This book offers an innovative introduction to the psychological basis of mathematics and the nature of mathematical thinking and learning, using an approach that empowers students by fostering their own construction of mathematical structures. Through accessible and engaging writing, award-winning mathematician and educator Anderson Norton reframes mathematics as something that exists first in the minds of students, rather than something that exists first in a textbook. By exploring the psychological basis for mathematics at every level - including geometry, (...) algebra, calculus, complex analysis and more - Norton unlocks students' personal power to construct mathematical objects based on their own mental activity, and illustrates the power of mathematics in organizing the world as we know it. Including reflections and activities designed to inspire awareness of the mental actions and processes coordinated in practicing mathematics, the book is geared towards current and future secondary and elementary mathematics teachers who will empower the next generation of mathematicians and STEM majors. Those interested in the history and philosophy that underpins mathematics will also benefit from this book, as well as those informed and curious minds attentive to the human experience more generally. Anderson Norton is Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Virginia Tech, USA, where he has been teaching mathematics courses for future teachers for 15 years. He is the editor of Constructing Number, and the co-author of Developing Fractions Knowledge and Numeracy for All Learners. (shrink)

Constructivist and embodied theories of learning each focus on action as the basis for cognition. However, in restricting action to sensorimotor activity, some embodied perspectives eschew ….

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted data collection for longitudinal studies in developmental sciences to an immeasurable extent. Restrictions on conducting in-person standardized assessments have led to disruptive innovation, in which novel methods are applied to increase participant engagement. Here, we focus on remote administration of behavioral assessment. We argue that these innovations in remote assessment should become part of the new standard protocol in developmental sciences to facilitate data collection in populations that may be hard to reach or engage due (...) to burdensome requirements. We present a series of adaptations to developmental assessments and a detailed discussion of data analytic approaches to be applied in the less-than-ideal circumstances encountered during the pandemic-related shutdown. Ultimately, these remote approaches actually strengthen the ability to gain insight into developmental populations and foster pragmatic innovation that should result in enduring change. (shrink)

This paper defends the usefulness of the concept of philosophical progress and the common assumption that philosophy and science aim to make the same, or a comparable, kind of progress. It does so by responding to Yafeng Shan's (2022) arguments that the wealth of research on scientific progress is not applicable or useful to philosophy, and that philosophy doesn't need a concept of progress at all. It is ultimately argued that while Shan's arguments are not successful, they reveal the way (...) forward in developing accounts of philosophical progress. (shrink)

Women as commercial baby factories, nature as an economic resource, life as one big shopping mall: This is what we get when we use the market as a common ...

This article investigates the potential of fMRI to test assumptions about different components in models of complex cognitive tasks. If the components of a model can be associated with specific brain regions, one can make predictions for the temporal course of the BOLD response in these regions. An event‐locked procedure is described for dealing with temporal variability and bringing model runs and individual data trials into alignment. Statistical methods for testing the model are described that deal with the scan‐to‐scan correlations (...) in the errors of measurement of the BOLD signal. This approach is illustrated using a “sacrificial” ACT‐R model that involves mapping 6 modules onto 6 brain regions in an experiment from Ravizza, Anderson, and Carter (in press) concerned with equation solving. The model's visual encoding predicted the BOLD response in the fusiform gyrus, its controlled retrieval predicted the BOLD response in the lateral inferior prefrontal cortex, and its subgoal setting predicted the BOLD response in the anterior cingulate cortex. On the other hand, its motor programming failed to predict anticipatory activation in the motor cortex, its representational changes failed to predicted the pattern of activity in the posterior parietal cortex, and its procedural component failed to predict an initial spike in caudate. The results illustrate the power of such data to direct the development of a theory of complex problem solving, both at the level of a specific task model as well as at the level of the cognitive architecture. (shrink)

In recent years, feminist scholarship on emotional labor has proliferated. I identify a related but distinct form of care labor, hermeneutic labor. Hermeneutic labor is the burdensome activity of: understanding and coherently expressing one’s own feelings, desires, intentions, and movitations; discerning those of others; and inventing solutions for relational issues arising from interpersonal tensions. I argue that hermeneutic labor disproportionately falls on women’s shoulders in heteropatriachal societies, especially in intimate relationships between women and men. I also suggest that some of (...) the gendered burdens of emotional labor that feminist scholars point out would better be described as hermeneutic labor. Drawing on feminist philosophy as well as findings from social psychology and sociology, I argue that the exploitation of women’s hermeneutic labor is a pervasive element of what Sandra Bartky calls the ‘micropolitics’ of intimate relationships. The widespread expectation that women are relationship maintenance experts, as well as the prevalence of a gendered demand-withdraw pattern of communication, leads an exploitative situation to appear natural or even desirable, even as it leads to women’s dissatisfaction. This situation may be considered misogynistic in Kate Manne’s sense, where misogyny is a property of social environments rather than a worldview. (shrink)

What is the work ethic? Does it justify policies that promote the wealth and power of the One Percent at workers' expense? Or does it advance policies that promote workers' dignity and standing? Hijacked explores how the history of political economy has been a contest between these two ideas about whom the work ethic is supposed to serve. Today's neoliberal ideology deploys the work ethic on behalf of the One Percent. However, workers and their advocates have long used the work (...) ethic on behalf of ordinary people. By exposing the ideological roots of contemporary neoliberalism as a perversion of the seventeenth-century Protestant work ethic, Elizabeth Anderson shows how we can reclaim the original goals of the work ethic, and uplift ourselves again. Hijacked persuasively and powerfully demonstrates how ideas inspired by the work ethic informed debates among leading political economists of the past, and how these ideas can help us today. (shrink)

In 1986, I argued that pains are essentially not phenomenal states. Using a Wittgen-steinian son of argument, I showed that the same sort of phenomena can be had on different occasions, and on one occasion persons be in pain, while on another occasion persons not be in pain. I also showed that very different phenomena could be experienced and, yet, organisms have the same sort of pain. I supported my arguments with empirical data from both laboratory and clinical studies. There (...) is nothing about this thesis I would now retract. However, there was a further thesis that needs to be reconsidered. I argued that phenomenal states are only accompaniments of pains, that pains are essentially a combination of cognitive, affective and behavioural/motivational states. This thesis I do now zaish to retract. I now argue that phenomenal states are necessary for pains, but still not sufficient. There must also be a cognitive state which involves an evaluation of the phenomenon as something like, 'Harm to the body'. The evaluation is a kind of de re belief, regarding the phenomenon as itself representing harm to the body. Besides admitting that phenomenal states are necessary for pains, I also now claim that other relevant belief states, affective states, and behavioural/motivational states are not necessary for pain, but normal consequences of pain. This revised theory is preferable to the 1986 one because it fits better with empirical facts (including providing better explanations for anomalous cases), fits better with certain powerful common-sense intuitions, and fits better with a larger theory of consciousness I have been developing. Among other things, it turns out that being in pain is a quite peculiar conscious state and considering it as a paradigm for consciousness is a serious mistake. (shrink)

Feminist epistemology has often been understood as the study of feminine "ways of knowing." But feminist epistemology is better understood as the branch of naturalized, social epistemology that studies the various influences of norms and conceptions of gender and gendered interests and experiences on the production of knowledge. This understanding avoids dubious claims about feminine cognitive differences and enables feminist research in various disciplines to pose deep internal critiques of mainstream research.

My purpose in this chapter is to survey some of the principal approaches to inductive inference in the philosophy of science literature. My first concern will be the general principles that underlie the many accounts of induction in this literature. When these accounts are considered in isolation, as is more commonly the case, it is easy to overlook that virtually all accounts depend on one of very few basic principles and that the proliferation of accounts can be understood as efforts (...) to ameliorate the weaknesses of those few principles. In the earlier sections, I will lay out three inductive principles and the families of accounts of induction they engender. In later sections I will review standard problems in the philosophical literature that have supported some pessimism about induction and suggest that their import has been greatly overrated. In the final sections I will return to the proliferation of accounts of induction that frustrates efforts at a final codification. I will suggest that this proliferation appears troublesome only as long as we expect inductive inference to be subsumed under a single formal theory. If we adopt a material theory of induction in which individual inductions are licensed by particular facts that prevail only in local domains, then the proliferation is expected and not problematic. (shrink)

One of liberalism’s core commitments is to safeguarding individuals’ autonomy. And a central aspect of liberal social justice is the commitment to protecting the vulnerable. Taken together, and combined with an understanding of autonomy as an acquired set of capacities to lead one’s own life, these commitments suggest that liberal societies should be especially concerned to address vulnerabilities of individuals regarding the development and maintenance of their autonomy. In this chapter, we develop an account of what it would mean for (...) a society to take seriously the obligation to reduce individuals’ autonomy-related vulnerabilities to an acceptable minimum. In particular, we argue that standard liberal accounts underestimate the scope of this obligation because they fail to appreciate various threats to autonomy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Locke on the Knowledge of Material Things ROBERT FENDEL ANDERSON IT IS nOT John Locke's intention, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, to deal with matter and material substance nor with how these are able to affect the mind. These are considerations for natural philosophy; Locke counts himself rather among the moral philosophers. He does not propose, therefore, to meddle with the physical aspects of the mind, nor (...) with the physical production of sensations through the organs, nor with the production of ideas in the understanding, nor even with whether ideas depend upon matter for their source. He defers to the wisdom of such men as Boyle, Sydenham, Huygens and Newton in these considerations, and finds it "... ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge....,, 1 It is true that Locke's Essay is characterized chiefly not by an interest in matter and the mechanics of perception but rather by an interest in epistemology and in the ordering and assessment of our knowledge. Because of the very nature and emphasis of this epistemology, however, Locke finds that he must, from time to time, at least mention the nature of matter and how it affects us. Finally, it becomes apparent, certain changes or ambiguities in his point of view regarding the mode of our knowledge and its certainty are consequences of his understanding of matter. It is a demonstration of these elements of his doctrine, which seem not to have obtained the full attention of such scholars as Aaron, Fraser, and Gibson, that I shall attempt in this paper. Fundamentally, Locke's theory of matter appears to be that of Democritus and Epicurus. Like the Greek atomists, he conceives of matter as consisting of particles or corpuscles infinite in number. At least some of these are so minute as to be individually insensible, and probably he intends that all are, although, to my knowledge, he never states that this is so. In the aggregate, in any case, particles do constitute perceptible bodies. As for the Greeks, so also for Locke, the particles arc all extended, having size and shape. They are said also to possess motion or rest, although he takes care to say that matter cannot produce motion in itself,e Locke frequently mentions other properties as being "primary" or "really in" material things. Some of these are solidity, texture, cohesion of parts, situation, and number. Apparently some of these may be ranked under others since, as he 1"Epistle to the Reader," Vol. I, p. 14. All footnotes refer to passages in John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, collated and annotated, with prolegomena, biographical, critical, and historical by Alexander Campbell Fraser, in two volumes (New York, Dover Publications, Inc., 1959). Large Roman numerals refer to books of the Essay; small Roman numerals refer to chapters of the books; Arabic numerals refer to sections of the chapters. 2 IV, x, 10. [205] 206 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY remarks, figure presupposes extension, and receiving or communicating motion through impact presupposes solidity. The influences of these particles upon one another are treated by Locke under the topic of "powers," a notion which includes in it some kind of "secret relation of parts." 3 The capacities in any substance to give alterations of primary qualities are active powers; the capacities to receive such alterations are passive powers. This alteration must be accomplished by impact or impulse since this, Locke says, is the only way in which bodies can be conceived to operate. Sensation in the percipient being then is to be understood as a special case of this impact of particles upon others. It is evident to Locke that from external obiects some motion must be conveyed by some parts of our bodies to the brain or seat of sensation to produce in our minds the particular ideas we have of these external objects. We are able by sight to perceive at a distance the primary qualities of bodies of observable size. Locke reasons that therefore "... some singly imperceptible bodies must come from them to the eyes, and thereby convey to... (shrink)

In Norton(2003), it was urged that the world does not conform at a fundamental level to some robust principle of causality. To defend this view, I now argue that the causal notions and principles of modern physics do not express some universal causal principle, brought to light by discoveries in physics. Rather they merely assert that, according to relativity theory, spacetime has an invariant velocity, that of light; and that theories of matter admit no propagations faster than light.

Religious Pluralism Religious pluralism, broadly construed, is a response to the diversity of religious beliefs, practices, and traditions that exist both in the contemporary world and throughout history. The terms “pluralism” and “pluralist” can, depending on context or intended use, signify anything from the mere fact of religious diversity to a particular kind of philosophical … Continue reading Pluralism, Religious →.

What are management gurus? Who are they? Why do we need them? This informative and practical guide analyses the value to be gained from reading the gurus, sets the growth of gurudom in context and traces the lines of development of the major schools of thought from their beginnings to the present day.

Although best known for his contributions to the theory of knowledge, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion, Hume also influenced developments in the philosophy of mind, psychology, ethics, political and economic theory, political and social history, and aesthetic theory. The fifteen essays in this volume address all aspects of Hume's thought. The picture of him that emerges is that of a thinker who, though often critical to the point of scepticism, was nonetheless able to build on that scepticism a constructive, viable, (...) and profoundly important view of the world. Also included in this volume are Hume's two brief autobiographies and a bibliography suited to those beginning their study of Hume. This second edition of one our most popular Companions includes six new essays and a new introduction, and the remaining essays have all been updated or revised. (shrink)

Introduction -- Membership -- Employment -- Property disputes -- The family -- Goods and services -- Conclusion.

Roots presents articles on major discoveries that laid the basis for contemporary molecular and cellular biology. In this article, Norton D. Zinder reviews the first findings about the single‐stranded DNA‐containing bacteriophages and what is known today about the genetics and molecular biology of these phages.

Nicholas Rescher’s way of understanding process philosophy reflects the ambitions of his own philosophical project and commits him to a conceptually ideal interpretation of process. Process becomes a transcendental idea of reflection that can always be predicated of our knowledge of the world and of the world qua known, but not necessarily of reality an sich. Rescher’s own taxonomy of process thinking implies that it has other variants. While Rescher’s approach to process philosophy makes it intelligible and appealing to mainstream (...) analytic philosophy, it leaves behind the more daring ideas of Bergson, James, and Whitehead, all of whom envisioned the primordial reality of process in a radical ontology of becoming. This variant of process thought can be construed as coherent and self-consistent, but not without relinquishing the correspondence theory of truth and embracing challenging ideas that bring us in close proximity to existentialism, apophatic theology, and Buddhism. (shrink)

David and Mary Norton present the definitive scholarly edition of Hume's Treatise, one of the greatest philosophical works ever written. This set comprises the two volumes of texts and editorial material, which are also available for purchase separately. -/- David Hume (1711 - 1776) is one of the greatest of philosophers. Today he probably ranks highest of all British philosophers in terms of influence and philosophical standing. His philosophical work ranges across morals, the mind, metaphysics, epistemology, religion, and aesthetics; (...) he had broad interests not only in philosophy as it is now conceived but in history, politics, economics, religion, and the arts. He was a master of English prose. -/- The Clarendon Hume Edition will include all of his works except his History of England and minor historical writings. It is the only thorough critical edition, and will provide a far more extensive scholarly treatment than any previous editions. This edition (which has been in preparation since the 1970s) offers authoritative annotation, bibliographical information, and indexes, and draws upon the major advances in textual scholarship that have been made since the publication of earlier editions - advances both in the understanding of editorial principle and practice and in knowledge of the history of Hume's own texts. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhat are the rules of the comedic roast? Initially, there might seem to be a tension between “the comedic” and “roasting” or “insult.” The comedic is concerned with the funny or mirth while insults are mean-spirited in nature, tools of injury. So how can the two be combined to produce something fun? In this article, I entertain a few views that attempt a resolution of this apparent tension. I conclude with a proposal that suggests when they are successful, roasts employ (...) mechanisms that redirect attention from the joke's content to its formal properties; it is when those mechanisms fail that roasting becomes disagreeable. (shrink)

The essays in this volume represent the first steps by philosophers and artificial intelligence researchers toward explaining why it is necessary to add an ...

According to the most popular theories of intentionality, a family of theories we will refer to as “functional intentionality,” a machine can have genuine intentional states so long as it has functionally characterizable mental states that are causally hooked up to the world in the right way. This paper considers a detailed description of a robot that seems to meet the conditions of functional intentionality, but which falls victim to what I call “the composition problem.” One obvious way to escape (...) the problem (arguably, the only way) is if the robot can be shown to be a moral patient – to deserve a particular moral status. If so, it isn’t clear how functional intentionality could remain plausible (something like “phenomenal intentionality” would be required). Finally, while it would have seemed that a reasonable strategy for establishing the moral status of intelligent machines would be to demonstrate that the machine possessed genuine intentionality, the composition argument suggests that the order of precedence is reversed: The machine must first be shown to possess a particular moral status before it is a candidate for having genuine intentionality. (shrink)

This paper offers a new account of metaphysical explanation. The account is modelled on Kitcher’s unificationist approach to scientific explanation. We begin, in Sect. 2, by briefly introducing the notion of metaphysical explanation and outlining the target of analysis. After that, we introduce a unificationist account of metaphysical explanation before arguing that such an account is capable of capturing four core features of metaphysical explanations: irreflexivity, non-monotonicity, asymmetry and relevance. Since the unificationist theory of metaphysical explanation inherits irreflexivity and non-monotonicity (...) directly from the unificationist theory of scientific explanation that underwrites it, we focus on demonstrating how the account can secure asymmetry and relevance. (shrink)

The trouble with business schools -- The great, but delicate experiment -- A hippocratic oath for business -- Six more arguments for the MBA oath -- The purpose of a manager -- Ethics and integrity -- No man is an island : stakeholders -- Ambition and good faith -- The letter and the spirit : law -- The sunlight of responsibility : transparency -- Personal and professional growth -- Sustainable prosperity : a partnership for living well -- Accountability.

I have taken the traditional problem of the seeming interdependence of identity concepts and essentialistic concepts and the attendant difficulties with circularity as a starting point in my consideration of recent attempts to provide accounts ofde re essences. Having distinguished between theories of individual and generic essences, I have shown how a linguistic device based upon a new approach to referring expressions has, perhaps, provided some advance in the understanding of individualde re essences. I have argued that, however efficacious these (...) linguistic devices may be in dealing with individual essences, they are of no help in dealing with generic essences. I considered, therefore, one of the recent attempts to use science as the arbiter ofde re essences and concluded that such attempts will not, ultimately, solve the traditional problem of circularity. That problem remains, arising in different forms to thwart different attempts to account forde re generic essences. (shrink)

Is there progress in philosophy? If so, how much? Philosophers have recently argued for a wide range of answers to these questions, from the view that there is no progress whatsoever to the view that philosophy has provided answers to all the big philosophical questions. However, these views are difficult to compare and evaluate, because they rest on very different assumptions about the conditions under which philosophy would make progress. This paper looks to the comparatively mature debate about scientific progress (...) for inspiration on how to formulate four distinct accounts of philosophical progress, in terms of truthlikeness, problem-solving, knowledge, and understanding. Equally importantly, the paper outlines a common framework for how to understand and evaluate these accounts. We distill a series of lessons from this exercise, to help pave the way for a more fruitful discussion about philosophical progress in the future. (shrink)