Minimal theory of mind is presented in the theory of mind literature as a middle ground between full-blown ToM and mere behavior-reading. Minimal ToM seems to be a useful construct for studying and understanding the minds of nonhuman animals and infants. However, providing an account of minimal ToM on which minimal mindreading is significantly less demanding than full-blown mindreading yet more than just a behavior-reading process is a challenge. In this paper, I argue that to address (...) this challenge, we need to depart from the traditional framework of mindreading in more radical ways than offered by current minimal theory of mind accounts. First, I explain the traditional view of mindreading on which mental state attribution is treated as essential for mindreading and analyze the general respects in which it makes mindreading demanding for the mindreader, such as requiring the mindreader to have concepts of mental states, engage in inferential reasoning processes involving mental states, and form meta-representations. Then I discuss and critically evaluate two accounts of minimal ToM and argue that these accounts either do not depart sufficiently from the demanding requirements of traditional mindreading or risk becoming re-descriptions of behavior-reading accounts. Finally, I present an alternative Millikanian account of minimal ToM that avoids this risk while departing more radically from the traditional view of mindreading by providing a way for minimal mindreaders to represent the mental states of others and respond to them without engaging in conceptual mental state attribution. (shrink)

We extend our general approach to characterizing information to multi-agent systems. In particular, we provide a formal description of an agent's knowledge containing exactly the information conveyed by some (honest) formula φ. Only knowing is important for dynamic agent systems in two ways. First of all, one wants to compare different states of knowledge of an agent and, secondly, for agent a's decisions, it may be relevant that (he knows that) agent b does not know more than φ. There are (...) three ways to study the question whether a formula φ can be interpreted as minimal information. The first method is semantic and inspects 'minimal' models for φ (with respect to some information order ≤ on states). The second one is syntactic and searches for stable expansions, minimal with respect to some language $\scr{L}^{\ast}$ . The third method is a deductive test, known as the disjunction property. We present a condition under which the three methods are equivalent. Then, we show how to construct the order ≤ by collecting 'layered orders'. Focusing on the multi-agent case we identify languages $\scr{L}^{\ast}$ for various orders ≤, and show how they yield different notions of honesty for different multi-modal systems. We then provide several tools for studying honesty types and illustrate their usefulness on a number of examples, for three modal systems of particular interest. Finally, we relate the different notions of minimal knowledge, and describe possible patterns of honesty for these systems. (shrink)

We extend our general approach to characterizing information to multi-agent systems. In particular, we provide a formal description of an agent''s knowledge containing exactly the information conveyed by some (honest) formula . Only knowing is important for dynamic agent systems in two ways. First of all, one wants to compare different states of knowledge of an agent and, secondly, for agent a''s decisions, it may be relevant that (he knows that) agent b does not know more than . There are (...) three ways to study the question whether a formula can be interpreted as minimal information. The first method is semantic and inspects minimal models for (with respect to some information order on states). The second one is syntactic and searches for stable expansions, minimal with respect to some language *. The third method is a deductive test, known as the disjunction property. We present a condition under which the three methods are equivalent. Then, we show how to construct the order by collecting layered orders. Focusing on the multi-agent case we identify languages * for various orders , and show how they yield different notions of honesty for different multi-modal systems. We then provide several tools for studying honesty types and illustrate their usefulness on a number of examples, for three modal systems of particular interest. Finally, we relate the different notions of minimal knowledge, and describe possible patterns of honesty for these systems. (shrink)

Should models of consciousness be detailed _mechanistic_ models of particular types of systems, or should they be _minimal_ models that abstract away from the underlying mechanistic details and provide generalisations? Detailed mechanistic models may afford a complete and precise account of consciousness in human beings and other, physiologically similar mammals. But they do not provide a good model of consciousness in other animals, such as non-vertebrates, let alone artificial systems. Minimal models can be applicable to a wide range of (...) different conscious systems. But do they provide genuine explanations that are autonomous from explanations by detailed mechanistic models? This paper provides a taxonomy of minimal models and measures of consciousness, clarifies their relation to detailed mechanistic models, and highlights benefits of different minimalist approaches to consciousness. (shrink)

Minimal Semantics asks what a theory of literal linguistic meaning is for - if you were to be given a working theory of meaning for a language right now, what would you be able to do with it? Emma Borg sets out to defend a formal approach to semantic theorising from a relatively new type of opponent - advocates of what she call 'dual pragmatics'. According to dual pragmatists, rich pragmatic processes play two distinct roles in linguistic comprehension: as (...) well as operating in a post-semantic capacity to determine the implicatures of an utterance, they also operate prior to the determination of truth-conditional content for a sentence. That is to say, they have an integral role to play within what is usually thought of as the semantic realm. Borg believes dual pragmatic accounts constitute the strongest contemporary challenge to standard formal approaches to semantics since they challenge the formal theorist to show not merely that there is some role for formal processes on route to determination of semantic content, but that such processes are sufficient for determining content. Minimal Semantics provides a detailed examination of this school of thought, introducing readers who are unfamiliar with the topic to key ideas like relevance theory and contextualism, and looking in detail at where these accounts diverge from the formal approach. Borg's defence of formal semantics has two main parts: first, she argues that the formal approach is most naturally compatible with an important and well-grounded psychological theory, namely the Fodorian modular picture of the mind. Then she argues that the main arguments adduced by dual pragmatists against formal semantics - concerning apparent contextual intrusions into semantic content - can in fact be countered by a formal theory. The defence holds, however, only if we are sensitive to the proper conditions of success for a semantic theory. Specifically, we should reject a range of onerous constraints on semantic theorizing (e.g., that it answer epistemic or metaphysical questions, or that it explain our communicative skills) and instead adopt a quite minimal picture of semantics. (shrink)

BackgroundRandomized Controlled Trials are the gold standard for assessing whether an intervention is effective; however, they require large sample sizes in order to detect small effects. For rare or complex populations, we advocate a case series approach as a more realistic and useful first step for intervention evaluation. We consider the importance of randomization to such designs, and advocate for the use of Randomization Tests and Between Case Effect Sizes to provide a robust and statistically powerful evaluation of outcomes. In (...) this tutorial, we describe the method, procedures, and analysis code necessary to conduct robust single case series, using an empirical example with minimally verbal autistic children.MethodWe applied a pre-registered randomized baseline design with between-case effect size to a case series, to test the efficacy of a novel, parent-mediated, app-based speech production intervention for minimally verbal autistic children. Parent-rated probe scores were used to densely sample performance accuracy over time.ResultsParents were able to reliably code their children’s speech productions using BabbleBooster. A non-significant Randomization Test and small Between-Case Effect Size, suggested there was no evidence that BabbleBooster improved speech production in minimally verbal autistic children, relative to baseline scores, during this brief period of intervention.ConclusionThe current analyses exemplify a more robust approach to examining treatment effects in rare or complex populations, where RCT may be difficult or premature to implement. To facilitate adoption of this method by researchers and practitioners, we provide analysis code that can be adapted using open source R packages. Future studies could use this case series design to evaluate interventions aiming to improve speech and language outcomes for minimally verbal autistic children, and other heterogeneous and hard to reach populations. (shrink)

Traditional approaches to animal ethics commonly emerge from one of two influential ethical theories: Regan’s deontology (The case for animal rights. University of California, Berkeley, 1983) and Singer’s preference utilitarianism (Animal liberation. Avon Books, New York, 1975). I argue that both of the theories are unsuccessful at providing adequate protection for animals because they are unable to satisfy the three conditions of a minimally decent theory of animal protection. While Singer’s theory is overly permissive, Regan’s theory is too restrictive. (...) I argue that a minimally decent animal ethic requires a framework that allows for context-dependent considerations of our complex human–animal relationship in a non-ideal world. A plausible theory which exemplifies this new ethic is virtue ethics. (shrink)

Batterman and Rice ([2014]) argue that minimal models possess explanatory power that cannot be captured by what they call ‘common features’ approaches to explanation. Minimal models are explanatory, according to Batterman and Rice, not in virtue of accurately representing relevant features, but in virtue of answering three questions that provide a ‘story about why large classes of features are irrelevant to the explanandum phenomenon’ ([2014], p. 356). In this article, I argue, first, that a method (the renormalization (...) group) they propose to answer the three questions cannot answer them, at least not by itself. Second, I argue that answers to the three questions are unnecessary to account for the explanatoriness of their minimal models. Finally, I argue that a common features account, what I call the ‘generalized ontic conception of explanation’, can capture the explanatoriness of minimal models. (shrink)

In this paper I shall deal with the question of whether a State-granted minimal income (which is not the same as a basic income) is a necessary condition in order for individuals (1) to attain a basic level of autonomy; and (2) to develop capabilities that allow them to improve the quality of their life. As a theoretical basis for my analysis I shall use Honneth’s theory of recognition, Sen’s capability approach (also in the version offered by Nussbaum), and (...) Simmel’s concept of independency as developed in his Philosophy of Money. A minimal income aims at guaranteeing not only the survival of the extremely poor (this could also be achieved by emergency programs), but also – in cooperation with other State programs such as education, medical and legal assistance etc – at enabling these individuals to be more independent from their social environment, where dependence often constitutes a strong obstacle to the development of their autonomy. The social and political inclusion of millions of people, both in threshold countries and in poor countries, depends upon the existence of such programs. (shrink)

In the paper I discuss the theory developed by Douglas D. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, who try to find new grounds for defending rights. Drawing upon Aristotle and his virtue ethics, they do not, however, employ the Aristotelian point of view, but present the neo-Aristotelian approach. They claim that rights should be conceived of not as normative but as metanormative principles. Rasmussen and Den Uyl argue that the fundamental right to liberty should be protected by the state. The (...) only role of the state is to be limited to the protection of right to liberty and in turn to the protection of self-directness. The authors defend the right to liberty on moral grounds. It seems, however, that the minimal state approach and moralistic defense of self-directness cannot be combined. (shrink)

Cho and Martinez-Martin provide a wide-ranging analysis of what they label “digital simulacra”—which are in essence data-driven AI-based simulation models such as digital twins or models used for i...

In this essay I suggest that we view design principles in systems biology as minimal models, for a design principle usually exhibits universal behaviors that are common to a whole range of heterogeneous (living and nonliving) systems with different underlying mechanisms. A well-known design principle in systems biology, integral feedback control, is discussed, showing that it satisfies all the conditions for a model to be a minimal model. This approach has significant philosophical implications: it not only accounts for (...) how design principles explain, but also helps clarify one dispute over design principles, e.g., whether design principles provide mechanistic explanations or a distinct kind of explanations called design explanations. (shrink)

The proposal that probabilistic inference and unconscious hypothesis testing are central to information processing in the brain has been steadily gaining ground in cognitive neuroscience and associated fields. One popular version of this proposal is the new theoretical framework of predictive processing or prediction error minimization, which couples unconscious hypothesis testing with the idea of ‘active inference’ and claims to offer a unified account of perception and action. Here we will consider one outstanding issue that still looms large at the (...) core of the PEM framework: the lack of a clear criterion for distinguishing conscious states from unconscious ones. In order to fulfill the promise of becoming a unifying framework for describing and modeling cognition, PEM needs to be able to differentiate between conscious and unconscious mental states or processes. We will argue that one currently popular view, that the contents of conscious experience are determined by the ‘winning hypothesis’, falls short of fully accounting for conscious experience. It ignores the possibility that some states of a system can control that system’s behavior even though they are apparently not conscious. What follows from this is that the ‘winning hypothesis’ view does not provide a complete account of the difference between conscious and unconscious states in the probabilistic brain. We show how this problem for the received view can be resolved by augmenting PEM with Daniel Dennett’s multiple drafts model of consciousness. This move is warranted by the similar roles that attention and internal competition play in both the PEM framework and the multiple drafts model. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Kaplan (Synthese 183:339–373, 2011) takes up the task of extending Craver’s (Explaining the brain, 2007) mechanistic account of explanation in neuroscience to the new territory of computational neuroscience. He presents the model to mechanism mapping (3M) criterion as a condition for a model’s explanatory adequacy. This mechanistic approach is intended to replace earlier accounts which posited a level of computational analysis conceived as distinct and autonomous from underlying mechanistic details. In this paper I discuss work in (...) computational neuroscience that creates difficulties for the mechanist project. Carandini and Heeger (Nat Rev Neurosci 13:51–62, 2012) propose that many neural response properties can be understood in terms of canonical neural computations. These are “standard computational modules that apply the same fundamental operations in a variety of contexts.” Importantly, these computations can have numerous biophysical realisations, and so straightforward examination of the mechanisms underlying these computations carries little explanatory weight. Through a comparison between this modelling approach and minimal models in other branches of science, I argue that computational neuroscience frequently employs a distinct explanatory style, namely, efficient coding explanation. Such explanations cannot be assimilated into the mechanistic framework but do bear interesting similarities with evolutionary and optimality explanations elsewhere in biology. (shrink)

Human and non-human animals are social beings, both have social interactions. The ability to anticipate behavior of others is a fundamental requirement of social interactions. However, there are several ways of how agents can succeed in this. Two modes of anticipation, namely mindreading and behavior-reading, shape the animal mindreading debate. As a matter of fact, no position has yet convincingly ruled out the other. This paper suggests a strategy of how to argue for a mentalistic interpretation as opposed to a (...) behavioral interpretation. The first step suggests considering a pluralistic approach in order to allow for shortcomings such as not having a natural language. Second, a critical examination of the principle called Morgan’s Canon will show that this principle cannot be used as a final argument to rule out mentalistic approaches. Finally, the author argues that the setting of current experiments is responsible for the indistinguishability of mindreading versus behavior-reading and she suggests alternative experimental designs. (shrink)

Hüttemann’s stance that science should be taken seriously as a source for our metaphysics is what drives the primary aim of his book, namely, to offer a minimal approach thereto for scientific practice. To accomplish this, he maintains a thorough, yet constrained focus on methods such as prediction, explanation, and manipulation to account for their ability to accurately explain the structure of reality. Hüttemann’s undertaking resists analysis of the content of physical theories to advance a metaphysics that avoids postulating (...) anything explanatorily irrelevant to its structure. (shrink)

When research poses risks to non‐participant bystanders, it is not always practicable to obtain their consent. One approach to assessing how much research risk may be imposed on nonconsenting bystanders is to examine analogous circumstances, including risk thresholds deemed acceptable for nonconsenting research participants and for nonconsensual risks imposed outside the research setting. For nonconsenting participants, US research regulations typically limit risks to those deemed to be “minimal.” Outside the research context, US tort law tolerates a more flexible “reasonable” (...) risk threshold. This article advances a preliminary case that nonconsenting participants and nonconsenting bystanders exposed to similar research risks may be entitled to the same level of protection, but that risks generated by research may not be special in kind. Thus, limiting research risks to those that are “reasonable,” rather than demanding that they be held to the “minimal” standard, may be the best approach for both nonconsenting participants and nonconsenting bystanders. Further work is needed to establish whether the descriptive standards used to support the analogies relied on here are normatively justifiable, as well as the extent to which the minimal risk standard and the reasonable risk standard would lead to meaningfully different outcomes in practice. (shrink)

This chapter seeks to recover an approach to consciousness from a general theory of brain function, namely the prediction error minimization theory. The way this theory applies to mental and developmental disorder demonstrates its relevance to consciousness. The resulting view is discussed in relation to a contemporary theory of consciousness, namely the idea that conscious perception depends on Bayesian metacognition; this theory is also supported by considerations of psychopathology. This Bayesian theory is first disconnected from the higher-order thought theory, and (...) then, via a prediction error conception of action, connected instead to the global neuronal workspace theory. Considerations of mental and developmental disorder therefore show that a very general theory of brain function is relevant to explaining the structure of conscious perception; furthermore, this theory can subsume and unify two contemporary approaches to consciousness, in a move that seeks to elucidate the fundamental mechanism for selection of representational content into consciousness. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is the recent revival of interest in structuralist approaches to science and, in particular, the structural realist position in philosophy of science . The challenge facing scientific structuralists is three-fold: i) to characterize scientific theories in ‘structural’ terms, and to use this characterization ii) to establish a theory-world connection (including an explanation of applicability) and iii) to address the relationship of ‘structural continuity’ between predecessor and successor theories. Our aim is to appeal to the (...) notion of shared structure between models to reconsider all of these challenges, and, in so doing, to classify the varieties of scientific structuralism and to offer a ‘minimal’ construal that is best viewed from a methodological stance. (shrink)

Creativity has received, and continues to receive, comparatively little analysis in philosophy and the brain and behavioural sciences. This is in spite of the importance of creative thought and action, and the many and varied resources of theories of mind. Here an alternative approach to analyzing creativity is suggested: start from the bottom up with minimally creative thought. Minimally creative thought depends non-accidentally upon agency, is novel relative to the acting agent, and could not have been tokened before the time (...) it is in fact tokened, relative to the agent in question. Thoughts that meet these three conditions—agency, psychological novelty, and modal—are what may be called cognitive breakthroughs. Even if such breakthroughs are not necessary to or definitive of richer creativity, they are indeed central to much of creativity. The minimal analysis provides a more workable explanandum for theories of creativity of varied motivation and method. (shrink)

Agents know some but not all logical consequences of what they know. Agents seem to be neither logically omniscient nor logically incompetent. Yet finding an intermediate standard of minimal rationality has proven difficult. In this paper, I take suggestions found in the literature (Lewis, 1988; Hawke, Özgün and Berto, 2020; Plebani and Spolaore, 2021) and join the forces of subject matter and impossible worlds approaches to devise a new solution to this quandary. I do so by combining a (...) space of FDE worlds (Berto and Jago, 2019) with a Lewisian (1988) understanding of subject matters as partitions. By doing so, I show how subject matters impose some order in the anarchic space of FDE worlds, while the worlds allow for distinctions between contents which would not otherwise be available. Combining the two approaches, then, brings us closer to the desired closure principles for knowledge of minimally rational agents. (shrink)

The emergence of signaling systems has been observed in numerous experimental and real-world contexts, but there is no consensus on which shared mechanisms underlie such phenomena. A number of explanatory mechanisms have been proposed within several disciplines, all of which have been instantiated as credible working models. However, they are usually framed as being mutually incompatible. Using an exemplar-based framework, we replicate these models in a minimal configuration which allows us to directly compare them. This reveals that the development (...) of optimal signaling is driven by similar mechanisms in each model, which leads us to propose three requirements for the emergence of conventional signaling. These are the creation and transmission of referential information, a systemic bias against ambiguity, and finally some form of information loss. Considering this, we then discuss some implications for theoretical and experimental approaches to the emergence of learned communication. (shrink)

Among the virtues of relationist approaches to Frege’s puzzle is that they put us in a position to outline structural features of the puzzle that were only implicit in earlier work. In particular, they allow us to frame questions about the relation between the explanatory roles of sense and sameness of sense. In this paper, I distinguish a number of positions about that relation which have not been clearly distinguished. This has a few pay-offs. It allows us to shed (...) light on recent controversies about the ‘essential indexical’, and it also allows us to see what’s at stake between relationists and their opponents. When we see what’s at stake, we can see that we have reason to adopt an account of cognitive significance that incorporates elements of both relationist and Fregean approaches. (shrink)

Dynamicism has provided cognitive science with important tools to understand some aspects of “how cognitive agents work” but the issue of “what makes something cognitive” has not been sufficiently addressed yet, and, we argue, the former will never be complete without the later. Behavioristic characterizations of cognitive properties are criticized in favor of an organizational approach focused on the internal dynamic relationships that constitute cognitive systems. A definition of cognition as adaptive-autonomy in the embodied and situated neurodynamic domain is provided: (...) the compensatory regulation of a web of stability dependencies between sensorimotor structures, is created and preserved during a historical/developmental process. We highlight the functional role of emotional embodiment: internal bioregulatory processes coupled to the formation and adaptive regulation of neurodynamic autonomy. Finally, we discuss a “minimally cognitive behavior program” in evolutionary simulation modelling suggesting that much is to be learned from a complementary “minimally cognitive organization program”. (shrink)

The emergence of signaling systems has been observed in numerous experimental and real‐world contexts, but there is no consensus on which (if any) shared mechanisms underlie such phenomena. A number of explanatory mechanisms have been proposed within several disciplines, all of which have been instantiated as credible working models. However, they are usually framed as being mutually incompatible. Using an exemplar‐based framework, we replicate these models in a minimal configuration which allows us to directly compare them. This reveals that (...) the development of optimal signaling is driven by similar mechanisms in each model, which leads us to propose three requirements for the emergence of conventional signaling. These are the creation and transmission of referential information, a systemic bias against ambiguity, and finally some form of information loss. Considering this, we then discuss some implications for theoretical and experimental approaches to the emergence of learned communication. (shrink)

Agents know some but not all logical consequences of what they know. Agents seem to be neither logically omniscient nor logically incompetent. Yet finding an intermediate standard of minimal rationality has proven difficult. In this paper, I take suggestions found in the literature (Lewis, 1988; Hawke, Özgün and Berto, 2020; Plebani and Spolaore, 2021) and join the forces of subject matter and impossible worlds approaches to devise a new solution to this quandary. I do so by combining a (...) space of FDE worlds (Berto and Jago, 2019) with a Lewisian (1988) understanding of subject matters as partitions. By doing so, I show how subject matters impose some order in the anarchic space of FDE worlds, while the worlds allow for distinctions between contents which would not otherwise be available. Combining the two approaches, then, brings us closer to the desired closure principles for knowledge of minimally rational agents. (shrink)

What is the role of explanation in shaping and sustaining religious beliefs, if any? This chapter tackles this question from the perspective of the framework known as the Cognitive Science of Religion. CSR has been generally dismissive of ‘intellectualist’ approaches to religion emphasizing the explanatory role of religious beliefs. Here, I argue, first, that some of the arguments against intellectualism found in the CSR literature are overstated and that some ‘minimally intellectualist’ propositions concerning religion are not only compatible with (...) CSR but are indeed implicit in some of its core, ‘foundational’ theories. Secondly, I look at ultimate explanations of origins, arguing that, with respect to the latter, explanations appealing to the will and actions of minded agents have an intuitive advantage vs. other kinds of explanations, and that, again, this follows from core CSR theories. Gods, I argue, are better regress-blockers than, say, inanimate causes, and this follows from the deeply rooted intuitions about basic ontological kinds which CSR theorizes about. (shrink)

We challenge Gallagher’s distinction between the sense of ownership and the sense of agency as two separable modalities of experience of the minimal self and argue that a careful investigation of the examples provided to promote this distinction in fact reveals that SO and SA are intimately related and modulate each other. We propose a way to differentiate between the various notions of SO and SA that are currently used interchangeably in the debate, and suggest a more gradual reading (...) of the two that allows for various blends of SO and SA. Such an approach not only provides us with a richer phenomenology but also with a more parsimonious view of the minimal self. (shrink)

The secure release of identity attributes is a key enabler for electronic business interactions. Users should have the maximum control possible over the release of their identity attributes and should state under which conditions these attributes can be disclosed. Moreover, users should disclose only the identity attributes that are actually required for the transactions at hand. In this paper we present an approach for the controlled release of identity attributes that addresses such requirements. The approach is based on the integration (...) of trust negotiation and minimal credential disclosure techniques. Trust negotiation supports selective and incremental disclosure of identity attributes, while minimal credential disclosure guarantees that only the attributes necessary to complete the on-line interactions are disclosed. (shrink)

We introduce a realist, unextravagant interpretation of quantum theory that builds on the existing physical structure of the theory and allows experiments to have definite outcomes but leaves the theory’s basic dynamical content essentially intact. Much as classical systems have specific states that evolve along definite trajectories through configuration spaces, the traditional formulation of quantum theory permits assuming that closed quantum systems have specific states that evolve unitarily along definite trajectories through Hilbert spaces, and our interpretation extends this intuitive picture (...) of states and Hilbert-space trajectories to the more realistic case of open quantum systems despite the generic development of entanglement. We provide independent justification for the partial-trace operation for density matrices, reformulate wave-function collapse in terms of an underlying interpolating dynamics, derive the Born rule from deeper principles, resolve several open questions regarding ontological stability and dynamics, address a number of familiar no-go theorems, and argue that our interpretation is ultimately compatible with Lorentz invariance. Along the way, we also investigate a number of unexplored features of quantum theory, including an interesting geometrical structure—which we call subsystem space—that we believe merits further study. We conclude with a summary, a list of criteria for future work on quantum foundations, and further research directions. We include an appendix that briefly reviews the traditional Copenhagen interpretation and the measurement problem of quantum theory, as well as the instrumentalist approach and a collection of foundational theorems not otherwise discussed in the main text. (shrink)

In this paper we study an alternative approach to the concept of abstract logic and to connectives in abstract logics. The notion of abstract logic was introduced by Brown and Suszko —nevertheless, similar concepts have been investigated by various authors. Considering abstract logics as intersection structures we extend several notions to their κ -versions, introduce a hierarchy of κ -prime theories, which is important for our treatment of infinite connectives, and study different concepts of κ -compactness. We are particularly interested (...) in non-topped intersection structures viewed as semi-lattices with a minimal meet-dense subset, i.e., with a minimal generator set. We study a chain condition which is sufficient for a minimal generator set, implies compactness of the logic, and in regular logics is equivalent to compactness of the consequence relation together with the existence of a inconsistent set, where κ is the cofinality of the cardinality of the logic. Some of these results are known in a similar form in the context of closure spaces, we give extensions to intersection structures and to big cardinals presenting new proofs based on set-theoretical tools. The existence of a minimal generator set is crucial for our way to define connectives. Although our method can be extended to further non-classical connectives we concentrate here on intuitionistic and infinite ones. Our approach leads us to the concept of the set of complete theories which is stable under all considered connectives and gives rise to the definition of the topological space of the logic. Topological representations of abstract logics by means of this space remain to be further investigated. (shrink)

Verificationism has been a hallmark of logical empiricism. According to this principle, a sentence is insignificant in a certain sense if its truth value cannot be determined. Although logical empiricists strove for decades to develop an adequate principle of verification, they failed to resolve its problems. This led to a general abandonment of the verificationist project in the early 1960s. In the last 50 years, this view has received tremendously bad press. Today it is mostly regarded as an outdated historical (...) concept. Theories that have evolved since the abandonment of verificationism can, however, help overcome some of its key problems. More specifically, an adequate criterion of significance can be derived from a combination of modern theories of justification and belief revision, along with a formal semantics for counterfactuals. In view of these potential improvements, the abandonment of verificationism appears premature. Half a century following its decline, it might be about time to revisit this disreputable view. The author argues in favor of a weak form of verificationism. This approach could be referred to as minimal verificationism, as it involves a weakening of traditional verificationist principles in various respects while maintaining their core idea. (shrink)

This article aims to propagate Logic Programming as a formal tool to deal with non-monotonic reasoning. In philosophy and linguistics non-monotonic reasoning is modelled using Minimal Models as standard, i.e., by imposing an order (or selection function) on the class of all models and then by defining entailment as only caring about the minimal models of the premises with respect to the order. In this article we investigate the question whether instead of minimal models we should use (...) logic programming to model non-monotonic reasoning. Logic programming is an attractive alternative to a minimal models approach in that it makes concrete predictions in an efficient and transparent way. We study this question by focusing on one particular phenomenon that gives rise to non-monotonic inferences: conditional sentences. (shrink)

In this paper, we set out to develop a theoretical and conceptual framework for the new field of Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience. This framework should be able to integrate insights from several relevant disciplines: theory on embodied cognition, ecological psychology, phenomenology, dynamical systems theory, and neurodynamics. We suggest that the main task of Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience is to investigate the phenomenon of skilled intentionality from the perspective of the self-organization of the brain-body-environment system, while doing justice to the phenomenology (...) of skilled action. In previous work, we have characterized skilled intentionality as the organism's tendency toward an optimal grip on multiple relevant affordances simultaneously. Affordances are possibilities for action provided by the environment. In the first part of this paper, we introduce the notion of skilled intentionality and the phenomenon of responsiveness to a field of relevant affordances. Second, we use Friston's work on neurodynamics, but embed a very minimal version of his Free Energy Principle in the ecological niche of the animal. Thus amended, this principle is helpful for understanding the embeddedness of neurodynamics within the dynamics of the system “brain-body-landscape of affordances.” Next, we show how we can use this adjusted principle to understand the neurodynamics of selective openness to the environment: interacting action-readiness patterns at multiple timescales contribute to the organism's selective openness to relevant affordances. In the final part of the paper, we emphasize the important role of metastable dynamics in both the brain and the brain-body-environment system for adequate affordance-responsiveness. We exemplify our integrative approach by presenting research on the impact of Deep Brain Stimulation on affordance responsiveness of OCD patients. (shrink)

Minimal risk is a central concept in the ethical analysis of research with children. It is defined as the risks “. . . ordinarily encountered in daily life . . . .” But the question arises: who is the referent for minimal risk? Commentators in the research ethics literature often answer this question by endorsing one of two possible interpretations: the uniform interpretation or the relative interpretation of minimal risk. We argue that describing the debate over (...) class='Hi'>minimal risk as a disagreement between the uniform and the relative interpretation impedes progress on the identification of a justifiable referent for minimal risk. There are two main problems with this approach: constructing the debate over minimal risk as a disagreement between a uniform and a relative interpretation misconstrues the main difference between competing interpretations and neither the uniform nor the relative interpretation identifies one unique and consistent group of children as the referent for minimal risk. We conclude that progress on the debate over minimal risk requires that we abandon the uniform and relative interpretations and address the main moral problem at stake: whether healthy children or the subjects of the research should be the referent for minimal risk. (shrink)

Recently, psychological phenomena have been expanded to new domains, crisscrossing boundaries of organizational levels, with the emergence of areas such as social personality and ecosystem learning. In this contribution, we analyze the ascription of an individual-based concept (personality) to the social level. Although justified boundary crossings can boost new approaches and applications, the indiscriminate misuse of concepts refrains the growth of scientific areas. The concept of social personality is based mainly on the detection of repeated group differences across a (...) population, in a direct transposition of personality concepts from the individual to the social level. We show that this direct transposition is problematic for avowing the nonsensical ascription of personality even to simple electronic devices. To go beyond a metaphoric use of social personality, we apply the organizational approach to a review of social insect communication networks. Our conceptual analysis shows that socially self-organized systems, such as isolated ant trails and bee’s recruitment groups, are too simple to have social personality. The situation is more nuanced when measuring the collective choice between nest sites or foraging patches: some species show positive and negative feedbacks between two or more self-organized social structures so that these co-dependent structures are inter-related by second-order, social information systems, complying with a formal requirement for having social personality: the social closure of constraints. Other requirements include the decoupling between individual and social dynamics, and the self-regulation of collective decision processes. Social personality results to be sometimes a metaphorical transposition of a psychological concept to a social phenomenon. The application of this organizational approach to cases of learning ecosystems, or evolutionary learning, could help to ground theoretically the ascription of psychological properties to levels of analysis beyond the individual, up to meta-populations or ecological communities. (shrink)

In this work we address the proposition that because it emerges from the contract tradition and so relies upon the assumption of mutual advantage, John Rawls' theory of “Justice as Fairness” cannot accommodate persons with severe mental and/or physical impairments. We respond to this criticism by proposing a revision to Rawls' contracting situation, the Original Position . Specifically, we propose to supplant the traditional understanding of mutual advantage—which we agree does constitute the necessary and sufficient condition for deliberation to come (...) about in the OP, as it stands—with a more modest alternative: a Hobbes-inspired concept that we call minimal mutual advantage. We argue that when this revision is introduced into Justice as Fairness, it reconciles admirably the seeming tension between contractarianism’s insistence on the rational, self-interested actor and the reality of societies in which not all members are capable of meeting a standard of reciprocity understood in terms of productive contributions to the general well-being. In so doing, minimal mutual advantage renders indistinguishable the disabled from the able in the OP, allowing Justice as Fairness to capture successfully problems of disability while leaving intact the more appealing aspects of liberalism that other approaches would dismiss. (shrink)

Enquiries into the possible nature and scope of innate knowledge never proceed in an empirical vaccuum. Instead, such conjectures are informed by a theory concerning probable representational form. Classical approaches to the nativism debate often assume a quasi-linguistic form of knowledge representation and deliniate a space of options accordingly. Recent connectionist theorizing posits a different kind of represenational form, and thus determines a different picture of the space of possible nativisms.

Tracking emotional responses as they unfold has been one of the hallmarks of applied neuroscience and related disciplines, but recent studies suggest that automatic tracking of facial expressions have low validation. In this study, we focused on the direct measurement of facial muscles involved in expressions such as smiling. We used single-channel surface electromyography to evaluate the muscular activity from the Zygomaticus Major face muscle while participants watched music videos. Participants were then tasked with rating each video with regard to (...) their thoughts and responses to each of them, including their judgment of emotional tone, personal preference and rating of whether the video displayed strength and impression. Using a minimal recording setup, we employed three ways to characterize muscular activity associated with spontaneous smiles. The total time spent smiling, the average duration of smiles, and instances of high valence. Our results demonstrate that Valence was the emotional dimension that was most related to the Zygomaticus activity. Here, the ZygoNum had higher discriminatory power than ZygoLen for Valence quantification. An additional investigation using fractal properties of sEMG time series confirmed previous studies of the Facial Action Coding System documenting a smoother contraction of facial muscles for enjoyment smiles. Further analysis using ZygoTrace responses over time to the video events discerned “high valence” stimuli with a 76% accuracy. Additional validation of this approach came against previous findings on valence detection using features derived from a single channel EEG setup. We discuss these results in light of both the recent replication problems of facial expression measures, and in relation to the need for methods to reliably assess emotional responses in more challenging conditions, such as Virtual Reality, in which facial expressions are often covered by the equipment used. (shrink)

This paper defends the idea that phenomenological approaches to self-consciousness can enrich the current analytic philosophy of perception, by showing how phenomenological discussions of minimal self-consciousness can enhance our understanding of the phenomenology of conscious perceptual experiences. As a case study, I investigate the nature of the relationship between naïve realism, a contemporary Anglophone theory of perception, and experiential minimalism (or, the ‘minimal self’ view), a pre-reflective model of self-consciousness originated in the Phenomenological tradition. I argue that (...) naïve realism is not only compatible with, but can be supplemented with experiential minimalism in a novel way. The suggestion is that there are reasons to combine naïve realism and experiential minimalism. My focus here will be on drawing a connection between the notion of minimal self and two core theoretical commitments of naïve realism, relationalism and transparency. (shrink)

Enquiries into the possible nature and scope of innate knowledge never proceed in an empirical vaccuum. Instead, such conjectures are informed by a theory (perhaps only tacitly endorsed) concerning probable representational form. Classical approaches to the nativism debate often assume a quasi-linguistic form of knowledge representation and deliniate a space of options (concerning the nature and extent of innate knowledge) accordingly. Recent connectionist theorizing posits a different kind of represenational form, and thus determines a different picture of the space (...) of possible nativisms. (shrink)

This article examines how minimal genome research mobilizes philosophical concepts such as minimality and essentiality. Following a historical approach the article aims to uncover what function this terminology plays and which problems are raised by them. Specifically, four historical moments are examined, linked to the work of Harold J. Morowitz, Mitsuhiro Itaya, Eugene Koonin and Arcady Mushegian, and J. Craig Venter. What this survey shows is a historical shift away from historical questions about life or descriptive questions about specific (...) organisms towards questions that explore biological possibilities: what are possible forms of minimal genomes, regardless of whether they exist in nature? Moreover, it highlights a fundamental ambiguity at work in minimal genome research between a universality claim and a standardization claim: does a minimal genome refer to the minimal gene set for any organism whatsoever? Or does it refer rather to a gene set that will provide stable, robust and predictable behaviour, suited for biotechnological applications? Two diagnoses are proposed for this ambiguity: a philosophical diagnosis of how minimal genome research either misunderstands the ontology of biological entities or philosophically misarticulates scientific practice. Secondly, a historical diagnosis that suggests that this ambiguity is part of a broader shift towards technoscience. (shrink)