The abstract individual is a model that represents real human beings in moral and political philosophy. It occupies a central role in individualist theories such as political liberalism and mainstream Western medical ethics. This article presents two methodological standards for assessing competing models. Taken together, the standards form an objective yardstick against which different constructions of the abstract individual can be evaluated. Thereby, the article introduces a new level of abstraction, and a new set of normative (...) principles, to individualist moral and political philosophy which facilitates reliable moral judgments between different models of human beings. (shrink)

The abstract individual is a model that represents real human beings in moral and political philosophy. It occupies a central role in individualist theories such as political liberalism and mainstream Western medical ethics. This article presents two methodological standards for assessing competing models. Taken together, the standards form an objective yardstick against which different constructions of the abstract individual can be evaluated. Thereby, the article introduces a new level of abstraction, and a new set of normative (...) principles, to individualist moral and political philosophy which facilitates reliable moral judgments between different models of human beings. (shrink)

The title of this paper may seem to involve a contradiction: my purpose is to show that it does not.Individuals fall into two categories; those which depend for their existence upon the existence of other individuals, and those which do not. In the second category are found such things as shoes, ships, cabbages, kings, and discrete bits of sealing wax. These may be calledindividual substances, and the way in which the existence of a cabbage depends upon water and earth, or (...) in which Descartes says the existence of all things depends upon God, will not be in point here. The individuals of the first category are characterized by a much more obvious kind of dependence. They include the sound of an individual shoe falling on the floor, the sinking of theBismarck, the stupidity of George I, the centre of gravity of a bit of sealing wax. All these are individuals, though they are not individual substances. They are what I shall callabstract individuals, orabstract particulars. (shrink)

I argue that Kant’s Categorical Imperative should be applied to individual maxim tokens rather than abstract maxim types. The article is divided into five sections. In the first, I explain my thesis. In the second, I show that my thesis disagrees with Rawls. In the third, I argue for my thesis on the basis of the wording of the Categorical Imperative and on the basis of considerations about autonomy. In the fourth, I argue for my thesis on the (...) basis of considerations about the ‘ought implies can’ principle. In the fifth, I provide a summary of the main argumentative moves and also explain some of the philosophical advantages of my thesis. (shrink)

This paper looks at the history of the problem of individuation from Plato to Whitehead. Part I takes as its point of departure Reiner Wiehl’s interpretation of the different meanings of “abstract” in the metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead and arrives at a corresponding taxonomy of different ways things can be called concrete. Part II compares the way philosophers in different periods understand the relation between thought and intuition. The view mostly associated with ancient philosophy is that thought and (...) sense-perception target different kinds of objects. The view mostly associated with modern philosophy (although it was introduced by the Stoics) is that thought and sense-perception are different ways of targeting the same objects. These differences have specific consequences for theories of individuation, which are assessed historically in Part III and then applied to Whitehead’s difficult texts in part IV. (shrink)

This study investigated individual differences in the belief bias effect, which is the tendency to accept conclusions because they are believable rather than because they are logically valid. It was observed that the extent of an individual's belief bias effect was unrelated to a number of measures of reasoning competence. Instead, as predicted by mental models theory, it was related to a person's ability to generate alternative representations of premises: the more alternatives a person generated, the less likely (...) they were to show a belief bias effect. In contrast to belief effects, which were predicted by the number of alternatives generated, scores on logical reasoning tasks were predicted by an individual's understanding of the concept of logical necessity. These two mediating variables, ability to generate alternatives and understanding of logical necessity, were themselves predicted by similar variables, such as cognitive motivation and abstract reasoning ability. Our findings strongly support the mental models interpretation of the belief bias effect, and suggest that individual differences in this effect are associated with a specific ability to generate alternatives, rather than with a general logical competence. (shrink)

This paper explores the influence of Søren Kierkegaard upon Paul Feyerabend by examining their common criticisms of totalising accounts of human nature. Both complained that philosophical and scientific theories of human nature which were methodologically committed to objectivity and abstraction failed to capture the richness of human experience. Kierkegaard and Feyerabend argued that philosophy and the science were threatening to become obstacles to human development by imposing abstract theories of human nature and reality which denied the complexities of both. (...) In both cases, this took the form of asserting an ‘existential’ criterion for the assessment of philosophical and scientific theories. Kierkegaard also made remarks upon the inappropriateness of applying natural scientific methods to human beings which Feyerabend later expanded and developed in his criticisms of the inability of the ‘scientific worldview’ to accommodate the values necessary to a flourishing human life. I conclude by noting some differences between Kierkegaard and Feyerabend’s positions and by affirming the value of existential criticisms of scientific knowledge.Keywords: Feyerabend; Kierkegaard; Objectivity;ion; Human nature. (shrink)

This study examined the hypothesis that conditional reasoning involves visual short-term memory resources (Johnson-Laird, 1985). A total of 147 university students were given measures of verbal and visual short-term memory capacity and a series of concrete and abstract conditional reasoning problems. Results indicate that there is a positive correlation between verbal working memory capacity and reasoning with both concrete and abstract premises. A positive correlation was also obtained between visual working memory capacity and reasoning with concrete premises.

Debates about the theological implications of recent research in the cognitive and evolutionary study of religion have tended to focus on the question of theism. The question of whether there is any disagreement about the conceptualization of the individual human being has been largely overlooked. In this article, I argue that evolutionary and cognitive accounts of religion typically depend upon a view of cognition that conceptually isolates the mind from its particular social and physical environmental contexts. By embracing this (...) view of the mind, these accounts also unwittingly embrace an abstract individualist view of individual personhood that Christian theologians have explicitly battled against. Taken as a whole, the field leaves sufficient room for supplementary theories that are compatible with theological accounts of the relational individual, but in practice, no effort has been made to engage, or even to accommodate, any other view of individual personhood. (shrink)

Barsalou's move to a perceptual basis for cognition is welcome. His scheme contrasts with classical logical schemes in many ways, including its implications for the status of individuals. Barsalou deals mainly with perceived individuals, omitting discussion of cognized individuals. It is argued that the individuality of cognized individuals is an abstraction, which conforms in its manner of formation to other cognitive abstractions which Barsalou discusses, such as truth and disjunction.

Open peer commentary on the article “Examining the Role of Re-Presentation in Mathematical Problem Solving: An Application of Ernst von Glasersfeld’s Conceptual Analysis” by Victor V. Cifarelli & Volkan Sevim. Upshot: Cifarelli and Sevim discuss the development of individual students’ abstract conceptual structures while problem solving, using constructs for analysis that are consistent with von Glasersfeld’s radical constructivism: re-presentation and reflective abstraction. This commentary discusses the on-going contributions of reflective abstraction to individual and collective learning.

According to Frege, the introduction of a new sort of abstract object is methodologically sound only if its identity conditions have been satisfactorily explained. Ironically, this ontological restriction has come to be known by Quine's criticism of Frege's intensional semantics, as the precept "No entity without identity." The aim of the paper is to reconstruct Frege's methodology of the introduction of abstract objects in detail, and to defend it against the more restrictive methodology underlying Quine's criticism of the (...) recognition of intensional objects. The main thesis is that Quine's criterion of non-circularity for the satisfactory individuation of abstract objects must be rejected. (shrink)

Two kinds of individuals are distinguished: abstract and concrete. Whereas abstract individuals belong to our conceptual sphere, concrete individuals (i.e. particulars) individuate the world of matter. A subject investigating the external world projects abstract individuals onto concrete ones. The proposal offers a solution to various metaphysical and epistemological puzzles concerned with individuals, e.g., the Ship of Theseus, the Polish Logician, problems with reidentification, or proper names.

In the property listing task (PLT), participants are asked to list properties for a concept (e.g., for the concept dog, “barks,” and “is a pet” may be produced). In conceptual property norming (CPNs) studies, participants are asked to list properties for large sets of concepts. Here, we use a mathematical model of the property listing process to explore two longstanding issues: characterizing the difference between concrete and abstract concepts, and characterizing semantic knowledge in the blind versus sighted population. When (...) we apply our mathematical model to a large CPN reporting properties listed by sighted and blind participants, the model uncovers significant differences between concrete and abstract concepts. Though we also find that blind individuals show many of the same processing differences between abstract and concrete concepts found in sighted individuals, our model shows that those differences are noticeably less pronounced than in sighted individuals. We discuss our results vis‐a‐vis theories attempting to characterize abstract concepts. (shrink)

BackgroundDistorted gambling-related cognitions are tightly related to gambling problems, and are one of the main targets of treatment for disordered gambling, but their etiology remains uncertain. Although folk wisdom and some theoretical approaches have linked them to lower domain-general reasoning abilities, evidence regarding that relationship remains unconvincing.MethodIn the present cross-sectional study, the relationship between probabilistic/abstract reasoning, as measured by the Berlin Numeracy Test, and the Matrices Test, respectively, and the five dimensions of the Gambling-Related Cognitions Scale, was tested in (...) a sample of 77 patients with gambling disorder and 58 individuals without gambling problems.Results and interpretationNeither BNT nor matrices scores were significantly related to gambling-related cognitions, according to frequentist analyses, performed both considering and disregarding group in the models. Correlation Bayesian analyses largely supported the null hypothesis, i.e., the absence of relationships between the measures of interest. This pattern or results reinforces the idea that distorted cognitions do not originate in a general lack of understanding of probability or low fluid intelligence, but probably result from motivated reasoning. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore and defend the idea that musical works are historical individuals. Guy Rohrbaugh (2003) proposes this for works of art in general. Julian Dodd (2007) objects that the whole idea is outré metaphysics, that it is too far beyond the pale to be taken seriously. Their disagreement could be seen as a skirmish in the broader war between revisionists and reactionaries, a conflict about which of metaphysics and art should trump the other when there is a (...) conflict. That dispute is a matter of philosophical methodology as much as it is a dispute about art. I argue that the ontology of works as individuals need not be dunked in that morass. My primary strategy is to show, contra Dodd's accusation, that historical individuals are familiar parts of the world. Although the ontological details are open to debate, it is the standard opinion of biologists is that biological species are historical individuals. So there is no conflict here between fidelity to art and respectable metaphysics. What suits species will fit musical work as well. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Shagrir and Sprevak explore the apparent necessity of representation for the individuation of digits in computational systems.1 1 I will first offer a response to Sprevak’s argument that does not mention Shagrir’s original formulation, which was more complex. I then extend my initial response to cover Shagrir’s argument, thus demonstrating that it is possible to individuate digits in non-representational computing mechanisms. I also consider the implications that the non-representational individuation of digits would have for the broader theory of (...) computing mechanisms. 1 The Received View: No Computation without Representation 2 Computing Mechanisms and Functional Individuation 3 Against Computational Externalism 4 Implications for the Mechanistic Account. (shrink)

The concept of agency is of crucial importance in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, and it is often used as an intuitive and rather uncontroversial term, in contrast to more abstract and theoretically heavy-weighted terms like “intentionality”, “rationality” or “mind”. However, most of the available definitions of agency are either too loose or unspecific to allow for a progressive scientific program. They implicitly and unproblematically assume the features that characterize agents, thus obscuring the full potential and challenge of modeling (...) agency. We identify three conditions that a system must meet in order to be considered as a genuine agent: a) a system must define its own individuality, b) it must be the active source of activity in its environment (interactionalasymmetry) and c) it must regulate this activity in relation to certain norms (normativity). We find that even minimal forms of proto-celular systems can already provide a paradigmatic example of genuine agency. By abstracting away some specific details of minimal models of living agency we define the kind of organization that is capable to meet the required conditions for agency (which is not restricted to living organisms). On this basis, we define agency as an autonomous organization that adaptively regulates its coupling with its environment and contributes to sustaining itself as a consequence. We find that spatiality and temporality are the two fundamental domains in which agency spans at different scales. We conclude by giving an outlook to the road that lies ahead in the pursuit to understand, model and synthesis agents. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Individual responsibility is now very much on the political agenda. Even those who believe that its importance has been exaggerated by the political right — either because the appropriate conditions for assigning responsibility to individuals are rarely satisfied or because not enough is done to protect individuals from the more harmful consequences of their past choices and gambles — accept that individual responsibility is at least one of the values against which a society and its institutions (...) ought to be evaluated. One might be forgiven for assuming, then, that we know exactly why individual responsibility is important. The truth is otherwise. Surprisingly little philosophical work has been undertaken to analyse and separate out the different rationales that might be in play. Several possible reasons are examined here including: utility, the social bases of self‐respect, autonomy, human flourishing and fairness. However, once we adopt a pluralistic view of the value of individual responsibility we open up the possibility of value conflict, which conflict can make it harder to arrive at definitive prescriptions about which social policies best advance our concerns for individual responsibility. It is nevertheless possible to draw at least some conclusions about which policies we should favour. One important conclusion is that sometimes it is better not to hold individuals responsible for their past choices by denying them aid now, so that they might be better able to assume individual responsibility at a later date. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: How Kant Answers Hegel's Formalism Charge Basic Principles versus Particular Duties: Kant and Rawls What Is My Obligation to Reduce Poverty? Social Contexts Specify the Content of Maxims Herman's Rules of Moral Salience The Humanity of Others Is Not Simply Given Developing Moral Judgment: The Case of Kant Himself The Return of Hegel.

Contemporary theological anthropology is now almost united in its opposition toward concepts of the abstract individual. Instead there is a strong preference for concrete concepts, which locate individual human being in historically and socioculturally contingent contexts. In this paper I identify, and discuss in detail, three key themes that structure recent theological opposition to abstract concepts of the individual: (1) the idea that individual human beings are constituted in part by their relations with their (...) environments, with other human beings, and with God; (2) the idea that individual human beings are unique entities; (3) the idea that individual human beings cannot be conceptualized in atemporal terms. Subsequently, I seek to demonstrate that theories of embodied cognition offer broad, if not unconditional, support for the concept of the concrete individual. As such, I suggest, theories of embodied cognition provide a valuable resource for dialogue between contemporary science and theological anthropology. (shrink)

My aim in this dissertation is to challenge Chad Hansen's mereological interpretation of ancient Chinese philosophy by providing my own interpretation based on theories of lei. Hansen's mereological interpretation is composed of two radical claims: One is to say that since ancient Chinese philosophy is dominated by nominalism, we do not have to introduce any abstract entities in interpreting ancient Chinese philosophy. The other is to say that Chinese nominalism is mereological. ;Against Hansen's first claim, I argue that since (...) nominalism does not always go along with the non-committment of abstract entities and ancient Chinese philosophy show the committment to abstract entities despite its nominalistic trend, we need to introduce abstract entities in our interpretation of ancient Chinese philosophy. Against Hansen's second claim, I argue that Chinese nominalism is based on theories of lei instead of mereology. Chinese lei-based nominalism is more like traditional forms of Western nominalism in that it is the scheme of individuals/similarities-among-individuals and that it emphasizes the conventional characteristics of determining similarity. Nevertheless, this dissertation prefers the Chinese term "lei" instead of the Western term "similarity" because the former better discloses Chinese contexts without unnecessary Western imposition. ;My lei-based interpretation is suggested with regard to three realms. These realms are linguistic features of Classical Chinese, theories of language in ancient China, and philosophical doctrines in ancient China. ;A close examination on linguistic features of Classical Chinese shows that these features simply disclose the conventional characteristics of Chinese characters, the pragmatics--priority conception of language, and individual/similarity semantical scheme, not the mereological scheme. In my discussion of theories of language in ancient China, I claim that besides Hansen's four Chinese assumptions about language , we also should emphasize the relativity of language, the articulatory nature of language, and the semantic role of lei as typical Chinese assumptions about language. All of these Chinese assumptions show why lei came to play a central role in Chinese theories of language. Lastly, I examine not only Hansen's favorite example which he uses to support his interpretation: Gongsun Long's white horse paradox, but also Mencian theory of human nature and Neo-Mohist theory of disputation, in order to show that lei was a theory of classification extensively discussed among ancient Chinese philosophers. (shrink)

abstract Individuals tend to change their behaviour as a response to insurance. Such behavioural responses to insurance are commonly seen as ethically and morally problematic. This is especially true of effects on behaviour from social insurance. These effects have been seen as an ethical problem, associated with irresponsibility, fraud and an immoral character. This article discusses the relevance of four different types of reasons for claims that behavioural responses to social insurance are immoral. These reasons are independent reasons con‐tract (...) related reasons reasons related to fraud and reasons related to justice. I argue that reasons related to justice are most relevant, but that this type of reason does not render the individual morally blameworthy. Hence, insofar as behavioural responses to social insurance are an ethical problem it is a problem that concerns the institution, i.e. what incentives social insurance exhibits, rather than the individual, i.e. the morality of the individual responding to it. Insofar as behavioural responses to social insurance are an ethical problem it is a problem for political philosophy rather than individual ethics. (shrink)

abstract Individuals tend to change their behaviour as a response to insurance. Such behavioural responses to insurance are commonly seen as ethically and morally problematic. This is especially true of effects on behaviour from social insurance. These effects have been seen as an ethical problem, associated with irresponsibility, fraud and an immoral character. This article discusses the relevance of four different types of reasons for claims that behavioural responses to social insurance are immoral. These reasons are (1) independent reasons (...) (2) con‐tract related reasons (3) reasons related to fraud and (4) reasons related to justice. I argue that reasons related to justice are most relevant, but that this type of reason does not render the individual morally blameworthy. Hence, insofar as behavioural responses to social insurance are an ethical problem it is a problem that concerns the institution, i.e. what incentives social insurance exhibits, rather than the individual, i.e. the morality of the individual responding to it. Insofar as behavioural responses to social insurance are an ethical problem it is a problem for political philosophy rather than individual ethics. (shrink)

Abstract:This study examined the relationship between the individual difference variables of personal moral philosophy, locus of control, Machiavellianism, and just world beliefs and ethical judgments and behavioral intentions. A sample of 602 marketing practitioners participated in the study. Structural equation modeling was used to test hypothesized relationships. The results either fully or partially supported hypothesized direct effects for idealism, relativism, and Machiavellianism. Findings also suggested that Machiavellianism mediated the relationship between individual difference variables and ethical judgments/behavioral intentions.

Feminists, critical race scholars, and other social‐justice theorists sometimes object to “abstraction” in liberal normative theory. Arguing that oppression affects individual agents in powerful yet subtle ways, they contend that allegedly abstract theories often reinforce oppressive power structures. Here I critically examine and ultimately reject Onora O'Neill's “abstraction without idealization” as a solution to this problem. Because O'Neill defines abstraction as simply the “bracketing of certain predicates,” her methodology fails to guide decisions about what to bracket and what (...) to include in the theory. Moreover, it may not be possible to abstract without also relying on some particular ideals. While abstraction is unavoidable, I conclude that it must be employed with greater attention to sociopolitical hierarchies and by using ideals that do not collude with structures of oppression. I discuss the work of Susan Babbitt and Elizabeth Anderson as examples of how nonoppressive ideals might be incorporated into normative theory. (shrink)

The Abstract Conceptual Feature (ACF) framework predicts that word meaning is represented within a high‐dimensional semantic space bounded by weighted contributions of perceptual, affective, and encyclopedic information. The ACF, like latent semantic analysis, is amenable to distance metrics between any two words. We applied predictions of the ACF framework to abstract words using eyetracking via an adaptation of the classical “visual word paradigm” (VWP). Healthy adults (n = 20) selected the lexical item most related to a probe word (...) in a 4‐item written word array comprising the target and three distractors. The relation between the probe and each of the four words was determined using the semantic distance metrics derived from ACF ratings. Eye movement data indicated that the word that was most semantically related to the probe received more and longer fixations relative to distractors. Importantly, in sets where participants did not provide an overt behavioral response, the fixation rates were nonetheless significantly higher for targets than distractors, closely resembling trials where an expected response was given. Furthermore, ACF ratings which are based on individual words predicted eye fixation metrics of probe‐target similarity at least as well as latent semantic analysis ratings which are based on word co‐occurrence. The results provide further validation of Euclidean distance metrics derived from ACF ratings as a measure of one facet of the semantic relatedness of abstract words and suggest that they represent a reasonable approximation of the organization of abstract conceptual space. The data are also compatible with the broad notion that multiple sources of information (not restricted to sensorimotor and emotion information) shape the organization of abstract concepts. While the adapted “VWP” is potentially a more metacognitive task than the classical visual world paradigm, we argue that it offers potential utility for studying abstract word comprehension. (shrink)

We focus on the theory of abstraction proposed by the target article. We suggest that abstraction varies at different levels of learning, cognitive development, or cognitive ability. We argue that this theory does not specify how abstraction is done at each of these levels. Because of these weaknesses, the theory cannot explicate how individuals differ in mental time travel at different phases of life or different levels of cognitive ability.

Within theoretical and empirical enquiries, many different meanings associated with consciousness have appeared, leaving the term itself quite vague. This makes formulating an abstract and unifying version of the concept of consciousness – the main aim of this article –into an urgent theoretical imperative. It is argued that consciousness, characterized as dually accessible (cognized from the inside and the outside), hierarchically referential (semantically ordered), bodily determined (embedded in the working structures of an organism or conscious system), and useful in (...) action (pragmatically functional), is a graded rather than an all-or-none phenomenon. A gradational approach, however, despite its explanatory advantages, can lead to some counterintuitive consequences and theoretical problems. In most such conceptions consciousness is extended globally (attached to primitive organisms or artificial systems), but also locally (connected to certain lower-level neuronal and bodily processes). For example, according to information integration theory (as introduced recently by Tononi and Koch, 2014), even such simple artificial systems as photodiodes possess miniscule amounts of consciousness. The major challenge for this article, then, is to establish reasonable, empirically justified constraints on how extended the range of a graded consciousness could be. It is argued that conscious systems are limited globally by the ability to individuate information (where individuated information is understood as evolutionarily embedded, socially altered, and private), whereas local limitations should be determined on the basis of a hypothesis about the action-oriented nature of the processes that select states of consciousness. Using these constraints, an abstract concept of consciousness is arrived at, hopefully contributing to a more unified state of play within consciousness studies itself. (shrink)

abstract This paper examines, from a philosophical point of view, the ethics of the role of the family and the deceased in decisions about organ retrieval. The paper asks: Who, out of the individual and the family, should have the ultimate power to donate or withhold organs? On the side of respecting the wishes of the deceased individual, the paper considers and rejects arguments by analogy with bequest and from posthumous bodily integrity. It develops an argument for (...) posthumous autonomy based on the liberal idea of self‐development and argues that this establishes a right of veto over donation. It claims, however, that whether the family's power to veto would conflict with posthumous autonomy rights depends on how it comes about. On the side of respecting the family's wishes, the paper first considers an argument from family distress. This supports a contingent, non‐rights‐based reason for the family's power that is trumped by the deceased's rights. It then outlines and criticises an argument based on family autonomy. The conclusion is that the individual has the right to veto the family's wish to donate and that, while the family has no right to veto the individual's wishes to donate, it can legitimately acquire this power and has done so in practice. (shrink)

I examine a major objection to the mechanistic view of concrete computation, stemming from an apparent tension between the abstract nature of computational explanation and the tenets of the mechanistic framework: while computational explanation is medium-independent, the mechanistic framework insists on the importance of providing some degree of structural detail about the systems target of the explanation. I show that a common reply to the objection, i.e. that mechanistic explanation of computational systems involves only weak structural constraints, is not (...) enough to save the standard mechanistic view of computation—it trivialises the appeal to mechanism, and thus makes the account collapse into a purely functional view. I claim, however, that the objection can be put to rest once the account is appropriately amended: computational individuation is indeed functional, while mechanistic explanation plays a role in accounting for computational implementation. Since individuation and implementation are crucial elements in a satisfying account of computation in physical systems, mechanism keeps its central importance in the theory of concrete computation. Finally, I argue that my version of the mechanistic view helps to provide a convincing reply to a powerful objection against non-semantic theories of concrete computation: the argument from the multiplicity of computations. (shrink)

This essay introduces the concept of deictic abstraction , taking as a point of departure Husserl’s prototypical but insufficient description of the act of ideation in which a shade of color comes to givenness as an ideal object, i.e., a non-individual or abstract object, on the basis of a perceived individual object. This concept comprises not only color-ideation and ideations of universalities of the sensuous sphere , but all acts founded in perceptions in which ideal objects are (...) directly referred to by means of demonstrative expressions . This allows various types of deictic ideations or abstractions, corresponding to the degree of universality and the kind of ideal object concerned, to be brought to light through the analysis of particular cases of everyday acts of deictic abstraction, including deictic abstractions of predicative universals of the lowest level of universality ; deictic abstractions of non-predicative universals, especially of universal ways of doing something ; and deictic abstractions of individual styles of doing something . Deictic abstractions not only turn out to be constitutive for the formation of perceptual concepts of the lower and lowest levels, but also prove to be foundational for all kinds of learning in which schemata of actions are acquired from a model. (shrink)

Fitch's basic logic is an untyped illative combinatory logic with unrestricted principles of abstraction effecting a type collapse between properties (or concepts) and individual elements of an abstract syntax. Fitch does not work axiomatically and the abstraction operation is not a primitive feature of the inductive clauses defining the logic. Fitch's proof that basic logic has unlimited abstraction is not clear and his proof contains a number of errors that have so far gone undetected. This paper corrects these (...) errors and presents a reasonably intuitive proof that Fitch's system K supports an implicit abstraction operation. Some general remarks on the philosophical significance of basic logic, especially with respect to neo-logicism, are offered, and the paper concludes that basic logic models a highly intensional form of logicism. (shrink)

The present study examines the work of a group of medical scientists as they identify interpretative ‘pitfalls’ – recurrent sources of error – in the use of a new radiographic technique, formulate suggestions on how these pitfalls can be avoided and communicate their findings in the form of a scientific publication. The analysis focuses on a session in which previously diagnosed cases are discussed, and demonstrates the ways in which a certain source of diagnostic error gradually emerges as a taken-for-granted (...) in the interaction. An increased sense of recognition, recurrence and typicality is discernible in the treatment of the cases. Talk characterized by expansions and elaborations, displays of understanding in the form of reformulations, understanding checks, and so on, leave room for brief typifications and reifications of interpretative difficulties in characteristics of the imaging technique. Topical treatment of perception and interpretation, as well as embodied engagement, become decreasingly salient. It is argued that the abstracted formulations in the published text rely on the case-by-case working up of generality from particularity; from individualized accounts of why ‘I’ interpreted the image in a certain way to proffered generalizations achieved through articulated perceptions of a generalized ‘one’. If these proffers are ratified, a potential ground is established for the consensual formulation of a pitfall. The formulation of novel instructions is consequently made relevant, projecting a re-instructed diagnostic practice. (shrink)

One determining characteristic of contemporary sociopolitical systems is their power over increasingly large and diverse populations. This raises questions about power relations between heterogeneous individuals and increasingly dominant and homogenizing system objectives. This article crosses epistemic boundaries by integrating computer engineering and a historicalphilosophical approach making the general organization of individuals within large-scale systems and corresponding individual homogenization intelligible. From a versatile archeological-genealogical perspective, an analysis of computer and social architectures is conducted that reinterprets Foucault’s disciplines and political anatomy (...) to establish the notion of politics for a purely technical system. This permits an understanding of system organization as modern technology with application to technical and social systems alike. Connecting to Heidegger’s notions of the enframing (Gestell) and a more primal truth (anfänglicheren Wahrheit), the recognition of politics in differently developing systems then challenges the immutability of contemporary organization. Following this critique of modernity and within the conceptualization of system organization, Derrida’s democracy to come (à venir) is then reformulated more abstractly as organizations to come. Through the integration of the discussed concepts, the framework of Large-Scale Systems Composed of Homogeneous Individuals (LSSCHI) is proposed, problematizing the relationships between individuals, structure, activity, and power within large-scale systems. The LSSCHI framework highlights the conflict of homogenizing system-level objectives and individual heterogeneity, and outlines power relations and mechanisms of control shared across different social and technical systems. (shrink)

The book's aim is to give a working representation of what metaphysics is today. The historical contributions reveal the roots of metaphysical themes and how today's methods are linked to their Aristotelian and Leibnizian past. The volume also touches on the relationships between ontological and linguistic analysis, the questions of realism and ontological commitment, the nature of abstract objects, the existential meaning of particular quantification, the primitiveness of identity, the question of epistemic versus ontological vagueness, the necessity of origin, (...) the nature of natural necessity, the possibility of intermittent existence, the notion of a temporal part and its place in an account of persistence, the question of identity and change across time and possible worlds, and many more. Readership: A toolbox for any researcher in metaphysics and an essential source for any PhD student with ontological interests. (shrink)

TheConceptual Feature framework predicts that word meaning is represented within a high-dimensional semantic space bounded by weighted contributions of perceptual, affective, and encyclopedic information. The ACF, like latent semantic analysis, is amenable to distance metrics between any two words. We applied predictions of the ACF framework to abstract words using eyetracking via an adaptation of the classical “visual word paradigm”. Healthy adults selected the lexical item most related to a probe word in a 4-item written word array comprising the (...) target and three distractors. The relation between the probe and each of the four words was determined using the semantic distance metrics derived from ACF ratings. Eye movement data indicated that the word that was most semantically related to the probe received more and longer fixations relative to distractors. Importantly, in sets where participants did not provide an overt behavioral response, the fixation rates were nonetheless significantly higher for targets than distractors, closely resembling trials where an expected response was given. Furthermore, ACF ratings which are based on individual words predicted eye fixation metrics of probe-target similarity at least as well as latent semantic analysis ratings which are based on word co-occurrence. The results provide further validation of Euclidean distance metrics derived from ACF ratings as a measure of one facet of the semantic relatedness of abstract words and suggest that they represent a reasonable approximation of the organization of abstract conceptual space. The data are also compatible with the broad notion that multiple sources of information shape the organization of abstract concepts. While the adapted “VWP” is potentially a more metacognitive task than the classical visual world paradigm, we argue that it offers potential utility for studying abstract word comprehension. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ : Cet article s’attache à un aspect fondamental de la philosophie matérialiste de Diderot, à savoir le fait que l’individualité psychologique ne peut pas correspondre à l’individu matériel que nous sommes parce que la mémoire sur laquelle elle repose est toujours en quelque sorte partielle. Que faire alors si cet individu matériel lui-même voit son existence mise en doute, du fait que, comme l’annonce le Rêve de d’Alembert, le seul individu, c’est le «tout»? En mettant en relation ces deux (...) démarches, nous montrons comment on peut élaborer une théorie de l’individu qui tienne compte du décalage entre l’individuation comme processus physique et de la constitution de l’individualité comme processus psychologique. -/- ABSTRACT: This paper is devoted to a fundamental aspect of Diderot’s materialist hilosophy: the fact that psychological identity does not exactly correspond with the material individuals we are because the memories on which psychological identity relies are always partial. This is complicated by the fact that even the material individual is denied reality since, as is stated in the Rêve de d’Alembert , the only individual is the «whole». By relating these two approaches, I try to show how one can develop a theory of the individual that takes into account the gap between individuation as a physical process and the constitution of a psychological individual. (shrink)

Capacities for abstract thinking and problem‐solving are central to human cognition. Processes of abstraction allow the transfer of experiences and knowledge between contexts helping us make informed decisions in new or changing contexts. While we are often inclined to relate such reasoning capacities to individual minds and brains, they may in fact be contingent on human‐specific modes of collaboration, dialogue, and shared attention. In an experimental study, we test the hypothesis that social interaction enhances cognitive processes of rule‐induction, (...) which in turn improves problem‐solving performance. Through three sessions of increasing complexity, individuals and groups were presented with a problem‐solving task requiring them to categorize a set of visual stimuli. To assess the character of participants’ problem representations, after each training session, they were presented with a transfer task involving stimuli that differed in appearance, but shared relations among features with the training set. Besides, we compared participants’ categorization behaviors to simulated agents relying on exemplar learning. We found that groups performed superior to individuals and agents in the training sessions and were more likely to correctly generalize their observations in the transfer phase, especially in the high complexity session, suggesting that groups more effectively induced underlying categorization rules from the stimuli than individuals and agents. Crucially, variation in performance among groups was predicted by semantic diversity in members’ dialogical contributions, suggesting a link between social interaction, cognitive diversity, and abstraction. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Beyond Individual-Centred 4E Cognition: Systems Biology and Sympoiesis” by Mads Julian Dengsø & Michael David Kirchhoff. Abstract: Dengsø and Kirchhoff offer a revised dynamic conception of the individual in place of the bounded cognitive agent of classical cognitive science. However, this may not be sufficiently robust to ground the enquiries into individual and cultural differences that remain vital in the proposed “deterritorialized cognitive science.” It also needs to make contact with (...) rich traditions of 4E research on socially distributed cognition, which are neglected in Dengsø and Kirchhoff’s critique. It is just because individualization is a fragile process, and because boundaries are hard-won achievements, that anti-individualists who highlight the multiplicity, heterogeneity, and dynamism of cognitive ecologies must reconfigure rather than eliminate or efface the individual. (shrink)

What can we do—and what should we do—to fight against bias? This final chapter introduces empirically-tested interventions for combating implicit (and explicit) bias and promoting a fairer world, from small daily-life debiasing tricks to larger structural interventions. Along the way, this chapter raises a range of moral, political, and strategic questions about these interventions. This chapter further stresses the importance of admitting that we don’t have all the answers. We should be humble about how much we still don’t know and (...) dedicate efforts to gathering as much knowledge as possible. Even so, we know enough now to start making a difference, and this chapter ultimately aims to chip away at the gap between our abstract commitments to treat people fairly and our lived habits and experiences, which continue to be shaped by implicit and explicit prejudices and stereotypes about race, gender, and other social categories. (shrink)

Properly speaking, the corporation, considered as an entity distinct from its members, cannot be morally responsible for wrongful corporate acts. Setting aside (in this abstract) acts brought about through negligence or omissions, we may say that moral responsibility for an act attaches to that agent (or agents) in whom the act "originates" in this sense: (1) the agent formed the (mental) intention or plan to bring about that act (possibly with the help of others) and (2) the act was (...) intentionally brought about through bodily movements over which that agent had direct control (i.e. the kind of direct mental control that I have over the body I refer to as "my" body) and through which the agent carried out his (mental) intention or plan. Corporate acts do not thus originate in some corporate entity distinct from its members because the corporation has neither a mind to form intentions nor a body it directly controls: it lacks the proper mind/body unity. Instead, corporate acts originate in individual autonomous human beings who make up the corporation and who intentionally bring about corporate acts through their own bodily movements. Such human individuals, and not "the corporation," are morally responsible for corporate acts. Moreover, to say that an entity is "morally responsible" for a wrongful act is to say that the entity is liable to blame and punishment. But it is not possible to impose blame and punishment on a corporation without inflicting it on corporate members. Thus, to say that a corporation (as an entity distinct from its members) is "morally responsible" for a wrongful corporate act is to imply that a (possibly innocent) corporate member legitimately may be punished for something for which another entity was morally responsible. This violates the moral principles that underlie blame and punishment. To hold that the corporation can be morally responsible for its acts is to adopt a dangerous organicism. (shrink)

This experimental study provides further support for a theory of meaning first put forward by Bar-Hillel and Carnap in 1953 and foreshadowed by Asimov in 1951. The theory is the Popperian notion that the meaningfulness of a proposition is its a priori falsity. We tested this theory in the first part of this paper by translating to logical form a long, tightly written, published text and computed the meaningfulness of each proposition using the a priori falsity measure. We then selected (...) the top propositions—by a priori falsity—and strung them together to form ad hoc abstracts and compared these abstracts with the published summary. The results were startling: translation to logical form, followed by application of the Asimovian idea and Bar-Hillel/Carnap mathematics as elaborated into an AI/NLP proposal in Fulda (1986, 1988), produced excellent abstracts, thereby providing a proof-of-concept that merely by knowing the logical form of long text passages, one can produce reasonable abstracts of them—without actually understanding the text. We here report on a second experiment analyzing, in the exact same manner, the correspondence that followed the published text of the first experiment. While the results of this confirming experiment are less startling, they nevertheless provide additional confidence in the promise of the technique. In other words, were the results of these two experiments to generalize, that would show that logical form captures much more semantics than has heretofore been considered likely. Far from (as is commonly supposed) being merely the syntactical rewrite of text into formal notation, translation to logical form, even when undertaken with almost no knowledge about the particular predicates, individual constants, or other objects referred to in that form, might capture the core of the meaning in some important sense. -/- Note: There is a key difference in the /style/ of the texts analyzed in I and II in this long paper, divided into two only for practical reasons—space; the first text analyzed is written in a tight mathematical style, while the second is written in the discursive style of philosophy. -/- Finally, the unusual (for me) length of this two-part paper is justified by its being data-driven. (shrink)

Properly speaking, the corporation, considered as an entity distinct from its members, cannot be morally responsible for wrongful corporate acts. Setting aside (in this abstract) acts brought about through negligence or omissions, we may say that moral responsibility for an act attaches to that agent (or agents) in whom the act "originates" in this sense: (1) the agent formed the (mental) intention or plan to bring about that act (possibly with the help of others) and (2) the act was (...) intentionally brought about through bodily movements over which that agent had direct control (i.e. the kind of direct mental control that I have over the body I refer to as "my" body) and through which the agent carried out his (mental) intention or plan. Corporate acts do not thus originate in some corporate entity distinct from its members because the corporation has neither a mind to form intentions nor a body it directly controls: it lacks the proper mind/body unity. Instead, corporate acts originate in individual autonomous human beings who make up the corporation and who intentionally bring about corporate acts through their own bodily movements. Such human individuals, and not "the corporation," are morally responsible for corporate acts. Moreover, to say that an entity is "morally responsible" for a wrongful act is to say that the entity is liable to blame and punishment. But it is not possible to impose blame and punishment on a corporation without inflicting it on corporate members. Thus, to say that a corporation (as an entity distinct from its members) is "morally responsible" for a wrongful corporate act is to imply that a (possibly innocent) corporate member legitimately may be punished for something for which another entity was morally responsible. This violates the moral principles that underlie blame and punishment. To hold that the corporation can be morally responsible for its acts is to adopt a dangerous organicism. (shrink)

The costs of and returns from actions are varied and individually concrete dimensions, combined in heterogeneous ways. The many needs of the body also fluctuate. Making action selection efficiently track some ultimate goal, whether fitness or another utility function, itself requires representational abstraction. Therefore, predictive brains need abstract value representations.