In an application of the personality dynamics framework, we advance understanding on the relationship between baseline leader humility and team psychological safety by exploring the roles of humility variability and attractor strength. Specifically, we examine how the consistency of leader-expressed humility across team members operates as a boundary condition in the relationship between leader-expressed humility and team psychological safety. We also explore how the agreement between leader self-reported humility and leader-expressed humility operates as an attractor to predict such a consistency. (...) We test the hypothesized model through a sample of 85 teams, rated by 354 team members. The findings suggest that consistency reinforces, while inconsistency weakens, the effect of leader-expressed humility on team psychological safety. The findings also reveal that SOA relates to the consistency of leader-expressed humility, depending on the level at which the agreement occurs. We conclude that to better understand the outcomes of humble leadership, it is necessary to take into account not only the baseline of humility expressed by the leader, but also his/her humility variability and the strength of the attractor. (shrink)

The _Critique of Religion and Religion’s Critique: On Dialectical Religiology_, is a book compiled in honour of Rudolf J. Siebert, Critical Theorist of Society and Religion. It is meant to both illuminate and interrogate his critical approach to the study of religion: Dialectical Religiology.

In our essay we trace the evolution of the critical theory of religion, or comparative dialectical religiology, out of the critical theory of society of the Institute for Social Research or the Frankfurt School. For us, the history of religions reflects the history of humanity’s intellectual and spiritual evolution. As we developed our critical theory of religion, we have tried to supersede concretely the great accomplishments of three generations of critical theorists, particularly in the field of religion. One main theme (...) of our critical theory of religion is the dialectic of two modes of existence: having and being; egoism and altruism. As we determinately negated the critical theory of society into our comparative dialectical religiology, we also penetrated deeper into its roots in the works of Kant and Hegel, Marx and Freud, Judaism and Christianity, particularly into the mystical theology of the great dialectician Meister Eckhart and of his many modern followers. We conclude our essay with the vision of the City of Being. (shrink)

Cognitive reflection, or the ability to inhibit intuitive and incorrect responses in favour of correct responses, predicts performance on a variety of cognitive tasks. The present study examined interventions to improve cognitive reflection. In two experiments, college students (N = 491) were assigned to one of three conditions, completed two versions of a cognitive reflection test (CRT), and then completed transfer tasks. Between the two CRTs, some participants were provided with elaborative feedback, others were instructed to consider additional responses for (...) their initial responses and the final group was a control. In both experiments, CRT performance increased between the first and second CRT in the feedback and instruction groups, but not in the control group. There was little evidence, however, for transfer to other tasks. These results suggest that cognitive reflection performance can be improved with brief interventions but that this improvement may not transfer to related tasks. (shrink)

Editors' introduction to 3rd thematic issue on philosophy of medicine.

The similarity of documents in a large database of published Fractals articles was examined for redundancy. Three different text matching techniques were used on published Abstracts to identify redundancy candidates, and predictions were verified by reading full text versions of the redundancy candidate articles. A small fraction of the total articles in the database was judged to be redundant. This was viewed as a lower limit, because it excluded cases where the concepts remained the same, but the text was altered (...) substantially. Far more pervasive than redundant publications were publications that did not violate the letter of redundancy but rather violated the spirit of redundancy. There appeared to be widespread publication maximization strategies. Studies that resulted in one comprehensive paper decades ago now result in multiple papers that focus on one major problem, but are differentiated by parameter ranges, or other stratifying variables. This ‘paper inflation’ is due in large part to the increasing use of metrics (publications, patents, citations, etc) to evaluate research performance, and the researchers’ motivation to maximize the metrics. (shrink)

The similarity of documents in a large database of published Fractals articles was examined for redundancy. Three different text matching techniques were used on published Abstracts to identify redundancy candidates, and predictions were verified by reading full text versions of the redundancy candidate articles. A small fraction of the total articles in the database was judged to be redundant. This was viewed as a lower limit, because it excluded cases where the concepts remained the same, but the text was altered (...) substantially.Far more pervasive than redundant publications were publications that did not violate the letter of redundancy but rather violated the spirit of redundancy. There appeared to be widespread publication maximization strategies. Studies that resulted in one comprehensive paper decades ago now result in multiple papers that focus on one major problem, but are differentiated by parameter ranges, or other stratifying variables. This ‘paper inflation’ is due in large part to the increasing use of metrics (publications, patents, citations, etc) to evaluate research performance, and the researchers’ motivation to maximize the metrics. (shrink)

Broadening access to both computational and educational resources is crit- ical to diffusing machine learning (ML) innovation. However, today, most ML resources and experts are siloed in a few countries and organizations. In this article, we describe our pedagogical approach to increasing access to applied ML through a massive open online course (MOOC) on Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML). We suggest that TinyML, applied ML on resource-constrained embedded devices, is an attractive means to widen access because TinyML leverages low-cost and globally (...) accessible hardware and encourages the development of complete, self-contained applications, from data collection to deployment. To this end, a collaboration between academia and industry produced a four part MOOC that provides application-oriented instruction on how to develop solutions using TinyML. The series is openly available on the edX MOOC platform, has no prerequisites beyond basic programming, and is designed for global learners from a variety of backgrounds. It introduces real-world applications, ML algorithms, data-set engineering, and the ethi- cal considerations of these technologies through hands-on programming and deployment of TinyML applications in both the cloud and on their own microcontrollers. To facili- tate continued learning, community building, and collaboration beyond the courses, we launched a standalone website, a forum, a chat, and an optional course-project com- petition. We also open-sourced the course materials, hoping they will inspire the next generation of ML practitioners and educators and further broaden access to cutting-edge ML technologies. (shrink)

The similarity of documents in a large database of published Fractals articles was examined for redundancy. Three different text matching techniques were used on publisheds to identify redundancy candidates, and predictions were verified by reading full text versions of the redundancy candidate articles. A small fraction of the total articles in the database was judged to be redundant. This was viewed as a lower limit, because it excluded cases where the concepts remained the same, but the text was altered substantially.Far (...) more pervasive than redundant publications were publications that did not violate the letter of redundancy but rather violated the spirit of redundancy. There appeared to be widespread publication maximization strategies. Studies that resulted in one comprehensive paper decades ago now result in multiple papers that focus on one major problem, but are differentiated by parameter ranges, or other stratifying variables. This ‘paper inflation’ is due in large part to the increasing use of metrics (publications, patents, citations, etc) to evaluate research performance, and the researchers’ motivation to maximize the metrics. (shrink)

Richard Swinburne and Travis Dumsday have defended what J. L. Schellenberg calls “the responsibility argument” as a response to the problem of divine hiddenness. Schellenberg, meanwhile, has levied various objections against the responsibility argument. In this paper, I develop a version of the responsibility argument and discuss some advantages it has over those defended by either Swinburne or Dumsday. I then show how my version can withstand Schellenberg’s criticisms.

In Frantz Fanon and Emancipatory Social Theory: A View from the Wretched, Dustin J. Byrd and Seyed Javad Miri bring together a collection of essays by a variety of scholars who explore the lasting influence of Frantz Fanon, psychiatrist, revolutionary, and social theorist. Fanon's work not only gave voice to the "wretched" in the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), but also shaped the radical resistance to colonialism, empire, and racism throughout much of the world. His seminal works, such as (...) Black Skin, White Masks, and The Wretched of the Earth, were read by The Black Panther Party in the United States, anti-imperialists in Africa and Asia, and anti-monarchist revolutionaries in the Middle East. Today, many revolutionaries and scholars have returned to Fanon's work, as it continues to shed light on the nature of colonial domination, racism, and class oppression. Contributors include: Syed Farid Alatas, Rose Brewer, Dustin J. Byrd, Sean Chabot, Richard Curtis, Nigel C. Gibson, Ali Harfouch, Timothy Kerswell, Seyed Javad Miri, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Pramod K. Nayar, Elena Flores Ruiz, Majid Sharifi, Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib and Esmaeil Zeiny. (shrink)

"The Critical Theory of Religion: From the Frankfurt School to Emancipatory Islamic Thought" is a collection of essay of Dr. Dustin J. Byrd, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Olivet College. The book concerns the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory of Society and how it relates to religion, especially Islam, in the contemporary world.

In his book, The Frankfurt School and the Dialectics of Religion: Translating Critical Faith into Critical Theory, Dustin J. Byrd argues that at the core of the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory is a secularized theology. Unlike their predecessors, especially Feuerbach, Marx, Lenin, Freud, and Nietzsche, who argued for an abstract negation of religion, the first generation of Critical Theorists followed Hegel's logic and attempted to rescue and preserve the revolutionary, emancipatory, and liberational aspects of religion in their secular non-conformist (...) philosophy. They saw in both Judaism and Christianity certain conceptual and semantic elements that could be enlisted into their struggle for a future reconciled society, one beyond the slaughterbench of history. In order to rescue religion, theological concepts had to go through the process of determinate negation, wherein such materials migrate from the depth of the religious mythos into publicly accessible reasoning, thus making the revolutionary impulse of prophetic religion accessible to the secular world. Byrd also argues that this determinate negation of religion remains relevant to today's post-secular societies, especially in regard to religious Muslims attempting to find their place in Western countries, which are often hostile to religion and religiosity. Examining the strengths and weaknesses of Habermas' famous "translation proviso," he argues that both religious and secular citizens of the West can learn from the Frankfurt School's dialectical approach to religion in order to find a space wherein both religious faith and secular reason can not only co-exist, but also join together in the process of creating a more reconciled future society. (shrink)

Propositions are central to at least most theorizing about the connection between our mental lives and the world: we use them in our theories of an array of attitudes including belief, desire, hope, fear, knowledge, and understanding. Unfortunately, when we press on these theories, we encounter a relatively neglected family of paradoxes first studied by Arthur Prior. I argue that these paradoxes present a fatal problem for most familiar resolutions of paradoxes. In particular, I argue that truth-value gap, contextualist, situation (...) theoretic, revision theoretic, ramified, and dialetheist approaches to the paradoxes must deny us the conceptual resources that they themselves make use of, on pain of contradiction. I then detail the costs of the extant strategies that avoid this issue: Hartry Field’s paracomplete approach; Andrew Bacon’s classical treatment of indeterminacy; a generalization of ideas from Prior, Nicholas J.J. Smith, and Hartley Slater; and free logics as recently explored by Bacon, John Hawthorne, and Gabriel Uzquiano. I argue that none of these is perfect, and that each restricts the theories we can endorse in a variety of areas of philosophy. I spell these restrictions out, showing, I hope, that the further investigation of these paradoxes must be a part of future research on propositional attitudes. (shrink)

In my commentary, I will argue that the conclusions drawn in the paper Noncommutative causality in algebraic quantum field theory by Gábor Hofer-Szaboó are incorrect. As proven by J.S. Bell, a local common causal explanation of correlations violating the Bell inequality is impossible.

Translation exercises are useful for teaching philosophical writing in higher education, but are not commonly used for this purpose. The article details the benefits such exercises may have for the motivation of students and for the improvement of their writing skills, particularly the kind of linguistic scrutiny required in much, if not all of philosophy. By way of example, some experiences with teaching J. L. Austin’s "How to Do Things With Words" in this way are discussed.

Lässt sich Kunst definieren? Von vielen analytischen Kunstphilosophen wird das bezweifelt. Für sie ist der Kunstbegriff ein “offener Begriff”, der auf unterschiedlichste Phänomene angewandt werden kann, selbst wenn diese keine gemeinsame Eigenschaft miteinander verbindet. Wer danach fragt, was Kunst denn eigentlich sei, verkennt in ihren Augen das Wesen des Kunstbegriffs. Träfe diese Auffassung zu, wären philosophische Theorien über das Wesen der Kunst bloße Spekulation. Der Streit um den Kunstbegriff, der bis heute nicht beigelegt ist, ist deshalb ein Streit um die (...) Grundlagen und die Möglichkeit einer Ästhetik der Kunst. Der Band stellt die wichtigsten Protagonisten dieses Streits in Aufsätzen vor, die hier größtenteils zum ersten Mal in deutscher Übersetzung vorliegen. Er enthält Beiträge von Berys Gaut, William E. Kennick, Maurice Mandelbaum, Robert J. Matthews, Robert Stecker, Morris Weitz und Paul Ziff. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Future of Environmental PhilosophyJ. Baird Callicott (bio)The old guy in The Graduate had just one word for Dustin Hoffman's character, Ben: "plastics." This old guy has three words for the future pursuit of environmental philosophers, young and old: global climate change (GCC).GCC is emerging as the central environmental concern of the 21st century. Back in the 20th century, E. O. Wilson's mantra was (I paraphrase) 'abrupt mass (...) anthropogenic species extinction is the crime for which posterity is least likely to forgive us.' In view of the multifaceted catastrophe graphically depicted in the recent acclaimed film, An Inconvenient Truth (AIT), Wilson's dictum seems quaint. Rather, a world whose very geography will be anthropogenically altered by risen sea levels, whose weather will be increasingly violent and erratic, whose seas will be stagnant and acidified by carbonic acid, etc., etc., is the crime for which posterity is least likely to forgive us—if there is any posterity to make a judgment.According to Al Gore in AIT anthropogenic GCC is a "moral" and "ethical" issue. But he doesn't elaborate. And at the end of the film he provides a lame list of things you and you and you and you—all of us individually AND voluntarily—can do to mitigate GCC, such as swap out halogen light bulbs for compact florescent ones and drive a hybrid car. Think "tragedy of the commons" for the efficacy of that approach to an adequate ethical response to the challenge of GCC.Gore's naivete apart, environmental ethics (EE) as we know it is singularly ill-prepared for dealing with GCC. The problem is one of scale, temporal as well as spatial. Spatially, EE concern was focused on the scale of biotic communities, ecosystems, and landscapes. And the relevant science was ecology. Temporally, the scale was also ecological: It might take Prince William Sound half a century, perhaps even a whole century, to fully recover from the Exxon Valdez spill. In temperate climates, after a clearcut a mature forest might spring up in a century and, through ecological succession, if left alone it will return to old growth in 300 years. Back in the 20th century that seemed like a long time, and we lamented that the ecological temporal scale and the economic temporal scale of [End Page 119] industries like the timber business and the oil business were out of phase, the former measured in decades the latter in quarters. But now, elderly environmental philosophers like me will personally witness little more than the initial environmental consequences of GCC—the occasional Katrina, the occasional hottest year on record, the disappearance of glaciers in Glacier National Park. We won't live to see (I hope) the cessation of the Gulf Stream or sea-levels rise more than a few centimeters. And the rectification of these consequences will be completed, if they ever are, only after thousands of years have elapsed.How then do we scale EE up to meet the moral challenge of GCC? Spatially we have a huge leap to make from the landscape scale to the biospheric scale. We have to become conversant with a new set of sciences; the relevant sciences are not ecology and conservation biology, but biogeochemistry and earth-systems science.Is a GCC EE even possible? Maybe ethics has temporal-scale limits? We used to marvel at the long view of the Iroquois who considered the consequences of present policies out seven generations. Wow! At 25 years per generation that is all of 250 years (adding on the 75-year life-span of the 7th generation). Can we have ethical concern for the 37th generation, a thousand years out? Or the 121st generation 3000 years out?J. Baird Callicott J. Baird Callicott is Regents Professor of Philosophy and Religion Studies in the Institute of Applied Sciences at the University of North Texas. From 1997–2000 he served the International Society for Environmental Ethics as president. He is author, editor, or co-editor of a score of books and more than a hundred journal articles and book chapters. Callicott's research proceeds on six major fronts: theoretical environmental ethics, land ethics, the philosophy of... (shrink)

In their recent target article, Bluhm et al. (2023) discuss the construct of “invasiveness” as it relates to medical treatments, and in particular to treatments that affect brain function. Cruciall...

This paper takes up the problem of correlationism from a phenomenological perspective. Speculative realists, such as Quentin Meillassoux and Graham Harman, seek to establish new forms of Continental realism largely because, in their view, phenomenology cannot adequately account for the real. To counter these claims, I will use what I call a “critical phenomenological approach”, which critically delimits the real from the intentional relation, and thus makes possible a phenomenological theory of the real. This approach to realism establishes not only (...) that the real is independent from the intentional relation but also that the intentional relation itself is contingent with regard to the real. Furthermore, it also shows that the human being is exposed to the real in an originary way that calls into question the adequacy of Meillassoux’s and Harman’s forms of realism. (shrink)

This volume is about the many ways we perceive. Contributors explore the nature of the individual senses, how and what they tell us about the world, and how they interrelate. They consider how the senses extract perceptual content from receptoral information. They consider what kinds of objects we perceive and whether multiple senses ever perceive a single event. They consider how many senses we have, what makes one sense distinct from another, and whether and why distinguishing senses may be useful. (...) They consider the extent to which the senses act in concert, rather than as discrete modalities, and whether this influence is epistemically pernicious, neutral, or beneficial. They explore both the familiar five sense modalities and other candidate sense modalities, including a sense for flavour, inner senses (e.g., a sense for pain), and various senses that may result from using sensory substitution devices. Contributors often represent competing views, and the methods they deploy sometimes differ from one essay to the next—with some drawing upon the sciences and engineering and others relying upon conceptual analysis. All contributors agree, nonetheless, that traditional theorizing about the senses is hampered by a neglect of the senses other than vision, and by the misconception that vision is a passive receptacle for an image thrown by a lens. And many contributors believe that it is unduly restrictive to think of perception as a collation of contents provided by individual sense modalities; they think that to understand perception properly, we need to build into our accounts the idea that the senses work together. The ambition of the volume is to begin to develop better paradigms for understanding the senses, and thereby to move toward a better understanding of perception. (shrink)

Both patched versions of the Bostrom/Kulczycki simulation argument contain serious objective errors, discovered while attempting to formalize them in predicate logic. The English glosses of both versions involve badly misleading meanings of vague magnitude terms, which their impressiveness benefits from. We fix the errors, prove optimal versions of the arguments, and argue that both are much less impressive than they originally appeared. Finally, we provide a guide for readers to evaluate the simulation argument for themselves, using well-justified settings of the (...) argument parameters that have simple, accurate statements in English, which are easier to understand and critique than the statements in the original paper. (shrink)

Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

Structuralism and quidditism are competing views of the metaphysics of property individuation: structuralists claim that properties are individuated by their nomological roles; quidditists claim that they are individuated by something else. This paper (1) refutes what many see as the best reason to accept structuralism over quidditism and (2) offers a methodological argument in favor of a quidditism. The standard charge against quidditism is that it commits us to something ontologically otiose: intrinsic aspects of properties, so-called ‘quiddities’. Here I grant (...) that quiddities are ontologically otiose, but deny that quidditism requires them. According to a view I call ‘austere quidditism’, properties are individuated by bare numerical identity. I argue that, as far as ontological parsimony is concerned, austere quidditism and structuralism are on a par. But is austere quidditism a coherent alternative to structuralism? To see that it is, we must get clear on what exactly we mean by ‘property individuation’. What we discover is that structuralism is a counterpart theory for properties, and that austere quidditism is simply the rejection of counterpart theory. I conclude with a methodological argument to the effect that counterpart theory for properties ought to be rejected. This paper begins by situating the debate between structuralists and quidditists within the context of a debate over the epistemic limits of fundamental science. At the center of this debate is David Lewis’s posthumously published ‘Ramseyan Humility’ (2008). In the appendix I explain the precise role of austere quidditism in Lewis’s argument. (shrink)

Ned Block argues that the higher-order (HO) approach to explaining consciousness is ‘defunct’ because a prominent objection (the ‘misrepresentation objection’) exposes the view as ‘incoherent’. What’s more, a response to this objection that I’ve offered elsewhere (Weisberg 2010) fails because it ‘amounts to abusing the notion of what-it’s-like-ness’ (xxx).1 In this response, I wish to plead guilty as charged. Indeed, I will continue herein to abuse Block’s notion of what-it’s-like-ness. After doing so, I will argue that the HO approach accounts (...) for the sense of what-it’s-like-ness that matters in a theory of consciousness. I will also argue that the only incoherence present in the HO theory is that generated by embracing Block’s controversial notion of what-it’s-like-ness, something no theorist of any stripe ought to do. Block is famous for (among other things) having introduced the notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ into contemporary philosophy of mind (Block 1995). This term is widely employed in the philosophical literature and it even appears in the empirical literature. But wide-speared usage has brought about divergent interpretations of the term. We can distinguish a ‘moderate’ and a ‘zealous’ reading of ‘phenomenal consciousness’. On the moderate reading, ‘phenomenal consciousness’ just means ‘experience’. Many people have embraced this sense of the term and use it to roughly pick out conscious experience involving sensory quality (states like conscious visual experiences or conscious pains, for example).2 On the zealous reading, however, phenomenal consciousness is held to be ‘distinct from any cognitive, intentional, or functional property’ (Block 1995: 234). That is, any explanation of phenomenal consciousness in exclusively cognitive, intentional, or functional terms will fail to capture, without remainder, what is really distinctive about phenomenal consciousness. Block, of course, is fully clear about embracing the zealous reading; indeed, his initial introduction of the notion is in those terms. The same ambiguity occurs with the much-used (and abused) idea of ‘what-it’s-like-ness’.. (shrink)

This chapter offers a brief characterization of creativity, followed by a review of some of the reasons people have been skeptical about the possibility of explaining creativity. It surveys some of the recent work on creativity that is naturalistic in the sense that it presumes creativity is natural, as opposed to magical, occult, or supernatural, and is therefore amenable to scientific inquiry. The chapter divides into two categories. The broader category is empirical philosophy, which draws on empirical research while addressing (...) questions that have traditionally been regarded as philosophical. The second category is experimental philosophy, a special branch of empirical philosophy in which experiments are designed by philosophers with the explicit purpose of addressing philosophical questions. This categorization is admittedly somewhat artificial, but it is a familiar one in the prevailing division of intellectual labor, and it will be a useful organizational tool for the chapter. (shrink)

This entry provides a substantive overview of research and debates concerning creativity in philosophy and related fields. Topics covered include definitions of creativity, whether creativity can be learned, whether it can be explained, attempts to explain creativity in cognitive science, and whether computer programs or AI systems can be creative.

Certain philosophers maintain that there is a ‘constitutive threshold for belief’: to believe that p just is to have a degree of confidence that p above a certain threshold. On the basis of this view, these philosophers defend what is known as ‘the Lockean Thesis ’, according to which it is rational to believe that p just in case it is rational to have a degree of confidence that p above the constitutive threshold for belief. While not directly speaking to (...) the controversy over the Lockean Thesis, this paper defends the general idea behind it—namely, the thesis that there is some threshold such that it is rational to believe that p if and only if it is rational to have a degree of confidence great than that threshold. This paper identifies the threshold in question—not with the alleged constitutive threshold for belief—but with what I call ‘the practical threshold for rational belief’. Roughly, the thesis defended here is that it is rational to believe that p if and only if it is rational to have a degree of confidence that p that rationalizes engaging in certain types of practical reasoning. (shrink)

A collaborative undertaking between an artist and a philosopher, this monograph attempts to deepen our understanding of "contemplative seeing" by addressing the works of Plato, Thoreau, Heidegger, and more. The authors explore what it means to "see" reality and contemplate how viewing reality philosophically and artfully is a form of spirituality. In this way, by developing a new conception of active visual engagement, the authors propose a way of seeing that unites both critical scrutiny and spiritual involvement, as opposed to (...) simple passive reception. (shrink)

This paper attempts to answer two questions: What is epistemic agency? And what are the motivations for having this concept? In response to the first question, it is argued that epistemic agency is the agency one has over one’s belief-forming practices, or doxastic dispositions, which can directly affect the way one forms a belief and indirectly affect the beliefs one forms. In response to the second question, it is suggested that the above conception of epistemic agency is either implicitly endorsed (...) by those theorists sympathetic to epistemic normativity or, at minimum, this conception can make sense of the legitimacy of the normative notions applicable to how and what one should believe. It is further contended that belief formation in some respects is a skill that can be intentionally developed and refined. Accepting this contention and the existence of certain epistemic norms provide inconclusive yet good reasons to endorse this concept. Recent challenges to this concept by Hillary Kornblith and Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij are also considered. (shrink)

Perception is typically distinguished from cognition. For example, seeing is importantly different from believing. And while what one sees clearly influences what one thinks, it is debatable whether what one believes and otherwise thinks can influence, in some direct and non-trivial way, what one sees. The latter possible relation is the cognitive penetration of perception. Cognitive penetration, if it occurs, has implications for philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. This paper offers an analysis of the phenomenon, (...) its theoretical consequences, and a variety of experimental results and possible interpretations of them. The paper concludes by proposing some constraints for analyses and definitions of cognitive penetrability. (shrink)

Computer programs are generating artworks of astonishing novelty and aesthetic value. By the standard definition of creativity, these programs would count as being creative. But if you still hesitate to call a program creative, that's for good reason, we argue. It's because real creativity requires AGENTS who are responsible for what they make, and it's not at all clear that these programs are agents. -/- (The title was imposed by the editor. It was supposed to be called, "ARE COMPUTERS CREATIVE?").

It has generally been recognized that while Bruno Latour’s and Martin Heidegger’s respective philosophies of technology converge on key points there is also a significant difference of attitudes towards the themes discussed. To better appreciate the similarities and differences, I suggest that we seek to understand both Latour and Heidegger as philosophers of the event, who seek to rescue the novel emergence of beings from the sedimentation of reductive, explanatory frameworks. I take up this line of thought and compare Latour’s (...) and Heidegger’s theories of things and the types of experiences they presume. Latour’s metaphysics of the actant ensures that no actant’s activity is ever reduced to being the passive effect of another. Yet while the actant can be ‘applied’ to any entity, from a Heideggerian standpoint this strength is precisely its weakness. Latour’s metaphysics provides a horizon of thought that blocks an original experience of things that Heidegger’s thought points towards. By stepping back from the horizonal experience Latour’s metaphysical blueprint for entities imposes, one can enter into an original opening that stems neither from humans nor nonhumans, but an ineradicable mystery at the origin of being. This mystery is nothing more than the inability to give ultimate reasons for the presence of beings. While Latour’s actant as _Ding_ is simply an actant with innumerable relations, Heidegger’s _das Ding_ is the concrete experience of the dissolution of metaphysical reasons, first and last causes. Precisely because Heidegger’s _das Ding_ emerges from a prior mystery that suspends any overarching causal or purposive schema, things can more freely presence from themselves. (shrink)

We identify a class of paradoxes that is neither set-theoretical nor semantical, but that seems to depend on intensionality. In particular, these paradoxes arise out of plausible properties of propositional attitudes and their objects. We try to explain why logicians have neglected these paradoxes, and to show that, like the Russell Paradox and the direct discourse Liar Paradox, these intensional paradoxes are recalcitrant and challenge logical analysis. Indeed, when we take these paradoxes seriously, we may need to rethink the commonly (...) accepted methods for dealing with the logical paradoxes. (shrink)