This interpretation of Zhuangzi's Dao, particularly in the "Qi Wu Lun," as "background noise" begins from Zhuangzi's question as to whether any human statements-and human language itself-can ultimately be distinguished from the "peeps of baby birds." The essay explores a tentative model of Dao that sees it as neither fully "linguistic" nor "non-linguistic" but as "pre-linguistic," the potential ground of emergence of words, statements, and meanings. To develop this model we turn to the notion of background noise in physics, especially (...) as discussed by Michel Serres in his discussion of chaos and information theory. A crucial feature of the Serresian chaos-theory model and also, it is suggested here, of Zhuangzi's Dao is the tendency of hyper-order to return (or switch) back to the initial state of disorder. (shrink)

: This interpretation of Zhuangzi's Dao, particularly in the "Qi Wu Lun," as "background noise" begins from Zhuangzi's question as to whether any human statements—and human language itself—can ultimately be distinguished from the "peeps of baby birds." The essay explores a tentative model of Dao that sees it as neither fully "linguistic" nor "non-linguistic" but as "pre-linguistic," the potential ground of emergence of words, statements, and meanings. To develop this model we turn to the notion of background noise in physics, (...) especially as discussed by Michel Serres in his discussion of chaos and information theory. A crucial feature of the Serresian chaos-theory model and also, it is suggested here, of Zhuangzi's Dao is the tendency of hyper-order to return (or switch) back to the initial state of disorder. (shrink)

This interpretation of Zhuangzi's Dao, particularly in the "Qi Wu Lun," as "background noise" begins from Zhuangzi's question as to whether any human statements-and human language itself-can ultimately be distinguished from the "peeps of baby birds." The essay explores a tentative model of Dao that sees it as neither fully "linguistic" nor "non-linguistic" but as "pre-linguistic," the potential ground of emergence of words, statements, and meanings. To develop this model we turn to the notion of background noise in physics, especially (...) as discussed by Michel Serres in his discussion of chaos and information theory. A crucial feature of the Serresian chaos-theory model and also, it is suggested here, of Zhuangzi's Dao is the tendency of hyper-order to return (or switch) back to the initial state of disorder. (shrink)

Buddhisms and Deconstructions considers the connection between Buddhism and Derridean deconstruction, focusing on the work of Robert Magliola. Fourteen distinguished contributors discuss deconstruction and various Buddhisms—Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese —followed by an afterword in which Magliola responds directly to his critics.

This chapter both explains the origins of emotivism in C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, R. B. Braithwaite, Austin Duncan-Jones, A. J. Ayer and Charles Stevenson (along with the endorsement by Frank P. Ramsey, and the summary of C. D. Broad), and looks at MacIntyre's criticisms of emotivism as the inevitable result of Moore's attack on naturalistic ethics and his ushering in the fact/value, which was a historical product of the Enlightenment.

Conventionality and aptness are two dimensions of metaphorical sentences thought to play an important role in determining how quick and easy it is to process a metaphor. Conventionality reflects the familiarity of a metaphor whereas aptness reflects the degree to which a metaphor vehicle captures important features of a metaphor topic. In recent years it has become clear that operationalizing these two constructs is not as simple as asking naïve raters for subjective judgments. It has been found that ratings of (...) aptness and conventionality are highly correlated, which has led some researchers to pursue alternative methods for measuring the constructs. Here, in four experiments, we explore the underlying reasons for the high correlation in ratings of aptness and conventionality, and question the construct validity of various methods for measuring the two dimensions. We find that manipulating the processing fluency of a metaphorical sentence by means of familiarization to similar senses of the metaphor (“in vivo conventionalization”) influences ratings of the sentence's aptness. This misattribution may help explain why subjective ratings of aptness and conventionality are highly correlated. In addition, we find other reasons to question the construct validity of conventionality and aptness measures: for instance, we find that conventionality is context dependent and thus not attributable to a metaphor vehicle alone, and we find that ratings of aptness take more into account than they should. (shrink)

We investigate how the perceived uncertainty of a conditional affects a person's choice of conclusion. We use a novel procedure to introduce uncertainty by manipulating the conditional probability of the consequent given the antecedent. In Experiment 1, we show first that subjects reduce their choice of valid conclusions when a conditional is followed by an additional premise that makes the major premise uncertain. In this we replicate Byrne. These subjects choose, instead, a qualified conclusion expressing uncertainty. If subjects are given (...) a third statement that qualifies the likelihood of the additional premise, then the uncertainty of the conclusions they choose is systematically related to the suggested uncertainty. Experiment 2 confirms these observations in problems that omit the additional premise and qualify the first premise directly. Experiment 3 shows that the qualifying statement also affects the perceived probability of the consequent given the antecedent of the conditional. Experiment 4 investigates the effect of suggested uncertainty on the fallacies and shows that increases in uncertainty reduce the number of certain conclusions that are chosen while affirming the consequent but have no effect on denying the antecedent. We discuss our results in terms of rule theories and mental models and conclude that the latter give the most natural account of our results. (shrink)

While Nozick and his sympathizers assume there is a widespread anti-hedonist intuition to prefer reality to an experience machine, hedonists have marshalled empirical evidence that shows such an assumption to be unfounded. Results of several experience machine variants indicate there is no widespread anti-hedonist intuition. From these findings, hedonists claim Nozick's argument fails as an objection to hedonism. This article suggests the argument surrounding experience machines has been misconceived. Rather than eliciting intuitions about what is prudentially valuable, these intuitive judgements (...) are instead calculations about prudential pay-offs and trade-offs. This position can help explain the divergence of intuitions people have about experience machines. (shrink)

Spitale, Germani, and Biller-Andorno (2024) have proposed a comprehensive framework for navigating the ethical dilemmas associated with risk and crisis communication (RCC) during public health emer...

Interpreting a seemingly simple function word like “or,” “behind,” or “more” can require logical, numerical, and relational reasoning. How are such words learned by children? Prior acquisition theories have often relied on positing a foundation of innate knowledge. Yet recent neural‐network‐based visual question answering models apparently can learn to use function words as part of answering questions about complex visual scenes. In this paper, we study what these models learn about function words, in the hope of better understanding how the (...) meanings of these words can be learned by both models and children. We show that recurrent models trained on visually grounded language learn gradient semantics for function words requiring spatial and numerical reasoning. Furthermore, we find that these models can learn the meanings of logical connectives and and or without any prior knowledge of logical reasoning as well as early evidence that they are sensitive to alternative expressions when interpreting language. Finally, we show that word learning difficulty is dependent on the frequency of models' input. Our findings offer proof‐of‐concept evidence that it is possible to learn the nuanced interpretations of function words in a visually grounded context by using non‐symbolic general statistical learning algorithms, without any prior knowledge of linguistic meaning. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Index to Volume Fifty-SixArticlesBernier, Bernard, National Communion: Watsuji Tetsurō's Conception of Ethics, Power, and the Japanese Imperial State, 1 : 84-105Between Principle and Situation: Contrasting Styles in the Japanese and Korean Traditions of Moral Culture, Chai-sik Chung, 2 : 253-280Buxton, Nicholas, The Crow and the Coconut: Accident, Coincidence, and Causation in the Yogavāiṣṭha, 3 : 392-408Chan, Sin Yee, The Confucian Notion of Jing (Respect), Sin Yee Chan, 2 : (...) 229-252Chong, Kim-chong, Zhuangzi and the Nature of Metaphor, 3 : 370-391Chung, Chai-sik, Between Principle and Situation: Contrasting Styles in the Japanese and Korean Traditions of Moral Culture, 2 : 253-280The Confucian Ideal of Harmony, Chenyang Li, 4 : 583-603The Confucian Notion of Jing.(Respect), Sin Yee Chan, 2 : 229-252The Conventional Status of Reflexive Awareness: What's at Stake in a Tibetan Debate? Jay L. Garfield, 2 : 201-228The Crisis of Knowledge in Islam (I): The Case of al-'āmirī, Paul L. Heck, 1 : 106-135The Crow and the Coconut: Accident, Coincidence, and Causation in the Yogavāiṣṭha, Nicholas Buxton, 3 : 392-408De Reu, Wim, Right Words Seem Wrong: Neglected Paradoxes in Early Chinese Philosophical Texts, 2 : 281-300The Desire You Are Required to Get Rid of: A Functionalist Analysis of Desire in the Bhaga-vadgītā, Christopher Framarin, 4 : 604-617Framarin, Christopher, The Desire You Are Required to Get Rid of: A Functionalist Analysis of Desire in the Bhagavadgītā, 4 : 604-617Garfield, Jay L., The Conventional Status of Reflexive Awareness: What's at Stake in a Tibetan Debate? 2 : 201-228Heck, Paul L., The Crisis of Knowledge in Islam (I): The Case of al-'ā mirī, 1 : 106-135Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel, 4 : 519-566Ho, Chien-hsing, Saying the Unsayable, 3 : 409-427Kantor, Hans-Rudolf, Ontological Indeterminacy and Its Soteriological Relevance: An Assessment of Mou Zongsan's (1909-1995) Interpretation of Zhiyi's (538-597) Tiantai Buddhism, 1 : 16-68Lai, Karyn, Li in the Analects: Training in Moral Competence and the Question of Flexibility, 1 : 69-83Li, Chenyang, The Confucian Ideal of Harmony, 4 : 583-603Li in the Analects: Training in Moral Competence and the Question of Flexibility, Karyn Lai, 1 : 69-83Ma, Lin, and Jaap van Brakel, Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, 4 : 519-566National Communion: Watsuji Tetsurō's Conception of Ethics, Power, and the Japanese Imperial State, Bernard Bernier, 1 : 84-105Ontological Indeterminacy and Its Soteriological Relevance: An Assessment of Mou Zongsan's (1909-1995) Interpretation of Zhiyi's (538- 597) Tiantai Buddhism, Hans-Rudolf Kantor, 1 : 16-68Right Words Seem Wrong: Neglected Paradoxes in Early Chinese Philosophical Texts, Wim De Reu, 2 : 281-300The Role of Time in the Structure of Chinese Logic, Jinmei Yuan, 1 : 136-152Sakya Pandita and the Status of Concepts, Jonathan Stoltz, 4 : 567-582Saying the Unsayable, Chien-hsing Ho, 3 : 409-427Schiltz, Elizabeth, Two Chariots: The Justification of the Best Life in the Katha Upanishad and Plato's Phaedrus, 3 : 451-468Spackman, John, The Tiantai Roots of Dōgen's Philosophy of Language and Thought, 3 : 428-450Stevenson, Frank W., Zhuangzi's Dao as Background Noise, 2 : 301-331Stoltz, Jonathan, Sakya Pandita and the Status of Concepts, 4 : 567-582The Tiantai Roots of Dōgen's Philosophy of Language and Thought, John Spackman, 3 : 428-450 [End Page 709]Two Chariots: The Justification of the Best Life in the Katha Upanishad and Plato's Phaedrus, Elizabeth Schiltz, 3 : 451-468van Brakel, Jaap, and Lin Ma, Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, 4 : 519-566Yuan, Jinmei, The Role of Time in the Structure of Chinese Logic, 1 : 136-152Zhuangzi and the Nature of Metaphor, Kim-chong Chong, 3 : 370-391Zhuangzi's Dao as Background Noise, Frank W. Stevenson, 2 : 301-331Book NotesFenner, David E. W., Introducing Aesthetics (note by James McRae), 3 : 515-516Introducing Aesthetics, by David E. W. Fenner (note by James McRae), 3 : 515-516McRae, James, a book... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Buddhisms and DeconstructionsFrancis X. Clooney, SJBuddhisms and Deconstructions. Edited by Jin Y. Park, with an afterword by Robert Magliola. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006. Pp. xxii + 290.Buddhisms and Deconstructions originated in a panel on "Buddhism, Deconstruction, and the Works of Robert Magliola" at the twenty-second annual convention [End Page 182] of the International Association for Philosophy and Literature. Half its essays began as conference (...) papers, while the rest (including several published elsewhere) were solicited for the volume. Implicit too are an awareness of other volumes—for example, Harold Coward's Derrida and Indian Philosophy (1990) and (with Toby Foshay) Derrida and Negative Theology (1992)—and the conviction that such volumes, although making a contribution, have not adequately sorted out what can usefully be said with respect to that tantalizingly elusive couple, deconstruction and Buddhism.The volume exemplifies many starting points and avenues for testing the Buddhism-deconstruction relationship, but all of it is clearly mapped. "Buddhism and Deconstruction" (section 1) illumines some basic issues underlying Buddhist-deconstructionist comparisons: "Naming the Unnameable: Dependent Co-arising and Différence" (Jin Y. Park) and "Nagarjuna and Deconstruction" (Ian Mabbett). "Buddhism Deconstructs" (section 2) explores how deconstruction can be analyzed from a Buddhist perspective, and includes "Derridean and Madhyamika Buddhist Theories of Deconstruction" (Zong-qi Cai) and "Indra's Postmodern Net" (David R. Loy). "Deconstructing Buddhism" (section 3), with essays on "Deconstructive and Foundationalist Tendencies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism" (Roger R. Jackson) and "Ji Zang's Sunyata-Speech: Derridean Denegation with Buddhist Negations" (Ellen Y. Zhang), looks in the other direction, still further deconstructing Buddhism. "Chan/Zen Buddhist Deconstruction" (section 4) furthers the critique with another pair of detailed analyses, "The Chan Deconstruction of Buddha Nature" (Youru Wang) and "Sudao: Repeating the Question in Chan Discourse" (Frank W. Stevenson). All these authors stick with cases in order to test the larger Buddhism and deconstruction hypothesis, showing, unsurprisingly, that similarities and differences make comparisons work out in different ways and for different conclusions. It matters which Buddhist tradition is brought into play, how one interprets some particular Buddhist thinker, and (because almost everyone here is thinking of "Derrida" and "deconstruction" at the same time) how someone with Buddhist learning ought to read which early or late essay by Derrida. Altogether, these eight essays illumine specific examples and contribute to the volume's larger topic, as we narrow down and define the Budhism-Deconstructionism conversation. Loy perhaps speaks for many of the authors here:From a Buddhist perspective, the post-structural realization that the meaning of a text cannot be totalized—that language/thought never attains a self-presence which escapes differences—is an important step towards the realization that there is no abiding-place for the mind anywhere within Indra's net. But the textual dissemination liberated by Derrida's deconstruction will not be satisfactory unless the dualist sense-of-self—not just its discourse—has been deconstructed.(p. 80)Or, as Ellen Zhang soberly puts it, [End Page 183]The play of sunyata/denegation implies a movement of thought that sees the surplus of thought, and understanding this surplus sometimes requires the un-thought. The moment of negativity is, therefore, also the moment of construction and creativity. Sunyata/denegation is not simply a nihilistic place of reducing meaning to non-meaning, reality to non-reality. On the contrary, it is the moment of emancipation of meanings, we find in the Chinese traditions from Zhuangzi to Buddhist philosophers and Chan masters. Meanwhile, the experiential dimensions in the process of transforming our thought and consciousness explored by Daoism and Buddhism also offer a possible critique of postmodern discourse.(p. 121)One could well imagine an entire volume made of just these essays with just such insights.But there is more. In "Deconstructing Life-Worlds" (section 5), two essays—"The Veil Rent in Twain: A Buddhist Reading of Robert Magliola's Deconstructive Chiasm" (Jane Augustine) and "Emmanuel, Robert" (Gad Horowitz)—remind us that the volume is indeed a still more complex three-way conversation, including also the writings and personality (evident by the vehicle of an Afterword) of Robert Magliola, a scholar of both Buddhism (which he teaches... (shrink)

It is an interesting paradox that on the one hand intemperate enthusiasm greets new medical discoveries. On the other hand, the lack of science in medicine is paraded from time to time, usually as a matter of apologetics, as, when a physician wishes to excuse an error, a lawyer to discredit a physician, or a jury to render a verdict contrary to medical evidence. Philosophers who insist on the mathematical or quantitative aspects in any definition of science ascribe very little (...) that is truly scientific to biology in general or to its daughter medicine in particular. Jerome Frank comments approvingly that “many scientific-minded physicians today deny that medicine is, or is likely ever to be, a science.” Articulate physicians themselves may be highly critical. Dr. Ian Stevenson, for example, declares, “Medicine will not achieve the status of a science until the basic laws of health and disease have been disclosed. But the search for these laws has hardly begun.” Stevenson goes on to point out that instead of seeking basic laws, medicine is concentrating on facts, from which no laws emerge. (shrink)

This paper provides an update semantics for counterfactual conditionals. It does so by giving a dynamic twist to the ‘Premise Semantics’ for counterfactuals developed in Veltman (1976) and Kratzer (1981). It also offers an alternative solution to the problems with naive Premise Semantics discussed by Angelika Kratzer in ‘Lumps of Thought’ (Kratzer, 1989). Such an alternative is called for given the triviality results presented in Kanazawa et al. (2005, this issue).

The functional basis of disgust in disease avoidance is widely accepted; however, there is disagreement over what disgust is. This is a significant problem, as basic questions about disgust require...

Intended both for undergraduate students and for general readers, this introduction to the philosophy of science uses case studies, anecdotes and personal comment to portray many heroes and villains from the field of science through the ages.

UK-based research conducted within a healthcare setting generally requires approval from the National Research Ethics Service. Research ethics committees are required to assess a vast range of proposals, differing in both their topic and methodology. We argue the methodological benchmarks with which research ethics committees are generally familiar and which form the basis of assessments of quality do not fit with the aims and objectives of many forms of qualitative inquiry and their more iterative goals of describing social processes/mechanisms and (...) making visible the complexities of social practices. We review current debates in the literature related to ethical review and social research, and illustrate the importance of re-visiting the notion of ethics in healthcare research. (shrink)

Inspired by Kant, Merleau-Ponty and Sellars, I illustrate and identify certain kinds of unity which are typical (if not universal) features of our conscious experience, and argue that Kant was right to claim that such unities are produced by unconscious processes of synthesis:A perceptual experience of succession is not reducible to a succession of perceptual experiences.The experience of perceiving one object as having several features is not reducible to a conjunction of perceptual experiences of those features.A cross-modal perceptual experience is (...) not reducible to a conjunction of single-modality perceptual experiences.Incoming perceptual information is synthesized into a single scene---a representation of the world as perceived from a spatia-temporal point of view.Any two of the simultaneous features of the experience of a subject S can be thought of together by S.Many of the experiences of a subject S can be thought of by S at a later time as part of his or her history of experience.These can be summarized in the general principle:An experience of a complex is not a complex of experiences.This is consistent with Sellars’ principle that:A sense-impression of a complex is a complex of impressionsbecause the latter applies at the sub-personal, unconceptualized level, and the former at the conscious level of conceptualized experiences. (shrink)

This paper investigates (modal) extensions of Heyting-Brouwer logic, i.e., the logic which results when the dual of implication (alias coimplication) is added to the language of intuitionistic logic. We first develop matrix as well as Kripke style semantics for those logics. Then, by extending the Gö;del-embedding of intuitionistic logic into S4, it is shown that all (modal) extensions of Heyting-Brouwer logic can be embedded into tense logics (with additional modal operators). An extension of the Blok-Esakia-Theorem is proved for this embedding.

This paper investigates the structure of lattices of normal mono- and polymodal subframelogics, i.e., those modal logics whose frames are closed under a certain type of substructures. Nearly all basic modal logics belong to this class. The main lattice theoretic tool applied is the notion of a splitting of a complete lattice which turns out to be connected with the “geometry” and “topology” of frames, with Kripke completeness and with axiomatization problems. We investigate in detail subframe logics containing K4, those (...) containing polymodal Altn and subframe logics which are tense logics. (shrink)

We shall describe the set of strongly meet irreducible logics in the lattice ϵLin.t of normal tense logics of weak orderings. Based on this description it is shown that all logics in ϵLin.t are independently axiomatizable. Then the description is used in order to investigate tense logics with respect to decidability, finite axiomatizability, axiomatization problems and completeness with respect to Kripke semantics. The main tool for the investigation is a translation of bimodal formulas into a language talking about partitions of (...) general frames into intervals so that relative to both Kripke frames and descriptive frames the expressive power of both languages coincides. (shrink)