100 years ago, the editors of the Journal of Educational Psychology conducted one of the most famous studies of experts' conceptions of human intelligence. Reason enough to prompt the question where we stand today with conceptualizing 'intelligence'. In this paper, I provide a synopsis of the latest research on human intelligence(s). I embrace the notion of intelligence as a non-unitary faculty with pluralistic forms. Even though I do not provide a definition of 'intelligence' of my own, I provide good reasons (...) for this reluctance. Nonetheless, I specify the term as complex, gradual, embedded, multidirectional, and dynamic. Furthermore, I argue for the special status of musical, not linguistic, intelligence. (shrink)

The heuristic value of Pylyshyn's cognitive impenetrability theory is questioned in this commentary, mainly because, as it stands, the key argument cannot be challenged empirically. Pylyshyn requires unambiguous evidence for an effect of cognitive states on early perceptual mechanisms, which is impossible to provide because we can only infer what might happen at these earlier levels of processing on the basis of evidence collected at the post-perceptual stage. Furthermore, the theory that early visual processes cannot be modified by cognitive states (...) implies that it is totally pointless to try to investigate interactions between consciousness and neurosensory processes. (shrink)

Roald Hoffmann's contributions to chemistry are well known; this Nobel laureate has published more than 500 articles and two books. As an "applied theoretical chemist," he has made significant contributions to our understanding of chemical bonding and reactivity, and taught two generations of chemists how to use molecular orbitals for real chemistry. Less well known, however, are Hoffmann's important and insightful contributions to the areas of scholarship surrounding chemistry. Over a career that spans nearly fifty years, Roald (...) class='Hi'>Hoffmann has thought and written copiously about the broader context of chemistry and its relationship to the arts and poetry. This book contains Hoffmann's essays and is organized around several major themes: chemical reasoning and explanation, writing and communicating in science, ethics, art and science, and chemical education. A few are unpublished lectures that are valuable additions to the volume. The editors have the full cooperation of Roald Hoffmann in this project. Most of the published work will be reprinted verbatim, but a few of the essays will be revised to eliminate redundancy. The unpublished lectures will also be edited since they were originally intended to be delivered orally at specific occasions. The editors will provide an introduction to the book, and some introductory material for each section. In introducing the material, they will highlight the intrinsic importance and interest of the ideas, as well as the places where Hoffmann's thought makes novel contributions to cognate areas. (shrink)

On childhood, childhood culture and child perspective in a cross-cultural frame of reference.

Willensfreiheit wird bestritten, weil sich der Begriff nicht logisch konsistent definieren lässt und weil inzwischen auch neurobiologische Anhaltspunkte gegen ihre Existenz sprechen. Anders als in der biblisch-reformatorischen Tradition gehört die Willensfreiheit aber zum Kern des aufgeklärten Menschenbildes. Und auch in der Theologie scheint die Bestreitung der Willensfreiheit unweigerlich auf die Lehre von der doppelten Prädestination hinauszulaufen, so dass seit Pietismus und Aufklärung auch die evangelische Theologie ihrem Ursprung untreu wurde. In dem Buch werden die Perspektiven der Philosophie, Neurobiologie und Theologie (...) zum Thema Willensfreiheit zusammengeführt. Die Argumente und Befunde gegen Willensfreiheit sind weit stärker als die zu ihren Gunsten. Deswegen existieren bislang nur Positionen, die den Determinismus akzeptieren, oder solche, die aus der Negation des Determinismus doch noch eine Möglichkeit für Willensfreiheit im menschlichen Gehirn zu finden hoffen. Die Studie geht einen völlig neuen Weg, indem sie den Determinismus der Aussenwelt bestreitet, und dies im Anschluss an die erkenntnistheoretischen Debatten über das Wesen des Quantenindeterminismus. Dabei wird aber gerade kein freier Wille postuliert, sondern ein Konzept aktiver Lebensführung entwickelt, in dem Bildung zur Verwirklichung von vorgenommenen Zielen eine besondere Rolle spielt."-- Back cover. (shrink)

Recent findings about the capabilities of smart animals such as corvids or octopi and novel types of artificial intelligence, from social robots to cognitive assistants, are provoking the demand for new answers for meaningful comparison with other kinds of intelligence. This book fills this need by proposing a universal theory of intelligence which is based on causal learning as the central theme of intelligence. The goal is not just to describe, but mainly to explain queries like why one kind of (...) intelligence is more intelligent than another, whatsoever the intelligence. Shiny terms like "strong AI," "superintelligence," "singularity" or "artificial general intelligence" that have been coined by a Babylonian confusion of tongues are clarified on the way. (shrink)

Chemical structures are among the trademarks of our profession, as surely chemical as flasks, beakers and distillation columns. When someone sees one of us busily scribbling formulas or structures, he or she has no trouble identifying a chemist. Yet these familiar objects, which accompany our work from start to end, from the initial doodlings (Fig. I) to the final polished artwork in a publication (Fig. II), are deceptively simple. They raise interesting and difficult questions about representation. It is the intent (...) of this article to reflect upon molecular graphics. (shrink)

From the early reception of Thomas Aquinas up to the present, many have interpreted his theory of liberum arbitrium to imply intellectual determinism: we do not control our choices, because we do not control the practical judgments that cause our choices. In this paper we argue instead that he rejects determinism in general and intellectual determinism in particular, which would effectively destroy liberum arbitrium as he conceives of it. We clarify that for Aquinas moral responsibility presupposes liberum arbitrium and thus (...) the ability to do otherwise, although the ability to do otherwise applies differently to praise and blame. His argument against intellectual determinism is not straightforward, but we construct it by analogy to his arguments against other deterministic threats. The non-determinism of the intellect’s causality with respect to the will results from his claims that practical reasoning is defeasible and that the reasons for actions are not contrastive reasons. (shrink)

In 1976 an interdisciplinary study on risks and risk evaluations was inaugurated in Sweden and was sponsored by the Committee for Future-oriented Research. One of the basic assumptions of the Swedish risk project was that modern society has created “new, increasingly complicated and large-scale technical systems.” It also assumed that “large systems are economically efficient, but vulnerable and therefore create risks.” A third assumption was that “the ever rising standard of living is purchased at the cost of certain additional risks.” (...) The perspective of the project was thus markedly historically oriented. (shrink)

Le mouvement skinhead se compose de deux entités : les skinheads racistes-nationalistes et les skinheads antiracistes. S’inspirant des théories psychosociologiques relatives aux représentations sociales et aux minorités actives proposées par Serge Moscovici , il décrit les styles de comportement précis de chaque groupe skin, leurs divergences et leurs ressemblances, et analyse la façon dont la société, aidée par les media, ne retient qu’une seule représentation sociale, celle des skinheads nationalistes. Malgré l’univocité de la représentation, ce qui ressort de 19 entretiens (...) avec les skinheads, c’est l’idée de pluralité identitaire combinée à un ancrage urbain très important.The skinhead movement is divided into two groups : the racist-nationalist skinheads and the antiracist skinheads. Taking into account the social-psychological theories of social representations and active minorities, proposed by Serge Moscovici , it describes the styles of behavior of each skin group, their divergences and resemblances and analyses how society, with the help of the media, has built only one social representation of the nationalist skinheads. In spite of this univocal representation, what is underlined through the nineteen interviews with skinheads is a form of plural identity linked to a strong urban anchoring. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, the capabilities approach has become an increasingly influential theory of development. It conceptualises human wellbeing in terms of an individual's ability to achieve functionings we have reason to value. In contrast, the African ethic of ubuntu views human flourishing as the propensity to pursue relations of fellowship with others, such that relationships have fundamental value. These two theoretical perspectives seem to be in tension with each other; while the capabilities approach focuses on individuals as the (...) locus of ethical value, an ubuntu ethic concentrates on the relations between individuals. In this article, we ask: to what extent is the capabilities approach compatible with this African ethical theory? We argue that, on reflection, relations play a much stronger role in the capabilities approach than often assumed. There is good reason to believe that relationality is part of the concept of a capability itself, where such relationality has intrinsic ethical value. This understanding of the ethical centrality of relations grounds new normative perspectives on the capabilities approach, and offers a more comprehensive grasp of the relevance of relationships to empirical enquiry. (shrink)

In this book Tobias Hoffmann studies the medieval free will debate during its liveliest period, from the 1220s to the 1320s, and clarifies its background in Aristotle, Augustine, and earlier medieval thinkers. Among the wide range of authors he examines are not only well-known thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham, but also a number of authors who were just as important in their time and deserve to be rediscovered today. To shed further light on (...) their theories of free will, Hoffmann also explores their competing philosophical explanations of the fall of the angels, that is, the hypothesis of an evil choice made by rational beings under optimal psychological conditions. As he shows, this test case imposed limits on tracing free choices to cognition. His book provides a comprehensive account of a debate that was central to medieval philosophy and continues to occupy philosophers today. (shrink)

In the original publication, the article title has been published incorrectly. Now the same has been corrected in this correction.

This is a response to a short communication on our research presented in Solbrække et al. (Med Health Care Philos 20(1):89–103, 2017), which raises a series of serious allegations. Our article explored the rise of ‘the breast cancer gene’ as a field of medical, cultural and personal knowledge. We used the concept biological citizenship to elucidate representations of, and experiences with, hereditary breast cancer in a Norwegian context, addressing a research deficit. In our response to Møller and Hovig’s (Med Health (...) Care Philos 21(2):239–242, 2018a) opinionated piece, we start by questioning on which scientific grounds they base their knowledge claims and situate their criticism in a pre-determined positivist script, which exposes their incompetency when it comes to establishing a useful critique of our research. We tie this to an attitude of scientific supremacy, which reduces the complexity and specificity of different knowledges into a clichéd divide between ‘hard evidence’ and ‘fiction’—presented in a predictable narrative which seeks to establish research protagonists and antagonists. We elaborate on the rationale of our qualitative approach to analyzing and interpreting situated and mediated aspects of BRCA 1/2. We counter claims that our research does harm to patients. We refer to a medical scandal emerging from Norway where 21 women were wrongfully diagnosed and surgically treated for a mis-interpreted cancer gene mutation. In conclusion, we stand by the integrity of our research as reported in the original paper. Scientific supremacy and pre-scripted criticism impose considerable obstacles for the possibility of establishing interdisciplinary dialogue across knowledge paradigms in health care and medicine. We therefore urge readers to reflect on how we can establish and sustain ethically careful and truthful dialogue—without doing violence to epistemological differences—to protect and advance the interdisciplinarity that constitutes the journal’s scope. (shrink)

Ethics committees in Catholic health care are responsible for con­sultation, education, and policy development and review. Historically, ethics committees were reactive and had no articulated goals. This article argues that the essential goals of Catholic ethics committees are (1) to promote the human dignity of patients and staff; (2) to promote the common good; (3) to promote institutional identity, integrity, and ethical climate; and (4) to improve quality of care. These goals are most effectively met when ethics committees are proactive (...) and integrated in the institution, embrace systems thinking, and utilize professional ethicists locally or regionally. (shrink)

Languages are complex systems that allow speakers to produce novel grammatical utterances. Yet, linguists differ as to how general and abstract they think the mental representation of speakers have to be to give rise to this grammatical creativity. In order to shed light on these questions, the present study looks at one specific construction type, English comparative correlatives, that turns out to be particularly interesting in this context: on the one hand it has been described in terms of one of (...) the most abstract and general syntactic rules, on the other hand it shows specific idiomatic structures that are often produced without any variation. While the syntax and semantics of the English Comparative Correlative construction have received considerable attention in the literature, so far only a small number of usage-based analyses have been published on the topic. These either only relied on small databases or focussed only on the productivity of one slot in the construction. In contrast to this, the present study analyses more than 1,400 CC tokens sampled from COCA. The results of the present study yield important results concerning English CC constructions, including the schematicity and generality of their mental representations. (shrink)

This article discusses the reasons why illusory contours are likely to result from adaptive perceptual mechanisms that have evolved across species to promote behavioral success.

ABSTRACT Causes must be distinct from their effects. If the temperature in a room is 15°F, this can cause water pipes to freeze. However, the temperature’s being 15°F is not a cause of the temperature’s being below the freezing point. In general, conceptual, logical, mathematical, and other non-causal dependence relations should not be misclassified as causal. In this paper, I discuss how interventionist theories of causation can meet the challenge of distinguishing between (direct or indirect) causal relations and dependence relations (...) that are due to non-causal factors. I survey several approaches to solving this problem, and propose a novel criterion based on the notion of supervenience. According to this criterion, variables are sufficiently distinct to qualify as the relata of a causal relation iff they do not have overlapping minimal supervenience bases. (shrink)

This article examines Aquinas’s theory of free choice and moral responsibility throughout his De malo and provides a careful analysis of question 6 “on human choice.” We argue that Aquinas here proposes an account of free choice as incompatible with determinism. We also show briefly that Aquinas’s account of the fall of the angels in the De malo confirms our interpretation.

The experiments reported herein probe the visual cortical mechanisms that control near–far percepts in response to two-dimensional stimuli. Figural contrast is found to be a principal factor for the emergence of percepts of near versus far in pictorial stimuli, especially when stimulus duration is brief. Pictorial factors such as interposition (Experiment 1) and partial occlusion Experiments 2 and 3) may cooperate, as generally predicted by cue combination models, or compete with contrast factors in the manner predicted by the FACADE model. (...) In particular, if the geometrical conŽ guration of an image favors activation of cortical bipole grouping cells, as at the top of a T-junction, then this advantage can cooperate with the contrast of the conŽ guration to facilitate a near–far percept at a lower contrast than at an X-junction. Varying the exposure duration of the stimuli shows that the more balanced bipole competition in the X-junction case takes longer exposure times to resolve than the bipole competition in the T-junction case (Experiment 3). (shrink)

Discussions concerning belief revision, theorydevelopment, and ``creativity'' in philosophy andAI, reveal a growing interest in Peirce'sconcept of abduction. Peirce introducedabduction in an attempt to providetheoretical dignity and clarification to thedifficult problem of knowledge generation. Hewrote that ``An Abduction is Originary inrespect to being the only kind of argumentwhich starts a new idea'' (Peirce, CP 2.26).These discussions, however, led to considerabledebates about the precise way in which Peirce'sabduction can be used to explain knowledgegeneration (cf. Magnani, 1999; Hoffmann, 1999).The crucial question (...) is that of understandinghow we can get the new elements capableof enlarging our theories. Under thesecircumstances, it might be helpful to step outof the entanglement and reconsider the basis ofthe problem that originally triggered Peirce'sinterest in abduction. This will lead us toanother Peircean concept, that of ``diagrammaticreasoning,'' which I discuss here in the contextof his ``pragmatism.'' In this way, I hope toreach a better understanding of thecontribution of ``abduction'' to the knowledgegeneration process. (shrink)

The perceived strength of darkness enhancement in the centre of surfaces surrounded or not surrounded by illusory contours was investigated as a function of proximity of the constituent elements of the display and their angular size. Magnitude estimation was used to measure the perception of the darkness phenomenon in white-on-grey stimuli. Darkness enhancement was perceived in both types of the stimuli used, but more strongly in the presence of illusory contours. In both cases, perceived darkness enhancement increased with increasing proximity (...) of the constituent parts of the display and with their angular size. These results suggest that the occurrence of darkness (or brightness) enhancement phenomena in the centre of the displays is not directly related to illusory contours, which only reinforce the subjective surface brightness/darkness. (shrink)

Theories of graded causation attract growing attention in the philosophical debate on causation. An important field of application is the controversial relationship between causation and moral responsibility. However, it is still unclear how exactly the notion of graded causation should be understood in the context of moral responsibility. One question is whether we should endorse a proportionality principle, according to which the degree of an agent’s moral responsibility is proportionate to their degree of causal contribution. A second question is whether (...) a theory of graded causation should measure closeness to necessity or closeness to sufficiency. In this paper, we argue that we should indeed endorse a proportionality principle and that this principle supports a notion of graded causation relying on closeness to sufficiency rather than closeness to necessity. Furthermore, we argue that this insight helps to provide a plausible analysis of the so-called ‘Moral Difference Puzzle’ recently described by Bernstein. (shrink)

A simple working taxonomy with three classes of pictorial completion is proposed as an alternative to Pessoa et al.'s classification: area, surface, and contour completion. The classification is based on psychophysical evidence, not on the different phenomenal attributes of the stimuli, showing that pictorial completion is likely to involve mechanistic interactions in the visual system at different levels of processing. Whether the concept of “filling-in” is an appropriate metaphor for the visual mechanisms that may underlie perceptual completion is questioned.

Lehar's Gestalt Bubble model introduces a computational approach to holistic aspects of three-dimensional scene perception. The model as such has merit because it manages to translate certain Gestalt principles of perceptual organization into formal codes or algorithms. The mistake made in this target article is to present the model within the theoretical framework of the question of consciousness. As a scientific approach to the problem of consciousness, the Gestalt Bubble fails for several reasons. This commentary addresses three of these: (1) (...) the terminology surrounding the concept of consciousness is not rigorously defined; (2) it is not made evident that three-dimensional scene perception requires consciousness at all; and (3) it is not clearly explained by which mechanism(s) the “picture-in-the-head,” supposedly represented in the brain, would be made available to different levels of awareness or consciousness. Footnotes1 After Shakespeare, Macbeth. (shrink)