notions’ is misplaced since the evidence in favour of this connection is weaker than is usually acknowledged. Instead, I build on Johnston’s analysis of the conceptual connection between Berkeley and Sergeant’s anti-representationalism. I first corroborate Johnston’s claim that there are striking similarities between their criticisms of Locke before going beyond that analysis by identifying two important similarities between their anti-representationalist arguments. (shrink)

Propositional quantifiers are added to a propositional modal language with two modal operators. The resulting language is interpreted over so-called products of Kripke frames whose accessibility relations are equivalence relations, letting propositional quantifiers range over the powerset of the set of worlds of the frame. It is first shown that full second-order logic can be recursively embedded in the resulting logic, which entails that the two logics are recursively isomorphic. The embedding is then extended to all sublogics containing the logic (...) of so-called fusions of frames with equivalence relations. This generalizes a result due to Antonelli and Thomason, who construct such an embedding for the logic of such fusions. (shrink)

Superficially, citizenship appears relatively simple: a legal status denoting political membership. However, critical citizenship studies scholars suggest that citizenship is first and foremost a political practice. When non-citizens, such as irregularised migrants, constitute themselves as citizens through their actions, irrespective of legal status, these practices of citizenship have transformational potential because they are extra-legal. Yet, there is an ambivalence here: rights-claiming migrants tend to frame their key demands within the terms of the law often by calling for the regularisation of (...) their status. This article addresses this ambivalence by adopting a ‘deconstructive method’ to investigate the legal dimensions of citizenship as sites of theoretical and political intervention. It is argued that practices of rights-claiming by irregularised migrants are important to grasp because they mobilise the paradoxes inherent to the fact that universal rights are enshrined in the constitutional texts of modern citizenship in order to generate new legal meanings and horizons of justice. This hypothesis is explored through a series of illustrative examples of rights-claiming taking place within and beyond the formal confines of legal orders. In so doing, the article sets out a novel conceptual framework for analysing how migrants’ claims to justice strategically negotiate citizenship in its legal form. (shrink)

A remarkable amount of the most innovative, significant, and lasting historical writing of the twentieth century has been produced in France, much of it the work of a group of historians associated with the journal Annales. Founded in 1929, Annales promoted a new kind of history based on three central aims: to substitute a problem-orientated analytical history for a traditional narrative of events; to embrace the history of the whole range of human activities rather than concentrate on political history; and, (...) in order to achieve the first two aims, to collaborate fully with other disciplines - notably geography, sociology, psychology, economics, linguistics, and anthropology. The critical history describes, analyzes, and evaluates the achievements of the Annales school, combining chronological and thematic approaches. The author distinguishes three generations in the history of the Annales movement. In the first phase, from the 1920's to 1945, the movement was small, radical, and subverse, fighting a guerrilla action against traditional political history and the history of events. Its leaders, and the founders of Annales, were Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch. After the Second World War, the movement's rebels took over the historical establishment. During this second phase, which lasted until about 1968, the movement was most nearly a school, with distinctive concepts and methods, and was presided over by the towering figure of Fernand Braudel. The third phase of the movement, which continues today, is marked by fragmentation. Its influence in France had become so great that it lost much of its distinctiveness, and no strong figures appeared to give the movement the inspiration and direction that Febvre, Bloch, and Braudel had provided. Some members of the group even returned to political history and to the narrative of events. The cycle was complete - the rebels became the establishment and were in turn rebelled against. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a new approach to the foundation of mathematics: non-monotonic set theory. I present two completely different methods to develop set theories based on adaptive logics. For both theories there is a finitistic non-triviality proof and both theories contain (a subtle version of) the comprehension axiom schema. The first theory contains only a maximal selection of instances of the comprehension schema that do not lead to inconsistencies. The second allows for all the instances, also the inconsistent (...) ones, but restricts the conclusions one can draw from them in order to avoid triviality. The theories have enough expressive power to form a justification/explication for most of the established results of classical mathematics. They are therefore not limited by Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. This remarkable result is possible because of the non-recursive character of the final proofs of theorems of non-monotonic theories. I shall argue that, precisely because of the computational complexity of these final proofs, we cannot claim that non-monotonic theories are ideal foundations for mathematics. Nevertheless, thanks to their strength, first order language and the recursive dynamic (defeasible) proofs of theorems of the theory, the non-monotonic theories form (what I call) interesting pragmatic foundations. (shrink)

In the traditional decision theories the role of forecasts is to a large extent swept under the carpet. I believe that a recognition of the connections between forecasts and decisions will be of benefit both for decision theory and for the art of forecasting.In this paper I have tried to analyse which factors, apart from the utilities of the outcomes of the decision alternatives, determine the value of a decision. I have outlined two answers to the question why a decision (...) which is made on the basis of a forecast is better than a decision which is based on a guess. Neither of these answers is universally valid. An assumption which is necessary for the first answer, i.e. Good's result, is that Bayes' rule is accepted as a correct and generally applicable decision principle. The second answer, which was given with the aid of probability intervals, departed from a more general decision principle, the maximin criterion for expected utilities, which was formulated in order to evade some of the criticism against Bayes' rule. However, the argument leading to the ansser is based on the assumption that the probability intervals associated with the states of nature represent certain knowledge. For this reason this answer is only approximatively valid.As a number of quotations in the section on “the weight of evidence” show, it is not sufficient to describe the knowledge about the states of nature by a single number, representing the (subjective) probability of the state, but something else has to be invoked which measures the amount of information on which a decision is based. Several authors have tried to characterize this mysterious quantity, which here was called the weight of evidence. However, there seems to be little agreement as to how this quantity should be measured. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Somaesthetics, Education, and the Art of DancePeter J. Arnold (bio)This essay has two related purposes. The first is to explicate what dance as an art form should minimally comprise if it is to be taught as a distinctive aspect of education in the school curriculum. The second and main purpose is to argue that dance, if taught in accordance with what is outlined, is not only an efficacious means (...) in the development, understanding and promotion of somaesthetics, a new term in aesthetic theory, but an example of itsvery embodiment. Put differently it will be upheld that the practice of danceis not only an excellent vehicle in the promotion of somaesthetics but a paradigm case of what it is.But what is somaesthetics? Briefly put, in common with the thinking of some noted philosophers in the past, it can be said that somaesthetics is as much concerned with the idea of being a person and living well as with the development of rational thought and the development of the intellect. It emphasizes, in particular, that the soma in the form of its physical skills, senses and pleasures plays no less a part in the living of a full life than conceptual understanding and the imaginative use of language.1 Richard Shusterman, upholding these sentiments, refers to somaesthetics asthe critical and meliorating study of the experience and use of one's body as a locus of sensory aesthetic appreciation and creative self-fashioning. It is....devoted to the knowledge, discourses, practices, and bodily disciplines that structure such somatic care or can improve it.2Although such values and concerns are known to many educationists, they are rarely acted upon or taught in a deliberate or systematic way. Even within the realms of dance and sport more could be done than is done somaesthetically to educate in the interests of what it is to be a whole person. [End Page 48]Before embarking on the task of exemplifying dance as a form of somaesthetics, it will be helpful first to say a little about education and the idea of dance as a valued human practice; and second, to say something about the aesthetic in relation to art.Education and the Art of Dance as a Valued Human PracticeWhat is clear about the idea of dance as an art form is that it is more than the human body making rhythmical and patterned movements in space. It can be more accurately described as a coherent and complex range of actions in which intentions are physically expressed in terms of a meaningful performance that is artistic in nature and not merely aesthetic in appeal.It is my view that these elements of what constitutes dance best come together and are most readily grasped when it is seen as a valued form of human practice. Following Alistair MacIntyre, I take the term "practice" to meanany coherent and complex form of socially established co-operative human activity through which goods internal to that activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved are systematically extended.3The idea of the arts as forms of practice is helpful in at least two important ways. First, it draws attention to the fact that an art, like medicine, the law, or sport, is a distinctive form of life with its own standards, values, and procedures. Second, it recognizes, in keeping with the idea of education, thatthe internal goods of an activity, like the art of dance, will enlighten and enlarge the powers of the participant. MacIntyre undoubtedly recognizes the connection between the idea of a practice and the concept of education when he observes the proper end of education isto help to discover activities whose ends are not outside themselves — The critical ability which ought to be the fruit of education serves nothing directly except itself, no one except those who exercise it — above all the task of education is to teach the value of activity for its own... (shrink)

Following a short introduction, this chapter begins by contrasting two different forms of higher-order perception theory of phenomenal consciousness - inner sense theory versus a dispositionalist kind of higher-order thought theory - and by giving a brief statement of the superiority of the latter. Thereafter the chapter considers arguments in support of HOP theories in general. It develops two parallel objections against both first-order representationalist theories and actualist forms of HOT theory. First, neither can give an adequate account of the (...) distinctive features of our recognitional concepts of experience. And second, neither can explain why there are some states of the relevant kinds that are phenomenal and some that aren. (shrink)

"What is secularism? Is it possible to separate religion from politics? This critical volume examines the dynamic relationship between the state and religion in India and Europe. It first conceptualizes the nature and challenges of secularism in the wake of radical changes in post-9/11 world politics. Second, in assessing the scope and future of secularism in the actual contexts of its emergence and practice, it redraws the boundaries and definitions of the institutional pillars of the state - judiciary, legislature, and (...) executive - and their interactions with religion across democracies in South Asia and Europe. Including wide-ranging essays by leading scholars, the book stimulates renewed debate on secularism, democracy, identity and multiculturalism in the contemporary world. It will prove invaluable to scholars and students of political science, sociology, philosophy, history, human rights, and legal theory, as well as those concerned with religion and state." from back cover. (shrink)

The critical theory of the Frankfurt School starts with an explanatory-diagnostic analysis of the social pathologies of the present followed by anticipatory-utopian reflection on possible treatments for these disorders. This approach draws extensively on parallels to medicine. I argue that the ideas of social pathology and crisis that pervade the methodological writings of the Frankfurt School help to explain critical theory’s contention that the object of critique identifies itself when social institutions cease to function smoothly. However, in reflecting on the (...) role that reason and self-awareness play in the second stage of social criticism, I contend that this model is actually better conceptualized through the lens of the psychoanalyst rather than the physician. Although the first generation’s explicit commitment to psychoanalysis has dissipated in recent critical theory, faith in a rationalized ‘talking cure’ leading to greater self-awareness of existing pathologies remains at the core of the Frankfurt School. (shrink)

My original reaction to Yosh’s paper was to grumble. It seemed to me to contain a number of terminological infelicities, unpersuasive arguments, and counterintuitive implications. And while I think that some of my superficial complaints are worth pointing out (and I can’t help myself), a commentary consisting only of grumbling would be neither interesting nor helpful. Paul Viminitz would describe such a commentary as “unseemly”. And so I revisited Yosh’s paper with a more sympathetic eye. My second reaction was to (...) suppose that what Yosh had actually done was to provide a Russellian analysis of sentences containing descriptions but in a 2nd order logical system – a system in which quantification over properties is permitted and in which 1st order quantifiers are reinterpreted as 2nd order properties. This would be an interesting albeit modest contribution to the description literature. But as I reread Yosh’s paper in preparation for writing this commentary, I realized that given the account of individual kinds that was being developed this wasn’t right. Individual kinds are not properties at all, they are a new sort of individual – teams of one. Yosh’s proposal is hardly modest at all. So, in these comments, I am going to focus on the notion of an individual kind and whether or not we ought to endorse such entities in our semantic theorizing. But first, some preliminary grumbling – I really can’t help myself. (shrink)

This talk by Dr. Peter D. Hershock makes use of Buddhist conceptual resources to assess how the emerging global attention economy and the confluence of big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are reshaping the human experience. Like the Copernican revolution, which de-centered humanity in the cosmos, the intelligence revolution is dissolving once-foundational certainties and opening new realms of opportunity. The results are almost sure to be mixed. Smart cities will be more efficient and more livable; smart health care (...) can potentially reach and benefit the half of humanity that now lacks even basic health services. Yet, smart services and the algorithmic tailoring of individual experience have the potential to first supplement and eventually supplant intelligent human practices, rendering human intelligence superfluous. Focusing in particular on the karmic dimensions of these transformations, the talk will consider who we need to be present as in order to resist the allure of digital sirens and direct the intelligence revolution toward a truly equitable and ethical re-centering of the human. (shrink)

In advanced societies, the sphere of work is subject to far-reaching changes which erode the system of gainful employment achieved in the second half of the last century, called ‘typical work’, i.e. full-time employment for an indefinite period with collectively negotiated wages and working conditions. This development has lead to a proliferation of various kinds of ‘atypical work’, most of which amount to poorly rewarded and insecure jobs with bad labour standards, and it has also weakened the traditional systems of (...) social security. As a result, most advanced societies have experienced a significant increase in social inequality and poverty in recent decades, even though their overall social wealth has constantly grown, a state of affairs which may be deemed to be not merely undesirable, but also unjust. This judgment, however, presupposes a particular conception of social justice that submits the economic order and the working world to certain normative demands. The paper aims to illuminate these demands by proceeding in three steps. First of all, it starts with recapitulating the conditions of the rise of typical work and the features of its decay. Secondly, it seeks to sketch a conception of social justice and its requirements on the working world, on the basis of which the present situation may be considered as unjust. Finally, it will deal with the question of how to reform the present working world in a way that, as far as possible, meets the requirements of justice. (shrink)

In order to account for the mode of existence of social rules and norms, the author develops a theory of the emergence of institutional facts. Just as other kinds of institutional fact, rules and norms are meanings. Therefore, insight into the emergence of social rules and norms can be achieved by studying the recognition and the communication of meanings. Following accounts of meaning and factuality, institutional facts are characterized as unquestionable shared typifications. It is argued that, in becoming an institutional (...) fact, a typification goes through two phases. First, it becomes a social habit. Second, this habit turns into an obligation by being objectified. (shrink)

I want to look at recent developments of representing AGM-style belief revision in dynamic epistemic logics and the options for doing something similar for ranking theory. Formally, my aim will be modest: I will define a version of basic dynamic doxastic logic using ranking functions as the semantics. I will show why formalizing ranking theory this way is useful for the ranking theorist first by showing how it enables one to compare ranking theory more easily with other approaches to belief (...) revision. I will then use the logic to state an argument for defining ranking functions on larger sets of ordinals than is customary. Secondly, I will argue that the only way to extend the account of belief revision given by ranking theory to higher-order beliefs and revisions is by continuing the approach taken by me and defining ranking theoretical equivalents of dynamic epistemic logics. For proponents of dynamic epistemic logic, such logics will naturally be of interest provided they are convinced of the revision operator defined by ranking theory. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, cognitive science has identified several forms of reasoning that make essential use of conceptual knowledge. Despite significant theoretical and empirical progress, there is still no unified framework for understanding how concepts are used in reasoning. This paper argues that the theory of conceptual spaces is capable of filling this gap. Our strategy is to demonstrate how various inference mechanisms which clearly rely on conceptual information—including similarity, typicality, and diagnosticity-based reasoning—can be modeled using (...) principles derived from conceptual spaces. Our first topic analyzes the role of expectations in inductive reasoning and their relation to the structure of our concepts. We examine the relationship between using generic expressions in natural language and common-sense reasoning as a second topic. We propose that the strength of a generic can be described by distances between properties and prototypes in conceptual spaces. Our third topic is category-based induction. We demonstrate that the theory of conceptual spaces can serve as a comprehensive model for this type of reasoning. The final topic is analogy. We review some proposals in this area, present a taxonomy of analogical relations, and show how to model them in terms of distances in conceptual spaces. We also briefly discuss the implications of the model for reasoning with concepts in artificial systems. (shrink)