In the literature we have found correspondence of several significant traits of Jewish mysticism with traits of Buddhism and other systems of Indian religion-philosophy. Among the corresponding traits is the fundamental idea of emptiness or nothingness, shuunyataa in Sanskrit, ayin in Hebrew. Also corresponding are attempts to harmonize the idea and experience of emptiness with fullness, and with the experience of the secular world with its many things and concepts. We list eight significant traits of Jewish mysticism, which we find (...) correspond with traits of Indian religion-philosophies. We also discuss some important relations of these Indian and Jewish belief systems with modern science. We contend, that natural science is built on spontaneous sensory experiences; on this basis concepts and theories are constructed. Likewise we think, that spiritual experiences occur spontaneously and contribute to the basis of religious, mystic and some philosophical belief systems. We thus think, there are important parallels between scientific and spiritual cognition. Key words: Comparative religion; Emptiness/fullness; nothingness; God; compassion; reincarnation; cognition, scientific spiritual; spiritual experiences; Buddhism. (shrink)

The discussion of animal mind in this paper is based on an idealist philosophy contending that only conscious experience is real, based on the transpersonal notion of collective conscious experience. The latter has earlier been explained by the author as experience referred to a group of humans as the subject, the We. Here it is contended that also a group of humans and animals can be seen as the subject of collective conscious experiences. The author argues that the notion of (...) collective conscious experience provides a possibility for studying the problems of animal mind and the related human problem of “other minds” in a detailed and rational way. (shrink)

The notion of collective conscious experience is here seen as an alternative or complement to themore familiar notion of individual conscious experience. Much evidence supports the concept of collective experience in the present. But what about time? Can a conscious experience which, whenregarded as individual, is referred to the past be considered a collectiveexperience extended in both past and present? My answer is yes, and this answer is supported by evidence about conceptions of time and conscious experience in various cultures, (...) including Western culture and science, and by evidence about the psychological Now. Egoless conscious experience is an alternative to both individual and collective experience; it is often connected with experience of timelessness, andis then unrestricted by time. (shrink)

Certain features of perception – the quale red, for example, and other qualia – must be regarded as additions to the materialist neurophysiological picture of perception. The perception of three-dimensional volumetric objects can also be seen as qualitative additions to the neurophysiological processes in the brain, possibly without additions to the information content.

The scientific study of cognition in the context of biological evolution has led to the result, that all our thoughts and cognitions, including science and philosophy, are dependent on our cognitive apparatus in its present stage of evolution. I find, that this result is in contradiction with the basic philosophy of mainstream biology, the philosophy of materialist realism, which recognizes the existence a material world independent of human observation and cognition. I therefore regard it as impossible to make a contradiction-free (...) account of CE based on materialist realism. An account of natural science, biological evolution, and CE based on an idealist philosophy is offered, and it is argued that this account is free of contradictions. Key words : Cognition and biological evolution, contradiction-free account, philosophy of science, idealist philosophy, materialist philosophy, time, psychological Now. n. (shrink)

The basic philosophy of mainstream biology, the philosophy of materialist realism, assumes the existence of a material world independent of human observation and cognition. The scientific study of cognition in the context of biology has, however, led to the result, that all our thoughts and cognitions, including the assumption of a material world, are dependent on our cognitive apparatus in its present stage of evolution. I think this shows a contradiction within materialist philosophy, and I therefore find it is impossible (...) to make a contradiction free account of cognition based on this philosophy. An account of natural science, biological evolution, and cognition based on an idealist philosophy is offered, and it is argued, that this account is free of contradictions. In the idealist philosophy "material objects" are regarded as concepts based on sensory experiences. (shrink)

If consciousness has no influence on my behaviour,what shall I do with it ? In this paper it is contended, that even if neuroscience is right, if some conscious experiences such as emotional experiences have no influence on our behavior, they still constitute a significant part of our world, our existence. For understanding the significance of conscious experiences we should go beyond behaviour, biology and biological evolution. This paper and its understanding of consciousness and natural science is based on an (...) idealist philosophy maintaining, that only conscious experience is real. Conscious experience is supposed to be known directly or intuitively, it cannot be explained. Key words: Consciousness as existence; behaviour; communication; language; free will; idealist philosophy; collective conscious experience; cognition. (shrink)

The authors found correspondence of several significant traits of Jewish mysticism with traits of Buddhism and other systems of Indian religion and philosophy in the literature. Among the corresponding traits is the fundamental idea of emptiness or nothingness, shuunyataa in Sanskrit, ayin in Hebrew. Also corresponding are attempts to harmonise the idea and experience of emptiness with fullness, and with the experience of the secular world with its many things and concepts. They list eight significant traits of Jewish mysticism, which (...) are found to correspond with traits of Indian religion-philosophies. This is of course a study in comparative religion, but some important relations between these Indian and Jewish belief systems with modern science are also discussed. (shrink)

Abstract Considerable evidence indicates that the human cognitive system comprises two subsystems, one rational-scientific and the other intuitive-spiritual. Differences as well as harmonies and interactions between the two subsystems are described. Th e advent of systems science has improved the understanding of the harmonies and interactions. Consideration of cultural differences is important for understanding spirituality and communicating about it. Key-words: Spirituality and cognition, systems science and spirituality, science and religion, spiritual experience, intuition, epistemology, idealist philosophy, cultural differences.?s.

This paper is discusses some central points in a dissertation for the degree of dr. phil., "Regulation as Productive Tool Use - a Participatory Observation in the Control Room of a District Heating System." An earlier version of the paper was presented by the author as part of the defense of the dissertation at Roskilde University Center June 14 2002. As suggested by the title, the dissertation was an empirical study of regulation in a control room. The object of the (...) authors participatory observation was how the operators in the control room followed rules when they regulated a highly automated plant. When I was shown the plant I was told that the technology ran smoothly and without error. Its control structures are based on formal logic and mechanical principles, all the same human beings are required in the control room to take care of anomalies. Among other things, the observations provide an opportunity to discuss the limitations of psychologies that study human beings on the basis of formal principles. The present paper focuses on two characteristic aspects of this discussion in the dissertation. First, it takes its point of departure in some practical problems of the control structures of the control room. It will demonstrate that the practical problems are problems of principle, and that formal principles are not adequate to study the object of human sciences, namely, human beings. Second, it sketches out what is required of a conception of human beings. As human beings are trusted to handle anomalies, we must explain how they are able to act on an incomplete understanding of the situation. And since they are able to identify what is wrong, we must explain how they develop new knowledge. The paper presented at the defense summarized the main arguments of the dissertation and alluded to an expansion of the main point using a particular instance. Here the weight is shifted to the latter expansion. (shrink)

The book will be an indispensable resource for anyone interested in contemporary philosophy and the social sciences.

Traditional frameworks for evaluating scientific models have tended to downplay their exploratory function; instead they emphasize how models are inherently intended for specific phenomena and are to be judged by their ability to predict, reproduce, or explain empirical observations. By contrast, this paper argues that exploration should stand alongside explanation, prediction, and representation as a core function of scientific models. Thus, models often serve as starting points for future inquiry, as proofs of principle, as sources of potential explanations, and as (...) a tool for reassessing the suitability of the target system. This is illustrated by a case study of the varied career of reaction-diffusion models in the study of biological pattern formation, which was initiated by Alan Turing in a classic 1952 paper. Initially regarded as mathematically elegant, but biologically irrelevant, demonstrations of how, in principle, spontaneous pattern formation could occur in an organism, such Turing models have only recently rebounded, thanks to advances in experimental techniques and computational methods. The long-delayed vindication of Turing’s initial model, it is argued, is best explained by recognizing it as an exploratory tool. (shrink)

In this pathbreaking study, Axel Honneth argues that "the struggle for recognition" is, and should be, at the center of social conflicts. Moving smoothly between moral philosophy and social theory, Honneth offers insights into such issues as the social forms of recognition and nonrecognition, the moral basis of interaction in human conflicts, the relation between the recognition model and conceptions of modernity, the normative basis of social theory, and the possibility of mediating between Hegel and Kant.

The System of Pragmatic Idealism is of special importance for Nicholas Rescher's philosophical work, because here he has presented the systematic approach at once. Dedicated to his 70th birthday a group of European and U.S-american philosophers discuss the main topics of Rescher's philosophical system. The contributions which are presented here for the first time and Nicholas Rescher's responses cover the most important topics of philosophy and give a deep and detailed insight into the strenght of Rescher's pragmatic idealism. This volume (...) is of interest for philosophers studying Rescher's philosophy and for all those who are interested in systematic philosophy and the vividnes of pragmatism and idealism in present philosophy. (shrink)

Consciousness has many elements, from sensory experiences such as vision and bodily sensation, to nonsensory aspects such as memory and thought. All are presented as experiences of a single subject, and all seem to be contained within a unified field of experience. This unity raises many questions: How do diverse systems in the brain co-operate to produce a unified experience? Are there conditions under which this unity breaks down? Is conscious experience really unified at all? Such questions are addressed in (...) this thought-provoking book. (shrink)

Taking scientific practice as its starting point, this book charts the complex territory of models used in science. It examines what scientific models are and what their function is. Reliance on models is pervasive in science, and scientists often need to construct models in order to explain or predict anything of interest at all. The diversity of kinds of models one finds in science – ranging from toy models and scale models to theoretical and mathematical models – has attracted attention (...) not only from scientists, but also from philosophers, sociologists, and historians of science. This has given rise to a wide variety of case studies that look at the different uses to which models have been put in specific scientific contexts. By exploring current debates on the use and building of models via cutting-edge examples drawn from physics and biology, the book provides broad insight into the methodology of modelling in the natural sciences. It pairs specific arguments with introductory material relating to the ontology and the function of models, and provides some historical context to the debates as well as a sketch of general positions in the philosophy of scientific models in the process. (shrink)

Though to deny the geological impact of human force on nature is now essentially quasi-criminal, many theorists remain, nonetheless, unimpressed with what this “new era” has afforded us in terms of critical potential. This article is concerned with what Srinivas Aravamudan deems “the escapist philosophy of various dimension of the hypothesis concerning the Anthropocene.” Following Erik Swyngedouw's indictment of apocalyptic discourses' vital role in displacing social antagonisms and nurturing capitalism, this article argues that the new regimes of Anthropocenean consciousness have (...) been powerful in disavowing racial antagonisms. It discusses the ways in which Anthropocene ethics have foreclosed proper political framings by promoting a moral philosophy unequipped to face the racial histories of our current ecological predicament. It contends that the “political Anthropocene” will remain an impossibility until it is able to wrestle with the problem of black suffering. (shrink)

69 Thompson-Schill, S.L. _et al. _(1997) Role of left inferior prefrontal cortex 59 Buckner, R.L. _et al. _(1996) Functional anatomic studies of memory in retrieval of semantic knowledge: a re-evaluation _Proc. Natl. Acad._ retrieval for auditory words and pictures _J. Neurosci. _16, 6219–6235 _Sci. U. S. A. _94, 14792–14797 60 Buckner, R.L. _et al. _(1995) Functional anatomical studies of explicit and 70 Baddeley, A. (1992) Working memory: the interface between memory implicit memory retrieval tasks _J. Neurosci. _15, 12–29 and cognition (...) _J. Cogn. Neurosci. _4, 281–288 61 Bäckman, L. _et al. _(1997) Brain activation in young and older adults 71 Petrides, M. (1994) Frontal lobes and behavior _Curr. Opin. Neurobiol._ during implicit and explicit retrieval _J. Cogn. Neurosci. _9, 378–391. (shrink)

The first book since Coady's 1992 'Testimony: A Philosophical Study' to offer a thorough survey and a philosophical introduction to testimony and its epistemological problems, while at the same time advancing a novel view that proposes independent justificatory pathways for the acceptance and rejection of testimony, respectively. // Table of Contents: // Introduction / 1. What is Testimony? / 2. The Testimonial Conundrum / 3. Testimony, Perception, Memory, and Inference / 4. Testimony and Evidence / 5. Reductionism and Anti-Reductionism / (...) 6. Hybrid Theories of Testimony / 7. Testimonial Knowledge: Transmission and Generation / 8. Trust and Assurance / 9. Expert Testimony / 10. Pathologies of Testimony / 11. Testimony and the Value of Knowledge / Glossary / Bibliography / Index. (shrink)

I argue that joint attention solves the “base problem” as it arises for Schiffer’s and Lewis’s theories of common knowledge. The problem is that an account is needed of the perceptual base of some forms of common knowledge that gets by without itself invoking common knowledge. The paper solves the problem by developing a theory of joint attention as consisting in the exercise of joint know-how involving particular and sometimes distal targets and arguing that certain joint perceivers can always have (...) a minimal form of propositional common knowledge about the location of these targets. On such a view, perceptual common knowledge is based on the experience of a process that is maintained by way of perceivers’ exercise of an object-involving form of joint know-how. Some reductive theories of collective intentionality require that agents’ intentions and subplans are common knowledge (or “out in the open”) between them. For these theories the base problem arises again. The enacted theory of joint attention can solve the problem. The argument is exactly parallel to the common knowledge case. The openness of joint agents’ intentions and meshing subplans is explained by appeal to their practical knowledge of how to maintain the process by way of which they pursue the collective intention. They can then make this knowledge explicit by linguistic communication. When they succeed in communicating knowledge of their meshing subplans as pursued in a joint action context, they necessarily have this knowledge in common. For theories of collective intentionality that include a common knowledge condition, the experience of participating in a perceptually constituted joint action provides the base that renders harmless the regress that otherwise threatens reductive analyses. (shrink)

Over the past few years numerous proposals have appeared that attempt to characterize consciousness in terms of what could be called its computational correlates: Principles of information processing with which to characterize the differences between conscious and unconscious processing. Proposed computational correlates include architectural specialization (such as the involvement of specific regions of the brain in conscious processing), properties of representations (such as their stability in time or their strength), and properties of specific processes (such as resonance, synchrony, interactivity, or (...) information integration). In exactly the same way as one can engage in a search for the neural correlates of consciousness, one can thus search for the computational correlates of consciousness. The most direct way of doing is to contrast models of conscious versus unconscious information processing. In this paper, I review these developments and illustrate how computational modeling of specific cognitive processes can be useful in exploring and in formulating putative computational principles through which to capture the differences between conscious and unconscious cognition. What can be gained from such approaches to the problem of consciousness is an understanding of the function it plays in information processing and of the mechanisms that subtend it. Here, I suggest that the central function of consciousness is to make it possible for cognitive agents to exert ?exible, adaptive control over behavior. From this perspective, consciousness is best characterized as involving (1) a graded continuum de?ned over quality of representation, such that availability to consciousness and to cognitive control correlates with properties of representation, and (2) the implication of systems of meta-representations. (shrink)

Implicit learning is the process through which we become sensitive to certain regularities in the environment (1) in the absence of intention to learn about those regularities (2) in the absence of awareness that one is learning, and (3) in such a way that the resulting knowledge is difficult to express.

Cognitive niche construction is the process whereby organisms create and maintain cause–effect models of their niche as guides for fitness influencing behavior. Extended mind theory claims that cognitive processes extend beyond the brain to include predictable states of the world. Active inference and predictive processing in cognitive science assume that organisms embody predictive (i.e., generative) models of the world optimized by standard cognitive functions (e.g., perception, action, learning). This paper presents an active inference formulation that views cognitive niche construction as (...) a cognitive function aimed at optimizing organisms' generative models. We call that process of optimization extended active inference. (shrink)

This essay presents a novel approach to specifying the meaning of the concept of populism, on the political position it occupies and on the nature of populism. Employing analytic techniques of concept clarification and recent analytic ideology critique, it develops populism as a political kind in three steps. First, it descriptively specifies the stereotype of populist platforms as identified in extant research and thereby delimits the peculiar political position populism occupies in representative democracies as neither inclusionary nor fascist. Second, it (...) specifies on this basis analytically–normatively the particular stance towards liberal representative democracy (in particular towards popular sovereignty and democratic legitimacy) that unifies populism’s political position and explains how populist politics can be compelling for democratic citizens. The normative core (populist ideology) turns out to require no more than two general principles of legitimizing political authority by elections. Surprisingly, it does not need a separate anti-pluralist or exclusionary commitment: it entails it. Third, this normative model allows a response to a contested question in the theoretical discussion, namely, whether populism (properly specified) can be democracy-enhancing. The article defends the negative answer in virtue of the normative core alone and does so as much vis-à-vis a minimal (purely electoral) as vis-à-vis a normatively ambitious (liberal) conception of democracy. The reconstruction of the normative core of populist ideology enables a novel argument to show that populism is incompatible with the continued democratic legitimation of political authority even in the normatively most austere conception of ‘electoral democracy’, not just with ‘liberal democracy’. Assuming a normatively more ambitious concept of democratic legitimation in terms of political autonomy, the model also produces an extremely direct argument showing that populists cannot fulfil their promise of ‘taking back control’ over political decision-making to the population. (shrink)

What do people learn when they do not know that they are learning? Until recently, all of the work in the area of implicit learning focused on empirical questions and methods. In this book, Axel Cleeremans explores unintentional learning from an information-processing perspective. He introduces a theoretical framework that unifies existing data and models on implicit learning, along with a detailed computational model of human performance in sequence-learning situations.

This paper develops a theory of joint attention as based on, and explicable in terms of, the exercise of a minimal kind of perceptual joint know-how. On the action-based view I shall be developing, joint forms of perception are object-involving processes constituted by perceivers’ skillfully co-ordinated motor movements in social space. Joint experience can then be understood as presenting the process to the involved perceivers and joint attention as perceivers’ focus on the object of this process. This theory reconciles at (...) least some primitivist and reductionist intuitions about joint attention. (shrink)

In evolutionary biology, niche construction is sometimes described as a genuine evolutionary process whereby organisms, through their activities and regulatory mechanisms, modify their environment such as to steer their own evolutionary trajectory, and that of other species. There is ongoing debate, however, on the extent to which niche construction ought to be considered a bona fide evolutionary force, on a par with natural selection. Recent formulations of the variational free-energy principle as applied to the life sciences describe the properties of (...) living systems, and their selection in evolution, in terms of variational inference. We argue that niche construction can be described using a variational approach. We propose new arguments to support the niche construction perspective, and to extend the variational approach to niche construction to current perspectives in various scientific fields. (shrink)

Comparing the relative sensitivity of direct and indirect measures of learning is proposed as the best way to provide evidence for unconscious learning when both conceptual and operative definitions of awareness are lacking. This approach was first proposed by Reingold & Merikle (1988) in the context of subliminal perception. In this paper, we apply it to a choice reaction time task in which the material is generated based on a probabilistic finite-state grammar (Cleeremans, 1993). We show (1) that participants progressively (...) learn about the statistical structure of the stimulus material over training with the choice reaction time task, and (2) that they can use some of this knowledge to predict the location of the next stimulus in a subsequent “generation” task. However, detailed partial correlational analyses of the correspondence between performance during the reaction time task and the statistical structure of the training material showed that large effects remained even when controlling for explicit knowledge as assessed by the generation task. Hence we conclude (1) that at least some of the knowledge expressed through reaction time performance can not be characterized as conscious, and (2) that even when associations are found at a global level of analysis, dissociations can still be obtained when more detailed analyses are conducted. Finally, we also show that participants are limited in the depth of the contingencies they can learn about, and that these limitations are shared by the Simple Recurrent Network model of Cleeremans & McClelland (1991). (shrink)

This essay presents a novel approach to specifying the meaning of the concept of populism, on the political position it occupies and on the nature of populism. Employing analytic techniques of concept clarification and recent analytic ideology critique, it develops populism as a political kind in three steps. First, it descriptively specifies the stereotype of populist platforms as identified in extant research and thereby delimits the peculiar political position populism occupies in representative democracies as neither inclusionary nor fascist. Second, it (...) specifies on this basis analytically–normatively the particular stance towards liberal representative democracy that unifies populism’s political position and explains how populist politics can be compelling for democratic citizens. The normative core turns out to require no more than two general principles of legitimizing political authority by elections. Surprisingly, it does not need a separate anti-pluralist or exclusionary commitment: it entails it. Third, this normative model allows a response to a contested question in the theoretical discussion, namely, whether populism can be democracy-enhancing. The article defends the negative answer in virtue of the normative core alone and does so as much vis-à-vis a minimal as vis-à-vis a normatively ambitious conception of democracy. The reconstruction of the normative core of populist ideology enables a novel argument to show that populism is incompatible with the continued democratic legitimation of political authority even in the normatively most austere conception of ‘electoral democracy’, not just with ‘liberal democracy’. Assuming a normatively more ambitious concept of democratic legitimation in terms of political autonomy, the model also produces an extremely direct argument showing that populists cannot fulfil their promise of ‘taking back control’ over political decision-making to the population. (shrink)

Despite being a new term, ‘fake news’ has evolved rapidly. This paper argues that it should be reserved for cases of deliberate presentation of false or misleading claims as news, where these are misleading by design. The phrase ‘by design’ here refers to systemic features of the design of the sources and channels by which fake news propagates and, thereby, manipulates the audience’s cognitive processes. This prospective definition is then tested: first, by contrasting fake news with other forms of public (...) disinformation; second, by considering whether it helps pinpoint conditions for the proliferation of fake news. (shrink)

Is it fair to leave the next generation a public debt? Is it defensible to impose legal rules on them through constitutional constraints? From combating climate change to ensuring proper funding for future pensions, concerns about ethics between generations are everywhere. In this volume sixteen philosophers explore intergenerational justice. Part One examines the ways in which various theories of justice look at the matter. These include libertarian, Rawlsian, sufficientarian, contractarian, communitarian, Marxian and reciprocity-based approaches. In Part Two, the authors look (...) more specifically at issues relevant to each of these theories, such as motivation to act fairly towards future generations, the population dimension, the formation of preferences through education and how they impact on our intergenerational obligations, and whether it is fair to rely on constitutional devices. (shrink)

Over the last 30 years, representationalist and dynamicist positions in the philosophy of cognitive science have argued over whether neurocognitive processes should be viewed as representational or not. Major scientific and technological developments over the years have furnished both parties with ever more sophisticated conceptual weaponry. In recent years, an enactive generalization of predictive processing – known as active inference – has been proposed as a unifying theory of brain functions. Since then, active inference has fueled both representationalist and dynamicist (...) campaigns. However, we believe that when diving into the formal details of active inference, one should be able to find a solution to the war; if not a peace treaty, surely an armistice of a sort. Based on an analysis of these formal details, this paper shows how both representationalist and dynamicist sensibilities can peacefully coexist within the new territory of active inference. (shrink)

Es ist in der Literatur weithin bekannt, dass im Gesundheitswesen auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen Allokationsentscheidungen getroffen werden. Während es auf der Makroebene um gesellschaftlich-politische Strukturfragen geht, stehen die Akteure der Mikroebene vor der Aufgabe, begrenzte Ressourcen in einer Organisation sinnvoll einzusetzen. In den ethischen Analysen der Mikro-Allokationsebene werden zumeist Entscheidungen der Healthcare Professionals thematisiert, weil sie eine unmittelbare Auswirkung auf die konkreten Patienten haben. Weniger in den Blick geraten Allokationen des Managements, welche die Rahmenbedingungen für Ressourcenzuteilungen beim Patienten betreffen. Hierbei geht (...) es nicht bloß um den Einsatz von Sachmitteln (z. B. Medikamenten- oder Gerätebudgets), sondern auch um den Personaleinsatz. Das Personalmanagement ist damit in wichtige Allokationsentscheidungen eingebunden und trägt eine dreifache Verantwortung: für die Gesundheit der Patienten, der Mitarbeiter und der Organisation. Der vorliegende Beitrag geht der Frage nach, welche Aspekte der Allokationsethik aus der Sicht des Personalmanagements in einem Krankenhaus zu bedenken sind, um der dreifachen Verantwortung gerecht zu werden. Dadurch zeigt sich, dass Allokationsethik in einem Krankenhaus nicht adäquat erfasst werden kann, ohne sich mit dem Personalmanagement zu beschäftigen, da das Personal die wertvollste Ressource ist, die es in einem Krankenhaus zu allozieren gilt. (shrink)

I put forward an externalist theory of social understanding. On this view, psychological sense making takes place in environments that contain both agent and interpreter. The spatial structure of such environments is social, in the sense that its occupants locate its objects by an exercise in triangulation relative to each of their standpoints. This triangulation is achieved in intersubjective interaction and gives rise to a triadic model of the social mind. This model can then be used to make sense of (...) others’ observed actions. Its possession plays a vital role in the development of the capacity for false belief reasoning. The view offers an integrated account of the development of social cognition from primary intersubjectivity to level-2 perspective taking. It incorporates insights from interactionism and mindreading theories of social cognition and thus offers a way out of the stalemate between defenders of the two views. Because psychological sense making is perspectival, the frame problem does not arise for social reasoners: the perspective they bring to bear on the action that is to be interpreted constrains the information they can select to make sense of what others do. (shrink)

Complete URL to this document: http://srsc.ulb.ac.be/axcWWW/93-Principles.html.

According to one influential view, model-building in science is primarily a matter of simplifying theoretical descriptions of real-world target systems using abstraction and idealization. This view, however, does not adequately capture all types of models. Many contemporary models in the natural and social sciences – from physics to biology to economics – stand in a more tenuous relationship with real-world target systems and have a decidedly stipulative element, in that they create, by fiat, ‘model worlds’ that operate according to some (...) set of specified rules. While such models may be motivated by an interest in actual target phenomena, their validity is not – at least not primarily – to be judged by whether they constitute an empirically adequate representation of any particular empirical system. The present paper compares and contrasts three such types of models: minimal models, toy models, and exploratory models. All three share some characteristics and thus overlap in interesting ways, yet they also exhibit significant differences. It is argued that, in all three cases, modal considerations have an important role to play: by exploring the modal structure of theories and phenomena – that is, by probing possibilities in various ways – such models deepen our understanding and help us gain knowledge not only about what there is in the world, but also about what there could be. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 581-591, September 2021.

While the study of implicit learning is nothing new, the field as a whole has come to embody — over the last decade or so — ongoing questioning about three of the most fundamental debates in the cognitive sciences: The nature of consciousness, the nature of mental representation (in particular the difficult issue of abstraction), and the role of experience in shaping the cognitive system. Our main goal in this chapter is to offer a framework that attempts to integrate current (...) thinking about these three issues in a way that specifically links consciousness with adaptation and learning. Our assumptions about this relationship are rooted in further assumptions about the nature of processing and of representation in cognitive systems. When considered together, we believe that these assumptions offer a new perspective on the relationships between conscious and unconscious processing and on the function of consciousness in cognitive systems. (shrink)

La falibilidad es una condición ubicua de nuestras empresas, la cual emana del hecho de que, comúnmente, las cosas que más nos interesan, como el descubrir la verdad, referirnos a cosas que de hecho existen, evitar dañar a los otros, etc., escapan nuestro alcance y, sin embargo, no dejamos de hacer grandes esfuerzos para conseguirlas. Es posible que hagamos todo lo que está en nuestras manos para actuar de manera cuidadosa y responsable y aun así nuestros actos tengan consecuencias negativas; (...) e igualmente es posible que nuestros actos tengan consecuencias positivas sin que podamos cobrar crédito por ellas como un logro. En este volumen, el autor se propone no solo explicar qué caracteriza a los casos de buena y mala suerte, sino también por qué valoramos más un logro que podemos atribuir al esfuerzo propio que el obtener lo que deseamos de manera accidental. (shrink)