We present a theory of cooperative-competitive intelligence (CCI), its measures, research program, and applications that stem from it. Within the framework of this theory, satisficing sub-optimal behavior is any behavior that does not promote a decrease in the prospective control of the functional action diversity/unpredictability (D/U) potential of the agent or team. This potential is defined as the entropy measure in multiple, context-dependent dimensions. We define the satisficing interval of behaviors as CCI. In order to manifest itself at individual or (...) team level, this capacity harnesses properties such as degeneracy, pleiotropy (pluri-potentiality), synergies, and metastability. Intelligence is embodied because intelligent behavior is deeply dependent on body functionalities, defined as entropy measures. We base our theory on three principles: (a) relativity of functional entropy/ information in agent (team)-environment systems, (b) tendency toward the satisficing level of D/U potential, and (c) tendency toward the non-decreasing D/U potential. The conjunction of these three principles provides existence of sub-optimal behaviors associated with CCI. First, we deal with the problem of how to reduce multidimensional behavior to a concept that accounts for the vast set of scenarios in which CCI is manifested. Secondly, we define and discuss the three interacting principles that underpin CCI behavior as well as providing an outline for a future CCI research program supported by agent￾based modeling and empirical research. Finally, we provide some preliminary practical issues that stem from the theory. (shrink)

Col·lecció que aplega les actes dels cursos d'estiu del comtat d'Urgell que se celebra cada juliol a Balaguer des de l'any 1996. Aquests llibres contribueixen a renovar el coneixement de les arrels medievals de la mà dels millors especialistes d'Europa i Amèrica. Directors: Flocel Sabaté i Joan Farré.

I develop here a novel version of the Fregean view of belief ascriptions (i.e., sentences of the form ‘S believes that p’) and I explain how my view accounts for various problem cases that many philosophers have supposed are incompatible with Fregeanism. The so-called problem cases involve (a) what Perry calls essential indexicals and (b) de re ascriptions in which it is acceptable to substitute coreferential but non-synonymous terms in belief contexts. I also respond to two traditional worries about what (...) the sense of a proper name could be, and I explain how my view provides intuitively pleasing solutions to Kripke’s ‘London’–‘Londres’ puzzle and his Paderewski puzzle. Finally, in addition to defending my view, I also argue very briefly against Russellian alternatives to Fregeanism. (shrink)

In this largely antimetaphysical treatment of free will and determinism, Mark Balaguer argues that the philosophical problem of free will boils down to an open scientific question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events. In the course of his argument, Balaguer provides a naturalistic defense of the libertarian view of free will. The metaphysical component of the problem of free will, Balaguer argues, essentially boils down to the question of whether humans possess libertarian free (...) will. Furthermore, he argues that, contrary to the traditional wisdom, the libertarian question reduces to a question about indeterminacy--in particular, to a straightforward empirical question about whether certain neural events in our heads are causally undetermined in a certain specific way; in other words, Balaguer argues that the right kind of indeterminacy would bring with it all of the other requirements for libertarian free will. Finally, he argues that because there is no good evidence as to whether or not the relevant neural events are undetermined in the way that's required, the question of whether human beings possess libertarian free will is a wide-open empirical question. (shrink)

In this book, Balaguer demonstrates that there are no good arguments for or against mathematical platonism. He does this by establishing that both platonism and anti-platonism are defensible views. Introducing a form of platonism ("full-blooded platonism") that solves all problems traditionally associated with the view, he proceeds to defend anti-platonism (in particular, mathematical fictionalism) against various attacks, most notably the Quine-Putnam indispensability attack. He concludes by arguing that it is not simply that we do not currently have any good (...) argument for or against platonism, but that we could never have such an argument and, indeed, that there is no fact of the matter as to whether platonism is correct. (shrink)

This book does two things. First, it introduces a novel kind of non-factualist view, and it argues that we should endorse views of this kind in connection with a wide class of metaphysical questions, most notably, the abstract-object question and the composite-object question (so, more specifically, the book argues that there’s no fact of the matter whether there are any such things as abstract objects or composite objects—or material objects of any other kind). Second, the book explains how these non-factualist (...) views fit into a general anti-metaphysical view called neo-positivism, and it explains how we could argue that neo-positivism is true. Neo-positivism is (roughly) the view is that every metaphysical question decomposes into some subquestions—call them Q1, Q2, Q3, etc.—such that, for each of these subquestions, one of the following three anti-metaphysical views is true of it: non-factualism, or scientism, or metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism. These three views can be defined (very roughly) as follows. Non-factualism about a question Q is the view that there’s no fact of the matter about the answer to Q. Scientism about Q is the view that Q is an ordinary empirical-scientific question about some contingent aspect of physical reality, and Q can’t be settled with an a priori philosophical argument. And metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism about Q is the view that Q asks about the truth value of a modal sentence that’s metaphysically innocent in the sense that it doesn’t say anything about reality and, if it’s true, isn’t made true by reality. (shrink)

Mathematical fictionalism (or as I'll call it, fictionalism) is best thought of as a reaction to mathematical platonism. Platonism is the view that (a) there exist abstract mathematical objects (i.e., nonspatiotemporal mathematical objects), and (b) our mathematical sentences and theories provide true descriptions of such objects. So, for instance, on the platonist view, the sentence ‘3 is prime’ provides a straightforward description of a certain object—namely, the number 3—in much the same way that the sentence ‘Mars is red’ provides a (...) description of Mars. But whereas Mars is a physical object, the number 3 is (according to platonism) an abstract object. And abstract objects, platonists tell us, are wholly nonphysical, nonmental, nonspatial, nontemporal, and noncausal. Thus, on this view, the number 3 exists independently of us and our thinking, but it does not exist in space or time, it is not a physical or mental object, and it does not enter into causal relations with other objects. This view has been endorsed by Plato, Frege (1884, 1893-1903, 1919), Gödel (1964), and in some of their writings, Russell (1912) and Quine (1948, 1951), not to mention numerous more recent philosophers of mathematics, e.g., Putnam (1971), Parsons (1971), Steiner (1975), Resnik (1997), Shapiro (1997), Hale (1987), Wright (1983), Katz (1998), Zalta (1988), and Colyvan (2001). (shrink)

This book does three main things. First, it defends mathematical platonism against the main objections to that view (most notably, the epistemological objection and the multiple-reductions objection). Second, it defends anti-platonism (in particular, fictionalism) against the main objections to that view (most notably, the Quine-Putnam indispensability objection and the objection from objectivity). Third, it argues that there is no fact of the matter whether abstract mathematical objects exist and, hence, no fact of the matter whether platonism or anti-platonism is true.

Platonism is the view that there exist such things as abstract objects — where an abstract object is an object that does not exist in space or time and which is therefore entirely non-physical and nonmental. Platonism in this sense is a contemporary view. It is obviously related to the views of Plato in important ways, but it is not entirely clear that Plato endorsed this view, as it is defined here. In order to remain neutral on this question, the (...) term ‘platonism’ is spelled with a lower-case ‘p’. (See entry on Plato.) The most important figure in the development of modern platonism is Gottlob Frege (1884, 1892, 1893-1903, 1919). The view has also been endorsed by many others, including Kurt Gödel (1964), Bertrand Russell (1912), and W.V.O. Quine (1948, 1951). (shrink)

This paper develops a novel version of anti-platonism, called semantic fictionalism. The view is a response to the platonist argument that we need to countenance propositions to account for the truth of sentences containing ‘that’-clause singular terms, e.g., sentences of the form ‘x believes that p’ and ‘σ means that p’. Briefly, the view is that (a) platonists are right that ‘that’-clauses purport to refer to propositions, but (b) there are no such things as propositions, and hence, (c) ‘that’-clause-containing sentences (...) of the above sort are not true---they are useful fictions. Semantic fictionalism is an extension of Hartry Field’s mathematical fictionalism, but my defense of the view is not analogous to his. One of the many virtues of my defense is its generality: it explains how we can adopt a fictionalist stance towards all abstract singular terms, e.g., mathematical singular terms and ‘that’-clauses. (shrink)

This paper argues that contrary to what is commonly claimed, presentism is perfectly consistent with the special theory of relativity. More precisely, this paper provides a formulation of a novel relativistic version of presentism that preserves the core “metaphysical stance” of classical presentism, and is fully compatible with special relativity. Others have tried to relativize presentism, but the view put forward here is different from the views that have been proposed in the past.

This paper develops a novel version of mathematical fictionalism and defends it against three objections or worries, viz., (i) an objection based on the fact that there are obvious disanalogies between mathematics and fiction; (ii) a worry about whether fictionalism is consistent with the fact that certain mathematical sentences are objectively correct whereas others are incorrect; and (iii) a recent objection due to John Burgess concerning “hermeneuticism” and “revolutionism”.

A response is given here to Benacerraf's 1973 argument that mathematical platonism is incompatible with a naturalistic epistemology. Unlike almost all previous platonist responses to Benacerraf, the response given here is positive rather than negative; that is, rather than trying to find a problem with Benacerraf's argument, I accept his challenge and meet it head on by constructing an epistemology of abstract (i.e., aspatial and atemporal) mathematical objects. Thus, I show that spatio-temporal creatures like ourselves can attain knowledge about mathematical (...) objects by simply explaininghow they can do this. My argument is based upon the adoption of a particular version of platonism — full-blooded platonism — which asserts that any mathematical object which possiblycould exist actuallydoes exist. (shrink)

This paper argues for a certain kind of anti-metaphysicalism about the temporal ontology debate, i.e., the debate between presentists and eternalists over the existence of past and future objects. Three different kinds of anti-metaphysicalism are defined—namely, non-factualism, physical-empiricism, and trivialism. The paper argues for the disjunction of these three views. It is then argued that trivialism is false, so that either non-factualism or physical-empiricism is true. Finally, the paper ends with a discussion of whether we should endorse non-factualism or physical-empiricism. (...) An initial reason is provided for thinking that non-factualism might be true, but in the end, the paper leaves this question open. The paper also argues against a certain kind of necessitarianism about the temporal ontology debate; but this isn't an extra job—the falsity of this necessitarian view falls out of the other arguments as a sort of corollary. (shrink)

A response is given here to Benacerraf's (1965) non-uniqueness (or multiple-reductions) objection to mathematical platonism. It is argued that non-uniqueness is simply not a problem for platonism; more specifically, it is argued that platonists can simply embrace non-uniqueness—i.e., that one can endorse the thesis that our mathematical theories truly describe collections of abstract mathematical objects while rejecting the thesis that such theories truly describe unique collections of such objects. I also argue that part of the motivation for this stance is (...) that it dovetails with the correct response to Benacerraf's other objection to platonism, i.e., his (1973) epistemological objection. (shrink)

The main task of this paper is to defend anti-platonism by providing an anti-platonist (in particular, a fictionalist) account of the indispensable applications of mathematics to empirical science.

Let libertarianism be the view that humans are capable of making decisions that are simultaneously undetermined and appropriately non-random. It’s often argued that this view is incoherent because indeterminacy entails randomness (of some appropriate kind). I argue here that the truth is just the opposite: the right kind of indeterminacy in our decisions actually entails appropriate non-randomness, so that libertarianism is coherent, and the question of whether it’s true reduces to the wide-open empirical question of whether certain of our decisions (...) (which I characterize here) are undetermined at the moment of choice. Moreover, the version of libertarianism developed here is entirely naturalistic and event-causal. (shrink)

A theory of objective mathematical correctness is developed. The theory is consistent with both mathematical realism and mathematical anti-realism, and versions of realism and anti-realism are developed that dovetail with the theory of correctness. It is argued that these are the best versions of realism and anti-realism and that the theory of correctness behind them is true. Along the way, it is shown that, contrary to the traditional wisdom, the question of whether undecidable sentences like the continuum hypothesis have objectively (...) determinate truth values is independent of the question of whether mathematical realism is true. (shrink)

Let libertarianism be the view that humans are capable of making decisions that are simultaneously undetermined and appropriately non-random. It’s often argued that this view is incoherent because indeterminacy entails randomness (of some appropriate kind). I argue here that the truth is just the opposite: the right kind of indeterminacy in our decisions actually entails appropriate non-randomness, so that libertarianism is coherent, and the question of whether it’s true reduces to the wide-open empirical question of whether certain of our decisions (...) (which I characterize here) are undetermined at the moment of choice. Moreover, the version of libertarianism developed here is entirely naturalistic and event-causal. (shrink)

This paper provides articulates a non-epiphenomenal, libertarian kind of free will—a kind of free will that’s incompatible with both determinism and epiphenomenalism—and responds to scientific arguments against the existence of this sort of freedom. In other words, the paper argues that we don’t have any good empirical scientific reason to believe that human beings don’t possess a non-epiphenomenal, libertarian sort of free will.

It is argued here that mathematical objects cannot be simultaneously abstract and perceptible. Thus, naturalized versions of mathematical platonism, such as the one advocated by Penelope Maddy, are unintelligble. Thus, platonists cannot respond to Benacerrafian epistemological arguments against their view vias Maddy-style naturalization. Finally, it is also argued that naturalized platonists cannot respond to this situation by abandoning abstractness (that is, platonism); they must abandon perceptibility (that is, naturalism).

This paper considers the empirical evidence that we currently have for various kinds of determinism that might be relevant to the thesis that human beings possess libertarian free will. Libertarianism requires a very strong version of indeterminism, so it can be refuted not just by universal determinism, but by some much weaker theses as well. However, it is argued that at present, we have no good reason to believe even these weak deterministic views and, hence, no good reason—at least from (...) this quarter—to doubt that we are libertarian free. In particular, the paper responds to various arguments for neural and psychological determinism, arguments based on the work of people like Honderich, Tegmark, Libet, Velmans, Wegner, and Festinger. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel version of anti-platonism, called semantic fictionalism. The view is a response to the platonist argument that we need to countenance propositions to account for the truth of sentences containing `that'-clause singular terms, e.g., sentences of the form `x believes that p' and `σ means that p'. Briefly, the view is that (a) platonists are right that `that'-clauses purport to refer to propositions, but (b) there are no such things as propositions, and hence, (c) `that'-clause-containing sentences (...) of the above sort are not true-they are useful fictions. Semantic fictionalism is an extension of Hartry Field's mathematical fictionalism, but my defense of the view is not analogous to his. One of the many virtues of my defense is its generality: it explains how we can adopt a fictionalist stance towards all abstract singular terms, e.g., mathematical singular terms and `that'-clauses. (shrink)

This paper does two things. First, it argues for a metaphilosophical view of conceptual analysis questions; in particular, it argues that the facts that settle conceptual-analysis questions are facts about the linguistic intentions of ordinary folk. The second thing this paper does is argue that if this metaphilosophical view is correct, then experimental philosophy is a legitimate methodology to use in trying to answer conceptual-analysis questions.

This paper argues for a certain kind of anti‐metaphysicalism about the temporal ontology debate, i.e., the debate between presentists and eternalists over the existence of past and future objects. Three different kinds of anti‐metaphysicalism are defined—namely, non‐factualism, physical‐empiricism, and trivialism. The paper argues for the disjunction of these three views. It is then argued that trivialism is false, so that either non‐factualism or physical‐empiricism is true. Finally, the paper ends with a discussion of whether we should endorse non‐factualism or physical‐empiricism. (...) An initial reason is provided for thinking that non‐factualism might be true, but in the end, the paper leaves this question open. The paper also argues against a certain kind of necessitarianism about the temporal ontology debate; but this isn't an extra job—the falsity of this necessitarian view falls out of the other arguments as a sort of corollary. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have argued in recent years that certain kinds of metaphysical debates—e.g., debates over the existence of past and future objects, mereological sums, and coincident objects—are merely verbal. It is argued in this paper that metaphysical debates are not merely verbal. The paper proceeds by uncovering and describing a pattern that can be found in a very wide range of philosophical problems and then explaining how, in connection with any problem of this general kind, there is always (...) a non-verbal debate to be had. Indeed, the paper provides a recipe for locating the non-verbal debates that surround these philosophical problems. This undermines metametaphysical verbalist views of our metaphysical questions—i.e., views that say that there is no non-verbal debate to be had about some metaphysical question. Finally, the paper also provides a quick argument against actual-literature verbalist views of our metaphysical questions; in other words, the paper argues that in connection with all of our metaphysical questions, it is easy to find examples of non-verbal debates in the actual philosophical literature. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that the debate over composition is factually empty; in other words, I argue that there’s no fact of the matter whether there are any composite objects like tables and rocks and cats. Moreover, at the end of the paper, I explain how my argument is suggestive of a much more general conclusion, namely, that there’s no fact of the matter whether there are any material objects at all. Roughly speaking, the paper proceeds by arguing that (...) if there were a fact of the matter about whether composite objects exist, then it would be either a necessary fact or a contingent fact, and both of these alternatives are implausible. (shrink)

One of Hume's most well-known works and a masterpiece of philosophy, A Treatise of Human Nature is indubitably worth taking the time to read.

La intención fundamental de la presente investigación es dar cuenta de la paradoja política que supone la identidad para la teoría crítica feminista, como lugar del que es necesario partir y como heterodesignación limitadora que queremos superar en parte. La identidad ha devenido un concepto clave para los feminismos contemporáneos: así, si el desde el diferencialismo se opta por un reforzamiento de la identidad femenina; desde la teoría queer se reclama la constante desestabilización de toda identidad. Queremos reivindicar, para el (...) siglo XXI, la necesidad de recuperar la idea ilustrada de un feminismo de la igualdad que beba de la tradición republicana, que parta de la identidad no como fin, sino como el comienzo necesario para un proyecto emancipatorio a la vez que sede de opresiones. Sostenemos que el feminismo de hoy debe atender a dos tareas fundamentales: (1) hacerse cargo de la paradoja de la identidad para la construcción de una subjetividad política feminista y (2) pensar las condiciones materiales, institucionales y simbólicas de la igualdad y la ciudadanía como aspiraciones a reivinidicar. (shrink)

This paper provides comments on Susan Schneider's paper 'Does the Mathematical Nature of Physics Undermine Physicalism?'. In particular, it argues that, in contrast with what Schneider suggests, mathematical fictionalism is not a psychologistic view in any interesting sense.

The purpose of this essay is to respond to critiques of my recent book (Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem) put forward by Michael McKenna, Derk Pereboom, and Bob Kane in an Author-Meets-Critics session at the 2011 Pacific Division meeting of the APA.

PurposeThis paper aims to establish that a certain sort of mathematical pluralism is true. MethodsThe paper proceeds by arguing that that the best versions of mathematical Platonism and anti-Platonism both entail the relevant sort of mathematical pluralism. Result and ConclusionThis argument gives us the result that mathematical pluralism is true, and it also gives us the perhaps surprising result that mathematical Platonism and mathematical pluralism are perfectly compatible with one another.

Examines democracy in the Philippines using the political thought of Jürgen Habermas. Winner of the 2016 Outstanding Scholarly Work Award for the School of Humanities presented by Ateneo de Manila University This book is a pioneering study of Philippine democracy, one of the oldest in the Asian region, vis-à-vis Habermasian critical theory. Proceeding from a concise examination of the theory of law and democracy found in Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms, Ranilo Balaguer Hermida explains how the law occupies the (...) central role in both the legitimation of political power and the attainment of social integration. He then discusses how Habermas proposes to resolve the tension that exists in modern society between democratic norms and social facts, through the adoption of a lawmaking procedure whereby the informal sources of issues and opinions from the public sphere are allowed to develop and interact with the formal deliberations and decision processes inside the political system. He also explores certain provisions of the present Philippine Constitution that were expressly intended to restore democratic institutions and processes destroyed by decades of martial law, as well as the problems and hindrances that stand in the way of their full implementation. Ranilo Balaguer Hermida is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. He received his PhD in philosophy from Monash University in Australia. (shrink)

Drawing on the self-determination framework, the study examined the effect of coaches’ autonomy support on the leisure experience of young male football players. Specifically, a model was tested analyzing the long-term predictive power of the players’ perception of coach-autonomy support at the beginning of the season on the subjective vitality of young football players at the end of the season through needs satisfaction and intrinsic motivation. Moreover, we tested whether the effects of coach-autonomy support on the aforementioned variables (needs satisfaction, (...) intrinsic motivation, and subjective vitality) at the end of the season remained at the beginning of the following season. Because the coach in the second season was not the same one as in the first season, the perception of coach-autonomy support at the beginning of the second season was used as a control variable. Three hundred and sixty football players (M age = 12.60 years; SD = 0.52) completed a questionnaire on the variables of interest at the beginning of the first season (T1), at the end of the first season (T2), and at the beginning of the second season (T3). The results of the path analyses showed that player’ perceptions of coach autonomy support at the beginning of the season (T1) positively predicted needs satisfaction at the end of the first season (T2), which in turn predicted intrinsic motivation at the end of the first season (T2). Additionally, intrinsic motivation significantly and positively predicted subjective vitality at the end of the first season (T2). Finally, needs satisfaction, intrinsic motivation, and subjective vitality at the end of the second season (T2) positively predicted these same variables at the beginning of the second season (T3). Results emphasized the importance of the autonomy support offered by the coach in promoting the quality of young people’s leisure experience playing football and its benefits for their well-being. (shrink)

One of the most pleasurable aspects of video games is their ability to induce immersive experiences. However, there appears to be a tentative conceptualization of what an immersive experience is. In this short review, we specifically focus on the terms of flow and immersion, as they are the most widely used and applied definitions in the video game literature, whilst their differences remain disputable. We critically review the concepts separately and proceed with a comparison on their proposed differences. We conclude (...) that immersion and flow do not substantially differ in current studies and that more evidence is needed to justify their separation. (shrink)

It is argued here that the question of whether compatibilism is true is irrelevant to metaphysical questions about the nature of human decision‐making processes—for example, the question of whether or not humans have free will—except in a very trivial and metaphysically uninteresting way. In addition, it is argued that two other questions—namely, the conceptual‐analysis question of what free will is and the question that asks which kinds of freedom are required for moral responsibility—are also essentially irrelevant to metaphysical questions about (...) the nature of human beings. (shrink)

It is argued here that there is no fact of the matter between direct reference theory and neo-Fregeanism. To get a more precise idea of the central thesis of this paper, consider the following two claims: (i) While direct reference theory and neo-Fregeanism can be developed in numerous ways, they can be developed in essentially parallel ways; that is, for any (plausible) way of developing direct reference theory, there is an essentially parallel way of developing neo-Fregeanism, and vice versa. And (...) (ii) for each such pair of theories, there is no fact of the matter as to which of them is superior; or more precisely, they are tied in terms of factual accuracy. These are sweeping claims that cannot be fully justified in a single paper. But arguments are given here that motivate these theses, i.e., that suggest that they are very likely true. (shrink)