Scientists from Einstein to Sagan have linked emotions like awe with the motivation for scientific inquiry, but no research has tested this possibility. Theoretical and empirical work from affective science, however, suggests that awe might be unique in motivating explanation and exploration of the physical world. We synthesize theories of awe with theories of the cognitive mechanisms related to learning, and offer a generative theoretical framework that can be used to test the effect of this emotion on early science learning.

It has been hypothesized that our believing that, or its seeming to us as though, the world is in some way dynamical partially explains (and perhaps rationalizes) future-bias. Recent work has, in turn, found a correlation between future-bias and near-bias, suggesting that there is a common explanation for both. Call the claim that what partially explains our being both future- and near-biased is our believing/it seeming to us as though the world is dynamical, the dynamical explanation. We empirically test two (...) versions of the dynamical explanation. The first is the moving ego explanation—according to which it is our belief that the ego moves, or our phenomenology as of the ego moving, that jointly (partially) explains future- and near-bias. The second is the moving time explanation—according to which it is our belief that time robustly passes, or our phenomenology as of robust passage, which jointly (partially) explain future- and near-bias. We found no evidence in favour of either explanation. (shrink)

Many philosophers have thought that our folk, or pre-reflective, view of persistence is one on which objects endure. This assumption not only plays a role in disputes about the nature of persistence itself, but is also put to use in several other areas of metaphysics, including debates about the nature of change and temporal passage. In this paper, we empirically test three broad claims. First, that most people (i.e. most non-philosophers) believe that, and it seems to them as though, objects (...) persist by enduring rather than perduring. Second, that most people have a view of change on which enduring but not perduring objects count as changing. Third, that one reason why the folk represent time as dynamical is because it seems to them, and they believe that, they endure through time. We found no evidence to support these claims. While there are certainly plenty of ‘folk’ endurantists in the population we tested, there are also plenty of ‘folk’ perdurantists. We did not find robust evidence that a majority of people believed that, or it seemed to them as though, objects endure rather than perdure. We conclude that many arguments in favour of endurantism that appeal to folk beliefs about, or experiences of, persisting objects and change rest on views about those beliefs and experiences that are empirically unsupported. There is no evidence to suggest that endurantism is the folk friendly view of persistence, and so we should stop treating it as such without argument. (shrink)

Philosophical accounts denying that temporal passage is an objective feature of reality face an explanatory challenge with respect to why it appears to us as though time passes. Recently, two solutions have surfaced. Cognitive illusionism claims that people experience the passage of time due to their belief that time passes. Cognitive error theory claims that we do not experience the passage of time, but hold the belief that we do, which we have acquired through making an inference from the prior (...) belief that time passes. These approaches suppose that belief and passage experience are explanatorily connected, and they depend on the claims that people who experience the passage of time or at least believe that they do also believe that time passes. To test these claims, we probed the beliefs of populations of individuals with depression and schizotypy, thus conditions that are strongly associated with alterations in temporal phenomenology. Depression was assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and schizotypy with the short Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences (O-LIFE). While cognitive illusionism and inferentialist cognitive error theory would predict a strong association between BDI and O-LIFE scores and beliefs about time passage, our study found no such association. The experience of passage does not seem to be explanatorily connected to beliefs about the passage of time. (shrink)

Many philosophers have thought that our folk, or pre-reflective, view of persistence is one on which objects endure. This assumption not only plays a role in disputes about the nature of persistence itself, but is also put to use in several other areas of metaphysics, including debates about the nature of change and temporal passage. In this paper, we empirically test three broad claims. First, that most people (i.e. most non-philosophers) believe that, and it seems to them as though, objects (...) persist by enduring rather than perduring. Second, that most people have a view of change on which enduring but not perduring objects count as changing. Third, that one reason why the folk represent time as dynamical is because it seems to them, and they believe that, they endure through time. We found no evidence to support these claims. While there are certainly plenty of ‘folk’ endurantists in the population we tested, there are also plenty of ‘folk’ perdurantists. We did not find robust evidence that a majority of people believed that, or it seemed to them as though, objects endure rather than perdure. We conclude that many arguments in favour of endurantism that appeal to folk beliefs about, or experiences of, persisting objects and change rest on views about those beliefs and experiences that are empirically unsupported. There is no evidence to suggest that endurantism is the folk friendly view of persistence, and so we should stop treating it as such without argument. (shrink)

Central to Pietraszewski's theory is a set of group-constitutive roles within four triadic primitives. Although some data from the developmental and biological sciences support Pietraszewski's theory, other data raise questions about whether similar behavioral expectations hold across various ecological conditions and interactions. We discuss the potential for a broader set of conceptual primitives that support reasoning about groups.

We are all familiar with regret. And on the face of it, there doesn't seem to be anything puzzling about it, the way there is about (among other things) self‐deception and survivor guilt. So what philosophical significance does it have?

Moral responsibility is a prerequisite for culpability. One can be morally responsible for φing without being culpable for it, but not vice versa. I agree with Andrew Simester on this, and agree that it is important to differentiate moral responsibility from culpability. That moral responsibility is a prerequisite for culpability is often taken to require sharply distinguishing excuses from what are called ‘exemptions’ (or to use the term Simester uses, ‘irresponsibility defences’) and treating exemptions as forming a category of (...) their own. I am not convinced that it does. In previous work, I have gone against the prevailing view by understanding the category of excuses to include what, on that view, are classified as exemptions. In this paper I reconsider this, delving deeper into the matter than I have in the past and drawing on Simester’s magisterial Fundamentals of Criminal Law to do so. I challenge the position that exemptions form a category of their own, distinct from excuses, and that infancy and insanity need to be understood as exemptions and not excuses. I argue that the category of exemptions, or “irresponsibility defenses,” is problematic, and that recognizing the distinction between culpability and moral responsibility and recognizing its importance does not commit one to excluding from the category of excuses infancy and insanity. Infancy and insanity are better seen as operating to exempt the agent altogether from moral responsibility only at the limit; more often, they operate to excuse, partially or fully. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Trois récits utopiques classiques: Gabriel de Foigny, La Terre Australe connue; Denis Veiras, Histoire des Sévarambes; Bernard de Fontenelle, Histoire des Ajaoïens ed. by Jean-Michel RacaultAndrew CremerJean-Michel Racault, ed. Trois récits utopiques classiques: Gabriel de Foigny, La Terre Australe connue; Denis Veiras, Histoire des Sévarambes; Bernard de Fontenelle, Histoire des Ajaoïens. Saint-Denis (La Réunion): Presses Universitaires Indianocéaniques. 2020. 539 pp., illus. Paperback, €16. ISBN: 978 2 490596 24 (...) 9.M. Jean-Michel Racault, Emeritus Professor of the University of La Réunion and general editor of the Œuvres complètes of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre in progress under the Classiques Garnier imprint, is an acknowledged expert in utopian studies, and works edited and presented by him in this field will be justly welcomed with keen interest and appreciation. It inspires confidence [End Page 168] that this edition should be the fruit of many years’ study and find its origins in his two theses of 1981 and 1987 and articles of 1991, 2003, and 2010 (21 n. 21). The blurb announces this volume as bringing together “three major works of political thought of the end of the seventeenth century representative of ‘Louis XIV utopias,’” a label that could be supposed to imply an anti-absolutist outlook in the three writers. But Racault argues that the idea, as put forward by the late Myriam Yardeni in her 1980 study Utopie et révolte sous Louis XIV, that these classical utopias express revolt against the monarchy of Louis XIV should be treated in a nuanced way, even with serious reservations (7, 217–18).Racault writes with impressive depth and clarity and makes a superb guide, yet it by no means follows that these works are easy to interpret. Indeed, part of his achievement is to show they may not be so and to offer evidence to suggest that they may invite “multiple possible readings.” The blurb gives fair warning of irony, ambiguity, and contradictoriness, and states that the utopia of these experimental fictions can be inverted to become an “anti-utopia.” As Racault observes with admirable honesty in his preface, “Ambivalence, uncertainty, and a sense of complexity are in fact characteristics of these utopias, in which one sometimes has the impression that the author develops lines of thought that are ideologically incompatible and does not know himself on which side he stands” (19). Racault exemplifies this paradox by reference to Foigny’s hero, “a Pascalian libertin as well as a Christian deist” (19–20). One might be allowed to object that this is to offer the reader who seeks it no clear utopian vision, and that such ambiguity leads to confusion worse confounded; indeed, I am tempted to wonder if ambiguity here reveals subtlety of thought less than a mere lack of perspicuity. Racault makes the highly important point that a similar duality “penetrates the accounts of Veiras and Fontenelle and prevents one from seeing them as simple preludes to Enlightenment thought” (20). Two more vigorous quotations may suffice to convey the flavor of this argument of duality: “the deism of La Terre Australe connue can also be read as a critique of deism, the [...] democratic humanism of the Histoire des Ajaoïens includes a utilitarian system of colonial domination” (21). Again, “the ‘heliocratic’ Sevarambian system inspired by the empire of the Incas after Garcilaso de la Vega [?1501–36] is essentially a theocratic absolutism in the end not much different from the monarchy of Louis XIV. Ajao, on the other hand, has no monarchy, and no ministers” (460). As to this variety between the texts, another indication is that Foigny’s land is anarchical (but [End Page 169] well ordered!), whereas Veiras’s can be understood as embracing certain policies of Colbert (236 and n. 14, 292 and n. 46), to whose protégé Pierre-Paul Riquet, baron de Bonrepos (1609–80), Veiras’s account is dedicated (231–34, 306–7).This substantial but not overlong volume is tastefully adorned with attractive covers and five splendid and richly annotated plates of maps illustrating the subject of the “Imaginary Voyage” or “Extraordinary Voyage,” a term used in a... (shrink)

Autism, typically described as a spectrum neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in verbal ability and social reciprocity as well as obsessive or repetitious behaviours, is currently thought to markedly affect more males than females. Not surprisingly, this encourages a gendered understanding of the Autism Spectrum. Simon Baron-Cohen, a prominent authority in the field of autism research, characterizes the male brain type as biased toward systemizing. In contrast, the female brain type is understood to be biased toward empathizing. Since persons (...) with autism are characterized as hyper-systemizers and hypo-empathizers, Baron-Cohen suggests that, whether they are male or female, most possess an “extreme male brain profile.” We argue that Baron-Cohen is misled by an unpersuasive gendering of certain capacities or aptitudes in the human population. Moreover, we suggest that this may inadvertently favour boys in diagnosing children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. If this is correct, it could also have rather serious consequences for treatment and services for girls (and women) on the Autism Spectrum. (shrink)

“Doğal din” terimi, bazen doğanın kendisinin ilahi olduğu bir panteistik doktrine atıfta bulunur. “Doğal teoloji” terimi ise aksine, başlangıçta gözlemlenen doğal gerçekler temelinde (ve bazen) Tanrı’nın varlığını savunmaya yönelik projeye atıfta bulunur. Bununla birlikte çağdaş felsefede, hem “doğal din” hem de “doğal teoloji” genel olarak, dinî veya teolojik konuları araştırmak için insana, “doğal” olan bilişsel yetilerini – akıl, algı, içgözlem- kullanma projesini ifade eder. Doğal din veya teoloji, mevcut anlayış üzerine, doğayla ilgili ampirik araştırmalarla sınırlı olmamakla birlikte ayrıca panteistik bir (...) sonuçla da bağlantılı değildir. Bununla birlikte o, özel doğal olmayan yetilere (ESP, telepati, mistik deneyim) veya doğaüstü bilgi kaynaklarına (kutsal metinler, vahiy teolojisi, inanç otoriteleri, doğrudan doğaüstü iletişim) hitap etmekten kaçınır. Genel olarak, doğal din veya teoloji (bundan böyle “doğal teoloji” olarak anılacaktır), diğer felsefi ve bilimsel girişimlerle aynı rasyonel inceleme standartlarına uymayı amaçlamaktadır ve aynı değerlendirme ve eleştiri yöntemlerine tabidir. (shrink)

The standard inferentialist approaches to modal logic tend to suffer from not being able to uniquely characterize the modal operators, require that introduction and elimination rules be interdefined, or rely on the introduction of possible-world like indexes into the object language itself. In this paper I introduce a hypersequent calculus that is flexible enough to capture many of the standard modal logics and does not suffer from the above problems. It is therefore an ideal candidate to underwrite an inferentialist theory (...) of meaning for modal operators. Here I treat specifically the modal logics K, D, T, S4, B, and S5. I show that the calculi are adequate for each set of models, and show that they meet a large set of criteria that are generally thought necessary for a calculus to underwrite a theory of meaning. (shrink)

Anscombe famously said that there are some act types that can only be done intentionally. We defend this claim: some act types are essentially intentional. We argue that Ving intentionally is itself essentially intentional: it is not possible to be non-intentionally Ving intentionally. And we show how this explains why various other act types—such as trying, lying, and thanking—are essentially intentional. Finally, building on Piñeros Glassock (2020) and Beddor & Pavese (2022), we explain how this makes trouble for the thesis (...) that if I am Ving intentionally, I know that I am Ving. (shrink)

Introduction to the new edition -- The philosophy of praxis -- The demands of reason -- Metacritique of the concept of nature -- Reification and rationality -- The realization of philosophy -- The controversy over subject-object identity -- From Lukács to the Frankfurt School -- The last philosophy of praxis -- Philosophy of praxis: summary and significance -- Appendix: the unity of theory and practice.

Explains Marcuse's philosophy, especially his critique of science and technology.

We defend a new constraint on the progressive that says that what you are doing is always specific in an important sense. This principle is Progressive Specificity: if you are Ving and to V is to X or to Y, then you are Xing or you are Ying. We offer three arguments for Progressive Specificity. We then extend those arguments to an analogous principle governing the futurative progressive. Finally, we explore the relationship between Progressive Specificity and the well-known principle of (...) Conditional Excluded Middle. -/- . (shrink)

This paper looks at the nature of normal-proper functions and the role they play in theories of representational content. More specifically: I lay down two desiderata for a theory which tries to capture what's distinctive of normal-proper functions and discuss two prominent theories which claim to satisfy them. I discuss the advantages of having normal-proper functions ground a theory of representational content. And, I look at both orthodox and heterodox versions of such theories.

This three-part chapter explores a higher-order logic we call ‘Classicism’, which extends a minimal classical higher-order logic with further axioms which guarantee that provable coextensiveness is sufficient for identity. The first part presents several different ways of axiomatizing this theory and makes the case for its naturalness. The second part discusses two kinds of extensions of Classicism: some which take the view in the direction of coarseness of grain (whose endpoint is the maximally coarse-grained view that coextensiveness is sufficient for (...) identity), and some which take the view in the direction of fineness of grain (whose endpoint is the maximally fine-grained theory containing all distinctness claims compatible with Classicism). The third part introduces some techniques for constructing models of Classicism, and uses them to prove the consistency of many of the extensions of Classicism introduced in the second part. (shrink)

Perception is riddled with cases of reliable misperception. These are cases in which a perceptual state is tokened inaccurately any time it is tokened under normal conditions. On the face of it, this fact causes trouble for theories that provide an analysis of perceptual content in non-semantic, non-intentional, and non-phenomenal terms, such as those found in Millikan (1984), Fodor (1990), Neander (2017), and Schellenberg (2018). I show how such theories can be extended so that they cover such cases without giving (...) up their core commitments. (shrink)

Gender dysphoria (GD) is marked by an incongruence between a person’s biological sex at birth, and their felt gender (or gender identity). There is continuing debate regarding the benefits and drawbacks of physiological treatment of GD in children, a pathway, beginning with endocrine treatment to suppress puberty. Currently, the main alternative to physiological treatment consists of the so-called “wait-and-see” approach, which often includes counseling or other psychotherapeutic treatment. In this paper, we argue in favor of a “third pathway” for the (...) diagnosis and treatment of GD in youths. To make our case, we draw on a recent development in bioethics: the phenomenological approach. Scholars such as Slatman and Svenaeus have argued that the extent to which the body can (or should be) manipulated or reconstructed through medical intervention is not only determined by consideration of ethical frameworks and social and legal norms. Rather, we must also take account of patients’ personal experience of their body, the personal and social values associated with it, and their understanding of its situation in their life: their narrative identities. We apply this phenomenological approach to medicine and nursing to the diagnosis and treatment of GD in youth. In particular, we discuss Zahavi and Martiny’s conception of the phenomenological interview, in order to show that narrative techniques can assist in the process of gender identification and in the treatment of youth presenting with GD. We focus on two case studies that highlight the relevance of a narrative-based interview in relations between patients, HCPs, and family, to expose the influence of social ideologies on how young people presenting with GD experience their bodies and gender. (shrink)

This paper outlines a new pluralistic theory of normative reasons for belief, welfarist pluralism, which aims to explain how there can be basic alethic/epistemic reasons for belief and basic pragmatic/non-alethic reasons for belief that can combine to determine what one ought to believe. The paper shows how this non-derivative first-order pluralism arises from a purely welfarist account of the foundations of theoretical normativity, thereby combining foundational pragmatism with non-derivative pluralism about normative reasons for belief. In addition, this paper outlines how (...) welfarist pluralism provides a new and potentialy attractive account of the value of truth (or its indicators), namely that the value of truth (or its indicators) is its direct contribution to individuals' personal good or wellbeing. (shrink)

The contributors to _Somaesthetics and Sport_ explore our embodied experiences of watching and playing sport, including sport’s beauty; the place of exercise in our sense of living a good life; and how we cope with pain and suffering.

Everyday lookism, by which I mean the widespread practice of commenting upon and judging the appearance of others, is often regarded as morally troubling. But when, and why, is it morally problemat...

The Mares-Goldblatt semantics for quantified relevant logics have been developed for first-order extensions of R, and a range of other relevant logics and modal extensions thereof. All such work has taken place in the the ternary relation semantic framework, most famously developed by Sylvan and Meyer. In this paper, the Mares-Goldblatt technique for the interpretation of quantifiers is adapted to the more general neighbourhood semantic framework, developed by Sylvan, Meyer, and, more recently, Goble. This more algebraic semantics allows one to (...) characterise a still wider range of logics, and provides the grist for some new results. To showcase this, we show, using some non-augmented models, that some quantified relevant logics are not conservatively extended by connectives the addition of which do conservatively extend the associated propositional logics, namely fusion and the dual implication. We close by proposing some further uses to which the neighbourhood Mares-Goldblatt semantics may be put. (shrink)

Digital artifacts — humanly-constructed items that inhabit our computers and networks — suffer an unfortunate reputation as being virtual and therefore unreal, and all too easy to reproduce on the cheap. These features together prompt the question of this article: if digital artifacts can be reproduced for free, and if they are unreal, why do they have economic value at all? Using a focal case study of bitcoin — the most unreal digital artifact of them all, and one that has (...) been copied and pasted a thousand times over — I answer the question. Some digital artifacts can't be copied on the cheap, as it turns out, and they are real enough to be useful. (shrink)

Higher-order logic augments first-order logic with devices that let us generalize into grammatical positions other than that of a singular term. Some recent metaphysicians have advocated for using these devices to raise and answer questions that bear on many traditional issues in philosophy. In contrast to these 'higher-order metaphysicians', traditional metaphysics has often focused on parallel, but importantly different, questions concerning special sorts of abstract objects: propositions, properties and relations. The answers to the higher-order and the property-theoretic questions may coincide (...) sometimes but will often come apart. I argue that when they do, the higher-order questions are closer to the metaphysical action and so it would be better for these debates to proceed in higher-order terms. (shrink)

Despite the frequency with which the term 'community' is used, it is hard to find any comprehensive exploration of the nature and value of community. This book tries to remedy this omission whilst taking seriously the idea that community can be of different kinds and can exist at different levels, and that these levels and kinds may come into conflict with one another. It focuses on the question of what kind of community is valuable at the level of the state. (...) It then explores the limits that ideals of political community place upon cultural diversity within the state, and the limits that, in turn, ideals of global community place upon the self-determination of political communities. This book will be of interest to students of political theory, philosophy and international relations. (shrink)

Situation theory, and channel theory in particular, have been used to provide motivational accounts of the ternary relation semantics of relevant, substructural, and various non-classical logics. Among the constraints imposed by channel-theory, we must posit a certain existence criterion for situations which result from the composites of multiple channels (this is used in modeling information flow). In associative non-classical logics, it is relatively easy to show that a certain such condition is met, but the problem is trickier in non-associative logics. (...) Following Tedder (2017), where it was shown that the conjunction-conditional fragment of the logic B admits the existence of composite channels, I present a generalised ver- sion of the previous argument, appropriate to logics with disjunction, in the neighbourhood ternary relation semantic framework. I close by suggesting that the logic BB+(^I), which falls between Lavers' system BB+ and B+ , satisfies the conditions for the general argument to go through (and prove that it satisfies all but one of those conditions). (shrink)

It deals with the problems of the Latin text (taking account of Michael Winterbottom's new edition), it delineates the work's structure and sometimes elusive train of thought, clarifies the underlying Greek and Latin concepts, and provides starting points for approaching the philosophical and historical problems that De Officiis raises.

This article discusses the relationship between a deconstructivist method in science and technology studies and the more recent moves towards a reconstructivist engagement with science and science policy making. Drawing on examples from the author's own research, the article identifies three forms of engagement and their relative utility and limitations. The article argues that these are typical of STS work that seeks direct engagement with science policy making and which could form the basis for a more "serviceable STS" that retains (...) its critical and independent perspective on science. The paper concludes by arguing that the analysis has important implications for the ways in which STS expertise can articulate with science policy making. (shrink)

Shortages of generic, injectable chemotherapeutics have been increasing in prevalence since 2006. Due to the lack of access to first-line, lifesaving treatments, physicians have been forced to ration chemotherapy between patients. Although the scarcity has been managed with good intentions, it has been done in an ad hoc manner, without the benefit of an ethically grounded and standardized schema. Using an approach based on the “accountability for reasonableness” method by Daniel and Sabin, I establish a framework and protocol for rationing (...) that is specific to chemotherapy. Prior to the state of true shortage, I present guidelines for the use of an adequate supply of chemotherapy with knowledge of upcoming scarcity. Within the rationing framework itself, I first prioritize emergency use of chemotherapeutics and those already receiving treatment at the time of shortage. I advocate for stratifying patients based on the prognostic indicators of their cancer type, using a combination of clinical-trial-based initial response and longer term survival, followed by the patients’ line of treatment. All patients who are not able to receive their “best” treatment must receive a sequent, next-best treatment, and their treatment team must have the ability to appeal to a rationing committee in special circumstances. I reject the ideas of stratification based on the intention of the treatment, perceived quality of life, pre-existing condition not impacting performance status, the classical “sickest first” argument, and giving preference to pediatric cases. Lastly, I advocate for any system of rationing to be transparent to those it affects and acknowledge the difficulties it presents to patients and physicians alike. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical debates surrounding toleration have revolved around three issues: What is toleration? Should we tolerate and, if so, why? What should be tolerated? These questions are of central importance to social and political thought.

The issue of how we ought to treat the nonhuman animals in our lives is one that has been growing in importance over the past forty years. A common charge is that discriminatory behavior based only on differences of species membership is just as wrong morally as are acts of racism or sexism. Is such a charge sustainable? It is argued that such reasoning confuses real differences with false ones, may have negative ethical consequences, and could tempt us to abandon (...) our responsibilities to the natural world. Finally, some benefits to human animal treatment that more humane nonhuman animal treatment may bring are considered. (shrink)

In a new study, Ben-Haim et al. use subliminal stimuli to separate conscious and unconscious perception in macaques. A programme of this type, using a range of cognitive tasks, is a promising way to look for conscious perception in more controversial cases.

Wittgenstein’s ‘ethnological approach’ to the philosophy of mathematics, in particular his discussion of calculation as an experiment and the limits of empiricism in mathematics, is presented against three interrelated backdrops: (1) James’ critique of Spencer’s evolutionary empiricism, specifically regarding necessary truths; (2) the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, led by Haddon and Rivers, whose Reports implicitly confuted Spencer; and (3) the subsequent work of Malinowski, especially his supplement to Ogden and Richards’ The Meaning of Meaning, a book sent to (...) Wittgenstein upon its publication in 1923. String figures as mathematics is a main illustrative example. (shrink)

Social learning has been shown to be an evolutionarily adaptive strategy, but it can be implemented via many different cognitive mechanisms. The adaptive advantage of social learning depends crucially on the ability of each learner to obtain relevant and accurate information from informants. The source of informants’ knowledge is a particularly important cue for evaluating advice from multiple informants; if the informants share the source of their information or have obtained their information from each other, then their testimony is statistically (...) dependent and may be less reliable than testimony from informants who do not share information. In this study, we use a Bayesian model to determine how rational learners should incorporate the effects of shared information when learning from other people, conducting three experiments that examine whether human learners behave similarly. We find that people are sensitive to a number of different patterns of dependency, supporting the use of a sophisticated strategy for social learning that goes beyond copying the majority, and broadening the situations in which social learning is likely to be an adaptive strategy. (shrink)

By the early 2020s, emotional artificial intelligence will become increasingly present in everyday objects and practices such as assistants, cars, games, mobile phones, wearables, toys, marketing, insurance, policing, education and border controls. There is also keen interest in using these technologies to regulate and optimize the emotional experiences of spaces, such as workplaces, hospitals, prisons, classrooms, travel infrastructures, restaurants, retail and chain stores. Developers frequently claim that their applications do not identify people. Taking the claim at face value, this paper (...) asks, what are the privacy implications of emotional AI practices that do not identify individuals? To investigate privacy perspectives on soft non-identifying emotional AI, the paper draws upon the following: over 100 interviews with the emotion detection industry, legal community, policy-makers, regulators and NGOs interested in privacy; a workshop with stakeholders to design ethical codes for using data about emotions; a UK survey of 2068 citizens on feelings about emotion capture technologies. It finds a weak consensus among social stakeholders on the need for privacy, this driven by different interests and motivations. Given this weak consensus, it concludes that there exists a limited window of opportunity to societally agree principles of practice regarding privacy and the use of data about emotions. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are value and design-based problems in current ambitions for the Metaverse. With the Metaverse deepening longstanding commercial surveillance practices, the paper focuses on data protection harms from biometric and emotion data, the gauging of first-person perspectives, and sensitivities around profiling of avatars. The paper advances two notions to address harms and data protection: _surveillant physics_ and _virtual realist governance_. _Surveillant physics_ refers to surveillance informing the laws of how that reality operates: this is a useful (...) concept given the granular control that platforms have over virtual worlds and the laws by which they function. _Virtual realist governance_ builds on the longstanding principle of virtual realism and David Chalmer’s recent theorising of Reality+ that demands that the virtual is taken to be real, meaning that experiences of virtual objects and what occurs in-world are treated as meaningful. The paper progresses to further consider governance questions, both around technical and ethical standards, but also data protection ideas such as personal data stores, and data trusts, that were not conceived as Metaverse-based ideas, but have greater chance of being realised as basic premises of the Metaverse are being designed. Although this paper is regretfully pessimistic, finding that a root problem of current ambitions for the Metaverse is that the public good and the commons are missing, it sees virtual realist scope for modes of resistance unseen in other digital realms. (shrink)

Relevant propositional dynamic logics have been sporadically discussed in the broader context of modal relevant logics, but have not come up for sustained investigation until recently. In this paper, we develop a philosophical motivation for these systems, and present some new results suggested by the proposed motivation. Among these, we’ll show how to adapt some recent work to show that the extensions of relevant logics by the extensional truth constants \ are complete with respect to a natural class of ternary (...) relation models to show a similar result for the constant-free versions of the logic. In addition, we prove that the logics in question satisfy the variable sharing property, vindicating the claim that they really are relevant logics. (shrink)

Aristotle is essentially human; that is, for all possible worlds metaphysically consistent with our own, if Aristotle exists, then he is human. This is a claim about the essential property of an object. The claim that objects have essential properties has been hotly disputed, but for present purposes, we can bracket that issue. In this essay, we are interested, rather, in the question of whether properties themselves have essential properties (or features) for their existence. We call those who suppose they (...) do “property essentialists”; those who do not, “property anti-essentialists,” or “quidditists.” We offer two complementary arguments. Our total argument is under-girded by two assumptions: transworld identity theory and “received view” counterfactual semantics, a la David Lewis. We then argue that, if one presumes that these are true, then one risks running headlong into paradox if one also accepts property anti-essentialism. That's the first argument. By contrast, if one accepts these same assumptions in conjunction with property essentialism, then the paradox is avoided. This is the second argument. We take it that our arguments work to show that, between property essentialism and quidditism, the property essentialist is on better footing. Plausibly, properties themselves do have essential properties for their existence. (shrink)

Much recent work on moral responsibility has focused on responsibility as accountability—a type of responsibility associated with the blame-oriented reactive attitudes of resentment, indignation, and guilt. The preoccupation with this admittedly important form of responsibility fosters a truncated portrait of our moral lives by largely ignoring responsibility for actions that merit praise and emulation. Through an examination of what is presupposed in the attitudes of gratitude and esteem, this essay argues that praiseworthiness is not best understood as the mirror image (...) of blameworthiness in the accountability sense. To make sense of praiseworthiness one must raise the profile of another type of responsibility —what Gary Watson has identified as its attributability, or aretaic face. Doing so also helps reveal some important features of virtuous agency, including a sense in which such agency may exhibit oft-overlooked and distinctive enhancements of an agent’s freedom. (shrink)

The first two sections of this paper are devoted respectively to the criticisms of my views raised by Stephen Engstrom and Andrews Reath at a symposium on Kant's Theory of Freedom held in Washington D.C. on 28 December 1992 under the auspices of the North American Kant Society. The third section contains my response to the remarks of Marcia Baron at a second symposium in Chicago on 24 April 1993 at the APA Western Division meetings. The fourth section deals (...) with some general criticisms of my treatment of Kant's theory of freedom and its connection with transcendental idealism that have been raised by Karl Ameriks, who was also a participant in the second symposium, in an earlier piece published in Inquiry and by Paul Guyer in a review. The paper as a whole is thus an attempt to reformulate and clarify some of the central claims of my book in light of the initial critical reaction. (shrink)

We consider the relationship between neural and behavioural evidence for animal consciousness. We critically examine two recent studies: one neural and one behavioural. The first, on crows, finds different neural activity depending on whether a stimulus is reported as seen or unseen. However, to implicate this neural activity in consciousness, we must assume that a specific conditioned behaviour is a report of conscious experience. The second study, on macaques, records behaviours strikingly similar to patterns of conscious and unconscious perception in (...) humans. However, confounds are only ruled out in human subjects, presupposing substantial neural similarity between humans and macaques. Taken together, the two studies reveal a sense in which neural and behavioural research rely on each other. Looking ahead, these two types of evidence could prove to be either mutually reinforcing or mutually undermining. The science of animal consciousness needs both neural and behavioural evidence, ideally obtained as part of a single coordinated programme. (shrink)

Autoinhibition is a design principle realized in many molecular mechanisms in biology. After explicating the notion of a design principle and showing that autoinhibition is such a principle, we focus on how researchers discovered instances of autoinhibition, using research establishing the autoinhibition of the molecular motors kinesin and dynein as our case study. Research on kinesin and dynein began in the fashion described in accounts of mechanistic explanation but, once the mechanisms had been discovered, researchers discovered that they exhibited a (...) second phenomenon, autoinhibition. The discovery of autoinhibition not only reverses the pattern in terms of which philosophers have understood mechanism discovery but runs counter to the one phenomenon-one mechanism principle assumed to relate mechanisms and the phenomena they explain. The ubiquity of autoinhibition as a design principle, therefore, necessitates a philosophical understanding of mechanisms that recognizes how they can participate in more than one phenomenon. Since mechanisms with this design are released from autoinhibition only when they are acted on by control mechanisms, we advance a revised account of mechanisms that accommodates attribution of multiple phenomena to the same mechanism and distinguishes them from other processes that control them. (shrink)