Previous studies using the dot-perspective task postulated that people automatically take into account others' perspective even when it prevents them from achieving their own goals. This human ability may be of key importance for the ascription of mental states and social interactions. The cognitive and emotional determinants of automatic perspective taking is still matter of debate. To address this issue, we examined the performance in the Samson et al. APT task in 91 healthy adults who underwent a detailed neuropsychological testing (...) including assessment of their general intelligence, attention and impulsivity, alexithymia, and measures of affective empathy and explicit theory of mind. Univariate and multiple linear regression models were used to explore the association between mean reaction times in the APT task, and the CPT-II parameters, WAIS global score, TAS, and GeSoCS and mini-SEA scores. Only the CPT-II parameters were significantly associated with the mean reaction times. Increased omissions, commissions, and detectability as well as hit reaction time standard error in CPT-II were all related to worse performances both in Self and Other conditions. The mean number of errors was negatively associated with the GeSoCS score. Among the variables studied, only CPT-II parameters had a significant impact on egocentric and altercentric interference. Neither global intelligence nor alexithymia have an effect on dot-perspective task performance. The present findings suggest that people with lower attentional resources and increased impulsivity display worse performances in the APT task and are less responsive to both egocentric and altercentric interference. (shrink)

Background and objectives: Definitions of medical futility, offered by healthcare professionals, bioethicists and other experts, have been rigorously debated by many investigators, but the perceptions of patients of futility have been explored only by a few. Patients were allowed to discuss their concerns about end-of-life care, so that their ideas about treatment futility or utility could be extrapolated by us.Methods: In this cross-sectional study, in-depth, semistructured interviews were conducted with 30 elderly people who were receiving outpatient care in a large, (...) urban Veterans Affairs medical centre in the US. Each of their healthcare providers was also interviewed. Participants were asked to consider four terms commonly used in advance directive forms and to discuss what these terms meant to them. Audiotapes of the open-ended interviews were transcribed and responses were coded and categorised by constant comparison, a commonly used qualitative method.Results: The following four factors were taken into account by the participants when discussing end-of-life interventions and outcomes: expected quality of life; emotional and financial costs of treatment; likelihood of treatment success; and expected effect on longevity.Conclusions: Although the terms “utility” or “futility” were not generally used by the participants, segments of speech indicating their perceptions of these terms were identified. Treatment was not always discussed in the same way by patients and providers, but seemed to reflect the same four concerns. Therefore, it may be fruitful for providers to focus on these concerns when discussing end-of-life treatment options with their patients. (shrink)

Many explanations in science make use of mathematics. But are there cases where the mathematical component of a scientific explanation is explanatory in its own right? This issue of mathematical explanations in science has been for the most part neglected. I argue that there are genuine mathematical explanations in science, and present in some detail an example of such an explanation, taken from evolutionary biology, involving periodical cicadas. I also indicate how the answer to my title question impacts on broader (...) issues in the philosophy of mathematics; in particular it may help platonists respond to a recent challenge by Joseph Melia concerning the force of the Indispensability Argument. (shrink)

'Working Memory, Thought, and Action' is the magnum opus of one of the most influential cognitive psychologists of the past 50 years. This new volume on the model he created discusses the developments that have occurred within the model in the past twenty years, and places it within a broader context.

In spite of a powerful tradition, more than two thousand years old, that in a valid argument the premises must be relevant to the conclusion, twentieth-century logicians neglected the concept of relevance until the publication of Volume I of this monumental work. Since that time relevance logic has achieved an important place in the field of philosophy: Volume II of Entailment brings to a conclusion a powerful and authoritative presentation of the subject by most of the top people working in (...) the area. Originally the aim of Volume II was simply to cover certain topics not treated in the first volume--quantification, for example--or to extend the coverage of certain topics, such as semantics. However, because of the technical progress that has occurred since the publication of the first volume, Volume II now includes other material. The book contains the work of Alasdair Urquhart, who has shown that the principal sentential systems of relevance logic are undecidable, and of Kit Fine, who has demonstrated that, although the first-order systems are incomplete with respect to the conjectured constant domain semantics, they are still complete with respect to a semantics based on "arbitrary objects." Also presented is important work by the other contributing authors, who are Daniel Cohen, Steven Giambrone, Dorothy L. Grover, Anil Gupta, Glen Helman, Errol P. Martin, Michael A. McRobbie, and Stuart Shapiro. Robert G. Wolf's bibliography of 3000 items is a valuable addition to the volume. (shrink)

Does mathematics ever play an explanatory role in science? If so then this opens the way for scientific realists to argue for the existence of mathematical entities using inference to the best explanation. Elsewhere I have argued, using a case study involving the prime-numbered life cycles of periodical cicadas, that there are examples of indispensable mathematical explanations of purely physical phenomena. In this paper I respond to objections to this claim that have been made by various philosophers, and I discuss (...) potential future directions of research for each side in the debate over the existence of abstract mathematical objects. (shrink)

In this paper, we first investigate a bit of feminist and hermeneutical aesthetics. Building upon these theories, we expand the discussion of art to include the fleshy canvas.We argue that a feminist philosophy of art suggests a sound theoretical framework by which one can maintain that skin art is just that – art. In its contemporary practice, tattooing has become a new form of art, and feminist theory provides context for interpretation. The tattooed body may agitate conventional conceptions of fine (...) art – but art evolves, and history makes this much clear. Definitions of art tend to develop, as does artistic practice. Artistic innovations subvert what is old and stale within the institutional art world, while art theory empowers that subversion and provides a context for the appreciation of art. (shrink)

1. The Bundle Theory I shall discuss is a theory about the nature of substances or concrete particulars, like apples, chairs, atoms, stars and people. The point of the Bundle Theory is to avoid undesirable entities like substrata that allegedly constitute particulars. The version of the Bundle Theory I shall discuss takes particulars to be entirely constituted by the universals they instantiate.' Thus particulars are said to be just bundles of universals. Together with the claim that it is necessary that (...) particulars have constituents, the fundamental claim of the Bundle Theory is: (BT) Necessarily, for every particular x and every entity y, y constitutes x if and only ify is a universal and x instantiates y. 2 The standard and supposedly devastating objection to the Bundle Theory is that it entails or is committed to a false version of the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles (Armstrong 1978: 91, Loux 1998: 107), namely: (Pll) Necessarily, for all particulars x and y and every universal z, if z is instantiated by x if and only if z is instantiated byy, then x is numerically identical with y. The most famous counterexample to the Identity of Indiscernibles is that put forward by Max Black, consisting of a world where there are only two iron spheres two miles apart from each other, having the same diameter, temperature, colour, shape, size, etc (Black 1952: 156). Let us from now on think of the properties of the spheres in this world as universals. The possibility of this world, which I shall hereafter refer to as 'Black's world', makes (Pll) false.' And according to common philosophical opinion this means that the Bundle Theory is false.. (shrink)

We discuss a recent attempt by Chris Daly and Simon Langford to do away with mathematical explanations of physical phenomena. Daly and Langford suggest that mathematics merely indexes parts of the physical world, and on this understanding of the role of mathematics in science, there is no need to countenance mathematical explanation of physical facts. We argue that their strategy is at best a sketch and only looks plausible in simple cases. We also draw attention to how frequently Daly and (...) Langford find themselves in conflict with mathematical and scientific practice. (shrink)

JANET DELGADO RODRIGUEZ | : The concept of vulnerability is central to current developments in bioethics, not only because of its analytic nature, but also due to its capacity for criticism. However, this concept has not been sufficiently developed, neither in the area of moral philosophy nor in bioethics. For this reason, it is necessary to define and analyze the conceptual framework in which the notion of vulnerability has been developed within the scope of bioethics. Thus, the purpose of this (...) paper is to indicate how the concept of vulnerability in the field of bioethics has been developed and what the main problems that derive from this approach are. Secondly, the paper analyzes some of the main philosophical approaches that I consider should be articulated in the expansion of a critical bioethics approach focused on the notion of vulnerability. To address this issue, I analyze the reflections that we find in the work of Martha Fineman, emphasizing the main relevant aspects for bioethics. Finally, I highlight the main implications of a theory of vulnerability for bioethics. | : Le concept de vulnérabilité est au coeur des développements actuels de la bioéthique, non seulement en raison de sa nature analytique, mais aussi en raison de son potentiel critique. Cependant, ce concept n’a pas été suffisamment développé, que ce soit dans le domaine de la philosophie morale ou de la bioéthique. Pour cette raison, il est nécessaire de définir et d’analyser le cadre conceptuel dans lequel la notion de vulnérabilité a été développée en bioéthique. Ainsi, le but de cet article est d’indiquer comment le concept de vulnérabilité a été développé dans le domaine de la bioéthique et quels sont les principaux problèmes découlant de cette approche. Deuxièmement, l’article analyse certaines des principales approches philosophiques qui devraient selon moi être articulées à une approche bioéthique critique centrée sur la notion de vulnérabilité. Pour traiter ce problème, j’analyse la réflexion de Martha Fineman, en soulignant les principaux aspects pertinents pour la bioéthique. Enfin, je souligne les principales implications d’une théorie de la vulnérabilité pour la bioéthique. (shrink)

Philosophers of mathematics have become increasingly interested in the explanatory role of mathematics in empirical science, in the context of new versions of the Quinean ‘Indispensability Argument’ which employ inference to the best explanation for the existence of abstract mathematical objects. However, little attention has been paid to analysing the nature of the explanatory relation involved in these mathematical explanations in science (MES). In this paper, I attack the only articulated account of MES in the literature (an account sketched by (...) Mark Steiner), according to which a genuine MES incorporates an explanatory proof of the mathematical result being used. The central case study involves an explanation for why bees build the cells of their honeycombs in the shape of hexagons. I make a distinction between two kinds of MES, mathematics-driven explanation in science and science-driven mathematical explanation, and argue that it is the second category which is both scientifically and philosophical more central. I conclude that the explanatory relation involved in MES is genuinely scientific and hence that the phenomenon of MES poses a challenge to general accounts of scientific explanation. (shrink)

Co-published with the University of Queensland Press. HPC holds rights in North America and U. S. Dependencies. Since its first publication in 1976, Alan Chalmers's highly regarded and widely read work--translated into eighteen languages--has become a classic introduction to the scientific method, known for its accessibility to beginners and its value as a resource for advanced students and scholars. In addition to overall improvements and updates inspired by Chalmers's experience as a teacher, comments from his readers, and recent developments (...) in the field, this fourth edition features an extensive chapter-long postscript that draws on his research into the history of atomism to illustrate important themes in the philosophy of science. Identifying the qualitative difference between knowledge of atoms as it figures in contemporary science and metaphysical speculations about atoms common in philosophy since the time of Democritus offers a revealing and instructive way to address the question at the heart of this groundbreaking work: What is this thing called science? (shrink)

The desire to minimize the number of individual new entities postulated is often referred to as quantitative parsimony. Its influence on the default hypotheses formulated by scientists seems undeniable. I argue that there is a wide class of cases for which the preference for quantitatively parsimonious hypotheses is demonstrably rational. The justification, in a nutshell, is that such hypotheses have greater explanatory power than less parsimonious alternatives. My analysis is restricted to a class of cases I shall refer to as (...) additive. Such cases involve the postulation of a collection of qualitatively identical individual objects which collectively explain some particular observed phenomenon. Especially clear examples of this sort occur in particle physics.1Introduction2Particle physics: a case study3Three kinds of simplicity4Explanatory power5Explanation and non‐observation6Parsimony and scientific methodology7Conclusions. (shrink)

Alan Bailey offers a clear and vigorous exposition and defence of the philosophy of Sextus Empiricus, one of the most influential of ancient thinkers, the father of philosophical scepticism. The subsequent sceptical tradition in philosophy has not done justice to Sextus: his views stand up today as remarkably insightful, offering a fruitful way to approach issues of knowledge, understanding, belief, and rationality. Bailey's refreshing presentation of Sextus to a modern philosophical readership rescues scepticism from the sceptics.

According to one popular nominalist picture, even when mathematics features indispensably in scientific explanations, this mathematics plays only a purely representational role: physical facts are represented, and these exclusively carry the explanatory load. I think that this view is mistaken, and that there are cases where mathematics itself plays an explanatory role. I distinguish two kinds of explanatory generality: scope generality and topic generality. Using the well-known periodical-cicada example, and also a new case study involving bicycle gears, I argue that (...) what is picked out by the mathematics are structural facts that go beyond any specific physical facts. (shrink)

BackgroundAlthough gait patterns disturbances are known to be related to cognitive decline, there is no consensus on the possibility of predicting one from the other. It is necessary to find the optimal gait features, experimental protocols, and computational algorithms to achieve this purpose.PurposesTo assess the efficacy of the Stable Sparse Classifiers procedure for discriminating young and healthy older adults, as well as healthy and cognitively impaired elderly groups from their gait patterns. To identify the walking tasks or combinations of tasks (...) and specific spatio-temporal gait features that allow the best prediction with SSC.MethodsA sample of 125 participants was studied. They underwent assessment with five neuropsychological tests that explore different cognitive domains. A summarized cognitive index, based on the Mahalanobis distance from normative data, was calculated. The sample was divided into three groups using k-means clustering of MDCog in addition to Age. The participants executed four walking tasks and their gait patterns, measured with a body-fixed Inertial Measurement Unit, were used to calculate 16 STGF and dual-task costs. SSC was then employed to predict which group the participants belonged to. The classification's performance was assessed using the area under the receiver operating curves and the stable biomarkers were identified.ResultsThe discrimination HE vs. MCI-E revealed that the combination of the easy dual-task and the fast walking task had the best prediction performance. The features related to gait variability and to the amplitude of vertical acceleration had the largest predictive power. SSC prediction accuracy was better than the accuracies obtained with linear discriminant analysis and support vector machine classifiers.ConclusionsThe study corroborated that the changes in gait patterns can be used to discriminate between young and healthy older adults and more importantly between healthy and cognitively impaired adults. A subset of gait tasks and STGF optimal for achieving this goal with SSC were identified, with the latter method superior to other classification techniques. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se hace una descripción de las variables fenomenológicas del movimiento, la ipseidad y la sensibilidad que propone la filosofía de Michel Henry. A partir de esta lectura se profundiza en el papel epistémico que ejerce la corporeidad, como horizonte de sentido para una ‘fenomenología de la vida material’.

One of the minor works that has been immortalized and remains amongst the most cited essays in the history of philosophy courses is the 1874 publication entitled: An Answer to the Question: “What is Enlightenment”? by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. We propose an hermeneutics of the main topics and problems that Kant addresses in this fundamental text; in addition, we will connect its arguments with the thesis that will be supported in this work: namely, that modern philosophy is an (...) exercise of critical thinking that has implications on the educational views, as well as on the ethical and political bets that aim at finding solutions for a society that has been historically traversed by an armed conflict, in a complex scenario where economic crises and asymmetric and fratricidal confrontations have been used, in conventional and unconventional ways, to obtain political power. (shrink)

Comparative constructions form two classes, those that permit direct comparisons (comparisons of measurements as in Seymour is taller than he is wide) and those that only allow indirect comparisons (comparisons of relative positions on separate scales as in Esme is more beautiful than Einstein is intelligent). In contrast with other semantic theories, this paper proposes that the interpretation of the comparative morpheme remains the same whether it appears in sentences that compare individuals directly or indirectly. To develop a unified account, (...) I suggest that all comparisons (whether in terms of height, intelligence or beauty) involve a scale of universal degrees that are isomorphic to the rational (fractional) numbers between 0 and 1. Crucial to a unified treatment, the connection between the individuals being compared and universal degrees involves two steps. First individuals are mapped to a value on a primary scale that ranks individuals with respect to the gradable property (whether it be height, beauty or intelligence). Second, the value on the primary scale is mapped to a universal degree that encodes the value’s relative position on the primary scale. Direct comparison results if measurements such as seven feet participate in the primary scale (as in Seven feet is tall). Otherwise the result is an indirect comparison. (shrink)

Para entender esta creación literaria indeformable debemos reflexionar sobre el concepto de semejanza en la obra barroca. La semejanza entendida como búsqueda de creación espiritual del hombre que se va haciendo a medida que las inquietudes intelectuales y científicas trabajan para retratar su alma. Siguiendo el pensamiento de M. Foucault la semejanza, con sus cuatro similitudes, guiará este estudio de triángulos invisibles que les propongo. La parodia, crea una écfrasis en la que la imagen del alma de Cervantes y el (...) texto literario no pueden separarse. El triángulo de la semejanza se moverá en la metaficción combinando los tres conceptos fundamentales de la mimesis: la representación, la interpretación y la recreación, que va a sacar a la luz una historia escrita en árabe titulada Historia de don Quijote de la Mancha.Un duelo entre dos autores mantendrá el misterio del alma retratada. (shrink)

How might social theory, public understanding of science and science policy best inform one another? What have been the key features of science-society relations in the modern world? How are we to re-think science-society relations in the context of globalization, hybridity and changing patterns of governance? This topical and unique book draws together the three key perspectives on science-society relations: public understanding of science, scientific and public governance, and social theory. The book presents a series of case studies (including the (...) debates on genetically modified foods and the AIDS movement in the USA) to discuss critically the ways in which social theorists, social scientists, and science policy makers deal with science-society relations. ‘Science' and 'society' combine in many complex ways. Concepts such as citizenship, expertise, governance, democracy and the public need to be re-thought in the context of contemporary concerns with globalization and hybridity. A radical new approach is developed and the notion of ethno-epistemic assemblage is used to articulate a new series of questions for the theorization, empirical study and politics of science-society relations. (shrink)

While acknowledging its theory-ladeness, Chalmers (history and philosophy, U. of Sydney) defends the objectivity of scientific knowledge against those critics for whom such knowledge is both subjective and ideological.

Since its first publication in 1976, Alan Chalmers's highly regarded and widely read work--translated into eighteen languages--has become a classic introduction to the scientific method, known for its accessibility to beginners and its value as a resource for advanced students and scholars. -- Amazon.com.

First published in 1967, _Writing and Difference_, a collection of Jacques Derrida's essays written between 1959 and 1966, has become a landmark of contemporary French thought. In it we find Derrida at work on his systematic deconstruction of Western metaphysics. The book's first half, which includes the celebrated essay on Descartes and Foucault, shows the development of Derrida's method of deconstruction. In these essays, Derrida demonstrates the traditional nature of some purportedly nontraditional currents of modern thought—one of his main targets (...) being the way in which "structuralism" unwittingly repeats metaphysical concepts in its use of linguistic models. The second half of the book contains some of Derrida's most compelling analyses of why and how metaphysical thinking must exclude writing from its conception of language, finally showing metaphysics to be constituted by this exclusion. These essays on Artaud, Freud, Bataille, Hegel, and Lévi-Strauss have served as introductions to Derrida's notions of writing and _différence_—the untranslatable formulation of a nonmetaphysical "concept" that does not exclude writing—for almost a generation of students of literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. _Writing and Difference_ reveals the unacknowledged program that makes thought itself possible. In analyzing the contradictions inherent in this program, Derrida foes on to develop new ways of thinking, reading, and writing,—new ways based on the most complete and rigorous understanding of the old ways. Scholars and students from all disciplines will find _Writing and Difference_ an excellent introduction to perhaps the most challenging of contemporary French thinkers—challenging because Derrida questions thought as we know it. (shrink)

Symbolic thought is what makes us human. Claude Lévi-Strauss stated that we can never know the genesis of symbolic thought, but in this powerful new study Alan Barnard argues that we can. Continuing the line of analysis initiated in Social Anthropology and Human Origins, Genesis of Symbolic Thought applies ideas from social anthropology, old and new, to understand some of the areas also being explored in fields as diverse as archaeology, linguistics, genetics and neuroscience. Barnard aims to answer questions (...) including: when and why did language come into being? What was the earliest religion? And what form did social organization take before humanity dispersed from the African continent? Rejecting the notion of hunter-gatherers as 'primitive', Barnard hails the great sophistication of the complex means of their linguistic and symbolic expression and places the possible origin of symbolic thought at as early as 130,000 years ago. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging interview Alan Norrie discusses how he became involved with Critical Realism, his work on Dialectical Critical Realism, and responses to it amongst the Critical Realist communi...