Evolution is littered with paraphyletic convergences: many roads lead to functional Romes. We propose here another example - an equivalence class structure factoring the broad realm of possible realizations of the Baars Global Workspace consciousness model. The construction suggests many different physiological systems can support rapidly shifting, sometimes highly tunable, temporary assemblages of interacting unconscious cognitive modules. The discovery implies various animal taxa exhibiting behaviors we broadly recognize as conscious are, in fact, simply expressing different forms of the same underlying (...) phenomenon. Mathematically, we find much slower, and even multiple simultaneous, versions of the basic structure can operate over very long timescales, a kind of paraconsciousness often ascribed to group phenomena. The variety of possibilities, a veritable rainbow, suggests minds today may be only a small surviving fraction of ancient evolutionary radiations - bush phylogenies of consciousness and paraconsciousness. Under this scenario, the resulting diversity was subsequently pruned by selection and chance extinction. Though few traces of the radiation may be found in the direct fossil record, exaptations and vestiges are scattered across the living mind. Humans, for instance, display an uncommonly profound synergism between individual consciousness and their embedding cultural heritages, enabling efficient Lamarkian adaptation. (shrink)

Evolution is littered with polyphyletic parallelism: many roads lead to functional Romes. We propose consciousness embodies one such example, and represent it here with an equivalence class structure that factors the broad realm of necessary conditions information theoretic realizations of Baars’ global workspace model. The construction suggests many different physiological systems can support rapidly shifting, highly tunable, and even simultaneous temporary assemblages of interacting unconscious cognitive modules. The discovery implies various animal taxa exhibiting behaviors we broadly recognize as conscious are, (...) in fact, expressing different forms of the same underlying phenomenon. The variety of possibilities suggests minds today may be only a small surviving fraction of ancient evolutionary radiations – bush phylogenies of consciousness pruned by selection and chance extinction. Although few traces of the radiations may be found in the fossil record, exaptations and vestiges are scattered across the living mind. (shrink)

The asymptotic limit theorems of information and control theories permit exploration of a surprising number of temperature-like measures and symmetry-breaking dynamics associated with cognition. Each of several markedly different perspectives produces a distinct temperature-analog, capturing a rich and highly-punctuated behavioral landscape across the complex, hierarchical cognitive phenomena that characterize life at every scale and level of organization. Theories of cognition may be confronted by canonical conundrums similar to those plaguing the study of consciousness and its regulation. In short, there may (...) be a spectrum of interacting cognitive ‘temperatures’ for organisms, social structures, institutions, information processing machines, and their composite entities, that varies across different systems, and between similar systems having undergone different individual developmental trajectories. The complexities of cognitive failure—leading to a vast array of pathologies—may be far stranger than generally recognized. (shrink)

Cognition in living entities—and their social groupings or institutional artifacts—is necessarily as complicated as their embedding environments, which, for humans, includes a particularly rich cultural milieu. The asymptotic limit theorems of information and control theories permit construction of a new class of empirical ‘regression-like’ statistical models for cognitive developmental processes, their dynamics, and modes of dysfunction. Such models may, as have their simpler analogs, prove useful in the study and re-mediation of cognitive failure at and across the scales and levels (...) of organization that constitute and drive the phenomena of life. These new models particularly focus on the roles of sociocultural environment and stress, in a large sense, as both trigger for the failure of the regulation of bio-cognition and as ‘riverbanks’ determining the channels of pathology, with implications across life-course developmental trajectories. We examine the effects of an embedding cultural milieu and its socioeconomic implementations using the ‘lenses’ of metabolic optimization, control system theory, and an extension of symmetry-breaking appropriate to information systems. A central implication is that most, if not all, human developmental disorders are fundamentally culture-bound syndromes. This has deep implications for both individual treatment and public health policy. (shrink)

The central paradigm of arti?cial intelligence is rapidly shifting toward biological models for both robotic devices and systems performing such critical tasks as network management, vehicle navigation, and process control. Here we use a recent mathematical analysis of the necessary conditions for consciousness in humans to explore likely failure modes inherent to a broad class of biologically inspired computing machines. Analogs to developmental psychopathology, in which regulatory mechanisms for consciousness fail progressively and subtly understress, and toinattentional blindness, where a narrow (...) 'syntactic band pass' de?ned by the rate distortion manifold of conscious attention results in pathological ?xation, seem inevitable. Similar problems are likely to confront other possible architectures, although their mathematical description may be far less straightforward. Computing devices constructed on biological paradigms will inevitably lack the elaborate, but poorly understood, system of control mechanisms which has evolved over the last few hundred million years to stabilize consciousness in higher animals. This will make such machines prone to insidious degradation, and, ultimately, catastrophic failure. (shrink)

We extend the comparatively simple processes of group symmetry-breaking in physical systems to groupoid/equivalence class phase transitions characterizing adiabatically, piecewise stationary, information transmission in prebiotic, biological, and social phenomena: High vs. Low probability paths $$\rightarrow$$ Interior and Exterior Interact $$\rightarrow$$ Multiple Interacting Tunable Workspaces Application to nonstationary processes seems possible via generalizations of the symmetry algebra, for example, to semigroupoids. The dynamic probability models explored here can be transformed into statistical tools for the analysis of real-time and other data across (...) a spectrum of important disciplines confronted by biological and other forms of cognition and their dysfunctions. (shrink)

We extend recent information-theoretic phase transition approaches to evolutionary and cognitive process via the Rate Distortion and Joint Asymptotic Equipartition Theorems, in the circumstance of interaction with a highly structured environment. This suggests that learning plateaus in cognitive systems and punctuated equilibria in evolutionary process are formally analogous, even though evolution is not cognitive. Extending arguments by Adami et al. (2000), we argue that 'adaptation' is the process by which a distorted genetic image of a coherently structured environment is imposed (...) upon a species. (shrink)

Applying a necessary condition communication theory formalism roughly similar to that of Dretske, but focused entirely on the statistical properties of long sequences of signals emitted by the interacting cognitive modules of human biology, we explore the regularities apparent in comorbid psychiatric and chronic physical disorders using an extension of recent perspectives on autoimmune disease. We find that structured psychosocial stress can literally write a distorted image of itself onto child development, resulting in a life course trajectory to characteristic forms (...) of comorbid mind/body dysfunction affecting both dominant and subordinate populations within a pathogenic social hierarchy. (shrink)

Mitochondrial dysfunction underlies a vast array of chronic disorders across the life span. The asymptotic limit theorems of information and control theories, supplemented by symmetry-breaking phase transition arguments adapted from physical theory, give deep insight into canonical mechanisms of cognition and regulation associated with such dysfunction. The probability models studied here can provide a foundation for the development of statistical tools useful in clinical and public health address of those disorders.

The Moral Nexus develops and defends a new interpretation of morality—namely, as a set of requirements that connect agents normatively to other persons in a nexus of moral relations. According to this relational interpretation, moral demands are directed to other individuals, who have claims that the agent comply with these demands. Interpersonal morality, so conceived, is the domain of what we owe to each other, insofar as we are each persons with equal moral standing. The book offers an interpretative argument (...) for the relational approach. Specifically, it highlights neglected advantages of this way of understanding the moral domain; explores important theoretical and practical presuppositions of relational moral duties; and considers the normative implications of understanding morality in relational terms. The book features a novel defense of the relational approach to morality, which emphasizes the special significance that moral requirements have, both for agents who are deliberating about what to do and for those who stand to be affected by their actions. The book argues that relational moral requirements can be understood to link us to all individuals whose interests render them vulnerable to our agency, regardless of whether they stand in any prior relationship to us. It also offers fresh accounts of some of the moral phenomena that have seemed to resist treatment in relational terms, showing that the relational interpretation is a viable framework for understanding our specific moral obligations to other people. (shrink)

A lump theorist claims that ordinary objects are spread out across possible worlds, much like many of us think that tables are spread out across space. We are not wholly located in any one particular world, the lump theorist claims, just as we are not wholly spatially located where one’s hand is. We are modally spread out, a trans-world mereological sum of world-bound parts. We are lump sums of modal parts. And so are all other ordinary objects. In this paper, (...) I explore lump theory and investigate five arguments against it. These arguments may be the primary reasons why lump theory has not been widely accepted––or extensively explored––until now. I maintain that these arguments can be answered, and moreover, that accepting lump theory has distinct advantages, making it a competitive view in its own right. (shrink)

I attempt to get as clear as possible on the chain of reasoning by which irreversible macrodynamics is derivable from time-reversible microphysics, and in particular to clarify just what kinds of assumptions about the initial state of the universe, and about the nature of the microdynamics, are needed in these derivations. I conclude that while a “Past Hypothesis” about the early Universe does seem necessary to carry out such derivations, that Hypothesis is not correctly understood as a constraint on the (...) early Universe’s entropy. (shrink)

I point out a radical indeterminism in potential-based formulations of Newtonian gravity once we drop the condition that the potential vanishes at infinity. This indeterminism, which is well known in theoretical cosmology but has received little attention in foundational discussions, can be removed only by specifying boundary conditions at all instants of time, which undermines the theory's claim to be fully cosmological, i.e., to apply to the Universe as a whole. A recent alternative formulation of Newtonian gravity due to Saunders (...) pp.22-48) provides a conceptually satisfactory cosmology but fails to reproduce the Newtonian limit of general relativity in homogenous but anisotropic universes. I conclude that Newtonian gravity lacks a fully satisfactory cosmological formulation. (shrink)

I develop an account of how mathematized theories in physics represent physical systems, in response to the frequent claim that any such account must presuppose a non-mathematized, and usually linguistic, description of the system represented. The account I develop contains a circularity, in that representation is a mathematical relation between the models of a theory and the system as represented by some other model --- but I argue that this circularity is not vicious, in any case refers in linguistic accounts (...) of meaning and representation, and is simply a consequence of the fact that we have no unmediated, representation-independent access to the world. (shrink)

There is uneasy tension between our ordinary talk about beliefs and desires and the ontological facts supported by neuroscience. Arguments for eliminative materialism are persuasive, yet error theory about folk psychological discourse seems unacceptable. One solution is to accept mental fictionalism: the view that we are (or should be) fictionalists about mentality. My aim in this paper is to explore mental fictionalism as a viable theoretical option, and to show that it has advantages over other fictionalist views in the literature, (...) as well as advantages over other theories of mind. However, mental fictionalism faces objections that do not plague other fictionalist accounts, nor other theories of the mind. These objections may provide some explanation as to why mental fictionalism has not (until recently) gained much traction in the literature. I end with some suggestions on how the mental fictionalist can address these objections, hopefully paving the way for further development of mental fictionalism as a live philosophical position in philosophy of mind. (shrink)

I criticise the view that the relativity and equivalence principles are consequences of the small-scale structure of the metric in general relativity, by arguing that these principles also apply to systems with non-trivial self-gravitation and hence non-trivial spacetime curvature (such as black holes). I provide an alternative account, incorporating aspects of the criticised view, which allows both principles to apply to systems with self-gravity.

This is my second entry in Mental Fictionalism: Philosophical Explorations. It examines three meta-ontological deflationary approaches - frameworks, verbal disputes, and metalinguistic negotiation - and applies them to ontological debates in philosophy of mind. An intriguing consequence of this application is that it reveals a deep, systematic problem for mental deflationism – specifically, a problem of cognitive collapse. This is surprising. Cognitive collapse problems are usually reserved for serious ontological views such as eliminative materialism and mental fictionalism, not deflationism. This (...) paper investigates why deflationism about the mental is particularly problematic and provides an explanation as to why mental fictionalism is in principle better equipped to address collapsing problems than deflationism is. (shrink)

This paper articulates and responds to a challenge to contemporary compatibilist views of free will. Despite the popularity and appeal of compatibilist theories, many are left with lingering doubts about compatibilism. This paper explains this doubt in terms of the absurdity challenge: because a compatibilist accepts that they do not have causal access to all the actual sufficient causal sources of their own agency, the compatibilist can find their own agency absurd. By taking a cue from political philosophy, this paper (...) argues that a non-ideal construction of the problem of free will allows compatibilists to overcome this existential-metaphysical challenge, and by doing so, perhaps adopt a metaphysically progressive picture of human agency. (shrink)

Philosophy of Physics: A Very Short Introduction explores the core topics of philosophy of physics through three key themes: the nature of space and time; the origin of irreversibility and probability in the physics of large systems; how we can make sense of quantum mechanics. Central issues discussed include: the scientific method as it applies in modern physics; the distinction between absolute and relative motion; the way that distinction changes between Newton's physics and special relativity; what spacetime is and how (...) it relates to the laws of physics; how fundamental physics can make no distinction between past and future and yet a clear distinction exists in the world we see around us; why it is so difficult to understand quantum mechanics, and why doing so might push us to change our fundamental physics, to rethink the nature of science, or even to accept the existence of parallel universes. (shrink)

This paper explores the question whether utilitarianism is compatible with the autonomy of the moral agent. The paper begins by considering Bernard Williams' famous complaint that utilitarianism cannot do justice to the personal projects and commitments constitutive of character. Recent work (by Peter Railton among others) has established that a utilitarian agent need not be free of such personal projects and commitments, and could even affirm them morally at the level of second"order reflection. But a different and more subtle problem (...) confronts this approach: the use of utilitarian principles to justify the cultivation of personal projects and attachments undermines the autonomy to support this objection, according to which autonomy is a matter of acting in a way one can reflectively endorse. (shrink)

Normativity and the Will collects fourteen important papers on moral psychology and practical reason by R. Jay Wallace, one of the leading philosophers currently working in these areas.The papers explore the interpenetration of normative and psychological issues in a series of debates that lie at the heart of moral philosophy. Part I, Reason, Desire, and the Will, discusses the nexus linking normativity to motivation, including the relations between desire and reasons, the role of normative considerations in explanations of action, (...) and the normative commitments involved in willing an end. Part II, Responsibility, Identification, and Emotion, looks at questions about the rational capacities presupposed by accountable agency and the psychic factors that both inhibit and enable identification with what we do. It includes an interpretation of the Nietzschean claim that ressentiment is among the sources of modern moral consciousness. Part III, Morality and Other Normative Domains, addresses the structure of moral reasons and moral motivation, and the relations between moral demands and other normative domains. Wallace's treatments of these topics are at once sophisticated and engaging. Taken together, they constitute an advertisement for a distinctive way of pursuing issues in moral psychology and the theory of practical reason. The book articulates and defends a unified framework for thinking about those issues, while offering sustained critical discussions of other influential approaches. It should be of interest to every serious student of moral philosophy. (shrink)

Archaeological theory -- Philosophy and archaeology -- Critical realism as critique of Western philosophy -- Critical realism as philosophical underlabourer -- Diversity and impasse in current archaeological theorising -- The contradictions of archaeological theory -- The material in archaeological theory -- Critical realism, the material, and absence -- Time, scale, and the ontology of the material -- Conclusions, implications, and further research.

How do we establish the relevance of a moral consideration when doing so is problematic? How are conflicts among relevant considerations properly resolved? James D. Wallace maintains that a successful ethical theory should be able to answer these important questions. Nevertheless, he argues, the leading contemporary moral theories do not satisfactorily address them. In this book, Wallace criticizes the standard philosophical accounts of how we should resolve problems of moral relevance and moral conflict. He proceeds by looking at (...) such accounts as utilitarianism, Kantian moral theory, and intuitionism, and by providing an extended evaluation of Henry Sidgwick's moral epistemology. According to Wallace, these approaches pose difficulties because they all assume that there exist fixed, unchanging standards, rules, or methods that give us explicit directions for the solution of such problems. He then goes on to develop his own, "contextualist," approach, which combines elements of both Aristotelian and pragmatic views. To solve new problems, he asserts, we must adapt what we have learned from past problems to novel circumstances, sometimes appreciably changing our ways of dealing with certain kinds of issues. In adapting our ways of dealing with these issues to unprecedented problems, and in dealing with the conflicts that arise from unprecedented juxtapositions of considerations, we alter and even reform morality. (shrink)

Duty of care is the core ethical responsibility of healthcare workers. Getting the workforce vaccinated will provide safety to the public, protect the vulnerable population and provide a safe working environment. While most agree that healthcare workers should be prioritised in the vaccination programme, mandatory vaccination remains a complicated and contentious issue with political, legal and ethical dimensions. This study aims to determine the ethical considerations associated with mandatory vaccinations among healthcare workers. A total of 152 abstracts were identified of (...) which, 142 were excluded based on abstracts because they did not meet the inclusion criteria. The remaining ten articles were further evaluated with three articles that fit the inclusion criteria specifically discussing mandatory vaccination among healthcare workers and the ethical issues. Benefits, risks, effectiveness, equity and justice, autonomy, reciprocity and trust were used as a framework to discuss the ethical considerations which resonated both directly from the included papers, as well as more generally from the other literature associated with this search. There is limited literature on the topic of ethical considerations associated with COVID-19 mandatory vaccination of healthcare workers, as a systematic review identified only 3 papers. Benefits, risks, effectiveness, equity and justice, autonomy, reciprocity and trust were among the seven ethical considerations identified and discussed. (shrink)

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has presented extraordinary challenges to worldwide healthcare systems, however, prevalence remains low in some countries. While the challenges of conducting research in high-prevalence countries are well published, there is a paucity from low COVID-19 countries.MethodsA PRISMA guided systematic review was conducted using the databases Ovid-Medline, Embase, Scopus and Web of Science to identify relevant articles discussing ethical issues relating to research in low prevalence COVID-19 countries.ResultsThe search yielded 133 original articles of which only 2 fit the inclusion (...) criteria and aim, with neither specific to low prevalence. Most of the available literature focused on clinical management and resource allocation related to high prevalence countries. These results will be discussed under the ethical dimensions of equity, individual liberty, privacy and confidentiality, proportionality, public protection, provision of care, reciprocity, stewardship and trust..ConclusionsA systematic review failed to identify articles relating to COVID-19 research ethics, specific to low prevalence countries. It shows that there is a significant gap in the literature that warrants further investigation. Common ethical principles were used to present a distinct set of challenges experienced by a country with a low prevalence of COVID-19. This unique perspective of some of the common ethical problems surrounding research, may help guide further discussion and guide research in similar countries. (shrink)

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1898 Edition.

Accessibly written, this is a book for all who are interested in the foundations of 21st century thought and who wonder where the cracks might be.

This book is the complete story of the creation of the universe, as it was understood by the ancient Egyptians. It is a collection of harmonic and radical 'Black Thoughts' and the pursuit of equality for all of this planet's inhabitants"--P. vii.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

It is widely recognized that ‘global’ symmetries, such as the boost invariance of classical mechanics and special relativity, can give rise to direct empirical counterparts such as the Galileo-ship phenomenon. However, conventional wisdom holds that ‘local’ symmetries, such as the diffeomorphism invariance of general relativity and the gauge invariance of classical electromagnetism, have no such direct empirical counterparts. We argue against this conventional wisdom. We develop a framework for analysing the relationship between Galileo-ship empirical phenomena on the one hand, and (...) physical theories that model such phenomena on the other, that renders the relationship between theoretical and empirical symmetries transparent, and from which it follows that both global and local symmetries can give rise to Galileo-ship phenomena. In particular, we use this framework to exhibit an analogue of Galileo’s ship for the local gauge invariance of electromagnetism. 1 Introduction2 Analogues of Galileo’s Ship? Faraday’s Cage and t’Hooft’s Beam-Splitter2.1 Faraday’s cage2.2 t’Hooft’s beam-splitter3 A Framework for Symmetries I: Systems and Subsystems4 An Example: Coulombic Electrostatics5 A Framework for Symmetries II: The Relationship between Theoretical and Empirical Symmetries6 Newtonian Gravity7 Local Symmetries that Are Not Boundary-Preserving: Classical Electromagnetism and Faraday’s Cage8 Local Boundary-Preserving Symmetries: Klein-Gordon-Maxwell Gauge Theory and t’Hooft’s Beam-Splitter9 Summary10 Conclusions. (shrink)

This work offers a comprehensive picture of the dynamic natures of language and consciousness that will interest linguists, psychologists, literary scholars,...

In this paper, we consider recent attempts to metaphysically explain agentive modality in terms of conditionals. We suggest that the best recent accounts face counterexamples, and more worryingly, they take some agentive modality for granted. In particular, the ability to perform basic actions features as a primitive in these theories. While it is perfectly acceptable for a semantics of agentive modal claims to take some modality for granted in getting the extension of action claims correct, a metaphysical explanation of agentive (...) modality cannot, at least not in the way that conditional approaches to agentive modality do. We argue that this problem was present even in the classical conditional analysis. By a pessimistic induction, we suggest that, probably, no conditional approach to agentive modality will succeed. (shrink)

How to Argue about . Bibliographic Info. Citation. How to Argue about ; Author(s): R. Jay Wallace; Source: Mind , New Series, Vol.

Social justice is put forth as a core professional nursing value, although conceptualizations within foundational documents and among nurse educators remain inconsistent and contradictory. The purpose of this study was to explore how faculty teach social justice in theory courses in Baccalaureate programs. This qualitative study utilized constructivist grounded theory methods to examine processes informing participants' teaching. Participants utilize four overarching approaches: fostering engaging classroom climates, utilizing various naming strategies, framing diversity and culture as social justice, and role modeling a (...) critical stance. They deploy specific strategies, varying largely by race, educational background, and nursing specialty. A background in social sciences supports pedagogy that interrogates health inequities rather than merely raising awareness about disparities. Findings also reveal that faculty of color navigate institutional structures predicated upon colorblind racism and problematic views of culture, which many white faculty teaching non‐Community Health Nursing courses described doing. To enact social justice and be answerable to our communities, concerted anti‐oppression efforts are needed across education, research, practice, and policy. This includes sustained commitment to address colonialism and whiteness in every institution that defines, promotes, and claims to advance nursing so that we can fulfill our responsibility to address unjust systems and structures to serve our communities. (shrink)

In a new interpretation, Garrett Wallace Brown considers Kant's cosmopolitan thought as a form of international constitutional jurisprudence that requires minimal legal demands. He explores and defends topics such as cosmopolitan law, cosmopolitan right, the laws of hospitality, a Kantian federation of states, a cosmopolitan epistemology of culture and a possible normative basis for a Kantian form of global distributive justice.