Open peer commentary on the article “Investigating Extended Embodiment Using a Computational Model and Human Experimentation” by Yuki Sato, Hiroyuki Iizuka & Takashi Ikegami. Upshot: First, we comment on a potential weakness highlighted by the use of self-reporting in the human-coupled windmill experiment as described in the target article. Second, we suggest that the authors treat their windmill models as soft-assembled dynamical systems. This would allow them to investigate extended body schemes by looking for 1/f noise in the interface between (...) the agent and the windmills. (shrink)

An overview of: "Why Red Doesn't Sound Like a Bell. Understanding the feel of consciousness".

Heras-Escribano argues against the normative character of affordances from a framework that relies on a Wittgensteinian notion of normativity and the incompatibility of direct perception, ….

In their historical overview of cognitive science, Bechtel, Abraham- son and Graham (1999) describe the field as expanding in focus be- ginning in the mid-1980s. The field had spent the previous 25 years on internalist, high-level GOFAI (“good old fashioned artificial intelli- gence” [Haugeland 1985]), and was finally moving “outwards into the environment and downards into the brain” (Bechtel et al, 1999, p.75). One important force behind the downward movement was Patricia Churchland’s Neurophilosophy (1986). This book began a movement bearing (...) its name, one that truly came of age in 1999 when Kath- leen Akins won a million-dollar fellowship to begin the McDonnell Project in Philosophy and the Neurosciences. The McDonnell Project put neurophilosophy at the forefront of philosophy of mind and cogni- tive science, yielding proliferating articles, conferences, special journal issues and books. In two major new books, neurophilosophers Patricia Churchland (2002) and John Bickle (2003) clearly feel this newfound prominence: Churchland mocks those who do not apply findings in neuroscience to philosophical problems as “no-brainers”; Bickle mocks anyone with traditional philosophical concerns, including “naturalistic philosophers of mind” and other neurophilosophers. (shrink)

It is often alleged that an agent is morally responsible in a liability sense for a transgression just in case s/he deserves a negative interpersonal response for that transgression, blaming responses such as resentment and indignation being paradigms. Aside from a few exceptions, guilt is cited in recent discussions of moral responsibility, if at all, as merely an effect of being blamed, or as a reliable indicator of moral responsibility, but not itself an explanation of moral responsibility. In this paper, (...) I argue that an agent is morally responsible in a liability sense for a transgression just in case s/he deserves to feel moral guilt for that transgression. I argue that this alternative view offers all that the predominant blame-focused view offers, while also solving some puzzling features of moral responsibility. Specifically, it offers a compelling way to reconcile conflicting intuitions about the suberogatory, and allows those who do not understand what Darwall calls ‘second-personal’ reasons to be morally responsible for their immoral acts. (shrink)

When should we make use of the criminal law? Suppose that a responsible legislature seeks to enact a morally justifiable range of criminal prohibitions. What criteria should it apply when deciding whether to proscribe conduct? Crimes, Harms, and Wrongs is a philosophical analysis of the nature, significance, and ethical limits of criminalisation. The authors explore the scope and moral boundaries of harm-based prohibitions, proscriptions of offensive behaviour, and 'paternalistic' prohibitions aimed at preventing self-harm. Their aim is to develop guiding principles (...) for these various grounds of state prohibition, including an analysis of the constraints and mediating factors that weigh for and against criminalisation. Both authors have written extensively in the field. In Crimes, Harms, and Wrongs they have reworked a number of well-known essays and added several important new essays to produce an integrated, accessible, philosophically-sophisticated account that will be of great interest to legal academics, philosophers, and advanced students alike"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Aristotle's definition of the soul should be interpreted as: 'the soul is the entelechy of a natural body that serves as its instrument'.

The book opens with a description of the smooth transition from Newtonian to Einsteinian behaviour from electrons as their energy is progressively increased, ...

The criminal law presently distinguishes between actions and omissions, and only rarely proscribes failures to avert consequences that it would be an offense to bring about. Why? In recent years it has been persuasively argued by both Glover and Bennett that, celeris paribus, omissions to prevent a harm are just as culpable as are actions which bring that harm about. On the other hand, and acknowledging that hitherto “lawyers have not been very successful in finding a rationale for it,” Tony (...) Honoré has sought to defend the law's differential treatment. He proposes a “distinct-duties theory” that in addition to the general duties we owe to everyone, we also owe distinct duties to a more limited collection of people and associations, specified by features of our relationship with them. Where a distinct duty holds, breach by omission may well be no better than breach by positive action. But absent a distinct duty, omissions, per Honoré, are less culpable. They are mere failures to intervene and improve or rectify things, whereas actions are positive interventions which make things worse. And, thus, the law has good reason to differentiate between them. (shrink)

In 1956, a few writings of Wittgenstein that he didn't publish in his lifetime were revealed to the public. These writings were gathered in the book Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956). There, we can see that Wittgenstein had some discontentment with the way philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians were thinking about paradoxes, and he even registered a few polemic reasons to not accept Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.

A Companion to Analytic Philosophy is a comprehensive guide to many significant analytic philosophers and concepts of the last hundred years. Provides a comprehensive guide to many of the most significant analytic philosophers of the last one hundred years. Offers clear and extensive analysis of profound concepts such as truth, goodness, knowledge, and beauty. Written by some of the most distinguished philosophers alive, some of whom have entries in the book devoted to them.

A Companion to Analytic Philosophy is a comprehensive guide to many significant analytic philosophers and concepts of the last hundred years. Provides a comprehensive guide to many of the most significant analytic philosophers of the last one hundred years. Offers clear and extensive analysis of profound concepts such as truth, goodness, knowledge, and beauty. Written by some of the most distinguished philosophers alive, some of whom have entries in the book devoted to them.

It has often been charged that the doctrine of papal infallibility is either false or incoherent. These charges stem, I believe, from a misunderstanding of the logical character of infallible papal utterances, a misunderstanding shared alike by friends and foes of the doctrine. In this paper, I shall argue that the doctrine is both coherent and correct. I devote section I to uncovering some of the sources of this misunderstanding and thereby defending what might be called my negative thesis, namely, (...) that infallible papal utterances are not statements. In section II, I continue defending my negative thesis, not now as an end in itself, but rather as a means of advancing my positive thesis that infallible papal utterances are declarations and have the same logic as other declarations. The latter thesis requires a discussion of the difference between statements and declarations. Section III contains a formal speech act analysis of successful and non-defective statements and declarations with some additional explanatory notes. In section IV, I speak rather generally about the task of philosophical theology in the light of the results and procedures of sections I–III. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes is recognized as one of the fathers of modern philosophy and political theory. In his own time he was as famous for his work in physics, geometry, and religion. He associated with some of the greatest writers, scientists, and politicians of his age. Martinich has written a complete and accessible biography of Hobbes. The book takes full account of the historical and cultural context in which Hobbes lived, drawing on both published and unpublished sources. It will be a (...) great resource for philosophers, political theorists and historians of ideas. The clear, crisp prose style will also ensure that the book appeals to general readers with an interest in the history of philosophy, the rise of modern science and the English Civil War. (shrink)

In animal husbandry in The Netherlands, as in a wide variety of other societal areas, we see an increased awareness of the fact that progress cannot be attained anymore by simply repeating the way we modernized this sector in the decades before, due to the multiplicity of the problems to be dealt with. The theory of reflexive modernization articulates this macro-social phenomenon, and at the same time serves as a prescriptive master-narrative. In this paper, I analyse the relationship between Feenberg's (...) instrumentalization theory and reflexive design; that is, the approach of doing reflexive modernization. Feenberg's analytical distinction between primary and secondary instrumentalization is useful in highlighting the way social and political values are inscribed into technological arrangements, but is not meant as a method. Reflexive design, on the other hand, is meant to be a reflective and deliberative method that aims to articulate, assess and reintegrate hitherto unquestioned values and presuppositions into new designs of production systems. Reflexive design thus may be seen as a conscious strategy of making explicit the separate stages of instrumentalization in advance, instead of criticizing the implicit embedding of dominant values in technological artefacts once they have been realized. The approach is illustrated with a case from animal husbandry. (shrink)