You recognize when you know something for certain, right? You "know" the sky is blue, or that the traffic light had turned green, or where you were on the morning of September 11, 2001--you know these things, well, because you just do. In On Being Certain , neurologist Robert Burton challenges the notions of how we think about what we know. He shows that the feeling of certainty we have when we "know" something comes from sources beyond our control (...) and knowledge. In fact, certainty is a mental sensation, rather than evidence of fact. Because this "feeling of knowing" seems like confirmation of knowledge, we tend to think of it as a product of reason. But an increasing body of evidence suggests that feelings such as certainty stem from primitive areas of the brain, and are independent of active, conscious reflection and reasoning. The feeling of knowing happens to us; we cannot make it happen. Bringing together cutting edge neuroscience, experimental data, and fascinating anecdotes, Robert Burton explores the inconsistent and sometimes paradoxical relationship between our thoughts and what we actually know. Provocative and groundbreaking, On Being Certain , will challenge what you know (or think you know) about the mind, knowledge, and reason. ROBERT BURTON, M.D. graduated from Yale University and University of California at San Francisco medical school, where he also completed his neurology residency. At age 33, he was appointed chief of the Division of Neurology at Mt. Zion-UCSF Hospital, where he subsequently became Associate Chief of the Department of Neurosciences. His non-neurology writing career includes three critically acclaimed novels. He lives in Sausalito, California. Visit his website at http://www.rburton.com/ “What do we do when we recognize that a false certainty feels the same as certainty about the sky being blue? A lesser guide might get bogged down in nail-biting doubts about the limits of knowledge. Yet Burton not only makes clear the fascinating beauty of this tangled terrain, he also brings us out the other side with a clearer sense of how to navigate. It's a lovely piece of work; I'm all but certain you'll like it. “ --David Dobbs, author of Reef Madness; Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral “Burton has a great talent for combining wit and insight in a way both palatable and profound.” --Johanna Shapiro PhD, professor of Family Medicine at UC Irvine School of Medicine “A new way of looking at knowledge that merits close reading by scientists and general readers alike.” -- Kirkus “This could be one of the most important books of the year. With so much riding on ‘certainty,’ and so little known about how people actually reach a state of certainty about anything, some plain speaking from a knowledgeable neuroscientist is called for. If Gladwell's Blink was fascinating but largely anecdotal, Burton's book drills down to the real science behind snap judgments and other decision-making.” -- Howard Rheingold, futurist and author of Smart Mobs “A fascinating read. Burton’s engaging prose takes us into the deepest corners of our subconscious, making us question our most solid contentions. Nobody who reads this book will walk away from it and say ‘I know this for sure’ ever again.” --Sylvia Pagán Westphal, science reporter, The Wall Street Journal “Burton provides a compelling and though-provoking case that we should be more skeptical about our beliefs. Along the way, he also provides a novel perspective on many lines of research that should be of interest to readers who are looking for a broad introduction to the cognitive sciences.” -- Seed Magazine. (shrink)

Exponents and critics of semantic presupposition have almost invariably based their discussion on the ('Standard') definition of presupposition implied by Frege and Strawson. In this study Noel Burton-Roberts argues convincingly against this definition, that leads it to a three-valued semantics. He presents a very simple semantic definition which is weaker, more general and leads to a semantics more easily interpreted as two-valued with gaps. The author shows that a wide range of intuitive facts that eluded the Standard definition follow directly (...) from this ('Revised') definition itself: facts about the presuppositions of compound sentences and modal sentences, about presuppositional conflict and about differences in the logical status of simple sentences suffering from presupposition failure. The book includes a detailed argument that an ambiguity of natural language negation, generally assumed to be necessary to the defence of semantic presupposition, is neither possible nor necessary in a presuppositional semantics. Noel Burton-Roberts has made an authoritative contribution to a debate which has involved philosophers and linguists for many years. His command of the issues, his clarity of exposition and his theoretical insight may well serve to change the boundaries of that debate. (shrink)

Humour is a source of moral concern because some jokes contain both elements of immorality and funniness. This raises the question of whether jokes can be funny despite moral flaws and, more generally, how immorality affects funniness. One answer to this question is comic moralism; the position that immorality negatively affects funniness. Berys Gaut has given a merited-response argument in defence of comic moralism, but Noël Carroll has criticised this argument. In this paper, I defend Gaut's argument from Carroll's criticism. (...) Specifically, I argue that benign appraisal is a necessary condition for amusement, which is a commonly proposed claim across many disciplines. (shrink)

Tocqueville pessimistically predicted that liberty and equality would be incompatible ideas. Robert Dahl, author of the classic _A Preface to Democratic Theory,_ explores this alleged conflict, particularly in modern American society where differences in ownership and control of corporate enterprises create inequalities in resources among Americans that in turn generate inequality among them as citizens. Arguing that Americans have misconceived the relation between democracy, private property, and the economic order, the author contends that we can achieve a society of (...) real democracy and political equality without sacrificing liberty by extending democratic principles into the economic order. Although enterprise control by workers violates many conventional political and ideological assumptions of corporate capitalism as well as of state socialism. Dahl presents an empirically informed and philosophically acute defense of "workplace democracy." He argues, in the light of experiences here and abroad, that an economic system of worker-owned and worker-controlled enterprises could provide a much better foundation for democracy, political equality, and liberty than does our present system of corporate capitalism. (shrink)

'Knowledge Capitalism' reveals how the emerging knowledge-based economy is redefining firms, empowering individuals and reshaping learning and work. It provides a practical tool-set for business managers to interpret and manage change.

The Law of Inertia plays a key role in the scheme of constructive axioms for the General Theory of Relativity. A new formulation of this law which avoids the circularity problems inherent in previous formulations is presented. The empirical status of this law and the manner in which it provides a non-conventional foundation for the Law of Motion and the definition of physical forces is established. First, quite general path structures are discussed which are not defined at the outset in (...) terms of geodesic paths and which require for their description only the local differential topological structure. Secondly, a number of theorems are presented which serve as purely local differential topological criteria for singling out from among the general path structures the geodesic ones that represent the inertial structure of spacetime. (shrink)

Grelling's Paradox is the paradox which results from considering whether heterologicality, the word-property which a designator has when and only when the designator does not bear the word-property it designates, is had by 'heterologicality'. Although there has been some philosophical debate over its solution, Grelling's Paradox is nearly uniformly treated as a variant of either the Liar Paradox or Russell's Paradox, a paradox which does not present any philosophical challenges not already presented by the two better known paradoxes. The aims (...) of this paper are, first, to offer a precise formulation of Grelling's Paradox which is clearly distinguished from both the Liar Paradox and Russell's Paradox; second, to offer a solution to Grelling's Paradox which both resolves the paradoxical reasoning and accounts for unproblematic predications of heterologicality; and, third, to argue that there are two lessons to be drawn from Grelling's Paradox which have not yet been drawn from the Liar or Russell's Paradox. The first lesson is that it is possible for the semantic content of a predicate to be sensitive to the semantic context; i.e., it is possible for a predicate to be an indexical expression. The second lesson is that the semantic content of an indexical predicate, though unproblematic for many cases, can nevertheless be problematic in some cases. In Section 1, Grelling's Paradox is presented informally. After making some refinements, Grelling's Paradox is then presented formally. In Section 2, the formal version of Grelling's Paradox is evaluated, and several previously proposed solutions are discussed and argued to be inadequate. In Section 3, it is argued that the heterologicality predicate is an indexical expression. A semantics for the heterologicality predicate is given, and it is shown how this semantics accounts for the unproblematic predications of heterologicality, as well as the problematic cases, and therefore constitutes a satisfactory and complete solution to Grelling's Paradox. Objections to this solution are addressed in Section 4. The conclusions of this paper are summarized in Section 5. (shrink)

A middle-aged woman had a massive stroke and would be dead within hours. The husband was in the ER waiting room. I took him aside and explained the grim prognosis. He paused, his expression blank, his lips searching for something to say. Finally, he blurted out, “I think I’ll go home and take a shower.”.

While window-shopping for his wife’s birthday, a businessman was struck by a speeding taxi that jumped the curb at 55th and Madison. In the few minutes it took the ambulance to reach the University emergency room, he had lapsed into a coma. Brain imaging revealed a large blood clot compressing the brain. The only hope for his survival was immediate drainage of the clot.

The cardiac rehab nurse calls out each of our group’s blood pressures and pulse rates. It is my first posthospitalization class and I am relieved to be in the middle of the pack. Although fully aware that numbers are not fate, I cannot help wondering if the worst performers will fully satisfy the dark needs of heart disease statistics. I presume that others are making similar calculations, yet wince at the ugly direction of my mind. Maybe it is not necessary (...) to do better than another; if we take our meds, eat wisely, and exercise to the max, it is possible that our entire group will do well. (shrink)

This book describes and explores six current approaches to the study of mind: the neuroscientific, the behavioral, the competence approach, the ecological, the phenomenological, and the computational. No other book in cognitive science covers such a broad range of research programs and topics in such a balanced fashion. The first chapter is a mini-history and philosophy of psychology which reviews some of the scientific developments and philosophical arguments behind these six different approaches. Each subsequent chapter presents work that is on (...) the frontiers of research in its field. (shrink)

The Anatomy of Melancholy is one of the last great works of English prose to have remained unedited. These are the first two volumes of what will be an authoritative edition of the work, currently being prepared by scholars on both sides of the Atlantic.

Recent developments in the cognitive sciences and artificial intelligence suggest ways of answering the most serious challenge to Peirce's notion of abduction. Either there is no such logical process as abduction or, if abduction is a form of inference, it is essentially unconscious and therefore beyond rational control so that it lacks any normative significance. Peirce himself anticipates and attempts to answer this challenge. Peirce argues that abduction is both a source of creative insight and a form of logical inference (...) subject to a degree of conscious control. In this paper I shall sketch a developing account of abduction that is suggested by the work of Paul Churchland, Paul Thagard, Chris Eliasmith, William Wimsatt, Owen Flanagan, and others. I shall argue that a credible account of abduction will require that we approach the phenomenon from both higher and lower levels as represented by these approaches. (shrink)

Phonological Knowledge addresses central questions in the foundations of phonology and locates them within their larger linguistic and philosophical context. Phonology is a discipline grounded in observable facts, but like any discipline it rests on conceptual assumptions. This book investigates the nature, status, and acquisition of phonological knowledge: it enquires into the conceptual and empirical foundations of phonology, and considers the relation of phonology to the theory of language and other capacities of mind. The authors address a wide range of (...) interrelated questions, the most central of which is this: is phonological knowledge different from linguistic knowledge in general? They offer responses to this question from a variety of perspectives, each of which has consequences for how phonology and language are conceived. Each also involves a host of further questions concerning the modularity of mind and of language; whether phonology should be included in the language faculty; the nature-convention debate; the content of phonological elements and its relation to phonetic substance; the implications of sign languages for phonology; whether functional and variationist considerations are relevant in phonology; how phonological knowledge arises; and, not least, the data and methods appropriate for phonological inquiry. Phonological Knowledge is an important contribution to the most fundamental issues in phonology and the understanding of language. It will interest researchers in and advanced students of phonology, linguistic theory, and philosophy of language.In addition to the editors, the authors are Mary Beckman, Silvain Bromberger, Jennifer Fitzpatrick, Paul Foulkes, Mark Hale, Morris Hallé, John Harris, Harry van der Hulst, Robert Ladd, G. Lindsey, Scott Myers, Janet Pierrehumbert, Charles Reiss, Shelley Velleman, Marilyn Vihman, and Linda Wheeldon.By relating foundational questions of phonology to their larger linguistic, cognitive, and philosophical contexts this book will generate interest not only among phonologists and their advanced students, but also among all those concerned to understand the forms and functions of language. (shrink)

This contribution to Palgrave's 'Advances' series addresses a wide range of issues that have arisen in post-Gricean pragmatic theory, in chapters by distinguished authors. Among the specific topics covered are scalar implicatures, lexical semantics and pragmatics, indexicality, procedural meaning, the semantics and pragmatics of negation. The volume includes both defences and critiques of Relevance Theory and of Neo-Gricean Pragmatics.

“Scleroderma,” the rheumatologist said after examining my stiff swollen arms and legs. “Unfortunately, given your biomarkers, it’s likely to get worse before it gets better, but you never know.” She gave a quick rundown of what I might expect—rapidly progressive skin and joint tightening, GI symptoms, high likelihood of multi-organ involvement…. “Let’s hope for the best.” She paused, then asked if I had any questions.

Symptoms of ConsciousnessIn this series of short essays, stories, poems, and personal observations, Robert A. Burton, neurologist and writer, uses both fiction and nonfiction to explore many paradoxes and contradictions inherent in scientific inquiry. A novelist as well as author of On Being Certain and A Skeptic’s Guide to the Mind, Burton brings story to science and science to story.

Given a strong family history of early heart attacks, the future has always been an iffy proposition. Miraculously, I have bypassed the early off-ramps and find myself approaching 80, stents in place, considering the very real but previously unimaginable possibility of still more. But what kind of more? With dopamine on the wane and no longer supercharged by the push and shove of unbridled ambition and pride, bigger and grander are out of the question. Tired clichés poke through the widening (...) cracks in my thinking to become uninvited bulletins of compromise and consolation. Be grateful. Relax, reminisce, enjoy sunsets, learn the backyard birds’ names, maybe even sing to them, and count blessings. (shrink)

Humour is a funny thing. Everyone knows what humour is but no-one knows exactly how it works. This book addresses the question 'What is humour?' -/- Consulting a dictionary on this question reveals an uninformative circle of definitions that goes from 'humour', to 'amusement', to 'funny' and back to 'humour'. Hence the book starts by untangling this circle of definitions to avoid being tied in conceptual knots. The remainder of the book is then free to lucidly provide a new theory (...) of humour which draws on cutting-edge research in psychology, linguistics and neuroscience. -/- Humour is important to people and so then are philosophical questions about humour. This book provides an understanding of what our sense of humour reveals about us and elucidates joking matters from the dinner table to the comedy club. (shrink)

The book investigates distinctions between independent individuality and interactive relationality in physical phenomena. This is a common topic for investigation in modern physics and philosophy of science, and the topic is explored using contemporary research in those disciplines. Additionally, it is common for Buddhism to focus on relationships, and it proposes that independent individual things do not exist. In the context of physical reality, I take this Buddhist view as a hypothesis and examine it critically. We evaluate its arguments and (...) find them generally to be problematic when evaluated against modern standards for logic and physics. However, its fundamental principle—emptiness, or shunyata—is still worthy of being tested. -/- Contrary to many books on Buddhism and science, this one takes a very positive view of science. Yet, this depends on how we define ‘science’. Hence, the book begins with an examination of that topic, informed by philosophy of science and the author’s experience and training as physicist and philosopher. While we discuss, explain and justify many standard views of science, and present the standard elements of science, physics and physics theories, the book argues extensively for one perspective: pluralism in a synthesis of the author’s design. -/- I will show shunyata to be quite consistent with the knowledge framework of Physics Pluralism. When we test Buddhist emptiness against the results of physics—interpreting both within that knowledge framework—we discover the relevance, importance, and some truth in the relationality ideas of shunyata. -/- Robert Alan Paul has studied physics, had a career as a physicist, and both studied and practiced Tibetan Buddhism. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics, and separate master’s degrees in philosophy; philosophy of science & mathematics; and physics (abd). He holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in four disciplines: philosophy of science, Western analytic metaphysics, Buddhist philosophy, and physics. His Ph.D. dissertation was the foundation of this book. (shrink)

The claim that distant simultaneity with respect to an inertial observer is conventional arose in the context of a space-and-time rather than a spacetime ontology. Reformulating this problem in terms of a spacetime ontology merely trivializes it. In the context of flat space, flat time, and a linear inertial structure (a purely space-and-time formalism), we prove that the hyperplanes of space for a given inertial observer are determined by a purely spatial criterion that depends for its validity only on the (...) two-way light principle, which is universally regarded as empirically verified. All (empirically determined) “spacetime” entities, such as the conformal structure or light surface equation, are used in a purely mathematical manner that is independent of and hence isneutral with respect to the ontological status that is ascribed to them. In this regard, our criterion is significantly stronger than thespacetime criterion recently advanced by D. Malament, which appeals explicitly to the conformal orthogonality of spacetime vectors and to the invariance of the conformal-orthogonal structure of spacetime under the causal automorphisms of spacetime. Once the hyperplanes of space for a given inertial observer have been determined by our empirical and purely spatial criterion, the following holds: there exists one and only one $\vec \varepsilon $ -synchronization procedure, namely the standard procedure proposed by Einstein, such that the planes of common time are thesame as the nonconventional hyperplanes of space for the inertial observer. It follows that our criterion provides an empirical even if indirect method for determining that the one-way speed of light is the same as the average two-way speed of light. In addition, two inertial observers that are not at rest with respect to each other necessarily havedifferent hyperplanes of space, and consequently their respective spatial views cannot be encompassed in a single three-dimensional space. Hence, our purely spatial criterion provides an empirical motivation for adopting the more comprehensive spacetime ontology. (shrink)

Johann Georg Hamann was a German philosopher who offered in his writings a radical critique of the Enlightenment's reverence for reason. A pivotal figure in the Sturm und Drang movement, his thought influenced such writers as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Gottfried Herder. As a friend of Immanuel Kant, Hamann was the first writer to comment on the Critique of Pure Reason, and his work foreshadows the linguistic turn in philosophy as well as numerous elements of twentieth century hermeneutics (...) and existentialism. Johann Georg Hamann and the Enlightenment Project addresses Hamann's oeuvre from the perspective of political philosophy, focusing on his views concerning the public use of reason, social contract theory, autonomy, aesthetic morality and the politics of 'taste, ' and the technocratic ideal of enlightened despotism. Robert Alan Sparling situates Hamann's work historically, elucidates his somewhat difficult writing, and argues for his relevance in the ongoing culture wars over the merits of the Enlightenment project. (shrink)

Aesthetic Pursuits: Essays in Philosophy of ArtLevinsonJerrold OUP. 2016. pp. 208. £35.00.

Humour is a funny thing. Everyone knows what humour is but no-one knows exactly how it works. This is the reason why I decided to write a PhD on the philosophy of humour. Some may see this as an odd mix – after all, philosophy is a weighty discipline and humour a light topic. -/- But humour is a phenomenon that anthropologists have discovered in every known human culture and the average person laughs around 17 times a day. Moreover, although (...) primatologists have observed laughter in apes (and rats), the mental sophistication required for full-blown humour seems to be exclusively human. Surely this makes it a legitimate topic to furrow a few philosophical brows. -/- So humour is human – but plenty of us have not perfected the art quite yet. For those still struggling, here are four rules of thumb for being more humorous. (shrink)

First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Trump’s election renewed discussion about the Electoral College, mostly centered on its disparity with the popular vote. Yet much commentary about the Electoral College neglects its original purpose grounded in the Founders’ concern to provide for indirect election to many important offices. The Founders’ project entailed determining the people’s aptitude to elect the types of individuals desirable for high office, in an attempt to harmonize their dual commitments to political right and political legitimacy. The Electoral College’s function was soon frustrated (...) by the rise of political parties, yet parties came to serve at least part of that function, with party leaders standing as a moderating force between the people and the presidency. However, the 2016 elections suggest that parties no longer play this intermediary role effectively. Examining the steps that led to this result, we seek to provide a reminder of the enduring thesis that the dangers inherent in republicanism require creative republican remedies. (shrink)

Hull et al. make a direct connection between selection and replication. My view is that selection, at its causal crux, is not inherently connected to replication. I make plain the causal crux of selection, distinguishing it from replication. I discuss implications of my results for Hull et al.'s critique of Darden and Cain (1989).

The dissertation is a critical examination of theory evaluation in population genetics. There are three main philosophical approaches to theory evaluation in philosophy of science: confirmation and hypothesis testing, scientific change, and experimentation. Accounts that champion each of the main philosophical approaches to scientific theory evaluation are represented in philosophy of biology: confirmation and hypothesis testing by Elisabeth A. Lloyd, scientific change by Lindley Darden, and experimentation by David W. Rudge. I argue that each of the main approaches is insufficient (...) for evaluating population genetics theories. However, the accounts I critique are not fundamentally incompatible. I modify, unify, and extend them into a comprehensive account of theory evaluation for population genetics. ;My philosophical analysis is driven by a complex, important, and ongoing controversy in population genetics, viz., the R. A. Fisher-Sewall Wright controversy in population genetics. I use my historical case study to assess the adequacy of both the extant philosophical analyses of theory evaluation and my own account. Between 1929 and 1962 Fisher and Wright debated the main differences emanating from their alternative approaches to evolutionary theorizing. The debates between Fisher and Wright functionally ended with Fisher's death. However, Wright continued to clarify his position in the controversy until his death in 1988, and other biologists have continued work on the core debates. ;Recently, four scientific papers led by biologists Jerry A. Coyne and Michael J. Wade have been key in revisiting and rekindling the Fisher-Wright controversy with analyses of old theoretical and empirical issues as well as new developments that have spun off the older work. Four decades after the debates between Fisher and Wright, these papers have staked out, with substantial disagreement, claims about the evaluative status of the two predominant population genetics approaches to evolution in the field. A further task of this dissertation is to provide a non-partisan evaluation of the last 40 years of work on the controversy, i.e., the controversy since Fisher's death in 1962. It is hoped that such a critical analysis of the controversy will advance it to some extent. (shrink)