This study provides evidence supporting the operation of a novel cognitive process of a somatic seat of attention, or ego-center, whose somatic location is under voluntary control and that provides access to differential emotional resources. Attention has typically been studied in terms of what it is directed toward, but it can also be associated with a localized representation in the body image that is experienced as the source or seat of attention—an aspect that has previously only been studied by subjective (...) techniques. Published studies of this phenomenon under terms such as egocenter or self-location suggest that the seat of attention can be situated in various ways within the experienced body, resulting in what are here referred to as different attentional stances. These studies also provide evidence that changes in attentional stance are associated with differences in cognitive skill, emotional temperament, self-construal, and social and moral attitudes, as well as with access to certain states of consciousness. In the present study, EEG results from multiple trials of each of 11 specific attentional stances confirmed that patterns of neural activity associated with the voluntarily control of attentional stances can be reliably measured, providing evidence for a differential neural substrate underlying the subjective location of the seat of attention. Additionally, brain activation patterns for the attentional stances showed strong correlations with EEG signatures associated with specific positive emotional states and with arousal, confirming that differential locations of the seat of attention can be objectively associated with different emotion states, as implied in previous literature. The ability to directly manage the seat of attention into various attentional stances holds substantial potential for facilitating access to specific cognitive and emotional resources in a new way. (shrink)

Replacing the value-free ideal (VFI) for science requires attention to the broader understanding of how science in society should function. In public spaces, science needed to project the VFI in norms for science advising, science education, and science communication. This resulted in the independent science advisor model and a focus on science literacy for science education and communication. Attending to these broader implications of the VFI which structure science and society relationships is crucial if we are to properly replace the (...) VFI with a better ideal. (shrink)

_Self-Reflection for the Opaque Mind_ attempts to solve a grave problem about critical self-reflection. Psychological studies indicate not just that we are bad at detecting our own "ego-threatening" thoughts; they also suggest that we are ignorant of even our ordinary thoughts. However, self-reflection presupposes an ability to know one’s own thoughts. So if ignorance is the norm, why attempt self-reflection? While admitting the psychological data, this book argues that we are infallible in a limited range of self-discerning judgments—that in some (...) cases, these judgments are self-fulfilling or self-verifying. Even so, infallibility does not imply indubitability, and the author does not wish to provide a "foundation" for empirical knowledge. The point is rather to explain how self-reflection as a rational activity is possible. The book will be of interest to scholars working on the issue of self-reflection across a wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science. (shrink)

It is clearly impermissible to kill one person because his organs can be used to save five others who are in need of transplants. It has seemed to many that the explanation for this lies in the fact that in such cases we would be intending the death of the person whom we killed, or failed to save. What makes these actions impermissible, however, is not the agent's intention but rather the fact that the benefit envisaged does not justify an (...) exception to the prohibition against killing or the requirement to give aid. The difference between this explanation and one appealing to intention is easily overlooked if one fails to distinguish between the prospective use of a moral principle to guide action and its retrospective use to appraise the way an agent governed him or herself. Even if this explanation is accepted, however, it remains an open question whether and how an agent's intention may be relevant to the permissibility of actions in other cases. \\\ [Jonathan Dancy] My first four sections concentrate on the second section of Professor Scanlon's contribution, where he lays out his conception of moral principles and of the role they play in theory and practice. I will raise questions on the following issues: 1. Scanlon's initial introduction of the notion of a principle. 2. His rejection of the standard view that principles are concerned with the forbidding, permitting and requiring of actions. 3. His rejection of pro tanto conceptions of principles in favour of a conception of them as conclusive. 4. The resulting account of what it is for a principle to face and survive exceptions. Scanlon's discussion of these matters here both appeals to and is in some respects more detailed than the relevant section of his recent What We Owe to Each Other. The topic is interesting both for the role played by principles in Scanlon's present discussion of intention and permissibility, and more generally because of his account of wrongness: an act is wrong iff it is ruled out by principles that nobody could reasonably reject. The remainder of my contribution is concerned with the ostensible focus of IP, namely the relevance of agent-intentions to the permissibility of what is done. (shrink)

In this new explanationist account of epistemic justification, Poston argues that the explanatory virtues provide all the materials necessary for a plausible account of justified belief. There are no purely autonomous reasons. Rather reasons occur only within an explanatory coherent set of beliefs.

This article introduces the notion of duplex elements of the finite rings and corresponding neutrosophic rings. The authors establish duplex ring Dup(R) and neutrosophic duplex ring Dup(R)I)) by way of various illustrations. The tables of different duplicities are constructed to reveal the comparison between rings Dup(Zn), Dup(Dup(Zn)) and Dup(Dup(Dup(Zn ))) for the cyclic ring Zn . The proposed duplicity structures have several algebraic systems with dissimilar consequences. Author’s characterize finite rings with R + R is different from the duplex ring (...) Dup(R). However, this characterization supports that R + R = Dup(R) for some well known rings, namely zero rings and finite fields. (shrink)

In this paper we examine C. I. Lewis's view on the roleof coherence – what he calls ''congruence'' – in thejustification of beliefs based on memory ortestimony. Lewis has two main theses on the subject. His negativethesis states that coherence of independent items ofevidence has no impact on the probability of a conclusionunless each item has some credibility of its own. Thepositive thesis says, roughly speaking, that coherenceof independently obtained items of evidence – such asconverging memories or testimonies – raises (...) the probabilityof a conclusion to the extent sufficient for epistemicjustification, or, to use Lewis's expression, ''rationaland practical reliance''.It turns out that, while thenegative thesis is essentially correct, astrong positive connection between congruence andprobability – a connection of the kind Lewis ultimatelyneeds in his validation of memory – is contingent on thePrinciple of Indifference. In the final section we assess therepercussions of the latter fact for Lewis's theory in particularand for coherence justification in general. (shrink)

Governments can try to counter obesity through preventive regulations such as sugar taxes, which appear to raise costs or reduce options for consumers. Would the regulations improve the welfare of adult consumers? The regulations might improve choice sets through a mechanism such as reformulation, but the scope for such improvement is limited. Otherwise, a paternalistic argument must be made that preventive regulations would improve welfare despite reducing choice. This paper connects arguments about obesity, health, and choice to a philosophically plausible (...) view of welfare. On the negative side, two errors to avoid are failing to see the limited value of health and thinking that findings of irrationality would alone settle arguments about welfare. On the positive side, preventive regulations could make people better-off if welfare is the satisfaction of preferences and if preventive regulations could better satisfy preferences by overcoming certain forms of irrationality. The leading evidence is from widespread attempts to lose weight. However, at least for the United States, most adults are not trying to lose weight, and that casts doubt on whether they would benefit from preventive regulations. If they would not, that seems a strong albeit not decisive reason against these regulations. (shrink)

This response to a variety of criticisms of _Charles Peirce and Modern Science_ restates and attempts to clarify and explain major themes of the book.

This paper begins with a problem stemming from Hume regarding credences about credences. Suppose one has a credence of .95 in p, and suppose one assesses the credence to be such. But suppose one’s second-order credence in this assessment is less than 1. Then, by a standard conditionalization rule, one’s credence in p becomes less than .95. Moreover, such “erosion” can iterate by considering one’s, third-, fourth-, fifth-order credences, etc. (In light of this, some have rejected higher-order credences; however, it (...) is argued that Lewis’ “Principal Principle” forbids this.) The paper then offers a partial solution by describing circumstances under which a person has reason to assign credence 1 to a first-order credence. The solution takes the form of a “transparency” view of self-knowledge from Parent (2017, chapter 8). Briefly, it is argued that when one “reflex-like” utters a sentence “The probability of p is n”, then as a matter of psychological law, the utterance is an expression of one’s own judgment. The Principal Principle then necessitates that one’s credence in p is n, assuming one is being rational. Thus, upon perceiving such an utterance, one can thereby have a reason to assign a second-order credence of 1. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Definition of Idealism Main Idealist Thinkers Absolute Idealism Vindicated (1) Phenomenalism (2) The Physical World as Imaginative Construction (3) The Purely Structural View of the Physical World (4) Panpsychism.

Книга включает материал, охватывающий основной курс проблем философии науки, социологии и истории знания, научного творчества, являющихся сферой интересов Г. Ф. Миронова. В качестве специального раздела представлены работы молодых исследователей.

The celebrated western humanist tradition has its source in its early philosophical texts. In The Gift of Death, Derrida analyses the history of the emergence of ethical responsibility in the so-called Religions of the Book such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. While the humanist project helped itself through its conquest of the human sphere, it has served to upset the ecological balance and jeopardize sustainability. While searching for an inclusive vision for a sustainable, ethical perspective, Dōgen’s philosophy gains relevance in (...) the contemporary context. (shrink)

Paternalist policies in public health often aim to improve people’s well-being by reducing their options, regulating smoking offering a prime example. The well-being challenge is to show that people really are better off for having their options reduced. The distribution challenge is to show how the policies are justified since they produce losers as well as winners. If we start from these challenges, we can understand the importance of the empirical evidence that a very high proportion of smokers regret smoking. (...) In short, it is important that they regret it and important that the proportion is so high. This paper explains how, philosophically, regret can relate to well-being and it considers some of the strengths and weakness in the empirical research that the explanation brings out. The regret case for regulating smoking is indeed strong, although not as strong as the empirical researchers think. It is much weaker for paternalistic intervention in other public health problems, such as obesity and binge drinking. (shrink)

Some contemporary philosophers suggest that we know just by introspection that folk psychological states exist. However, such an "armchair refutation" of eliminativism seems too easy. I first attack two strategems, inspired by Descartes, on how such a refutation might proceed. However, I concede that the Cartesian intuition that we have direct knowledge of representational states is very powerful. The rest of this paper then offers an error theory of how that intuition might really be mistaken. The idea is that introspection (...) does not detect any folk psychological states, but rather detects neural states that dispose us to certain sorts of linguistic behavior. Briefly, rather than detecting a mental appearance of the state-of-affairs that I am sitting near the fire, introspection detects a state disposing me to assert "It appears to me that I am sitting by the fire." The nature of this linguistic-dispositional state is then given a connectionist underpinning, where inputs from introspection lead to such assertive behavior. The Cartesian certainty we feel in self-ascribing such appearances is also explained. Even though I do not endorse such an error theory outright, I suggest that its tenability is enough to undercut introspection arguments against eliminativism. (shrink)

Sociological pscychological problems; Islam; essays.

Supercommentary on portion of Tattvacintāmaṇi of Gaṅgeśa, dealing with an argument liable to a valid objection (satpratipakṣa), one of the five forms of fallacious middle term hetvābhāsa.

Jc Beall is known for defending modest dialetheism; this is the view that there are dialetheia, but only in the form of “spandrels” arising otherwise reasonable semantic terminology (e.g., the Liar paradox). Beall also regards his view as modest in partaking of a deflationary view of truth, a view where ‘true’ is a device of disquotational inference which expresses no “substantive property.” Beall supports deflationism by an appeal to Ockham’s razor; however, the premise that ‘true’ is fundamentally disquotational is found (...) dubious. Nonetheless, we can craft an ultra-modest dialetheism which assumes only that at least one utterance of ‘This sentence is not true’ uses ‘true’ as a disquotational device, and maintains neturality on whether it expresses a substantive property. The limited scope of the ultra-modest view will be disappointing to formal semanticists hoping to capture the behavior of ‘true’ throughout the language. But its modest basis gives dialetheism the best hope for wider acceptance in the discipline. (shrink)

This classic study of Santayana was the first book to appear in the _Arguments of the Philosophers_ series. Growing interest in the work of this important American philosopher has prompted this new edition of the book complete with a new preface by the author reassessing his own ideas about Santayana and reflecting the new interest in the philosopher's work. A select bibliography of works published about Santayana since the book's first appearance is also included.

But as you know... my style of ‘brilliancy’ consists in a mixture of irony and seriousness,—the same things said ironically and also seriously.Peirce’s philosophical writings are notoriously difficult. The reasons most often cited are the apparent contradictions, the long, inconclusive technical digressions, and the unfinished character of his thought. His champions instead emphasize his originality, arguing that his apparent contradictions often mark traditional dualisms subtly transcended; some discern strands of an uncompleted system. Originality, subtlety, and the need to reconstruct the (...) whole from its fragmentary expressions also pose difficulties, albeit ones rewarding. I think, however, that the problem... (shrink)

The following paragraphs were written not for print publication but for oral delivery on a celebratory occasion; their many unsupported assertions, some commonplace and some controversial, were made not to prove a thesis but to suggest a point of view—a perspective on Peirce's thought that might be taken, or not, as one wishes. The suggestion is that some difficulties are resolved and some things fall into place if we view his philosophy in its several relations to modern science. For that (...) purpose, his idea of science is of central importance and it is that idea only that I discuss here. Although drawn from the historical fact of modern science, Peirce's concept of science is unusual, radical, and difficult. In... (shrink)

For Viennese artist Florian Pumhösl »abstraction is a method«, not a category. Or rather, if abstraction is the defining category of modernism, the objective is to reproduce modernism's problems and limits and exploit relationships among its parts. Considering what Pumhösl calls the »textile complex« of modernism, this essay examines the artist's work in parallel with Charles Sanders Peirce's diagram concept and Gottfried Semper's use of textile diagrams throughout Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts.