This study provides evidence for implicit learning in syntactic comprehension. By reanalyzing data from a syntactic priming experiment (Thothathiri & Snedeker, 2008), we find that the error signal associated with a syntactic prime influences comprehenders' subsequent syntactic expectations. This follows directly from error‐based implicit learning accounts of syntactic priming, but it is unexpected under accounts that consider syntactic priming a consequence of temporary increases in base‐level activation. More generally, the results raise questions about the principles underlying the maintenance of implicit (...) statistical knowledge relevant to language processing, and about possible functional motivations for syntactic priming. (shrink)

Without a doubt, one of the main reasons Platonsim remains such a strong contender in the Foundations of Mathematics debate is because of the prima facie plausibility of the claim that objectivity needs objects. It seems like nothing else but the existence of external referents for the terms of our mathematical theories and calculations can guarantee the objectivity of our mathematical knowledge. The reason why Frege – and most Platonists ever since – could not adhere to the idea that mathematical (...) objects were mental, conventional or in any other way dependent on our faculties, will or other historical contingencies was that objects whose properties of existence depended on such contingencies could not warrant the objectivity required for scientific knowledge. This idea gained currency in the second half of the 19th Century and remains current for the most part today. However, it was not always like that. Objectivity, after all, has a history, and according to its historians (Daston 2001), the view that scientific knowledge need be objective is a fairly recent one. Up until mid-19th Century, science was not so much concerned with objectivity, as it was concerned with truth. Before the rise of the modern university and the professional scientist, science had the discovery of truths as its ultimate goal. In contrast, modern science now aims at the production and acquisition of objective knowledge. The difference might seem.. (shrink)

What role does non-genetic inheritance play in evolution? In recent work we have independently and collectively argued that the existence and scope of non-genetic inheritance systems, including epigenetic inheritance, niche construction/ecological inheritance, and cultural inheritance—alongside certain other theory revisions—necessitates an extension to the neo-Darwinian Modern Synthesis (MS) in the form of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES). However, this argument has been challenged on the grounds that non-genetic inheritance systems are exclusively proximate mechanisms that serve the ultimate function of calibrating organisms (...) to stochastic environments. In this paper we defend our claims, pointing out that critics of the EES (1) conflate non-genetic inheritance with early 20th-century notions of soft inheritance; (2) misunderstand the nature of the EES in relation to the MS; (3) confuse individual phenotypic plasticity with trans-generational non-genetic inheritance; (4) fail to address the extensive theoretical and empirical literature which shows that non-genetic inheritance can generate novel targets for selection, create new genetic equilibria that would not exist in the absence of non-genetic inheritance, and generate phenotypic variation that is independent of genetic variation; (5) artificially limit ultimate explanations for traits to gene-based selection, which is unsatisfactory for phenotypic traits that originate and spread via non-genetic inheritance systems; and (6) fail to provide an explanation for biological organization. We conclude by noting ways in which we feel that an overly gene-centric theory of evolution is hindering progress in biology and other sciences. (shrink)

This article discusses how the Gawad Kalinga movement in the Philippines has operationalized good governance among its communities. This movement has not only provided opportunities for collaboration and cooperation between and among the three major governance actors, governments, business, and civil society, but more important, provided a framework for active citizen engagement in the process of improving their quality of life. Citizen participation is central not only in the theory of social quality but also in good governance. The paper argues (...) argues that in order for reforms to be successful and sustainable, institutional reforms and active citizen engagement are necessary. These reforms are key to addressing some basic problems facing nations today, an alarming decline in trust in institutions and corruption. This paper is divided into three parts. The first part discusses good governance approaches and reform of public administration in relation to social quality theory. The second part discusses the tenets of citizenship and civil organization leadership within the context of good governance. The third part focuses on an emerging citizens’ movement in the Philippines—the Gawad Kalinga movement, which highlights the aspects of citizen engagement. The last part contains some concluding remarks drawn from the Gawad Kalinga experience as applied governance reform, and its implications for enhancing social quality. (shrink)

I argue that the use of heritable modifications for psychology, personality, and behavior should be limited to the reversal or prevention of relatively unambiguous instances of pathology or likely harm (e.g. sociopathy). Most of the likely modifications of psychological personality would not be of this nature, however, and parents therefore should not have the freedom to make such modifications to future children. I argue by examining the viewpoints of both the individual and society. For individuals, modifications would interfere with their (...) capacity for self-determination in a way that undermines the very concept of self-determination. I argue that modification of psychology and personality is unlike present parenting in morally significant ways. For society, modification offers a medium for power to manipulate the makeup of persons and populations, possibly causing biological harm to the species and altering our conceptions of social responsibility. (shrink)

Framing is the least well-developed central concept of prospect theory. Framing is both fundamental to prospect theory and remarkably underdeveloped in the prospect theory literature. This paper focuses on the many subtypes and variations of framing: thematic vs. evaluative; successful vs. failed; productive vs. counterproductive; purposeful, structural and interactive framing; counterframing; loss frames vs. gain frames; revolving framing vs. sequential framing; framing by a third party; and framing vs. priming. The bulk of the paper provides an analysis of framing and (...) framing effects in foreign policy settings with an emphasis on U.S. foreign policy. We highlight framing effects during the Cold War, the Persian Gulf War, the current ``war on terrorism'', and other IR/foreign policy settings. Our examination highlights the extent to which presidents and other significant world leaders use framing to shape policy debates and national security choices. (shrink)

This article offers commentary on a work in the same journal issue. I argue that the authors, Entwistle and Watt, approach person-centered care in health care with a questionable focus on the understanding of concepts as the primary causal mechanism and bracket-out considerations of the structural conditions of medical practice. I argue that the challenges in implementing person-centered care have not been from a difficulty articulating and/or understanding such goals, but from failing to address existing systemic pressures that are preventing (...) health care and health care professionals from addressing patients as persons in the fullest sense. Any examination of person-centered care and its challenges should consider the co-determining nature of the material and the conceptual/ethical. (shrink)

Karl Marx argued that the preferable starting point for influencing social practices is to understand their workings—not to simply moralize social systems through idealization. This thread in Marx informs contemporary critical social theories such as feminism and critical race theory. Such work attempts to diagnose and analyze internal contradictions, limitations, and dysfunctions in social structures as they actually are in order to connect them to normative dissatisfactions in lived experience. This critical theoretical methodology thus embodies what Charles Mills calls for (...) in nonideal explanatory models that abstract without idealizing. In this chapter I argue that Marx’s theory of society, which informs his critique of political economy in Capital, offers bioethics a nonideal framework through which to analyze normative dissatisfactions in health care practice. What may appear to be moral problems or dilemmas in health care can be the result of, or significantly influenced by, structural patterns in health care’s material production—not its abstract moral content. Therefore, understanding health care structurally, as a set of productive practices within a larger systematic whole of capitalist production, can help diagnose systemic dysfunctions in health care’s material production that produce or make worse normative dissatisfactions of concern for bioethics. I call such morally significant structural dysfunctions social pathologies of health care, and contend that a Marx-informed bioethics can descriptively theorize structural bases of moral discontent and conflict in health care, and therein inform its social and political transformation for the better. (shrink)

This World Bank Report offers a new conception of fair decision processes in health financing. It argues that such procedural fairness can contribute to fairer outcomes, strengthen the legitimacy of decision processes, build trust in authorities, and promote the sustainability of reforms on the path to health coverage for all.

When A utters a declarative sentence in a context to B, typically A can mean a proposition by the sentence, the sentence in context literally expresses a proposition, there are propositions A and B can agree the sentence literally expressed, and B can acquire knowledge from this testimonial exchange. In recent work on linguistic communication, each of these four platitudes has been challenged, and on the same basis: viz. on the ground that exactly which proposition the sentence expressed in context (...) is not discernible given the information provided by the context. I argue that, even if this is true, there will be propositional parts of the proposition expressed by the sentence in context which can be identified and that, consequently, the partial understanding afforded by the existence of such identifiable parts undermines the soundness of the arguments against the platitudes. (shrink)

Due to constraints on institutional capacity and financial resources, the road to universal health coverage (UHC) involves difficult policy choices. To assist with these choices, scholars and policy makers have done extensive work on criteria to assess the substantive fairness of health financing policies: their impact on the distribution of rights, duties, benefits and burdens on the path towards UHC. However, less attention has been paid to the procedural fairness of health financing decisions. The Accountability for Reasonableness Framework (A4R), which (...) is widely applied to assess procedural fairness, has primarily been used in priority-setting for purchasing decisions, with revenue mobilization and pooling receiving limited attention. Furthermore, the sufficiency of the A4R framework’s four criteria (publicity, relevance, revisions and appeals, and enforcement) has been questioned. Moreover, research in political theory and public administration (including deliberative democracy), public finance, environmental management, psychology, and health financing has examined the key features of procedural fairness, but these insights have not been synthesized into a comprehensive set of criteria for fair decision-making processes in health financing. A systematic study of how these criteria have been applied in decision-making situations related to health financing and in other areas is also lacking. This paper addresses these gaps through a scoping review. It argues that the literature across many disciplines can be synthesized into 10 core criteria with common philosophical foundations. These go beyond A4R and encompass equality, impartiality, consistency over time, reason-giving, transparency, accuracy of information, participation, inclusiveness, revisability and enforcement. These criteria can be used to evaluate and guide decision-making processes for financing UHC across different country income levels and health financing arrangements. The review also presents examples of how these criteria have been applied to decisions in health financing and other sectors. (shrink)

Language’s intentional nature has been highlighted as a crucial feature distinguishing it from other communication systems. Specifically, language is often thought to depend on highly structured intentional action and mutual mindreading by a communicator and recipient. Whilst similar abilities in animals can shed light on the evolution of intentionality, they remain challenging to detect unambiguously. We revisit animal intentional communication and suggest that progress in identifying analogous capacities has been complicated by (i) the assumption that intentional (that is, voluntary) production (...) of communicative acts requires mental-state attribution, and (ii) variation in approaches investigating communication across sensory modalities. To move forward, we argue that a framework fusing research across modalities and species is required. We structure intentional communication into a series of requirements, each of which can be operationalised, investigated empirically, and must be met for purposive, intentionally communicative acts to be demonstrated. Our unified approach helps elucidate the distribution of animal intentional communication and subsequently serves to clarify what is meant by attributions of intentional communication in animals and humans. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractScience and technology consortia provide a viable solution for the recent unsustainable academic growth in biomedical research.

The speed and scale of the COVID‐19 pandemic has highlighted the limits of current health systems and the potential promise of non‐establishment research such as “DIY” research. We consider one example of how DIY research is responding to the pandemic, discuss the challenges faced by DIY research more generally, and suggest that a “trust architecture” should be developed now to contribute to successful future DIY efforts.

English has plural terms as well as singular terms. But our standard formal languages, e.g., the predicate calculus, feature only singular terms. How can the plural idiom be formalized?‘Changing the subject’ is by far the most common plurals strategy among both philosophers and linguists: a plural term is replaced by a singular term standing for some complex object that ‘contains’ the individuals to which the plural term alludes. For example, one might simply replace ‘A, B imply C’ with ‘{A, B} (...) implies [singular] C’. We uncover a surprising variety of ways to change the subject, of ever‐increasing complexity and ingenuity. Our question is whether any can made to work. (shrink)

Estonian doesn't have a definite article. Instead, bare singular noun phrases can unambiguously bear either a definite interpretation or an indefinite interpretation. This paper argues that the pragmatic principles governing the felicitous use of three English articles ("a", "the" and "another"), described by A Grønn and KJ Sæbø (2012, 'A, the, another: A game of same and different' Journal of Logic, Language and Information 21, 75-95) can also account for the conditions under which a bare singular noun phrase in Estonian (...) bears a definite or instead an indefinite interpretation. The two languages use the same pragmatic principles to determine the definiteness interpretation of a noun phrase. The difference is just that in English (where definiteness meanings have been lexicalized) these pragmatic principles govern the felicity of article use, whereas in Estonian they govern the interpretation of a bare singular noun phrase. (shrink)

ObjectiveHead and neck cancer treatments are known to significantly affect functionality and appearance, leading to an increased risk for body image disturbances. Yet, few longitudinal studies exist to examine body image in these patients. Based on a conceptual model, the current study aimed to determine, in patients newly diagnosed with HNC: the prevalence, level, and course of body image concerns; correlates of upon cancer diagnosis body image concerns; predictors of immediate post-treatment body image concerns; and association between body image concerns (...) and levels of anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, support, and alcohol and drug misuse.MethodsTwo hundred and twenty-three, newly diagnosed with a primary HNC were assessed using structured clinical interviews and psychometric measures at three, and 6 months after diagnosis. Primary outcome was 3-month, as it was most salient to body image disturbance. Multiple linear regression analyses were conducted on the potential body image predictors, based on the model.ResultsSixty-eight percent of patients with HNC presented some level of body image concerns. Body image concerns at baseline and post-treatment were significantly related and significantly increased from pre- to post-treatment. Immediately post-treatment, 89% presented some level of body image concerns. Correlates of body image concerns in patients with HNC at baseline included: physical symptom burden, difficulties with communication and eating, coping with the cancer diagnosis using denial, suicidal ideation, and having had a past anxiety diagnosis. When controlling for sociodemographic and medical variables, body image concerns in patients with HNC in the immediate post-treatment were predicted by: baseline body image, physical symptom burden, and neuroticism.ConclusionThis longitudinal study helps identify patients more susceptible to experience body image disturbance following head and neck cancer. Clinicians ought to pay special attention to body image concerns upon cancer diagnosis, physical symptom burden, and neuroticism, and may want to target these factors in future preventive interventions. (shrink)

According to telling based views of testimony (TBVs), B has reason to believe that p when A tells B that p because A thereby takes public responsibility for B's subsequent belief that p. Andrew Peet presents a new argument against TBVs. He argues that insofar as A uses context-sensitive expressions to express p, A doesn't take public responsibility for B's belief that p. Since context-sensitivity is widespread, the kind of reason TBVs say we have to believe what we're told, is (...) not widespread. Peet doesn't identify any problem with his own argument though he does attempt to limit its sceptical potential by identifying special contexts in which TBVs stand a chance of success. A more general defence of TBVs can be provided by showing Peet's argument to be unsound. I argue that Peet's argument is unsound because it requires us to wrongly suppose that speakers do far less labour than their audiences in context-sensitive linguistic communication. I aim to show why—in the context of the epistemology of testimony and the philosophy of language—it's important to recognize the labour that speakers can do, and so can can be held responsible for not doing, in episodes of context-sensitive linguistic communication. (shrink)

Within the history of African American struggle against racist oppression that often verges on dystopia, a hidden tradition has depicted a transfigured world. Daring to speculate on a future beyond white supremacy, black utopian artists and thinkers offer powerful visions of ways of being that are built on radical concepts of justice and freedom. They imagine a new black citizen who would inhabit a world that soars above all existing notions of the possible. In Black Utopia, Alex Zamalin offers (...) a groundbreaking examination of African American visions of social transformation and their counterutopian counterparts. Considering figures associated with racial separatism, postracialism, anticolonialism, Pan-Africanism, and Afrofuturism, he argues that the black utopian tradition continues to challenge American political thought and culture. Black Utopia spans black nationalist visions of an ideal Africa, the fiction of W. E. B. Du Bois, and Sun Ra’s cosmic mythology of alien abduction. Zamalin casts Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler as political theorists and reflects on the antiutopian challenges of George S. Schuyler and Richard Wright. Their thought proves that utopianism, rather than being politically immature or dangerous, can invigorate political imagination. Both an inspiring intellectual history and a critique of present power relations, this book suggests that, with democracy under siege across the globe, the black utopian tradition may be our best hope for combating injustice. (shrink)

Our goal is to develop a syntactical apparatus for propositional logics in which the accepted and rejected propositions have the same status and obeying treated in the same way. The suggested approach is based on the ideas of Łukasiewicz used for the classical logic and in addition, it includes the use of multiple conclusion rules. More precisely, a consequence relation is defined on a set of statements of forms “proposition _A_ is accepted” and “proposition _A_ is rejected”, where _A_ is (...) a proposition,—a unified consequence relation. Accordingly, the rules defining a unified consequence relation,—the unified rules, have statements as premises and as conclusions. A special attention is paid to the logics in which each proposition is either accepted or rejected. If we express this property via unified rules and add them to a unified deductive system, such a unified deductive system defines a reversible unified consequence: a statement “proposition _B_ is accepted” is derived from the statement “proposition _A_ is accepted” if and only if a statement “proposition _A_ is rejected” is derived from the statement “proposition _B_ is rejected”. (shrink)

b>: there is no “mind-body problem”, or “hard problem of consciousness”; if there is a hard problem of something, it is the problem of reconciling the manifest and scientific images.

Alex Blum ABSTRACT: We show, that given two fundamental theses of Kripke, no statement of the form ‘‘a=b’ is necessarily true’, is true, if ‘a’ and ‘b’ are distinct rigid designators. Download PDF.

We show, that given two fundamental theses of Kripke, no statement of the form ‘‘a=b’ is necessarily true’, is true, if ‘a’ and ‘b’ are distinct rigid designators.

It is widely assumed that the possibility of faultless disagreement is to be explained by the peculiar semantics and/or pragmatics of special kinds of linguistic construction. For instance, if A asserts “o is F” and B asserts this sentence’s denial, A and B can disagree faultlessly only if they employ the right kind of predicate as their “F”. In this paper, I present an argument against this assumption. Focusing on the special case when the expression of interest is a predicate, (...) I present a series of examples in which the same pairs of sentences are employed, but in different contexts. In some cases, we get an impression of faultless disagreement and in some cases we don’t. I identify a pattern across these contexts and conclude that faultless disagreement is made possible, not by a special kind of predicate, but instead by a special kind of context. (shrink)

Alex Blum ABSTRACT: We show that Kripke’s argument for the necessity of identity statements relating objects a and b by their rigid designators demands an additional significant premise. Download PDF.

A semantic framework for interpreting dialogue should provide an account of the content that is mutually accepted by its participants. The acceptance by one agent of another’s contribution crucially involves the theory of what that contribution means; A’s acceptance of B’s contribution means that the content of B’s contribution must be integrated into A’s extant commitments.1 For assertions, traditionally assumed to express a proposition formalised as a set of possible worlds, it was clear how the integration should go: acceptance meant (...) intersecting the newly accepted proposition with the set of worlds representing the content of the agent’s prior commitments. Dynamic semantics (e.g., Asher (1989)) refined this picture by replacing intersection with the operation of dynamic update. The way to treat the negative counterpart of acceptance—namely, rejection—is also clear in principle: A s rejection of B’s assertion means that the negation of the content of B’s contribution should be integrated with the content of A’s prior commitments. However, acceptance and rejection don’t just happen with assertions. These speech acts can happen with questions as well. That is, an agent can choose to address the issues raised by the questioner; he can also choose to reject them. The explicit acceptance of a question can be conveyed by providing a direct answer or by an explicit admittance that one doesn’t know an answer; explicit rejection by uttering I won’t answer. (shrink)

Some things are _about_, or are _directed on_ , or _represent_, other things. For example, the sentence 'Cats are animals' is about cats (and about animals), this article is about intentionality, Emanuel Leutze's most famous painting is about Washington's crossing of the Delaware, lanterns hung in Boston's North Church were about the British, and a map of Boston is about Boston. In contrast, '#a$b', a blank slate, and the city of Boston are not about anything. Many mental states and events (...) also have "aboutness": the belief that cats are animals is about cats, as is the fear of cats, the desire to have many cats, and seeing that the cats are on the mat. Arguably some mental states and events are not about anything: sensations, like pains and itches, are often held to be examples. Actions can also be about other things: hunting for the cat is about the cat, although tripping over the cat is not. This -- rather vaguely characterized -- phenomenon of "aboutness" is called _intentionality_. Something that is about (directed on, represents) something else is said to "have intentionality", or (in the case of mental states) is said to be an "intentional mental state". (shrink)

I argue here that the impairment principle requires clarification. It needs to explain what makes one impairment greater than another, otherwise we will be unable to make the comparisons it requires, the ones that enable us to determine whether b really is a greater impairment than a, and as a result, whether causing b is immoral because causing a is. I then develop two of what I think are the most natural accounts of what might make one impairment greater than (...) another. The quantitative understanding of greater impairment is problematic because it leaves the impairment principle vulnerable to counterexamples; just because impairment b impairs a larger number of abilities or the same number of abilities but for a longer period or to a higher degree does not mean that b is a greater impairment than a. The qualitative understanding of greater impairment is problematic because it does not explain examples of greater impairment used in the literature, means that an abortion is always a qualitatively more severe impairment than causing fetal alcohol syndrome regardless of how the organism is affected, and/or entails that lethal impairment is always greater than nonlethal impairment. (shrink)

In the summer of 1514, Desiderius Erasmus (c.1467-1536) was beginning to establish his name as the leading humanist scholar of his age, when he was recalled to his monastery in his native Holland.

Introductory texts in the philosophy of mind often begin with a discussion of behaviourism, presented as one of the few theories of mind that have been conclusively refuted. But matters are not that simple: behaviourism, in one form or another, is still alive and kicking.

We show that Kripke’s argument for the necessity of identity statements relating objects a and b by their rigid designators demands an additional significant premise.

It is a basic and intuitive assumption that the relation of moral preference must be transitive—if A is overall morally preferable to B; and B is overall morally preferably to C; then, if our views are coherent, it better be the case that A is overall morally preferable to C. However, recent work by Temkin and Rachels has undermined that assumption by showing that common-sense ethical distributive principles that we are unlikely to give up generate intransitive sets of moral preferences. (...) The consequences of this for resource allocation are profound—how can we come up with a just way of rationing limited resources if whatever course of action we adopt, there will be other alternatives that are morally preferable to it? However, regardless of the theoretical challenges, practical resource allocation decisions must be made every day! We explore an approach to dealing with some of the pragmatic aspects of the problem, even though the theoretical problem of intransitivity remains unsolved. We begin by considering whether the ways in which counterexamples to transitivity have (of necessity) been oversimplified actually contribute to the intractability of the problem by taking the possibilities of cost sharing, benefit splitting, and compensation (which are often available in real-life tradeoff situations) off the table. The proposal we end up suggesting does not rely on any assumptions or judgments about interpersonal aggregation, and so has a chance of allowing us to work around the most troubling kind of intransitivity. (shrink)

It is a basic and intuitive assumption that the relation of moral preference must be transitive—if A is overall morally preferable to B; and B is overall morally preferably to C; then, if our views are coherent, it better be the case that A is overall morally preferable to C. However, recent work by Temkin and Rachels has undermined that assumption by showing that common-sense ethical distributive principles that we are unlikely to give up generate intransitive sets of moral preferences. (...) The consequences of this for resource allocation are profound—how can we come up with a just way of rationing limited resources if whatever course of action we adopt, there will be other alternatives that are morally preferable to it? However, regardless of the theoretical challenges, practical resource allocation decisions must be made every day! We explore an approach to dealing with some of the pragmatic aspects of the problem, even though the theoretical problem of intransitivity remains unsolved. We begin by considering whether the ways in which counterexamples to transitivity have (of necessity) been oversimplified actually contribute to the intractability of the problem by taking the possibilities of cost sharing, benefit splitting, and compensation (which are often available in real-life tradeoff situations) off the table. The proposal we end up suggesting does not rely on any assumptions or judgments about interpersonal aggregation, and so has a chance of allowing us to work around the most troubling kind of intransitivity. (shrink)

Background: how mind functions is subject to continuing scientific discussion. A simplistic approach says that, since no convincing way has been found to model subjective experience, mind cannot exist. A second holds that, since mind cannot be described by classical physics, it must be described by quantum physics. Another perspective concerns mind's hypothesized ability to interact with the world of quanta: it should be responsible for reduction of quantum wave packets; physics producing 'Objective Reduction' is postulated to form the basis (...) for mind-matter interactions. This presentation describes results derived from a new approach to these problems. It is based on well-established biology involving physics not previously applied to the fields of mind, or consciousness studies, that of critical feedback instability. -/- Methods: 'self-organized criticality' in complexity biology places system loci of control at critical instabilities, physical properties of which, including information properties, are presented. Their elucidation shows that they can model hitherto unexplained properties of experience. -/- Results: All results depend on physical properties of critical instabilities. First, at least one feed-back or feed-forward loop must have feedback gain, g = 1: information flows round the loop impress perfect images of system states back on themselves: they represent processes of perfect self-observation. This annihilates system quanta: system excitations are instability fluctuations, which cannot be quantized. Major results follow: -/- 1. Information vectors representing criticality states must include at least one attached information loop denoting self-observation. -/- 2. Such loop structures are attributed a function, 'registering the state's own existence', explaining -/- a. Subjective 'awareness of one's own presence' -/- b. How content-free states of awareness can be remembered (Jon Shear) -/- c. Subjective experience of time duration (Immanuel Kant) -/- d. The 'witness' property of experience – often mentioned by athletes 'in the zone' -/- e. The natural association between consciousness and intelligence -/- This novel, physically and biologically sound approach seems to satisfactorily model subjectivity. -/- Further significant results follow: -/- 1. Registration of external information in excited states of systems at criticality reduces external wave-packets: the new model exhibits 'Objective Reduction' of wave packets. -/- 2. High internal coherence (postulated by Domash & Penrose) leading to a. Non-separable information vector bundles. b. Non-reductive states (Chalmers's criterion for experience). -/- 3. Information that is: a. encoded in coherence negentropy; b. non-digitizable, and therefore c. computationally without digital equivalent (posited by Penrose). -/- Discussion and Conclusions: instability physics implies anharmonic motion, preventing excitation quantization, and totally different from the quantum physics of simple harmonic motion at stability. Instability excitations are different from anything hitherto conceived in information science. They can model aspects of mind never previously treated, including genuine subjectivity, objective reduction of wave-packets, and inter alia all properties given above. (shrink)

An conversation with Harry Frankfurt about his views on love, free will, and responsibility, as well as his general approach to philosophy. (Note: a revised version appears in Alex Voorhoeve, Conversations on Ethics, OUP 2009).

An interview with Philippa Foot about her book 'Natural Goodness' and the development of her thought. (Note: A slightly revised version appears in Conversations on Ethics, OUP 2009).

Inhaltsverzeichnis/Contents: H.G. CALLAWAY: Open Transcendentalism and the Normative Character of Methodology. Roger F. GIBSON: Two Conceptions of Philosophy. Jürg FREUDIGER: Quine und die Unterdeterminiertheit empirischer Theorien. David PEARS: The Ego and the Eye: Wittgenstein's Use of an Analogy. Guido KÜNG: Welterkennen und Textinterpretation bei Roman Ingarden und Nelson Goodman. Barry SMITH: Putting the World Back into Semantics. Herbert STACHOWIAK: Offen für Ophelia? Paul GOCHET & Michel KEFER: Henri Lauener's Open Transcendentalism. Rudolf HALLER: Zum Problem des Relativismus in der Philosophie. Andreas (...) GRAESER: Analytic Philosophy and Hermeneutic Philosophy. Toward Reunion in Philosophy? Avrum STROLL: That Puzzle We Call the Mind. Wolfgang RÖD: Humes Skeptizismus als Entwurf eines neuen philosophischen Paradigmas. Henry E. ALLISON: Apperception and Analyticity in the B-Deduction. Peter SIMONS: Who's Afraid of Higher-Order Logic? Wilhelm K. ESSLER: Gorgias hat Recht! Alex BURRI: Relativismus, Realismus, Mathematik. (shrink)

Our reply is in four parts. The first part addresses objections to our claim that there might be "unknowable" color facts. The second part discusses the use we make of opponent process theory. The third part examines the question of whether colors are causes. The fourth part takes up some issues concerning the content of visual experience. Our target article had three aims: (a) to explain clearly the structure of the debate about color realism; (b) to introduce an interdisciplinary audience (...) to the way philosophers have thought about the issue; (c) to argue that colors are certain sorts of physical properties ("productances"). We are very grateful to the commentators in this continuing commentary for their criticism and constructive suggestions. (shrink)

The principle of suspension says that when you disagree with an epistemic peer about p, you should suspend judgment about p. In “Epistemic Abstainers, Epistemic Martyrs, and Epistemic Converts,” Scott F. Aikin, Michael Harbour, Jonathan Neufeld, and Robert B. Talisse argue against the principle of suspension, claiming that it “is deeply at odds with how we view ourselves as cognitive agents.” I argue that their arguments do not succeed.

The principle of suspension says that when you disagree with an epistemic peer about p, you should suspend judgment about p. In “Epistemic Abstainers, Epistemic Martyrs, and Epistemic Converts,” Scott F. Aikin, Michael Harbour, Jonathan Neufeld, and Robert B. Talisse argue against the principle of suspension. In “In Defense of Epistemic Abstemiousness” I presented arguments that their arguments do not succeed, and in “On Epistemic Abstemiousness: A Reply to Bundy” they argue that my arguments are not successful. I here clarify (...) and defend my arguments. (shrink)