This paper examines human planning abilities, using as its inspiration planning techniques developed in artificial intelligence. AI research has shown that in certain problems partial‐order planners, which manipulate partial plans while not committing to a particular ordering of those partial plans, are more efficient than total‐order planners, which represent all partial plans as totally ordered. This research asks whether total‐order planning and/or partial‐order planning are accurate descriptions of human planning, and if different populations use different planning techniques. Using a simple (...) planning task modeled after tasks designed in artificial intelligence we tested 7–8 year‐old children, 11–13 year‐old children, adult controls, and adults with damage to the prefrontal cortex. We found that adults and older children exhibited performance on planning tasks of varying complexity which matched that of artificial partial‐order planners, and that this pattern of performance did not vary with multiple presentations of the planning task. In contrast, young children and adults with damage to the prefrontal cortex exhibited performance matching that of artificial total‐order planners. This pattern of performance did vary, however, with multiple presentations of the planning task, with the young children and adults with cortical damage displaying aspects of total‐order planning. In a further study we found that adolescents who had sustained damage to the prefrontal cortex as children displayed two different patterns of performance; when measures of reaction time were analyzed they revealed a pattern of performance suggestive of partial‐order plan representations. However, analyses of the adolescents' protocols revealed a pattern of performance suggestive of total‐order plan representations. The significance of these results to psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence are discussed. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor argues, in The mind doesn't work that way (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000, that the computational theory of mind is undermined by the pervasive context sensitivity of human cognition. His objections can be easily met, however, by noting the properties of appropriately structured representation hierarchies.

In a profile in the November, 2012 issue of the magazine Architect, activist-architect Raphael Sperry, a founder of the group Architects Planners & Designers for Social Responsibility discussed his petition to amend the AIA’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct to include a prohibition on “the design of spaces intended for long-term solitary isolation and execution.”1 This issue is both serious and timely. It deserves contemplative attention before any action is taken. The purpose of this letter is to provide the (...) the architecture profession a condensed analysis of the possible justification for taking the action Mr. Sperry advocates. After review and consideration, we are persuaded that Mr. Sperry’s proposal does merit action by the AIA. (shrink)

This paper examines the idea of "objective phenomenology," or a way of understanding the phenomenal character of conscious experiences that doesn’t require one to have had the kinds of experiences under consideration. My central thesis is that structural facts about experience—facts that characterize purely how conscious experiences are structured—are objective phenomenal facts. I begin by precisifying the idea of objective phenomenology and diagnosing what makes any given phenomenal fact subjective. Then I defend the view that structural facts about experience are (...) objective. I also argue that structural facts about experience, despite being objective, nevertheless still give rise to an explanatory gap. (shrink)

A modern critique of modernity -- Popular sovereignty and the general will -- Political legitimacy and applied politics -- Morality and education -- Metaphysics and religion -- Economic philosophy -- War and peace -- After Rousseau.

The singular position of Montesquieu's political philosophy seems to raise the question: Isn't the opposition between republicanism and liberalism a largely artificial one? On the one hand, the description of the republican vivere civile in the Spirit of the Laws testifies to the important ties that exist between Montesquieu and the tradition of ?civic humanism?. However, this apparent theoretical proximity between Montesquieu and the British Neo-Harringtonians ought not to be taken too far, obscuring the deep divergences that differentiate their respective (...) positions, notably when it comes to the interpretation of history. Montesquieu's break from the republican tradition is exemplified by his rejection of its conception of freedom rooted in the citizens' necessary participation in power. But in the end, this does not enable us to conclude that he subscribes to a purely liberal theory. The British model shows that even if direct participation in the exercise of power is not necessary for the existence of liberty, a certain level of civic involvement and public awareness is needed. The liberal opposition between positive and negative liberty, political autonomy and enjoyment of rights without interference must therefore be transcended. (shrink)

_Hailed by the _New York Times_ as a book that “examines the role that argument has played throughout history and how it has shaped human existence”__ “An invigorating reflection on the nature and value of disagreement.... Sharp and taut.... A lesson in a well-constructed argument itself.”—_Publishers Weekly_, starred review__ “Perhaps more than any other commentary, _Why Argument Matters_ illuminates the root causes of our partisan, venomous, irrational times—and yet somehow rescues from the morass the true nature of argument, its power (...) and beauty.”—Michael Wolff, author of ___Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House__ From Eve’s crafty exchange with the serpent, to Martin Luther King Jr.’s soaring, subtle ultimatums, to the throes of Twitter—argument’s drainpipe—the human desire to prevail with words has been not just a moral but an existential compulsion. In this dazzling reformulation of argument, renowned critic Lee Siegel portrays the true art of argument as much deeper and far more embracing than mere quarrel, dispute, or debate. It is the supreme expression of humanity’s longing for a better life, born of empathy and of care for the world and those who inhabit it. With wit, passion, and striking insights, Siegel plumbs the emotional and psychological sources of clashing words, weaving through his exploration the untold story of the role argument has played in societies throughout history. Each life, he maintains, is an argument for that particular way of living; every individual style of argument is also a case that is being made for that person’s right to argue. Argument is at the heart of the human experience, and language, at its most liberated and expressive, inexorably bends toward argument. (shrink)

"My road to atheism was paved by science...ironically, so was my later journey to God." Journalist and award-winning author of The Case for Christ Lee Strobel examines the idea that science isn't the enemy of faith, but that it provides a solid foundation for belief in God. New scientific discoveries point to the incredible complexity of our universe, a complexity best explained by the existence of a Creator. This six-session video study (DVD/digital video sold separately) invites participants to encounter the (...) evidence of a Creator. Join Strobel in reexamining the theories that once led him away from God. Pastors, small group leaders, and individuals seeking resources that answer tough questions about the existence of God and the claims of rationality will find compelling answers in The Case for a Creator study, investigating probing questions like: Where do science and faith overlap or agree? As a form of knowledge, what are the weaknesses of science and rationality? How much can I depend on science while still have a thriving faith? Is faith in God ever based on rationality? Sessions include: Science and God Doubts about Darwinism The Evidence of Cosmology The Fine-tuning of the Universe The Evidence of Biochemistry The DNA and the Origin of Life Designed for use with the Case for a Creator Revised Video Study 9780310699606 (sold separately). (shrink)

Malgré son ambition, la philosophie politique n'est jamais parvenue à prouver qu'il est rationnel (bon, avantageux pour l'individu autant que pour la collectivité) d'être juste. Ce livre entend évoquer les " personnages conceptuels " ou les " figures " théâtrales mises en scène par les philosophes eux-mêmes afin de mettre à l'épreuve leur théorie de la justice : de tels personnages viennent contredire le discours rationnel du philosophe, et souvent l'accuser d'idéalisme. Cette thèse philosophique s'accompagne d'une thèse sur le présent (...) : la théorie politique contemporaine dominante tend depuis les années 1970 à réduire la figure du " mal " politique, en l'assimilant, sous couvert de théorie du choix rationnel, au " passager clandestin ", qui ne contribue pas à la coopération sociale à la mesure de ce qu'il profite. Or un tel choix est pour le moins contestable, dans la mesure où il laisse dans l'ombre des figures plus " extrêmes " du mal politique : le nazi, le criminel de guerre, le terroriste. A cet égard, la philosophie politique moderne, quoique décidément rationaliste, a mieux cerné le risque que fait courir à la philosophie elle-même l'" Insensé " ou le " raisonneur violent ". Face au risque d'irénisme encouru par la théorie politique, sociale et morale contemporaine, dont le monde semble parfois peuplé de " zombies raisonnables ", il nous faut restituer le rôle de l'expérience tragique au coeur de la philosophie politique. (shrink)

Drawing on decades of research found in his Case for... series, as well as new interviews and insights, investigative journalist and former atheist Lee Strobel presents clear and compelling evidence to help seekers and believers answer life's ultimate question: Is God Real?

Hope is more than a wish. It is true. It is real. Lee Strobel's trademark investigative style gives readers the confidence to know that true, dependable hope is found in Jesus Christ and that living with hope will make a life-changing difference in people's lives each day.

Including an edited transcription of a colloquium on Sander's life and work, this title contains plates selected from the J. Paul Getty Museum's collection. Sander's works exemplify the contradictory nature of early 20th century Germany.

The article distinguishes metaphysical from practical communitarianism. Metaphysical communitarianism is alleged to involve a concealed ideological element, which leads its adherents to stereotypes when trying to capture the essence of the modern self. The claim is examined that minorities, or other ethnic and cultural groups have collective rights, either moral or legal in nature. Justifications of collective rights resorting to the value of cultural identity are said to be in need of explaining why the proper way of protecting such value (...) is through rights. It is argued that practical communitarianism’s case for collective rights needs embracing meta-normative and normative relativism, whose application to political action yields consequences at odds with widespread ethical intuitions. (shrink)

La reflexion sur l'experience politique est au coeur de L'Esprit des lois. a l'instar de nombreux auteurs du XVIIIe siecle, Montesquieu s'interroge sur la perennite des Republiques animees par la vertu. L'essor de l'economie, dans les grands etats europeens, nuit a l'expression des vertus et - corrompt les moeurs pures -. Or en l'absence de devouement civique, les etats peuvent-ils fonder le lien social et garantir la liberte politique? La vertu patriotique, passion dominante des cites antiques, peut-elle devenir caduque sans (...) prejudice pour l'homme moderne? En revenant sur l'inscription de Montesquieu dans la tradition du liberalisme politique, cette etude explore les voies plurielles tracees par Montesquieu face au - mal politique - incarne dans le despotisme. Elle invite a approfondir la reflexion consacree au concept de societe civile.". (shrink)

Since it is Hume who famously asked how an "ought" can ever possibly be deduced from an "is," it is Hume who is typically cast as the representative of empiricism's inadequacy for doing the work of ethics. Yet, as I will show, in his description of the proper functioning of the passions that necessarily involve other persons and their evaluations of us, Hume provides a naturalistic description that is not reductive of value, but rather incorporates values into the very ground (...) of empirical description. Contemporary moral philosophers who dismiss Hume's complex account of the passions as unnecessary for understanding his account of morals, and then fault the account of morals for its failure to move beyond mere description to any kind of normative assessment, ignore how the detail of Hume's own account of the passions suggests a way that an empirical account can in fact be value-laden, as we shall see. (shrink)

According to the standard analysis of degree questions, the logical form of a degree question contains a variable that ranges over individual degrees and is bound by the degree question operator how. In contrast with this, we claim that the variable bound by the degree question operator how does not range over individual degrees but over intervals of degrees, by analogy with Schwarzschild and Wilkinson's proposal regarding the semantics of comparative clauses. Not only does the interval-based semantics predict the existence (...) of certain readings that are not predicted under the standard view, it is also able, together with other natural assumptions, to account for the sensitivity of degree questions to negative islands, as well as for the fact, uncovered by Fox and Hackl, that negative islands can be obviated by some properly placed modals. Like Fox and Hackl, we characterize negative island effects as arising from the fact that the relevant question, due to its meaning alone, can never have a maximally informative answer. Contrary to Fox and Hackl, however, we do not need to assume that scales are universally dense, nor that the notion of maximal informativity responsible for negative islands is blind to contextual parameters. (shrink)

Building on previous works which argued that scalar implicatures can be computed in embedded positions, this paper proposes a constraint on exhaustification which restricts the conditions under which an exhaustivity operator can be licensed. We show that this economy condition allows us to derive a number of generalizations, such as, in particular, the ‘Implicature Focus Generalization’: scalar implicatures can be embedded under a downward-entailing operator only if the scalar term bears pitch accent. Our economy condition also derives specific predictions regarding (...) the licensing of so-called Hurford disjunctions. (shrink)

In this article, we describe and attempt to solve a puzzle arising from the interpretation of modified numerals like less than five and between two and five. The puzzle is this: such modified numerals seem to mean different things depending on whether they combine with distributive or non-distributive predicates. When they combine with distributive predicates, they intuitively impose a kind of upper bound, whereas when they combine with non-distributive predicates, they do not. We propose and explore in detail four solutions (...) to this puzzle, each involving some notion of maximality, but differing in the type of maximality involved and in the source of maximality. While the full range of data we consider do not conclusively favor one theory over the other three, we do argue that overall the evidence goes against the view that modified numerals lexically encode a ‘standard’ maximality operator, and suggests the need for a pragmatic blocking mechanism that filters out readings of sentences that are generated by the grammar but intuitively unavailable. (shrink)

Plural definite descriptions across many languages display two well-known properties. First, they can give rise to so-called non-maximal readings, in the sense that they ‘allow for exceptions’. Second, while they tend to have a quasi-universal quantificational force in affirmative sentences, they tend to be interpreted existentially in the scope of negation. Building on previous works, we offer a theory in which sentences containing plural definite expressions trigger a family of possible interpretations, and where general principles of language use account for (...) their interpretation in various contexts and syntactic environments. Our theory solves a number of problems that these previous works encounter, and has broader empirical coverage in that it offers a precise analysis for sentences that display complex interactions between plural definites, quantifiers and bound variables, as well as for cases involving non-distributive predicates. The resulting proposal is briefly compared with an alternative proposal by Križ, which has similar coverage but is based on a very different architecture and sometimes makes subtly different predictions. (shrink)

The relative merits and demerits of historically prominent views such as the correspondence theory, coherentism, pragmatism, verificationism, and instrumentalism have been subject to much attention in the truth literature and have fueled the long-lived debate over which of these views is the most plausible one. While diverging in their specific philosophical commitments, adherents of these historically prominent views agree in at least one fundamental respect. They are all alethic monists. They all endorse the thesis that there is only one property (...) in virtue of which propositions can be true, and so, in this sense, take truth to be one. The truth pluralist, on the other hand, rejects this idea. There are several properties in virtue of which propositions can be true. The literature on truth pluralism has been growing steadily for the past twenty years. This volume, however, is the first of its kind—the first collection of papers focused specifically on pluralism about truth. Part I is dedicated to the development, investigation, and critical discussion of different forms of pluralism. An additional reason to look at truth pluralism with interest is the significant connections it bears to other debates in the truth literature—the debates concerning traditional theories of truth and the deflationism/inflationism divide being cases in hand. Parts II and III of the volume connect truth pluralism to these two debates. (shrink)

Applying critical sociological theory, this book explores the shortcomings of popular tactics in animal liberation efforts. Building a case for a scientifically-grounded grassroots approach, it is argued that professionalized advocacy that works in the service of theistic, capitalist, patriarchal institutions will find difficulty achieving success.

Theoria, Volume 88, Issue 4, Page 765-781, August 2022.

Is a human more conscious than an octopus? In the science of consciousness, it’s oftentimes assumed that some creatures (or mental states) are more conscious than others. But in recent years, a number of philosophers have argued that the notion of degrees of consciousness is conceptually confused. This paper (1) argues that the most prominent objections to degrees of consciousness are unsustainable, (2) examines the semantics of ‘more conscious than’ expressions, (3) develops an analysis of what it is for a (...) degreed property to count as degrees of consciousness, and (4) applies the analysis to various theories of consciousness. I argue that whether consciousness comes in degrees ultimately depends on which theory of consciousness turns out to be correct. But I also argue that most theories of consciousness entail that consciousness comes in degrees. (shrink)