This article addresses the ability of Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) networks to generate stagewise cognitive development in accordance with Piaget's theory of cognitive epigenesis. We carried out a replication study of the simulation experiments by McClelland (1989) and McClelland and Jenkins (1991) in which a PDP network learns to solve balance scale problems. In objective tests motivated from catastrophe theory, a mathematical theory of transitions in epigenetical systems, no evidence for stage transitions in network performance was found. It is concluded (...) that PDP networks lack the ability to recover the positive outcomes of analogous catastrophe analyses of real cognitive developmental data. In an attempt to further characterize the learning behaviour of PDP networks, we carried out a second simulation study using the discrimination‐shift paradigm. The results thus obtained indicate that PDP learning is compatible with the learning of stimulus‐response relationships, not with the acquisition of mediating rules such as conceived in (neo‐)Piagetian theory. In closing, we speculate about the feasibility of simulating stagewise development with alternative network architectures. (shrink)

A influência da família no desenvolvimento da criança e do adolescente é um foco importante de pesquisa atualmente. Para estudar a relação entre a interação familiar e a auto-estima de adolescentes, 111 alunos (13 e 14 anos), de três escolas particulares de Porto União (SC) responderam a Escala de A..

Die deutsch-jüdische Philosophin und Altphilologin Lotte Labowsky (1905-91), 1933/34 mit der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Bibliothek Warburg (K. B.W.) nach England emigriert, zählt zu den bisher weniger bekannten Gelehrten des Warburg-Kreises. Die Auffindung ihres "Nachlasses" im Marbacher Nachlass Raymond Klibanskys ermöglicht indes neue Einblicke in die Geschichte der K.B.W. und ihres philosophiegeschichtlichen Forschungsprogramms im englischen Exil. Auch das Leben der ebenso produktiven wie engagierten Wissenschaftlerin wird nun sichtbar. Über 550 Briefe Labowskys an Klibansky, geschrieben zwischen 1927 und 1991, zeugen von intensiver Arbeitsgemeinschaft und (...) Freundschaft eines transnationalen0Gelehrtenpaars im 20. Jahrhundert. (shrink)

The relationship between James and Whitehead has been underlined from the very outset by the critical scholarship on Whitehead, as is testified by the presence of articles that appeared before the author’s death. By dissociating myself from the radical interpretation that frames Whitehead’s speculative opus as a systematization of James’s ideas, I survey that confrontation which has been advanced in the last years (Weber 2002, 2003, 2011, Sinclair 2009) in order to provide further contribution, by tackle the problem of (...) novelty. Precisely, I concentrate on those instances, especially the methodological ones, which are not simply akin, but rather properly shared by the authors. In other words, I focus on those grounding ideas from which they endorse a pluralistic universe, conceived in connection with the problem of novelty. Properly, 1) I analyze the way Whitehead refers to James in his books; 2) I compare the roles they acknowledge to reason, in the nexus with the concept of experience; 3) I show the importance both authors ascribe to the problem of novelty, the main topic involved in their efforts to build up new cosmologies. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an arts-based posthumanist cartography of a theatre play, Apple Time performed by deaf youth in Regina, Saskatchewan. This play was co-constructed by deaf youth performers, two deaf adults, a hearing teacher, and a hearing director. Apple Time premiered in Regina, Saskatchewan on June 2, 2018, and was remounted again at the Globe Theatre (Regina) in February 2019 and again at the SoundOff Festival in Edmonton, Alberta. The arts-based cartography examines intelligibility as a (...) methodological problem as posited by Graif (2018), in which the actions of deaf children and youth often remain invisible due to the ontological position that perception of the world is predicated upon the ability to hear. Intelligibility as a methodological problem poses a challenge to the deficit perspective commonly held by families and service providers working with deaf children and youth (Glickman & Hall, 2019). The performers in this play were able to re-align audience perceptions through the presentation of their inner worlds and preoccupations, thereby making their multiple deaf worlds more intelligible. (shrink)

This article presents an analytic critique of the predominant revisionist theoretical paradigm of just war (henceforth: revisionism). This is accomplished by means of a precise description and explanation of the practicability problem that confronts it, namely that soldiers that revisionism would deem “unjust” are bound to fail to fulfil the duties that revisionism imposes on them, because these duties are overdemanding. The article locates the origin of the practicability problem in revisionism’s overidealized conception of a soldier as an individual rational (...) agent analogous to the aggressor or defender in a case of lethal self-defense, who is capable of reflecting on the morality of his status in war and of the killing he performs and thus of recognizing his revisionist duties. Revisionism, however, ignores the following fact: Killing in war is not a natural human behavior. This is why training soldiers to kill is—and arguably always has been—a necessity for the existence of war and the killing that occurs in it. Moreover, this training involves a certain level of moral desensitization to violence whose goal is to prevent soldiers from thoroughly reflecting on the morality of the killing they engage in. Hence, war and killing can only exist if soldiers are trained in such a way that they do not reflect on whether they could be addressees of revisionist duties in the first place. This means that military training is a “constitutive condition” of soldiers and war, which is why it cannot excuse their noncompliance with revisionist duties, thus making these duties categorically overdemanding. The argument here draws on the paradigmatic example of modern US military killing conditioning (MC), but embeds it into a broader military-historical perspective that describes how soldiers have always needed to be mentally and morally influenced in order to enable war and killing. The article’s explanation of revisionism’s practicability problem has a constructive consequence for future theory-building in the ethics of war: It implies that a potentially revised ethical theory of war must necessarily analyze the institutions that allocate belligerent resources, if it aims to morally assess battlefield behavior in a practicable manner. (shrink)

Logical paradoxes – like the Liar, Russell's, and the Sorites – are notorious. But in Paradoxes and Inconsistent Mathematics, it is argued that they are only the noisiest of many. Contradictions arise in the everyday, from the smallest points to the widest boundaries. In this book, Zach Weber uses “dialetheic paraconsistency” – a formal framework where some contradictions can be true without absurdity – as the basis for developing this idea rigorously, from mathematical foundations up. In doing so, (...) class='Hi'>Weber directly addresses a longstanding open question: how much standard mathematics can paraconsistency capture? The guiding focus is on a more basic question, of why there are paradoxes. Details underscore a simple philosophical claim: that paradoxes are found in the ordinary, and that is what makes them so extraordinary. (shrink)

Max Weber (1864-1920), generally known as a founder of modern social science, was concerned with political affairs throughout his life. The texts in this edition span his career and include his early inaugural lecture The Nation State and Economic Policy, Suffrage and Democracy in Germany, Parliament and Government in Germany under a New Political Order, Socialism, The Profession and Vocation of Politics, and an excerpt from his essay The Situation of Constitutional Democracy in Russia, as well as other shorter (...) writings. Together they illustrate the development of his thinking on the fate of Germany and the nature of politics in the modern western state in an age of cultural 'disenchantment'. The introduction discusses the central themes of Weber's political thought, and a chronology, notes and an annotated bibliography place him in his political and intellectual context. (shrink)

I examine different arguments that could be used to establish indeterminism of neurological processes. Even though scenarios where single events at the molecular level make the difference in the outcome of such processes are realistic, this falls short of establishing indeterminism, because it is not clear that these molecular events are subject to quantum mechanical uncertainty. Furthermore, attempts to argue for indeterminism autonomously (i.e., independently of quantum mechanics) fail, because both deterministic and indeterministic models can account for the empirically observed (...) behavior of ion channels. (shrink)

The recent literature on causality has seen the introduction of several distinctions within causality, which are thought to be important for understanding the widespread scientific practice of focusing causal explanations on a subset of the factors that are causally relevant for a phenomenon. Concepts used to draw such distinctions include, among others, stability, specificity, proportionality, or actual-difference making. In this contribution, I propose a new distinction that picks out an explanatorily salient class of causes in biological systems. Some select causes (...) in complex biological systems, I argue, have the property of enabling coherent causal control of these systems. Examples of such control variables include hormones and other signaling molecules, e.g., TOR (target of rapamycin), morphogens or the products of homeotic selector genes in embryonic pattern formation. I propose an analysis of this notion based on concepts borrowed from causal graph theory. (shrink)

... PREFACE Paul Gochet (Liege) "[...] une entite physique ne peut etre envisagee que comme une sorte de concretisation, de consolidation locale dans un ...

Did you know that Hillary Clinton sold weapons to ISIS? Or that Mike Pence called Michelle Obama “the most vulgar First Lady we’ve ever had”? No, you didn’t know these things. You couldn’t know them, because these claims are false.1 But many American voters believed them.One of the most distinctive features of the 2016 campaign was the rise of “fake news,” factually false claims circulated on social media, usually via channels of partisan camaraderie. Media analysts and social scientists are still (...) debating what role fake news played in Trump’s victory.2 But whether or not it drove the outcome, fake news certainly affected the choices of some individual voters.Why were people willing to believe easily... (shrink)

Several authors have used the notion of causal specificity in order to defend non-parity about genetic causes (Waters 2007, Woodward 2010, Weber 2017, forthcoming). Non-parity in this context is the idea that DNA and some other biomolecules that are often described as information-bearers by biologists play a unique role in life processes, an idea that has been challenged by Developmental Systems Theory (e.g., Oyama 2000). Indeed, it has proven to be quite difficult to state clearly what the alleged special (...) role of genetic causes consists in. In this paper, I show that the set of biomolecules that are normally considered to be information-bearers (DNA, mRNA) can be shown to be the most specific causes of protein primary structure, provided that causal specificity is measured over a relevant space of biological possibilities, disregarding physical as well as logically possible states of the causal variables. (shrink)

Build the skills you need to understand and resolve ethical problems! Ethical Dimensions in the Health Professions, 7th Edition provides a solid foundation in ethical theory and concepts, applying these principles to the ethical issues surrounding health care today. It uses a unique, six-step decision-making process as a framework for thinking critically and thoughtfully, with case studies of patients to illustrate ethical topics such as conflict of interest, patient confidentiality, and upholding best practices. Written by Regina F. Doherty, an (...) educator and occupational therapist, this book will help you make caring and effective ethical choices that improve patient care and outcomes. UNIQUE! Ethical decision-making process provides an organizing framework to use in making the best decisions when faced with ethical problems. Patient stories depict real-life situations and demonstrate the ethical decision-making process. Reflection boxes depict important concepts and stimulate critical thinking. Summary boxes highlight the most important information in each section. Coverage of interprofessional team decision-making reflects this important, expanding movement in healthcare nationally and internationally. Questions for thought and discussion encourage students to apply the ethical decision-making process to different situations. NEW! Updated content throughout the book reflects the changes in the growing interprofessional movement. NEW! Expanded content on clinician well-being includes tools for supporting moral resilience and preventing burnout in health professionals. NEW! Updated content addresses the topics of social justice, health disparities, intersectionality, and health outcomes. NEW! Updated national standards and regulations are provided for electronic health communications, data protections, and clinical research. NEW! Coverage of scientific literature is expanded with studies on the effects of compassion on patient outcomes, patient safety, and provider and organizational well-being. NEW! Coverage of ethical issues impacting healthcare and society includes topics such as medical scarcity due to healthcare supply chain shortages and extreme weather events due to climate change. (shrink)

Many of our cognitive capacities are the result of enculturation. Enculturation is the temporally extended transformative acquisition of cognitive practices in the cognitive niche. Cognitive practices are embodied and normatively constrained ways to interact with epistemic resources in the cognitive niche in order to complete a cognitive task. The emerging predictive processing perspective offers new functional principles and conceptual tools to account for the cerebral and extra-cerebral bodily components that give rise to cognitive practices. According to this emerging perspective, many (...) cases of perception, action, and cognition are realized by the on-going minimization of prediction error. Predictive processing provides us with a mechanistic perspective that helps investigate the functional details of the acquisition of cognitive practices. The argument of this paper is that research on enculturation and recent work on predictive processing are complementary. The main reason is that predictive processing operates at a sub-personal level and on a physiological time scale of explanation only. A complete account of enculturated cognition needs to take additional levels and temporal scales of explanation into account. This complementarity assumption leads to a new framework—enculturated predictive processing—that operates on multiple levels and temporal scales for the explanation of the enculturated predictive acquisition of cognitive practices. Enculturated predictive processing is committed to explanatory pluralism. That is, it subscribes to the idea that we need multiple perspectives and explanatory strategies to account for the complexity of enculturation. The upshot is that predictive processing needs to be complemented by additional considerations and conceptual tools to realize its full explanatory potential. (shrink)

Contemporary and emerging chatbots can be fine-tuned to imitate the style, tenor, and knowledge of a corpus, including the corpus of a particular individual. This makes it possible to build chatbots that imitate people who are no longer alive — deathbots. Such deathbots can be used in many ways, but one prominent way is to facilitate the process of grieving. In this paper, we present a framework that helps make sense of this process. In particular, we argue that deathbots can (...) serve as affective scaffolds, modulating and shaping the emotions of the bereaved. We contextualize this affective scaffolding by comparing it to earlier technologies that have also been used to scaffold the process of grieving, arguing that deathbots offer some interesting novelties that may transform the continuing bonds of intimacy that the bereaved can have with the dead. We conclude with some ethical reflections on the promises and perils of this new technology. (shrink)

Many of our cognitive capacities are shaped by enculturation. Enculturation is the acquisition of cognitive practices such as symbol-based mathematical practices, reading, and writing during ontogeny. Enculturation is associated with significant changes to the organization and connectivity of the brain and to the functional profiles of embodied actions and motor programs. Furthermore, it relies on scaffolded cultural learning in the cognitive niche. The purpose of this paper is to explore the components of symbol-based mathematical practices. Phylogenetically, these practices are the (...) result of concerted organism-niche interactions that have led from approximate number estimations to the emergence of discrete, symbol-based mathematical operations. Ontogenetically, symbol-based mathematical practices are associated with plastic changes to neural circuitry, action schemata, and motor programs. It will be suggested that these practices rely on previously acquired capacities such as subitizing and counting. With these considerations in place, I will argue that computations, understood in the sense of Turing (1936), are a specific kind of symbol-based mathematical practices that can be realized by human organisms, machines, or by hybrid organism-machine systems. In sum, this paper suggests a new way to think about mathematical cognition and computation. (shrink)

A commonly neglected feature of the so-called Equal Weight View, according to which we should give our peers’ opinions the same weight we give our own, is its prima facie incompatibility with the common picture of philosophy as an armchair activity: an intellectual effort to seek a priori knowledge. This view seems to imply that our beliefs are more likely to be true if we leave our armchair in order to find out whether there actually are peers who, by disagreeing (...) with us, force us to revise our beliefs. This article argues that the Equal Weight View should be spelled out in such a way that not only actual peer disagreement requires us to revise our beliefs, but also merely possible peer disagreement. This result is not a reductio ad absurdum of the view. Quite the opposite: it shows that the view is, contrary to appearance, compatible with our common way of doing philosophy. (shrink)

Morality and Cognitive Science What do we know about how people make moral judgments? And what should moral philosophers do with this knowledge? This article addresses the cognitive science of moral judgment. It reviews important empirical findings and discusses how philosophers have reacted to them. Several trends have dominated the cognitive science of morality in … Continue reading Morality and Cognitive Science →.

The aim of this chapter is to argue against the semiotic reading of Husserl’s theory of depiction according to which depiction [Abbildung] must necessarily involve symbolic function. I aim to show that Husserl’s notes on depiction can be divided into two parts: those that deal with internal depiction and those concerned with external depiction. This division provides a constructive way to explain Husserl’s asemiotic view on depiction, but it has not received proper attention from Husserlian scholars. Accordingly, I aim to (...) show that it is internal depiction that is clearly deprived of any symbolic function. (shrink)

Theories of skill acquisition have made radically different predictions about the role of general problem‐solving methods in acquiring rules that promote effective transfer to new problems. Under one view, methods that focus on reaching specific goals, such as means‐ends analysis, are assumed to provide the basis for efficient knowledge compilation (Anderson, 1987), whereas under an alternative view such methods are believed to disrupt rule induction (Sweller, 1988). We suggest that the role of general methods in learning varies with both the (...) specificity of the problem solver's goal and the systematicity of the strategies used for testing hypotheses about rules. In the absence of a specific goal people are more likely to use a rule‐induction learning strategy, whereas provision of a specific goal fosters use of difference reduction, which tends to be a non‐rule‐induction strategy. We performed two experiments to investigate the impact of goal specificity and systematicity of rule‐induction strategies in learning and transfer within a complex dynamic system. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that during free exploration of a problem space, greater learning occurred if participants adopted more systematic strategies for rule induction, and that participants come to favor such strategies. Experiment 2 revealed that participants who were provided with a specific goal performed well on the initial problem but were impaired on a transfer test using a similar problem with a different goal. Instruction on a systematic rule‐induction strategy facilitated solution for both the initial and transfer problems, but participants' use of this strategy declined if they had a specific goal. Our results support Sweller's (1988) proposal that general problemsolving methods applied to a specific goal foster acquisition of knowledge about an isolated solution path but do not provide an effective way of learning the overall structure of a problem space. We interpret these results in terms of dualspace theories of search through problem space. (shrink)

Darwin famously held that his use of the term "chance" in evolutionary theory merely "serves to acknowledge plainly our ignorance of the causes of each particular variation". Is this a tenable view today? Or should we revise our thinking about chance in evolution in light of the more advanced, quantitative models of Neo-Darwinian theory, which make substantial use of statistical reasoning and the concept of probability? Is determinism still a viable metaphysical doctrine about biological reality after the quantum revolution in (...) physics, or dowe have to abandon it in favor of an objective indeterminism? In light of such reflections, what is the relevant interpretation of probability in evolutionary theory? Do biologists use the concept of probability because they are finite cognitive agents or because the evolutionary process is fundamentally probabilistic? In this paper, I will show that we do not yet fully understand the nature of chance in evolution. (shrink)

The present article intends to call the attention to the role played by Rodolfo Mondolfo, with his theory of the early greek philosophy's dependence in relation with an earlier reflexion about man and social life, in the "turning " that restored the beginning of phylosophy in to history.O presente artigo pretende chamar a atenção para o papel representado por Rodolfo Mondolfo, com sua teoria da dependência da primeira filosofia grega em relação a uma reflexão anterior sobre o homem e a (...) vida social, na "viragem" que reinseriu na história o início da filosofia. (shrink)

Die Reihe "Studien interdisziplinäre Geschlechterforschung" präsentiert regelmäßig neuere Untersuchungen über Herausbildungen und Bedeutungen von Geschlecht. Verknüpft werden natur-, technik-, sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Sichtweisen. Ebenfalls thematisiert werden hochschulpolitische Entwicklungen und Perspektiven von Geschlechterforschung in und außerhalb der Hochschule. Die Reihe wird herausgegeben vom Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung an der Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg (ZFG) und dem Zentrum für feministische Studien, Universität Bremen (ZFS). In diesem Band: In unserer heutigen Technowissenschaftskultur ist die Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Körper und (...) Maschine zentral. Während Körper denaturalisiert und durch die Life- und Cyberscience als turbulent und dynamisch reformuliert werden, wird Maschinen Sozialität zu- und eingeschrieben. An Beispielen aus der Robotik, Embodied Agents-Forschung und anderen Technowissenschaften, mit Bezug auf Philosophie, Wissenschaftsforschung und Literatur wird gezeigt, wie sich transklassische Maschinen und post-humane Körper herausbilden und geschlechtlich neu kodiert werden. (shrink)

Deepfake technology uses machine learning to fabricate video and audio recordings that represent people doing and saying things they've never done. In coming years, malicious actors will likely use this technology in attempts to manipulate public discourse. This paper prepares for that danger by explicating the unappreciated way in which recordings have so far provided an epistemic backstop to our testimonial practices. Our reasonable trust in the testimony of others depends, to a surprising extent, on the regulative effects of the (...) ever-present possibility of recordings of the events they testify about. As deepfakes erode the epistemic value of recordings, we may then face an even more consequential challenge to the reliability of our testimonial practices themselves. (shrink)

Frontmatter -- Inhalt -- Formen und Inhalte der Bedeutungsbeschreibung: Definition, Explikation, Repräsentation, Simulation / Weber, Nico -- Zeichen, Bedeutung, Objekt aus kommunikationssemantischer Sicht / Juchem, Johann G. -- Was ist philosophische Logik der Zeit? / Stuhlmann-Laeisz, Rainer -- Zum Kompositionalitätsprinzip in der Semantik / Schröder, Bernhard -- Kognitiv orientierte Lexikographie / Figge, Udo L. -- Wortbedeutungen in Wörterbüchern, Wortbedeutungen in Texten / Seewald, Uta -- Lexikon und Universalgrammatik / Bierwisch, Manfred -- Enzyklopädische Informationen in Wörterbüchern / Bergenholtz, Henning / (...) Kaufmann, Uwe -- Ansichten von Bedeutung: fachsprachliche vs. gemeinsprachliche Semantik / Schaeder, Burkhard -- On Compound Explication in a Byzantine Greek Dictionary / Steiner-Weber, Astrid -- Lexikographische Erschließung des Wendekorpus / Hellmann, Manfred W. -- Les temps d'un dictionnaire de TAO sont-ils venus? / Zemb, Jean-Marie -- Semantische Relatoren / Engel, Ulrich -- Die Beschreibung von Sätzen ohne Subjektsphrase in der kopfgesteuerten Phrasenstrukturgrammatik / Klenk, Ursula -- Representation of Verb-alternations in an Inheritance-based Lexicon / Wolting, Suzanne -- Probleme der Extraktion semantischer Relationen aus maschinenlesbaren Wörterbüchern / Mehl, Stephan -- Können Verben semantische Relationen markieren? / Büchel, Gregor -- On the Verification of Lexical Descriptions in Text Corpora / Heid, Ulrich -- Automatische Generierung natürlichsprachlicher Paraphrasen formaler Bedeutungsbeschreibungen / Küstner, Herbert -- Verb Semantics in Multilingual Sentence Generation / Stede, Manfred -- ADRESSEN DER AUTOREN. (shrink)

This article argues that military conditioning (MC) systematically violates the human dignity of soldiers. The argument relies on an absolute deontologist account of human dignity understood as a claim-right to live in self-respect, which is a right to decide on one’s own behalf about, and to be in control of, essential aspects of one’s own life. The article claims that MC violates soldiers’ dignity so understood because the largely automatic physical killing reflex that MC instills aims to remove their freedom (...) of choice to kill or not to kill, while the MC practices that rationalize the killing of opponents aim to subvert soldiers’ moral deliberation in relation to this behavior. MC thus aims to take away soldiers’ control over a very essential aspect of human life: the decision whether to take life in war. Thereby, MC systematically violates their human dignity. The article concludes with a proposal for an amendment to international law that would allow legal institutions to do more justice to soldiers’ dignity. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Jakob Hohwy argues that the emerging predictive processing perspective on cognition requires us to explain cognitive functioning in purely internalistic and neurocentric terms. The purpose of the present paper is to challenge the view that PP entails a wholesale rejection of positions that are interested in the embodied, embedded, extended, or enactive dimensions of cognitive processes. I will argue that Hohwy’s argument from analogy, which forces an evidentiary boundary into the picture, lacks the argumentative resources to (...) make a convincing case for the conceptual necessity to interpret PP in solely internalistic terms. For this reason, I will reconsider the postulation and explanatory role of the evidentiary boundary. I will arrive at an account of prediction error minimization and its foundation on the free energy principle that is fully consistent with approaches to cognition that emphasize the embodied and interactive properties of cognitive processes. This gives rise to the suggestion that explanatory pluralism about the application of PP is to be preferred over Hohwy’s explanatory monism that follows from his internalistic and neurocentric view of predictive cognitive systems. (shrink)

Abstract pictures are distinguished from depictive pictures in that no visibly recognizable objects can be seen in them. Abstract pictures are thus non-depictive and non-figurative. The question still remains, however, if abstract pictures can be representations. The aim of this chapter is to defend the view that abstract pictures can be representational and therefore have content or subject matter. It will be shown that there are at least three ways to understand what the subject matter of abstract pictures can be: (...) it is either abstracted from figurative content, it is spiritual or the subject matter is produced. (shrink)