The distinction between analog and digital representation is reexamined; it emerges that a more fundamental distinction is that between symbolic and analog simulation. Analog simulation is analyzed in terms of a (near) isomorphism of causal structures between a simulating and a simulated process. It is then argued that a core concept, naturalistic analog simulation, may play a role in a bottom-up theory of adaptive behavior which provides an alternative to representational analyses. The appendix discusses some formal conditions for naturalistic analog (...) simulation. (shrink)

Events have played a central role in a number of recent philosophical analyses. In general, there are two different sorts of arguments that might be offered in favour of an event analysis: first, it might be held that the constructions being analyzed contain certain nominals which intuitively refer to events, and further that any satisfactory analysis must respect these intuitions; second, it might be argued that quite aside from our intuitions, the concept of an event — perhaps as a purely (...) technical device — permits the solution of philosophical problems implicit in alternative non-event analyses.I wish to argue that both the above sorts of arguments fail. First, I argue that our intuitions about the reference on nominals are inconsistent, varying from context to context, so that the various sorts of event analyses cannot be talking about a single category of entities. (shrink)

Events have played a central role in a number of recent philosophical analyses. In general, there are two different sorts of arguments that might be offered in favour of an event analysis: first, it might be held that the constructions being analyzed contain certain nominals which intuitively refer to events, and further that any satisfactory analysis must respect these intuitions; second, it might be argued that quite aside from our intuitions, the concept of an event — perhaps as a purely (...) technical device — permits the solution of philosophical problems implicit in alternative non-event analyses.I wish to argue that both the above sorts of arguments fail. First, I argue that our intuitions about the reference on nominals are inconsistent, varying from context to context, so that the various sorts of event analyses cannot be talking about a single category of entities. (shrink)

Responding to this issue’s invitation to bring new disciplinary insights to the field of improvement science, this article takes as its starting point one of the field’s guiding metaphors: the imperative to “mind the gap”. Drawing on insights from anthropology, history, and philosophy, the article reflects on the origins and implications of this metaphoric imperative, and suggests some ways in which it might be in tension with the means and ends of improvement. If the industrial origins of improvement science in (...) the twentieth century inform a metaphor of gaps, chasms, and spaces of misalignment as invariably imperfect and potentially dangerous, and therefore requiring bridging or closure, other currents that feed the discipline of improvement science suggest the potential value and uses of spaces of openness and ambiguity. These currents include the science of complex adaptive systems, and certain precepts of philosophical pragmatism acknowledged to inform improvement science. Going a step further, I reflect on whether or not these two contrasting approaches within improvement science should be treated as incommensurable paradigms, and what each approach tells us about the very possibility of accommodating seemingly irreconcilable or incommensurable approaches within improvement science. (shrink)

Studies on rational conjecture, inference, and reckoning.

The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) is widely regarded as the greatest and most significant English-speaking philosopher and often seen as having had the most influence on the way philosophy is practiced today in the West. His reputation is based not only on the quality of his philosophical thought but also on the breadth and scope of his writings, which ranged over metaphysics, epistemology, morals, politics, religion, and aesthetics. The Handbook's 38 newly commissioned chapters are divided into six parts: Central (...) Themes; Metaphysics and Epistemology; Passion, Morality and Politics; Aesthetics, History, and Economics; Religion; Hume and the Enlightenment; and After Hume. The volume also features an introduction from editor Paul Russell and a chapter on Hume's biography. (shrink)

The art of rational conjecture.--The art of drawing inferences.--The art of reckoning.

This brilliant and controversial work investigates the relationship between 'individual' and 'scientific' knowledge.

On a remarkably thin base of evidence – largely the spectral analysis of points of light – astronomers possess, or appear to possess, an abundance of knowledge about the structure and history of the universe. We likewise know more than might even have been imagined a few centuries ago about the nature of physical matter, about the mechanisms of life, about the ancient past. Enormous theoretical and methodological ingenuity has been required to obtain such knowledge; it does not invite easy (...) discovery by the untutored. It may seem odd, then, that we have so little scientific knowledge of what lies closest at hand, apparently ripe for easy discovery, and of greatest importance for our quality of life: our own conscious experience – our sensory experiences and pains, for example, our inner speech and imagery, our felt emotion. Scientists know quite a bit about human visual capacities and the brain processes involved in vision, much less about the subjective experience of seeing; a fair bit about the physiology of emotion, almost nothing about its phenomenology. Philosophers began in earnest in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to describe and classify our patterns of conscious experience. John Locke, for instance, divided experienced “ideas” into those that arise from sensation and those that arise from reflection, and he began to classify them into. (shrink)

Academic literature addressing the topic of business ethics has paid little attention to cross-cultural studies of business ethics. Uncertainty exists concerning the effect of culture on ethical beliefs. The purpose of this research is to compare the ethical beliefs of managers operating in South Africa and Australia. Responses of 52 managers to a series of ethical scenarios were sought. Results indicate that despite differences in socio-cultural and political factors there are no statistically significant differences between the two groups regarding their (...) own ethical beliefs. Results thus support the view that culture has little or no impact on ethical beliefs. (shrink)

Sales professionals have been frequent targets of ethical criticism. This paper reports on a survey on ethics of sales professionals in South Africa. The results revealed salespeoples views on controversial sales practices that involve direct monetary consequences; on practices that adversely affect customers, employers and competitors; and on sales peoples sensitization of ethical issues. Stealing from a competitor at a trade show was viewed as the most unethical of the scenarios, while phone sabotage and lying to a customer were held (...) to be the next most unethical scenarios. Analysis of the results lead to a discussion of the implications for sales management. Ethical perceptions were affected by financial considerations. Marketing and Sales Managers will have to review their approach to training in sales ethics as well as how sales professionals implement the market driven approach. (shrink)

First published in 1981. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Enactivists frequently argue their account heralds a revolution in cognitive science: enactivism will unseat cognitivism as the dominant paradigm. We examine the lines of reasoning enactivists employ in stirring revolt, but show that none of these prove compelling reasons for cognitivism to be replaced by enactivism. First, we examine the hard sell of enactivism: enactivism reveals a critical explanatory gap at the heart of cognitivism. We show that enactivism does not meet the requirements to incite a paradigm shift in the (...) Kuhnian sense—there is no internal crisis in cognitivism. Nor does it provide inherently better explanations of cognition as some have claimed. Second, we consider the soft sell of enactivism: enactivism provides a more attractive, parsimonious, or clear-eyed lens on cognition. This move proves to boil down to a misunderstanding of how theories are selected in science. Instead we lend support to a broader and more desirable way to conceive of enactivism, the recent proposal that enactivism is a philosophy of nature. We explain how a philosophy of nature does more than support a single research paradigm by integrating scientific questions into a cohesive picture. (shrink)

Anger and disgust may have distinct roles in sexual morality; here, we tested hypotheses regarding the distinct foci, appraisals, and motivations of anger and disgust within the context of sexual offenses. We conducted four experiments in which we manipulated whether mutual consent (Studies 1–3) or desire (Study 4) was present or absent within a counter-normative sexual act. We found that anger is focused on the injustice of non-consensual sexual acts, and the transgressor of the injustice (Studies 1 and 3). Furthermore, (...) the sexual nature of the act was not critical for the elicitation of anger—as anger also responded to unjust acts of violence (Study 3). By contrast, we hypothesised and found that disgust is focused on whether or not a person voluntarily engaged in, desired or consented to a counter-normative sexual act (Studies 2–4). Appraisals of abnormality and degradation were the primary appraisals of disgust, and the sexual nature of the act was a critical elicitor of disgust (Study 3). A final study ruled out victimisation as the mechanism of the effect of consent on disgust and indicated that the consenter's sexual desire was the mechanism (Study 4). Our results reveal that anger and disgust have differential roles in consent-related sexual offenses due to the distinct appraisals and foci of these emotions. (shrink)

A founder of modern analytic philosophy and one of the most important logicians of the twentieth century, Bertrand Russell has influenced generations of philosophers. The Bloomsbury Companion to Bertrand Russell explores this influence in detail and responds to renewed interest in Russell's philosophical approach, presenting the best guide to research in Russell studies today. -/- Bringing new insights into Russell's relationship with his contemporaries, a team of experts explore his life-long battles with important philosophical issues. (...) They consider how he influenced thinkers and schools of thought, from Schröder, Frege and Meinong to Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, while also covering his impact on individual issues in epistemology, logic, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and political philosophy. Importantly this companion discusses often overlooked topics. Focusing on Russell's later views, including his moral philosophy and his politics, reveals that Russell did make significant contributions to ethics - both theoretical and practical - in the course of his career. -/- Through a combination of enlightening historical background and sustained focus on Russell's impact on contemporary areas of philosophy, The Bloomsbury Companion to Bertrand Russell demonstrates why Russell continues to influence philosophers of language, mathematics, epistemology and metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper considers a new problem for desire theories of well-being. The problem claims that these theories are implausible because they misvalue the effects of fleeting desires, long-standing desires, and fluctuations in desire strength on well-being. I begin by investigating a version of the desire theory of well-being, simple concurrentism, that fails to capture intuitions in these cases. I then argue that desire theories of well-being that are suitably stability-adjusted can avoid this problem. These theories claim that the average strength (...) of a desire, and the length of time that it is held, both influence the extent to which its fulfilment or frustration affects well-being. I end by considering whether value-fulfilment theories of well-being have a more attractive response to this problem. I find that these theories have significant downsides that make them unappealing alternatives. (shrink)

A founder of modern analytic philosophy and one of the most important logicians of the twentieth century, Bertrand Russell has influenced generations of philosophers. This volume explores this influence in detail and responds to renewed interest in Russell's philosophical approach, presenting the best guide to research in Russell studies today. Bringing new insights into Russell's relationship with his contemporaries, a team of experts explore his life-long battles with important philosophical issues. They consider how he influenced thinkers (...) and schools of thought, from Schröder, Frege and Meinong to Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, while also covering his impact on individual issues in epistemology, logic, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and political philosophy. Importantly this companion discusses often overlooked topics. Through a combination of enlightening historical background and sustained focus on Russell's impact on contemporary areas of philosophy, it demonstrates why Russell continues to influence philosophers of language, mathematics, epistemology and metaphysics. (shrink)

This article demonstrates that non-mechanistic, dynamical explanations are a viable approach to explanation in the special sciences. The claim that dynamical models can be explanatory without reference to mechanisms has previously been met with three lines of criticism from mechanists: the causal relevance concern, the genuine laws concern, and the charge of predictivism. I argue, however, that these mechanist criticisms fail to defeat non-mechanistic, dynamical explanation. Using the examples of Haken et al.’s model of bimanual coordination, and Thelen et al.’s (...) dynamical field model of infant perseverative reaching, I show how each mechanist criticism fails once the standards of Woodward’s interventionist framework are applied to dynamical models. An even-handed application of Woodwardian interventionism reveals that dynamical models are capable of producing genuine explanations without appealing to underlying mechanistic details. 1Introduction2Interventionism and Mechanistic Explanation 2.1Causal relevance and ideal interventions2.2Invariance2.3Explanation3Covering-Laws and Dynamical Explanation 3.1Dynamical models3.2Covering-law explanation3.3Prediction4Causal Relevance 4.1The causal relevance concern4.2Intervening on dynamical models4.3Test case I: The Haken–Kelso–Bunz model4.4Test case II: Dynamical field model5Genuine Laws 5.1The genuine laws concern5.2Using invariance in place of laws5.3Test case I: The Haken–Kelso–Bunz model5.4Test case II: Dynamical field model6Prediction 6.1Predictivism6.2Crude and invariant prediction7Interventionist Criticism of the Haken–Kelso–Bunz Model8Dynamical Explanation8Conclusion. (shrink)

Set against a background of calls for evidence-based practice, this paper explores the role of evidence and argument in phenomenological research. Drawing on Smith’s (1998) analysis of original argument, the author considers how evidence can be discerned, understood, and communicated, and the resulting kinds and contexts of knowledge that may be constituted in the practice of phenomenological research. Linking Churchill’s (2012) discussion of researcher perspectivity with Smith’s analysis of original argument, contrasts are drawn between rhetorical, demonstrative, and dialectical approaches to (...) argument, with proposed parallels to first-person, second-person, and third-person perspectives explored. Implications for argument-based phenomenological research are discussed. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 12, Special Edition July 2012. (shrink)

This book is concerned with methods of curing three kinds of conflict which have afflicted mankind. They are the conflicts of man with nature, with other men, and with himself. Of these, the first is the concern of science, the second of politics, and the third of religion and psychology. Modern techniques have made poverty un-necessary, and have provided the possibility of a much higher level of general wellbeing than has ever existed at any former time. Failure to realize this (...) possibility is due to the persistence of beliefs, principles, emotions, and habits of thought that were appropriate in earlier ages. (shrink)

This book includes detailed critical analysis of a wide variety of versions of the indispensability argument, as well as a novel approach to traditional views about mathematics.

You live your entire waking life immersed in your inner experiences – private phenomena created by you, just for you, your own way. Despite their intimacy and ubiquity, you probably do not know the characteristics of your own inner phenomena; neither does psychology or consciousness science. Investigating Pristine Inner Experience explores how to apprehend inner experience in high fidelity. This book will transform your view of your own inner experience, awaken you to experiential differences between people and thereby reframe your (...) thinking about psychology and consciousness science, which banned the study of inner experience for most of a century and yet continued to recognize its fundamental importance. The author, a pioneer in using beepers to explore inner experience, draws on his 35 years of studies to provide fascinating and provocative views of everyday inner experience and experience in bulimia, adolescence, the elderly, schizophrenia, Tourette's syndrome, virtuosity and more. (shrink)

Belirli betimlemeler, bir belirli tanımlıkla (Türkçede seslendirilmeyen ancak İngilizcede karşılığı "the" olan) başlayan "İngiltere'nin kralı", "Çin'in başkenti" gibi deyimlerdir. Russell bu yazıda belirli betimlemelerin mantıksal olarak nasıl çözümlenmesi gerektiği ile ilgili kendi betimlemeler kuramını ortaya atar. Russell'ın savı, belirli betimlemeler doğru bir biçimde çözümlenirse bir karşılığı olmayan "Fransa'nın şimdiki kralı" gibi deyimlerin yol açtığı türden birçok felsefi bilmecenin ortadan kalkacağıdır.

Mechanistic explanations are often said to explain because they reveal the causal structure of the world. Conversely, dynamical models supposedly lack explanatory power because they do not describe causal structure. The only way for dynamical models to produce causal explanations is via the 3M criterion: the model must be mapped onto a mechanism. This framing of the situation has become the received view around the viability of dynamical explanation. In this paper, I argue against this position and show that dynamical (...) models can themselves reveal causal structure and consequently produce nonmechanistic, dynamical explanations. Taking the example of cell fates from systems biology, I show how dynamical models, and specifically the attractor landscapes they describe, identify the causes of cell differentiation and explain why cells select particular fates. These dynamical features of the system better fit Woodward’s (2010, 2018) criteria of specificity and proportionality and make them the best candidate causes of cell fates than mechanisms. I also show how these causes are irreducible and inaccessible to mechanistic models, making 3M unworkable and counterproductive in this case. Dynamical models can reveal dynamical causes and thereby provide causal explanations. (shrink)

Russell Goodman tells the story of the development of philosophy in America from the mid-18th century to the late 19th century. The key figures in this story, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, the writers of The Federalist, and the romantics Emerson and Thoreau, were not professors but men of the world, whose deep formative influence on American thought brought philosophy together with religion, politics, and literature.

This 2002 book explores Wittgenstein's long engagement with the work of the pragmatist William James. In contrast to previous discussions Russell Goodman argues that James exerted a distinctive and pervasive positive influence on Wittgenstein's thought. For example, the book shows that the two philosophers share commitments to anti-foundationalism, to the description of the concrete details of human experience, to the priority of practice over intellect, and to the importance of religion in understanding human life. Considering in detail what Wittgenstein (...) learnt from his reading of Principles of Psychology and Varieties of Religious Experience the author provides considerable evidence for Wittgenstein's claim that he is saying 'something that sounds like pragmatism'. This provocative account of the convergence in the thinking of two major philosophers usually considered as members of discrete traditions will be eagerly sought by students of Wittgenstein, William James, pragmatism and the history of twentieth-century philosophy. (shrink)

This elegant essay on the justice of work focuses on the fit between who we are and the kind of work we do. Russell Muirhead shows how the common hope for work that fulfills us involves more than personal interest; it also points to larger understandings of a just society. We are defined in part by the jobs we hold, and Muirhead has something important to say about the partial satisfactions of the working life, and the increasingly urgent need (...) to balance the claims of work against those of family and community. Against the tendency to think of work exclusively in contractual terms, Muirhead focuses on the importance of work to our sense of a life well lived. Our notions of freedom and fairness are incomplete, he argues, without due consideration of how we fit the work we do. Muirhead weaves his argument out of sociological, economic, and philosophical analysis. He shows, among other things, how modern feminism's effort to reform domestic work and extend the promise of careers has contributed to more democratic understandings of what it means to have work that fits. His account of individual and social fit as twin standards of assessment is original and convincing--it points both to the unavoidable problem of distributing bad work in society and to the personal importance of finding fulfilling work. These themes are pursued through a wide-ranging discussion that engages thinkers from Plato to John Stuart Mill to Betty Friedan. Just Work shows what it would mean for work to make good on the high promise so often invested in it and suggests what we--both as a society and as individuals--might do when it falls short. (shrink)

This book explores the rise of theoretical physics in 19th century Germany. The authors show how the junior second physicist in German universities over time became the theoretical physicist, of equal standing to the experimental physicist. Gustav Kirchhoff, Hermann von Helmholtz, and Max Planck are among the great German theoretical physicists whose work and career are examined in this book. Physics was then the only natural science in which theoretical work developed into a major teaching and research specialty in its (...) own right. Readers will discover how German physicists arrived at a well-defined field of theoretical physics with well understood and generally accepted goals and needs. The authors explain the nature of the work of theoretical physics with many examples, taking care always to locate the research within the workplace. The book is a revised and shortened version of Intellectual Mastery of Nature: Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein, a two-volume work by the same authors. This new edition represents a reformulation of the larger work. It retains what is most important in the original work, while including new material, sharpening discussions, and making the research more accessible to readers. It presents a thorough examination of a seminal era in physics. (shrink)

Fried and Kollár constructed a fully faithful functor from the category of graphs to the category of fields. We give a new construction of such a functor and use it to resolve a longstanding open problem in computable model theory, by showing that for every nontrivial countable structure${\cal S}$, there exists a countable field${\cal F}$of arbitrary characteristic with the same essential computable-model-theoretic properties as${\cal S}$. Along the way, we develop a new “computable category theory”, and prove that our functor and (...) its partially defined inverse are computable functors. (shrink)

Despite several decades of debate, the concept of disease remains hotly contested. The debate is typically cast as one between naturalism and normativism, with a hybrid view that combines elements of each staked out in between. In light of a number of widely discussed problems with existing accounts, some theorists argue that the concept of disease is beyond repair and thus recommend eliminating it in a wide range of practical medical contexts. Any attempt to reframe the ‘disease’ discussion should answer (...) the more basic sceptical challenge, and should include a meta-methodological critique guided by our pragmatic expectations of what the disease concept ought to do given that medical diagnosis is woven into a complex network of healthcare institutions. In this paper, we attempt such a reframing, arguing that while prevailing accounts do not suffer from the particular defects that prominent critics have identified, they do suffer from other deficits—and this leads us to propose an amended hybrid view that places objectivist approaches to disease on stronger theoretical footing, and satisfies the institutional-ethicaldesiderataof a concept of disease in human medicine. Nevertheless, we do not advocate a procrustean approach to ‘disease’. Instead, we recommend disease concept pluralism between medical and biological sciences to allow the concept to serve the different epistemic and institutional goals of these respective disciplines. (shrink)

Fall prediction using machine learning has become one of the most fruitful and socially relevant applications of computer vision in gerontological research. Since its inception in the early 2000s, this subfield has proliferated into a robust body of research underpinned by various machine learning algorithms (including neural networks, support vector machines, and decision trees) as well as statistical modeling approaches (Markov chains, Gaussian mixture models, and hidden Markov models). Furthermore, some advancements have been translated into commercial and clinical practice, with (...) companies in various stages of development capitalizing on the aging population to develop new commercially available products. Yet despite the marvel of modern machine learning-enabled fall prediction, little research has been conducted to shed light on the security and privacy concerns that such systems pose for older adults. The present study employs an interdisciplinary lens in examining privacy issues associated with machine learning fall prediction and exploring the implications of these models in elderly care and the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). Ultimately, a justice-informed set of best practices rooted in social geroscience is suggested to help fall prediction researchers and companies continue to advance the field while preserving elderly privacy and autonomy. (shrink)

Despite recent advances in ways to prevent transmission of HIV from a mother to her child during pregnancy, infants continue to be born and become infected with HIV, particularly in southern Africa where HIV prevalence is the highest in the world. In this region, emphasis has shifted from voluntary HIV counselling and testing to routine testing of women during pregnancy. There have also been proposals for mandatory testing. Could mandatory testing ever be an option, even in high-prevalence settings? Many previous (...) examinations of mandatory testing have dealt with it in the context of low HIV prevalence and a well-resourced health care system. In this discussion, different assumptions are made. Within this context, where mandatory testing may be a strategy of last resort, the objections to it are reviewed. Special attention is paid in the discussion to the entrenched vulnerability of women in much of southern Africa and how this contributes to both HIV prevalence and ongoing challenges for preventing HIV transmission during pregnancy. While mandatory testing is ethically plausible, particularly when coupled with guaranteed access to treatment and care, the discussion argues that the moment to employ this strategy has not yet come. Many barriers remain for pregnant women in terms of access to testing, treatment and care, most acutely in the southern African setting, despite the presence of national and international human rights instruments aimed at empowering women and removing such barriers. While this situation persists, mandatory HIV testing during pregnancy cannot be justified. (shrink)