We compared the ability of three different contextual models of lexical semantic memory and of a simple associative model to predict the properties of semantic networks derived from word association norms. None of the semantic models were able to accurately predict all of the network properties. All three contextual models over-predicted clustering in the norms, whereas the associative model under-predicted clustering. Only a hybrid model that assumed that some of the responses were based on a contextual model and others on (...) an associative network successfully predicted all of the network properties and predicted a word's top five associates as well as or better than the better of the two constituent models. The results suggest that participants switch between a contextual representation and an associative network when generating free associations. We discuss the role that each of these representations may play in lexical semantic memory. Concordant with recent multicomponent theories of semantic memory, the associative network may encode coordinate relations between concepts, and contextual representations may be used to process information about more abstract concepts. (shrink)

The Alien films are steeped in the horror of sexual violence and the effects that it can have on survivors. The films place male viewers into a position they are not usually forced to confront in their own lives, during which they can only wonder what it would be like to have to worry about sexual violence just as much as women. This chapter looks more closely at what it is like for women in both the real world and the (...) world of the Alien films. It shows that rape is more likely to be under reported for male survivors than for females, but the gulf between sexes is still likely to be pretty large, even taking this into account. While the men in these films direct their ugly comments towards female characters like Ripley or the hypothetical colonists' daughters, the aliens themselves are far less discerning. (shrink)

Experiential evidence shows that pain is associated with common meanings. These include a meaning of threat or danger, which is experienced as immediately distressing or unpleasant; cognitive meanings, which are focused on the long-term consequences of having chronic pain; and existential meanings such as hopelessness, which are more about the person with chronic pain than the pain itself. This interdisciplinary book - the second in the three-volume Meanings of Pain series edited by Dr Simon van Rysewyk - aims to better (...) understand pain by describing experiences of pain and the meanings these experiences hold for the people living through them. The lived experiences of pain described here involve various types of chronic pain, including spinal pain, labour pain, rheumatic pain, diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome, endometriosis-associated pain, and cancer-related pain. Two chapters provide narrative descriptions of pain, recounted and interpreted by people with pain. Language is important to understanding the meaning of pain since it is the primary tool human beings use to manipulate meaning. As discussed in the book, linguistic meaning may hold clues to understanding some pain-related experiences, including the stigmatisation of people with pain, the dynamics of patient-clinician communication, and other issues, such as relationships between pain, public policy and the law, and attempts to develop a taxonomy of pain that is meaningful for patients. Clinical implications are described in each chapter. This book is intended for people with pain, their family members or caregivers, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and policy makers. (shrink)

While research has focused on financial and social goals in impact investing, we add to the limited research that focuses on how individuals manage identity multiplicity, defined as three or more role identities. Based on our qualitative study of Christian impact investors, we develop a model of identity multiplicity work, explaining how individuals manage their multiple role identities to reduce identity tensions during the process of impact investing. We find individuals engaged in an interactive, ongoing three-step process of identity multiplicity (...) work: prioritizing one of their salient identities, managing their identity multiplicity interrelationships, and reinforcing their prioritized identity. Investors generally prioritized an identity that was neither financial nor social, but rather religious. We also find this identity work implemented through three novel mechanisms: shadowing, one identity casts a shadow over another thereby enabling the simultaneous pursuit of related goals; distinguishing, all identities are retained and at least a minimum threshold of role expectations are met; and surrendering, partial sacrificing of goals of one identity in favor of another identity based on an individual’s self-reflective importance of the role. Our findings offer new insights to multiple identities, impact investing and business ethics literatures. (shrink)

Standard Type Theory, STT, tells us that b^n(a^m) is well-formed iff n=m+1. However, Linnebo and Rayo have advocated the use of Cumulative Type Theory, CTT, has more relaxed type-restrictions: according to CTT, b^β(a^α) is well-formed iff β > α. In this paper, we set ourselves against CTT. We begin our case by arguing against Linnebo and Rayo’s claim that CTT sheds new philosophical light on set theory. We then argue that, while CTT ’s type-restrictions are unjustifiable, the type-restrictions imposed by (...) STT are justified by a Fregean semantics. What is more, this Fregean semantics provides us with a principled way to resist Linnebo and Rayo’s Semantic Argument for CTT. We end by examining an alternative approach to cumulative types due to Florio and Jones; we argue that their theory is best seen as a misleadingly formulated version of STT. (shrink)

This is a critical notice of Tim Button's book "The Limits of Realism".

Does thought have distinctive experiential features? Is there, in addition to sensory phenomenology, a kind of cognitive phenomenology--phenomenology of a cognitive or conceptual character? Leading philosophers of mind debate whether conscious thought has cognitive phenomenology and whether it is part of conscious perception and conscious emotion.

Apocalypse, it seems, is everywhere. Preachers with vast followings proclaim the world's end and apocalyptic fears grip even the non-religious amid climate change, pandemics, and threats of nuclear war. But as these ideas pervade popular discourse, grasping their logic remains elusive. Ben Jones argues that we can gain insight into apocalyptic thought through secular thinkers. He starts with a puzzle: Why would secular thinkers draw on Christian apocalyptic beliefs--often dismissed as bizarre--to interpret politics? The apocalyptic tradition proves appealing in (...) part because it theorizes a special relation between crisis and utopia. Apocalyptic thought points to crisis as the vehicle to bring the previously impossible within reach, thus offering apparent resources for navigating challenges in ideal theory, which tries to imagine the best and most just society. By examining apocalyptic thought's appeal and risks, this study arrives at new insights on the limits of ideal theory and utopian hope. (shrink)

Viewed from a certain perspective, nothing can seem more secure than introspection. Consider an ordinary conscious episode—say, your current visual experience of the colour of this page. You can judge, when reflecting on this experience, that you have a visual experience as of something white with black marks before you. Does it seem reasonable to doubt this introspective judgement? Surely not—such doubt would seem utterly fanciful. The trustworthiness of introspection is not only assumed by commonsense, it is also taken for (...) granted by many of theorists about the mind. Within both philosophy and the science of consciousness it is widely held that introspection is generally reliable, at least with respect to the question of one’s current (or immediately prior) conscious states. Without this assumption, we could not make sense of theorists’ widespread use of introspection, both in support of their own position and to undermine that of their opponents. (shrink)

Articles by Bain Attwood, Tim Murray, Gillian Cowlishaw, Stephen Muecke, Andrew Lattas, Philip Jones, Barry Morris, Tim Rowse, Heather Goodall, Jan Pettman and Colin Pardoe annotated separately.

The meaning and truth conditions for claims about physical modality and causation have been considered problematic since Hume’s empiricist critique. But the underlying semantic commitments that follow from Hume’s empiricism about ideas have long been abandoned by the philosophical community. Once the consequences of that abandonment are properly appreciated, the problems of physical modality and causal locutions fall away, and can be painlessly solved.

In this book , Lorraine Besser-Jones develops a eudaimonistic virtue ethics based on a psychological account of human nature. While her project maintains the fundamental features of the eudaimonistic virtue ethical framework—virtue, character, and well-being—she constructs these concepts from an empirical basis, drawing support from the psychological fields of self-determination and self-regulation theory. Besser-Jones’s resulting account of "eudaimonic ethics" presents a compelling normative theory and offers insight into what is involved in being a virtuous person and "acting well." (...) This original contribution to contemporary ethics and moral psychology puts forward a provocative hypothesis of what an empirically-based moral theory would look like. (shrink)

One of the central problems in the study of consciousness concerns the ascription of consciousness. We want to know whether certain kinds of creatures—such as non-human animals, artificially created organisms, and even members of our own species who have suffered severe brain-damage—are conscious, and we want to know what kinds of conscious states these creatures might be in if indeed they are conscious. The identification of accurate markers of consciousness is essential if the science of consciousness is to have any (...) chance of success. (shrink)

We provide a direct method for proving Craig interpolation for a range of modal and intuitionistic logics, including those containing a "converse" modality. We demonstrate this method for classical tense logic, its extensions with path axioms, and for bi-intuitionistic logic. These logics do not have straightforward formalisations in the traditional Gentzen-style sequent calculus, but have all been shown to have cut-free nested sequent calculi. The proof of the interpolation theorem uses these calculi and is purely syntactic, without resorting to embeddings, (...) semantic arguments, or interpreted connectives external to the underlying logical language. A novel feature of our proof includes an orthogonality condition for defining duality between interpolants. (shrink)

What is it that makes someone a parent? Many writers – call them ‘monists’– claim that parenthood is grounded solely in one essential feature that is both necessary and sufficient for someone's being a parent. We reject not only monism but also ‘necessity’ views, in which some specific feature is necessary but not also sufficient for parenthood. Our argument supports what we call ‘pluralism’, the view that any one of several kinds of relationship is sufficient for parenthood. We begin by (...) challenging monistic versions of gestationalism, the view that gestation uniquely grounds parenthood. Monistic and necessity gestationalism are implausible. First, we raise the ‘paternity problem’– necessity gestationalists lack an adequate account of how men become fathers. Second, the positive arguments that necessity gestationalists give are not compelling. However, although gestation may not be a necessary condition for parenthood, there is good reason to think that it is sufficient. After further rebutting an ‘intentionalist’ account of parenthood, in which having and acting on intentions to procreate and rear is necessary for parenthood, we end by sketching a pluralist picture of the nature of parenthood, rooted in causation, on which gestation, direct genetic derivation, extended custody, and even, sometimes, intentions, may be individually sufficient for parenthood. (shrink)

This paper offers some refinements to a particular objection to act consequentialism, the “causal impotence” objection. According to proponents of the objection, when we find circumstances in which severe, unnecessary harms result entirely from voluntary acts, it seems as if we should be able to indict at least one act among those acts, but act consequentialism appears to lack the resources to offer this indictment. Our aim is to show is that the most promising response on behalf of act consequentialism, (...) the threshold argument, cannot offer a fully general prescription about what to do in cases of collective action. (shrink)

Organizational ethics—defined as the alignment of an institution’s practices with its mission, vision, and values—is a growing field in health care not well characterized in empirical literature. To capture the scope and context of organizational ethics work in United States healthcare institutions, we conducted a nationwide convenience survey of ethicists regarding the scope of organizational ethics work, common challenges faced, and the organizational context in which this work is done. In this article, we report substantial variability in the structure of (...) organizational ethics programs and the settings in which it is conducted. Notable findings included disagreement about the activities that comprise organizational ethics and a lack of common metrics used to assess organizational ethics activities. A frequently cited barrier to full engagement in these activities was poor institution-wide understanding about the role and function of organizational ethics resources. These data suggest a tension in the trajectory of organizational ethics’ professionalization: while some variability is appropriate to the field’s relative youth, inadequate attention to definitions of organizational ethics practice and metrics for success can impede discussions about appropriate institutional support, leadership context, and training for practitioners. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an argument for rejecting Sarah Moss's recent account of legal proof. Moss's account is attractive in a number of ways. It provides a new version of a knowledge-based theory of legal proof that elegantly resolves a number of puzzles about mere statistical evidence in the law. Moreover, the account promises to have attractive implications for social and moral philosophy, in particular about the impermissibility of racial profiling and other harmful kinds of statistical generalisation. In this (...) paper, I show that Moss's account of legal proof crucially depends on a moral norm called the rule of consideration. I argue that we have a number of reasons to be sceptical of this rule. Once we reject the rule, it is not clear that Moss's account of legal proof is either plausible or attractive. (shrink)

Jessica Brown effectively contends that Keith DeRose’s latest argument for contextualism fails to rule out contextualism’s chief rival, namely, classic invariantism. Still, even if her position has not been ruled out, the classic invariantist must offer considerations in favor of her position if she is to convince us that it is superior to contextualism. Brown defends classic invariantism with a warranted assertability maneuver that utilizes a linguistic pragmatic principle of relevance. I argue, however, that this maneuver is not as effective (...) as it might be. I propose a different warranted assertability maneuver—one that utilizes a pragmatic principle of strength—that affords a more successful defense of classic invariantism, and that helps to establish that classic invariantism is superior to contextualism. (shrink)

Digital innovations are rapidly changing the contemporary workplace. Big Tech companies marketing algorithmic management increasingly decide on the Future of Work. Political responses, however, often focus on managing the impact of these technologies on workers. They leave the question of how these technologies are designed or how workers can determine their own futures unanswered. This approach risks surrendering the Future of Work debate to techno-determinist imaginaries aligned with corporate interests. Using Cornelius Castoriadis’ early writings on worker struggles in French Tayloristic (...) factories and his later oeuvre on conflictual social imaginaries, I propose an agonistic approach to the Future of Work. Not merely companies implementing workplace technologies, but also workers themselves possess agency in determining the Future of Work. Workers’ frequent contestations against machinic surveillance and technologically mediated coordination of the labour process disclose an alternative Future of Work in which technologies are used to enhance worker autonomy rather than bureaucratic control. Worker struggles at Amazon Mechanical Turk illustrate this agonistic dynamic: Amazon mobilizes algorithmic management to fragment and control a workforce of globally dispersed remote workers, but the latter form online social communities and create counter-technologies to reappropriate control over the labour process. (shrink)

Science is our best way of finding out about the natural world, and philosophers who write about that world ought to be sensitive to the claims of our best science. There are obstacles, however, to outsiders using science well. We think philosophers are prone to misuse science: to give undue weight to results that are untested; to highlight favorable and ignore unfavorable data; to give illegitimate weight to the authority of science; to leap from scientific premises to philosophical conclusions without (...) spelling out their relevance; to treat mere resonance between a scientific theory and a philosophical view as empirical evidence for the philosophical view. This article identifies and illustrates some of the ways in which philosophers misuse science, explains why these pitfalls are easy to fall into, and concludes with suggestions for avoiding them. (shrink)

The devastating impact of the COVID‐19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic is prompting renewed scrutiny of practices that heighten the risk of infectious disease. One such practice is refusing available vaccines known to be effective at preventing dangerous communicable diseases. For reasons of preventing individual harm, avoiding complicity in collective harm, and fairness, there is a growing consensus among ethicists that individuals have a duty to get vaccinated. I argue that these same grounds establish an analogous duty to avoid buying and (...) eating most meat sold today, based solely on a concern for human welfare. Meat consumption is a leading driver of infectious disease. Wildlife sales at wet markets, bushmeat hunting, and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are all exceptionally risky activities that facilitate disease spread and impose immense harms on human populations. If there is a moral duty to vaccinate, we also should recognize a moral duty to avoid most meat. The paper concludes by considering the implications of this duty for policy. (shrink)

This paper examines the neo-Aristotelian account of species natures as ‘life-forms’, which we owe to Philippa Foot, Michael Thompson and their defenders. I begin by developing two problems for their view: a problem of underdetermination and a problem generated by psychological work on ‘folk essentialism’. I move on to consider their important transcendental argument, which suggests that claims about life-forms are presupposed by all efforts to describe the organic world. In response, I sketch a neo-Kantian projectivist position, which agrees that (...) life-forms are presupposed in these contexts, while denying that such life-forms are real. This position makes a better sense of the phenomena cited in support of the neo-Aristotelian view, while avoiding the problems raised for that view in the first half of this paper. (shrink)

This paper makes the case for an inhabited institutionalism by pondering questions that continue to vex institutional theory: How can we account for local activity, agency, and change without reverting to a focus on individual actors—the very kinds of actors that institutional theory was designed to critique? How is change possible in an institutional context that constructs interests and sets the very conditions for such action? Efforts to deal with these questions by inserting various forms of individual, purposive actors into (...) institutional frameworks have created inconsistencies that threaten the overall coherence of institutional theory and move it farther from its sociological roots. To provide alternative answers, we turn to the growing line of work on “inhabited” institutions. Our exegesis of this literature has two goals. The first goal is to shift focus away from individuals and nested imagery and towards social interaction and coupling configurations. This move opens new avenues for research and helps to identify the spaces—both conceptual and empirical—and the supra-individual processes that facilitate change. This shift has important theoretical implications: incorporating social interaction alters institutional theory, and our second goal is to specify an analytic framework for this new research, an inhabited institutionalism. Inhabited institutionalism is a meso-approach for examining the recursive relationships among institutions, interactions, and organizations. It provides novel and sociologically consistent means for dealing with issues of agency and change, and a new agenda for research that can reinvigorate and reunite organizational sociology and institutional theory. (shrink)

Unlike surrogacy and cloning, reproduction via gamete donation is widely assumed to be morally unproblematic. Recently, a number of authors have argued that this assumption is mistaken: gamete donors, they claim, have parental responsibilities that they typically treat too lightly. In this paper I argue that the ‘parental neglect’ case against gamete donation fails. I begin by examining and rejecting the view that gamete donors have parental responsibilities; I claim that none of the current accounts of parenthood provides good reason (...) for ascribing parenthood to gamete donors. I then argue that even if gamete donors do have parental responsibilities for ‘their’ children, it is not clear that they treat these responsibilities too lightly. I conclude the paper by examining the wider question of just what kind of responsibilities gamete donors might have towards the children that they have a role in creating. (shrink)

In his lectures on neoliberalism, Michel Foucault argues that neoliberalism produces subjects as ‘entrepreneurs of themselves’. He bases this claim on Gary Becker’s conception of the utility-maximizing agent who solely acts upon cost/benefit-calculations. Not all neoliberalized subjects, however, are encouraged to maximize their utility through mere calculation. This article argues that Foucault’s description of neoliberal subjectivity obscures a non-calculative, more audacious side to neoliberal subjectivity. Precarious workers in the creative industries, for example, are encouraged not merely to rationally manage their (...) human capital, but also to take a leap of faith to acquire unpredictable successes. It is this latter risk-loving, extra-calculative side to neoliberal subjectivity that economists usually designate as ‘entrepreneurial’. By confronting Foucault with the theories of entrepreneurship of the Austrian School of Economics, Frank Knight, and Joseph Schumpeter, the Foucauldian analytical framework is enriched. Neoliberal subjectivation is not the monolithic promotion of utility-maximizing agents, but the generation of a multiplicity of modes for entrepreneurs to relate to oneself and the market. (shrink)

Higher education institutions are mining and analyzing student data to effect educational, political, and managerial outcomes. Done under the banner of “learning analytics,” this work can—and often does—surface sensitive data and information about, inter alia, a student’s demographics, academic performance, offline and online movements, physical fitness, mental wellbeing, and social network. With these data, institutions and third parties are able to describe student life, predict future behaviors, and intervene to address academic or other barriers to student success (however defined). Learning (...) analytics, consequently, raise serious issues concerning student privacy, autonomy, and the appropriate flow of student data. We argue that issues around privacy lead to valid questions about the degree to which students should trust their institution to use learning analytics data and other artifacts (algorithms, predictive scores) with their interests in mind. We argue that higher education institutions are paradigms of information fiduciaries. As such, colleges and universities have a special responsibility to their students. In this article, we use the information fiduciary concept to analyze cases when learning analytics violate an institution’s responsibility to its students. (shrink)

This is a commentary on MM McCabe's "First Chop your logos... Socrates and the sophists on language, logic, and development". In her paper MM analyses Plato's Euthydemos, in which Plato tackles the problem of falsity in a way that takes into account the speaker and complements the Sophist's discussion of what is said. The dialogue looks as if it is merely a demonstration of the silly consequences of eristic combat. And so it is. But a main point of MM's paper (...) is that there is serious philosophy in the Euthydemos, too. MM argues that to counter the sophist brothers Euthydemos and Dionysodoros, Socrates points out that that there are different aspects to the verb 'to say' that run in parallel to the different aspects of the very 'to learn'. So just as there is continuity rather than ambiguity between 'to learn' and 'to understand', so there is continuity between the different aspects of saying. Thus Socrates puts forward a teleological account of both learning and meaning. Following up on some of MM's thoughts, I argue that the sophists subscribe, despite appearance, to a theory of meaning that respects serious and widely accepted philosophical theses on meaning. -/- Forthcoming in the Australasian Philosophical Review. The curator of the volume is Fiona Leigh, and the committee also has Hugh Benson and Tim Clarke. You can find MM's paper as well as the commentaries by Nicholas Denyer and Russell E. Jones and Ravi Sharma (and myself) by registering. (shrink)

It has become popular to portray the Buddhist Nāgārjuna as an ontological nihilist, i.e., that he denies the reality of entities and does not postulate any further reality. A reading of his works does show that he rejects the self-existent reality of entities, but it also shows that he accepts a "that-ness" to phenomenal reality that survives the denial of any distinct, self-contained entities. Thus, he is not a nihilist concerning what is real in the final analysis of things. How (...) Nāgārjuna’s positions impact contemporary discussions of ontological nihilism and deflationism in Western philosophy is also discussed. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Creativity is an important quality that has been linked with problem solving, achievement, and scientific advancement. It has previously been proposed that creative individuals pay greater attention to and are able to utilize information that others may consider irrelevant, in order to generate creative ideas (e.g., Eysenck, 1995). In this study we investigated whether there was a relationship between creativity and greater learning about irrelevant information. To answer this question, we used a self-report measure of creative ideation and a blocking (...) task, which involved learning about irrelevant stimuli. We failed to find evidence for this association, with a Bayes Factor indicating support for no relationship between these measures. While it is possible that a different measure of creative ideation, for example one which does not rely on self-report, may produce different results, a more lucrative research direction may be focusing on the link between creativity and cognitive flexibility, in line with suggestions by Zabelina and Robinson (2010). (shrink)

In recent years, Italian Thought has become an influential school of philosophical reflection. This explains the reputation of thinkers like Agamben, Negri, and Esposito far beyond the borders of Italy. Not only has Italian Thought called attention to the crisis of Derridian deconstructive thought in recent years and replaced it with a biopolitical approach, but it also attests to contemporary political issues of key urgency. I aim to clarify this diffusion process with the specific case of Belgium, where two extra (...) factors explain the rise of Italian Thought. The neoliberalisation of the university system renders Belgian universities particularly dependent on Anglo-Saxon research trends, while the political and economic developments of Belgium are a key example of the issues Italian Thought emphasizes. (shrink)

In this paper we develop a participatory model of the Christian doctrine of the atonement, according to which the atonement involves participating in the death and resurrection of Christ. In part one we argue that current models of the atonement—exemplary, penal, substitutionary and merit models—are unsatisfactory. The central problem with these models is that they assume a purely deontic conception of sin and, as a result, they fail to address sin as a relational and ontological problem. In part two we (...) argue that a participatory model of the atonement is both exegetically and philosophically plausible, and should be taken seriously within philosophical theology.i.. (shrink)

This paper shows how to derive nested calculi from labelled calculi for propositional intuitionistic logic and first-order intuitionistic logic with constant domains, thus connecting the general results for labelled calculi with the more refined formalism of nested sequents. The extraction of nested calculi from labelled calculi obtains via considerations pertaining to the elimination of structural rules in labelled derivations. Each aspect of the extraction process is motivated and detailed, showing that each nested calculus inherits favorable proof-theoretic properties from its associated (...) labelled calculus. (shrink)

In 1935/1936 Kurt Gödel wrote three notebooks on the foundations of quantum mechanics, which have now been entirely transcribed for the first time. Whereas a lot of the material is rather technical in character, many of Gödel's remarks have a philosophical background and concentrate on Leibnizian monadology as well as on vitalism. Obviously influenced by the vitalistic writings of Hans Driesch and his ‘proofs’ for the existence of an entelechy in every living organism, Gödel briefly develops the idea of a (...) computing machine which closely resembles Turing's groundbreaking conception. After introducing the notebooks on quantum mechanics, this article describes Gödel's vitalistic Weltbild and the ideas leading to the development of his computing machine. It investigates a notion of lawlike sequence which closely resembles Turing's concept of a computable number and which Gödel himself calls ‘problematic’, and compares it to the opposed concept of randomness, drawing upon the notion of program-size complexity. Finally, Gödel's machine is implemented in a dialect of the Lisp programing language. (shrink)

Climate change is one of the greatest collective action problems ever faced. The social and cultural barriers to intersubjectively motivating concern and agency are sweeping. It seems all but impossible to imagine politically viable solutions commensurate with the realities of the problem, and likewise find visionary ways of framing this problem to inspire meaningful solutions. One therefore perceives an abyss between ‘problem’ and ‘solution,’ as expressed in irreconcilable debates between problem-driven and solution-driven strategies for motivating climate action. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s (...) dialectical phenomenology of motivation and class consciousness in particular, I argue that his call for a “thinkable politics” can help activists bring problem-driven and solution-driven motives for climate response into productive relation. (shrink)

Most animals have mental states of one sort or another, but few species share our capacity for self-awareness. We are aware of our own mental states via introspection, and we are aware of the mental states of our fellow human beings on the basis of what they do and say. This chapter is not concerned with these traditional forms of mind-reading—forms whose origins predate the beginnings of recorded history—but with the prospects of a rather different and significantly more recent form (...) of ‘mind-reading’: the capacity to reliably ascribe mental states to a creature on the basis of information derived from information about their brain states. (shrink)

Buchanan and Powell’s book is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the evolution of morality. I suggest that they exaggerate the degree to which their view of the evolution of moral progress is committed to a form of moral realism. I also suggest that Darwin’s own approach to the evolution of the moral sense shares more with their view than they may realise. Finally I point to some tensions in their invocation of the concept of the Environment of Evolutionary (...) Adaptedness (EEA). (shrink)

Abstract A Note to Cogito Les Jones Blackburn College Previous submissions include -Intention, interpretation and literary theory, a first lookWittgenstein and St Augustine A DiscussionAreas of Interest – History of Western Philosophy, Miscellaneous Philosophy, European A Note on Cogito Descartes' brilliance in driving out doubt, and proving the existence of himself as a thinking entity, is well documented. Sartre's critique (or maybe extension) is both apposite and grounded and takes these enquiries on to another level. Let's take a look. (...) 'I think' somehow, for all its power, lacks something. What? Consider what one does when thinking (difficult, but we can try). Implicit in the word 'think', in fact the very essence of the word 'think', is that activity is going on, and if such activity is going on then it must be going on about something, an object, an emotion, a problem,or maybe some dreamlike state, but common to all these is that something is going on. Is that really so? Well, if that wasn't so we would be able to think in a pure state, wouldn't we? But what does a pure state of 'thinking' mean? It can't mean that there isnothing there, because if there were nothing there then no thinking would be taking place. Can it mean that we are thinking of nothing? Well no, because if we are thinking of nothing then we are thinking of something, we are contemplating the notion, or the nature, of nothing. In fact, one can argue that if we talk of something, inthis case nothing or nothingness, then in our head we have some notion of what that is, i.e. something exists in the mind for it to come out of our mouths. Thinking is a recognition of something outside the individual, for the very act of direction, which isan indispensable part of thinking, recognises, must recognise, that there are things to address outside the individual. Something else to bear in mind. According to Sartre human beings are condemned to freedom. Why condemned? Human beings did not choose to be born, but the act ofbeing born also imparts the freedom of which Sartre speaks. Freedom is something which we parrot off as being a sine qua non for the human condition. I believe that's true, but freedom in this sense isn't without its consequences for the individual humanbeing, for individual human beings handle freedom differently. To some it enables them to fly, to others it imparts immense pressures, anguish, heartbreak, unhappiness can all be associated with such freedom. Each individual is responsible for his destiny, for his direction. If someone says that God impelled him, that individual chose his or her God, and chose to obey his or her God. This believer has to sift through the multitude of things that his or her God desire of him or her. All this is fine, so long as we acknowledge what is going on here. Belief in God is, by definition, a belief. Belief, following Wittgenstein, is a language game with its rules and its boundaries. The essential feature of religion as language game are its boundaries, which can be summed up in the word belief. OK, belief has its practises which are its constituent parts, but belief is the boundary between religion and other language games, as the proof constituents are different. Our world is determined by the language used to describe everything that goes on within it. The boundaries of our world are set by the language we use. This might be better put as language gives access to ever expending boundaries. Ever expanding boundaries are only possible by ever expanding thought, and ever expanding thought is only possible by ever expanding directions to our thought brought about through language. It is a fact taken that to be conscious is to think. How could this be otherwise? Consciousness without thought just does not make sense. Imagine a state of consciousness without directional thought. What would it be like? It would be something never experienced, completely out of our understanding. Why? Because understanding itself is a directional thought process. If we say we are going outside our understanding then that is a world of void, and a world of void does not exist. Can such a world be contemplated in our thinking? Well, yes, but then it requires thinking, and thinking requires direction, and such direction requires language. Why does direction require language? Because there is no other way for human beings to articulate a directional thought. Could one point at an image without language? Well, one could have an image in mind, but the essence of saying something about it, of descriptive power, brings us back to the essence, to the power of language to direct. So what of this language of which we speak? Wittgenstein's private language argument points us towards the notion that language itself constantly develops and redevelops through human interaction. Descarte's cogito implies that thinking rules out doubt of one's own existence. But such thinking, to be valid, to make sense, to direct, must develop in a language that has developed, has been verified, by a plurality, by a plurality whose essence is social. Correct use of language symbols, i.e. words, requires that we verify and reverify the accuracy of such symbols. How do we do that? We do that in constant usage, in constant interaction, with other human beings. An individual using a private language could not be understood by others, his symbol system has not been verified by others, his meanings may not be your meanings. It follows from what we have said above that language is constructed, and is continually constructed, in a social context. Given our previous thoughts regarding verification this could not be otherwise. Language has a normative form. All language users are required, by their very use of the language, to verify the use of terms, grammar etc etc. As Wittgenstein cites (appropriately) games as a model, let us take a look. If I play e.g. Ludo, I am governed by the rules. It is not just that I may play dishonestly, for if I were to play at all that very dishonesty, to count as Ludo, would have to be rule governed. The rules of Ludo are Ludo, they are the essence and the constitution of it. Wittgenstein, particularly in his later writings, interweaves many concepts, and connects them in different and sometimes rather elusive ways. Wittgenstein sees concepts like emotions, sentiments and experiences in these interweaving maps. Of course these can be regarded as psychological concepts ** Language can be considered in another but related way, as embodying the elements of a cultural heritage. Language was seen as embodying the notion of higher culture in the arts, architecture etc. Over recent decades this has tended to shift to consider less tangible benefits, such things as oral traditions, cultural values and cultural identity. So language enables us to explore, through the achievements of past generations, cultural mores that may have laid unchallenged for many years. Many of these values and mores may be seen as independent of the language by which they are transmitted, but still this monumental accomplishment of mankind i.e. language, enables man to explore, to modify, to codify, to extend the boundaries of human experience. There are therefore massive implications for our Note on Cogito of Wittgenstein's work. Following Wittgenstein emotions and other psychological concepts can be termed depth grammar, and are distinguished by the fact that the third person of the present is recognised by observation, the first person is not. Taking Wittgenstein's well known pain example the sentence 'He is in pain' is a third person statement of an observational nature. The sentence 'I am in pain' is not derived from observation but from experience, it is an expression of that experience, it's essence is the experience. The asymmetry consists in the fact that predicting psychological attributes of others is warranted by what they do and say. By contrast, the use of such statements in the first person present tense does not rest on one's observation of one's own behaviour. (Hacker 2010:287) p 9 According to Wittgenstein 'I am in pain' is more like a cry of pain, an expression of pain, than a report of some pain. Of course this appertains for other similar statements. 'I feel good' etc. (shrink)