Research on sleep loss and vigilance both focus on declines in cognitive performance, but theoretical accounts have developed largely in parallel in these two areas. In addition, computational instantiations of theoretical accounts are rare. The current work uses computational modeling to explore whether the same mechanisms can account for the effects of both sleep loss and time on task on performance. A classic task used in the sleep deprivation literature, the Psychomotor Vigilance Test, was extended from the typical 10-min duration (...) to 35 min, to make the task similar in duration to traditional vigilance tasks. A computational cognitive model demonstrated that the effects of time on task in the PVT were equivalent to those observed with sleep loss. Subsequently, the same mechanisms were applied to a more traditional vigilance task—the Mackworth Clock Task—providing a good fit to existing data. This supports the hypothesis that these different types of fatigue may produce functionally equivalent declines in performance. (shrink)

In 'Law as a Leap of Faith' Gardner's analogy of faith in law to faith in God may seem outlandish. But consider the implications of the positions Gardner's jurisprudential views assemble: law can give us reason to do what we would otherwise not have reason to do - in fact it can give us reason to do what would otherwise be immoral. This is the implication of a commitment to law's capacity to give exclusive reasons, on one hand, together with (...) the commitment, on the other, that any given law is valid because of its sources and not its moral merits. (shrink)

Both advocates and opponents of the animalist view that we are fundamentally biological organisms have typically assumed that animalism is incompatible with intuitive verdicts about cerebrum isolation and transplantation. It is argued here that this assumption is a mistake. Animalism, developed in a natural way, in fact strongly supports these intuitive verdicts. The availability of this attractive resolution of a central puzzle in the personal identity debate has been obscured by a range of factors, including the prevalence in contemporary metaphysics (...) of a certain conception of the nature of organisms. I end by explaining how the animalist can use intuitive verdicts, usually thought to present a difficulty for the view, as positive evidence for claims about the persistence conditions of the relevant kind of organism. (shrink)

The animalist view of personal identity, according to which we human persons are identical to animals, is arguably the simplest view of the relationship between human persons and animals. But animalism faces a serious challenge from the possibility of brain transplants. This chapter develops, on behalf of animalism, a new way of modeling such cases. The model is developed by analogy with situations of environmentally determined reference shift familiar from the literature on externalism in the philosophy of mind and language. (...) The resulting externalist animalist model is put to work in describing a range of variant cases and in accounting for certain anti-animalist intuitions. In the final section some wider consequences are elucidated, concerning the extrinsic nature of thought, and the coherence, within a broadly materialist framework, of disembodied consciousness. (shrink)

Although most of us know that human beings cannot and should not be replaced by computers, we have great difficulties saying why this is so. This paradox is largely the result of institutionalizing several fundamental misconceptions as to the nature of both trustworthy objective and moral knowledge. Unless we transcend this paradox, we run the increasing risks of becoming very good at counting without being able to say what is worth counting and why. The degree to which this is occurring (...) is the degree to which the computer revolution is already over — and the degree to which we human beings have lost. (shrink)

Michelle Bella & Giovanni Maddalena – Many Peirce scholars wonder about what is going on with the publication of the Writings? André De Tienne – The answer is at once, almost nothing, but a lot! We are in a state of quasi-limbo, and so people do notice that we have not been publishing any volume for the last 10 years and the universal question is, what is happening to the Peirce Edition Project? It is a question that I keep (...) asking myself! But I am glad to share this more publicly, so that peo... (shrink)

This paper reports on an investigation of issues surrounding the use of ethical codes/codes of conduct in Irish based companies. Using a comprehensive questionnaire survey, the paper examines the incidence, content and enforcement of codes of conduct among a sample of the top 1000 companies based in Ireland. The main findings indicate that the overall usage of codes of conduct amongst indigenous Irish companies has increased significantly from 1995 to 2000. However, in line with prior research, these codes focus primarily (...) on issues surrounding company and employee protection as opposed to society protection. Almost half of all codes are written by company personnel or provided by head office. Revisions of codes are common but formal ongoing methods of instructing new staff about codes are not prevalent. Less than one-third of companies with codes have formal channels for reporting violations but a high percentage have formal disciplinary procedures in place for breaches of codes. (shrink)

Not only did he found his own school of philosophy, known as eclecticism, but he reintroduced into French intellectual life the study and appreciation of the history of philosophy, and produced studies and translations--of Plato and Proclus, Descartes and Pascal--that stand to this day as paradigms of exegetical thoroughness. And it was he who first pointed out to his countrymen that there was some serious philosophical work being carried out on the other side of the Rhine.

Visual working memory is a construct hypothesized to store a small amount of accurate perceptual information that can be brought to bear on a task. Much research concerns the construct's capacity and the precision of the information stored. Two prominent theories of VWM representation have emerged: slot-based and continuous-resource mechanisms. Prior modeling work suggests that a continuous resource that varies over trials with variable capacity and a potential to make localization errors best accounts for the empirical data. Questions remain regarding (...) the variability in VWM capacity and precision. Using a novel eye-tracking paradigm, we demonstrate that VWM facilitates search and exhibits effects of fixation frequency and recency, particularly for prior targets. Whereas slot-based memory models cannot account for the human data, a novel continuous-resource model does capture the behavioral and eye tracking data, and identifies the relevant resource as item activation. (shrink)

Michela Bella & Anna Boncompagni – This conversation will focus on your role and your position with respect to pragmatism; those who you consider allies and enemies in the field; and then finally your ideas about the future of philosophy and the future of pragmatism. You worked with famous philosophers like Carnap, Reichenbach and many others. But let us start from the beginning. Hilary Putnam – My alma mater was the University of Pennsylvania. The first teacher who really influenced (...) me there... (shrink)

Michela Bella & Matteo Santarelli – What was the state of Pragmatism studies when you first encountered pragmatism? Larry A. Hickman – After completing my undergraduate degree in psychology I decided that I wanted to study philosophy. In order to prepare for graduate school, I spent a year taking philosophy courses at the University of Texas in Austin. The faculty included Charles Hartshorne, who was co-editor of the Peirce Collected Papers. There was also David L. Miller and George Gentry, (...) b... (shrink)

Decentralised ledgers are gaining momentum following the interest of industries and people in smart contracts. Major attention is paid to blockchain applications intended for trading assets that exploit digital cryptographic certificates called tokens. Particularly relevant tokens are the non-fungible tokens (NFTs), namely, unique and non-replicable tokens used to represent the cryptographic counterpart of assets ranging from pieces of art through to licenses and certifications. A relevant consequence of the hard-coded nature of blockchains is the hardness of probing, in particular when (...) advanced searchers involving the capabilities of the smart contracts or the assets digitised by NFTs are required. For this purpose, a formal representation for the operational semantics of smart contracts and of tokens has become particularly urgent, especially in economy and finance, where blockchains become increasingly relevant. Hence, we feel the need to tailor Semantic Web technologies to achieve that semantic representation at least for NFTS. This article reports on an ontology that leverages the Ontology for Agents, Systems, and Integration of Services (“OASIS”) towards the semantic representation of smart contracts responsible for managing ERC721-compliant NFTs and running on the Ethereum blockchain. Called Ether-OASIS, the proposed ontology adopts OASIS and tailors its behaviouristic approach to the Ethereum blockchain by conceiving smart contracts as agents running on the blockchain and, consequently, smart contract interactions as agent commitments. Smart contracts are represented in terms of their actions, purposes and tokens that they manage, thus realising a blockchain that is more usable both by users and automated applications. The ontology is evaluated using standard ontological metrics and applied on a case study concerning the minting and transferring of NFTs that digitise batches of wheat. (shrink)

The thirteenth-century Ancrene Wisse is one of the major works of early Middle English prose, and was repeatedly revised and adapted for different audiences. It has attracted much attention from students of church history and women's studies as a highly influential, important example of pastoral guidance for women religions. This is the first edition to bring together the full manuscript evidence, and to set it in its broader cultural and institutional context. Volume II will be published in 2006.

The Ancrene Wisse, a guide for female recluses written in the West Midlands in the early thirteenth century, and the closely related religious works of the `Katherine Group', offer a vivid insight into the religious life of the time, and their rich and varied prose style blends Latin and native English stylistic traditions with remarkable skill and assurance. The difficulty of their language, however, has made them largely inaccessible except to experts in Middle English, and this edition is designed to (...) introduce them to a wider audience, including undergraduates with limited experience of Middle English and specialists in other disciplines, particularly history, theology, and women's studies. It provides a representative selection in new and readable critical texts, with a general introduction, notes, a select glossary, and interleaved translations. (shrink)

THE problem of religious knowledge may be stated very simply. If there is a real God, how can we find out that fact? The present discussion assumes that this is just what we must find out, if there is to be any possibility of a philosophically valid religion; for the essential element in religion is God, and consequently the essential philosophical question in regard to religion is that of the reality of God.

Michela Bella & Matteo Santarelli – What did you know about Pragmatism when you started? Where did you start as a student? Charlene Haddock Seigfried – I came to pragmatism by way of existentialism. During the late sixties, I took my first graduate class at the University of Southern California – an introduction to empiricism – which I didn’t like at all, and I also attended a lecture on existentialism, which intrigued me. But I was always interested in social (...) and political issues and I was m... (shrink)

Written for students, Mind, Matter, and Nature presumes no prior philosophical training on the part of the reader. The book nevertheless holds the arguments discussed to rigorous standards and is conversant with recent literature, thus making it useful as well to more advanced students and professionals interested in a resource on Thomistic hylomorphism in the philosophy of mind.

In an attempt to extract a coherent and still relevant structure of thought from its obsolete encumbrances, some of the recent interpretations of Kant have been needlessly hampered by neglect of the important concept of ‘possible experience’. Failure to make the full use of this concept that Kant himself made has inevitably been damaging to the Kantian doctrine of phenomenal objectivity; and any version of Kant that is so damaged falls drastically short of the original. I should like, therefore, after (...) making the problem a little clearer, to examine the concept of possible experience as Kant presents it; to attempt a clarification of difficulties in his presentation that may have contributed to the tendency to neglect the concept; and finally to indicate briefly the unfortunate consequences of this neglect in some recent instances. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Whose Red Garments?Which Divine Warrior? Thomas Aquinas on Isaiah 63 and the Literal Interpretation of the Old TestamentJoshua MaddenIntroductionIn attempting to discern the principles by which St. Thomas Aquinas offers a literal interpretation of the Old Testament, this essay will serve to highlight the tension between various periods and methods of biblical exegesis in the hope that it will allow a more fruitful engagement with the conclusions of both (...) St. Thomas and modern biblical commentators. In order to make this discernment, we begin first by addressing the concept of literal interpretation as a whole, as significant misunderstandings can arise in any discussion of what a "literal" reading of Scripture actually is. This exploration will serve our project well by allowing us to pin down precisely what is meant by this term, as well as why it should be important in any mode of theological exegesis (especially that of the Old Testament). When we are able to parse out the exact nature of literal interpretation and the implications of taking such an approach with regard to St. Thomas, we will then be capable of examining a particular instance of Thomas's exegesis by offering a test case of his methods in the reading of Isaiah 63, in which Isaiah prophesies the future appearance of a heavenly warrior who will bring both judgment and salvation to Israel.To sum up, we have two goals: to show that St. Thomas's understanding of the literal sense is both logically coherent and perennially illuminating, and to highlight a particular instance in which St. Thomas's exegesis and literal interpretation is employed in an insightful and creative manner. The conclusion of such an investigation will demonstrate that Aquinas is a [End Page 1201] valuable resource for the science of biblical exegesis precisely because of his philosophically robust methodology and his commitment to the grounding and foundational importance of the Old Testament's historical, literal sense.The Nature of Literal InterpretationAt the very outset of the Summa theologiae, St. Thomas deals with the issue of biblical interpretation and the various senses of Scripture. First, he clarifies what it means to speak of a literal sense of Scripture: "that first signification whereby words signify things belongs to the first sense, the historical or literal."1 Having established what he means by the literal sense, he goes on to speak of the various spiritual senses—allegorical, moral, anagogical—and the way in which they are to be parsed out, but he is careful to note that a multiplication of senses does not necessitate equivocation in meaning: "Thus in holy Scripture no confusion results [from the multiplicity of senses] for all the senses are founded on one—the literal—from which alone can any argument be drawn, and not from those intended in allegory."2 To sum up: the literal, historical sense of Scripture is that meaning which is intended by the words themselves, and it is upon this understanding alone that any argument (and thus any theology) can be founded.3Now one should not take this definition of the literal sense as somehow historicizing or demystifying the text of Scripture, as though St. Thomas were concerned merely with what the words of the human authors mean. First, it is not merely the intention of the human author that must be ascertained, for the human author is not the only author: "The author of holy Scripture is God."4 In the preface to the Super Isaiam he says the same: "the author of Sacred Scripture is the Holy Spirit," and it is "the prophet's tongue" (lingua prophetae) which acts as the divine instrument (organum spiritus sancti).5 So [End Page 1202] here we have a necessary condition for literal interpretation, that it must treat God as the primary author of Scripture. Therefore, a literal exegesis of any particular text must take into account not only the intention of the human author, but the divine author as well.Let us proceed. It is a particularly modern approach to couch this search for the literal sense of the text as the search to ascertain "what the author meant." For St. Thomas, this is a... (shrink)

Gli aspetti concreti e le ricadute pratiche della filosofia sono da qualche tempo al centro dell'attenzione sia degli specialisti - che si interrogano sulla portata e il significato della loro materia anche fuori dalle accademie - sia dei non filosofi - che affollano festival culturali e interrogano i filosofi sui media. Sulle diverse fogge assunte dalla filosofia di fronte alla pratica riflettono gli autori di questi saggi, facendo riferimento tanto a quelle contenute nel sapere consegnatoci in duemilacinquecento anni da questa (...) disciplina, quanto a quelle più recenti, volte a rinnovare il suo rapporto con la quotidianità - le cosiddette "pratiche filosofiche". Un ventaglio di sguardi diversi tra loro, che privilegiano ora la sapienza e la logica, ora la saggezza e la cura, che hanno però in comune l'interesse a pensare le sfide della contemporaneità e le conseguenze pratiche che la filosofia è in grado di offrire a ciascuno di noi, ma anche l'idea che la filosofia non sia una mera disciplina speculativa, ma sia invece indispensabile agli uomini - a tutti gli uomini - per dar senso alla loro vita. (shrink)

The recent publication of the stenographer's transcript of Whitehead's guest lecture on “social ethics” has shed new light on the relation between his metaphysics and ethics. Instead of including ethics in his philosophy, Whitehead treats it as a distinct, specialized science that does not share in the universality of metaphysics. The present article argues that an analysis of his lecture shows that a nonindividualist Whiteheadian ethics is possible without rupturing the coherence of Whitehead's system or contradicting the ontological or subjectivist (...) principle. As part of a larger transition in Whitehead's thinking during the years 1925–1927, he reformulates the notion of the environment as inheritance and is therefore able to pose the question of the endurance of values at the level of society, which is the purview of ethics. Reconstructing the metaphysical background may provide a “stimulus to the imagination” for ethical debates today, especially in the field of environmental ethics. (shrink)

In his well-known Discourse on Metaphysics , Leibniz puts individual substance at the basis of metaphysical building. In so doing, he connects himself to a venerable tradition. His theory of individual concept, however, breaks with another idea of the same tradition, that no account of the individual as such can be given. Contrary to what has been commonly accepted, Leibniz’s intuitions are not the mere result of the transcription of subject-predicate logic, nor of the uncritical persistence of some old metaphysical (...) assumptions. They grow, instead, from an unprejudiced inquiry about our basic ontological framework, where logic of truth, linguistic analysis, and phenomenological experience of the mind’s life are tightly interwoven. Leibniz’s struggle for a concept capable of grasping concrete individuals as such is pursued in an age of great paradigm changes – from the Scholastic background to Hobbes’s nominalism to the Cartesian ‘way of ideas’ or Spinoza’s substance metaphysics – when the relationships among words, ideas and things are intensively discussed and wholly reshaped. This is the context where the genesis and significance of Leibniz’s theory of ‘complete being’ and its concept are reconstrued. The result is a fresh look at some of the most perplexing issues in Leibniz scholarship, like his ideas about individual identity and the thesis that all its properties are essential to an individual. The questions Leibniz faces, and to which his theory of individual substance aims to answer, are yet, to a large extent, those of contemporary metaphysics: how to trace a categorial framework? How to distinguish concrete and abstract items? What is the metaphysical basis of linguistic predication? How is trans-temporal sameness assured? How to make sense of essential attributions? In this ontological framework Leibniz’s further questions about the destiny of human individuals and their history are spelt out. Maybe his answers also have something to tell us. This book is aimed at all who are interested in Leibniz’s philosophy, history of early modern philosophy and metaphysical issues in their historical development. (shrink)

It is well known that AI-based language technology—large language models, machine translation systems, multilingual dictionaries, and corpora—is currently limited to three percent of the world’s most widely spoken, financially and politically backed languages. In response, recent efforts have sought to address the “digital language divide” by extending the reach of large language models to “underserved languages.” We show how some of these efforts tend to produce flawed solutions that adhere to a hard-wired representational preference for certain languages, which we call (...) language modeling bias. Language modeling bias is a specific and under-studied form of linguistic bias were language technology by design favors certain languages, dialects, or sociolects with respect to others. We show that language modeling bias can result in systems that, while being precise regarding languages and cultures of dominant powers, are limited in the expression of socio-culturally relevant notions of other communities. We further argue that at the root of this problem lies a systematic tendency of technology developer communities to apply a simplistic understanding of diversity which does not do justice to the more profound differences that languages, and ultimately the communities that speak them, embody. Drawing on the concept of epistemic injustice, we point to the broader ethico-political implications and show how it can lead not only to a disregard for valuable aspects of diversity but also to an under-representation of the needs of marginalized language communities. Finally, we present an alternative socio-technical approach that is designed to tackle some of the analyzed problems. (shrink)