What is Functionalism? Functionalism is one of the major proposals that have been offered as solutions to the mind/body problem. Solutions to the mind/body problem usually try to answer questions such as: What is the ultimate nature of the mental? At the most general level, what makes a mental state mental? Or more specifically, What do thoughts have in common in virtue of which they are thoughts? That is, what makes a thought a thought? What makes a pain a pain? (...) Cartesian Dualism said the ultimate nature of the mental was to be found in a special mental substance. Behaviorism identified mental states with behavioral dispositions; physicalism in its most influential version identifies mental states with brain states. Functionalism says that mental states are constituted by their causal relations to one another and to sensory inputs and behavioral outputs. Functionalism is one of the major theoretical developments of Twentieth Century analytic philosophy, and provides the conceptual underpinnings of much work in cognitive science. (shrink)

What is Functionalism? Functionalism is one of the major proposals that have been offered as solutions to the mind/body problem. Solutions to the mind/body problem usually try to answer questions such as: What is the ultimate nature of the mental? At the most general level, what makes a mental state mental? Or more specifically, What do thoughts have in common in virtue of which they are thoughts? That is, what makes a thought a thought? What makes a pain a pain? (...) Cartesian Dualism said the ultimate nature of the mental was to be found in a special mental substance. Behaviorism identified mental states with behavioral dispositions; physicalism in its most influential version identifies mental states with brain states. Functionalism says that mental states are constituted by their causal relations to one another and to sensory inputs and behavioral outputs. Functionalism is one of the major theoretical developments of Twentieth Century analytic philosophy, and provides the conceptual underpinnings of much work in cognitive science. (shrink)

In this section, we will start with an influential attempt to define `intelligence', and then we will move to a consideration of how human intelligence is to be investigated on the machine model. The last part of the section will discuss the relation between the mental and the biological.

Freud's anthropology is in fact little more than an amplified psychiatry. For Freud, the human being is in essence a sick animal. In this paper the author discusses why Freud made this so-called 'anthropological turn'. First it is shown that Freud wanted his psychoanalytic theory to be a 'Philosophy of Man'. Secondly it is argued that this can only be the case if the determinants of pathology, that psychoanalysis claimed to have discovered, are constitutive of human subjectivity. This means that (...) the defensemechanisms and the partial sexual instincts interact in each of us and do so necessarily. Although Freud usually merely postulates the necessary character of this interaction, which always produces symptoms, one can nevertheless find some argumentation for this relation distributed in his work. The third part of this paper consists in an enumeration and explanation of the reasons Freud gives for the fact that we can never satisfy our sexual instincts and always have to rely on the substitutes he calls symptoms. Some of these reasons can be led back to the conflict between sexuality and culture, but most of them are determined in an organic way. If this Freudian intuition is true, the 'Philosophy of Man' should be replaced by the 'Philosophy of Psychopathology'. (shrink)

A central debate in philosophy and neuroscience pertains to whether PFC activity plays an essential role in the neural basis of consciousness. Neuroimaging and electrophysiology studies have revealed that the contents of conscious perceptual experience can be successfully decoded from PFC activity, but these findings might be confounded by post- perceptual cognitive processes, such as thinking, reasoning, and decision-making, that are not necessary for con- sciousness. To clarify the involvement of the PFC in consciousness, we present a synthesis of research (...) that has used intracranial electrical stimulation (iES) for the causal modulation of neural activity in the human PFC. This research provides compelling evidence that iES of only certain prefrontal regions (i.e., orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingu- late cortex) reliably perturbs conscious experience. Conversely, stimulation of anterolateral prefrontal sites, often con- sidered crucial in higher-order and global workspace theories of consciousness, seldom elicits any reportable alterations in consciousness. Furthermore, the wide variety of iES-elicited effects in the PFC (e.g., emotions, thoughts, and olfactory and visual hallucinations) exhibits no clear relation to the immediate environment. Therefore, there is no evidence for the kinds of alterations in ongoing perceptual experience that would be predicted by higher-order or global workspace theories. Nevertheless, effects in the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortices suggest a specific role for these PFC subregions in supporting emotional aspects of conscious experience. Overall, this evidence presents a challenge for higher-order and global workspace theories, which commonly point to the PFC as the basis for con- scious perception based on correlative and possibly confounded information. (shrink)

In this response to 32 commentators, I start by clarifying the overflow argument. I explain why the distinction between generic and specific phenomenology is important and why we are justified in acknowledging specific phenomenology in the overflow experiments. Other issues discussed are the relations among report, cognitive access, and attention; panpsychic disaster; the mesh between psychology and neuroscience; and whether consciousness exists.

Michael Tye's response to my “Grain” (Block ) and “Windows” (Block ) raises general metaphilosophical issues about the value of intuitions and judgments about one's perceptions and the relations of those intuitions and judgments to empirical research, as well as specific philosophical issues about the relation between seeing, attention and de re thought. I will argue that Tye's appeal to what is (§. 2) “intuitively obvious, once we reflect upon these cases” (“intuition”) is problematic. I will also argue that (...) first person judgments can be problematic when used on their own as Tye does but can be valuable when integrated with empirical results. (shrink)

Mental (or semantic) holism is the doctrine that the identity of a belief content (or the meaning of a sentence that expresses it) is determined by its place in the web of beliefs or sentences comprising a whole theory or group of theories. It can be contrasted with two other views: atomism and molecularism. Molecularism characterizes meaning and content in terms of relatively small parts of the web in a way that allows many different theories to share those parts. For (...) example, the meaning of 'chase' might be said by a molecularist to be try to catch. Atomism characterizes meaning and content in terms of none of the web; it says that sentences and beliefs have meaning or content independently of their relations to other sentences or beliefs. One major motivation for holism has come from reflections on the natures of confirmation and learning. As Quine (1953) observed, claims about the world are confirmed not individually, but only in conjunction with theories of which they are a part. And typically, one cannot come to understand scientific claims without understanding a significant chunk of the theory of which they are a part. For example, in learning the Newtonian concepts of 'force', 'mass', kinetic energy' and 'momentum', one doesn't learn any definitions of these terms in terms that are understood beforehand, for there are no such definitions. Rather, these theoretical terms were all learned together in conjunction with procedures for solving problems. The major problem with holism is that it threatens to make generalization in psychology virtually impossible. If the content of any state depends on all others, it would be extremely unlikely that any two believers would ever share a state with the same content. Moreover, holism would appear to conflict with our ordinary conception of reasoning. What sentences one accepts influence what one infers. if i accept a sentence and then later reject it, i thereby change the inferential role of that sentence, so the meaning of what i accept wouldn't be the same as what i later reject. but then it would be difficult to understand on this view how one could rationally --or even irrationally!-- change one's mind. and agreement and translation are also problematic for much the same reason. holists have responded (1) by proposing that we should think not in terms of "same/different" meaning but in terms of a gradient of similarity of meaning, (2) by proposing "two factor" theories or (3) by simply accepting the consequence that there is no real difference between changing meanings and changing beliefs. (shrink)

This article introduces the special issue on “Relational Work in Market Economies” by explaining the origins of the concept and its value in illuminating a dimension of market activity that has not been systematically addressed by social scientists. It also explains why this focus on individual economic transactions could be relevant for those whose interest centers on broader questions of political economy. Finally, there are brief descriptions of the other six articles that make up this special issue.

This paper argues that the “Canberra Plan” picture of physicalistic reduction of mind--a picture shared by both its proponents and opponents, philosophers as diverse as David Armstrong, David Chalmers Frank Jackson, Jaegwon Kim, Joe Levine and David Lewis--neglects ground (Fine, 2001, 2012). To the extent that the point of view endorsed by the Canberra Plan has an account of the physical/functional ground of mind at all, it is in one version trivial and in another version implausible. In its most general (...) form, the point of view of the Canberra Plan is committed to unacceptably treating indexical or name-related facts as part of the ultimate physical/functional ground of the mental. (shrink)

O'Regan and Noe declare that the qualitative character of experience is constituted by the nature of the sensorimotor contingencies at play when we perceive. Sensorimotor contingencies are a highly restricted set of input-output relations. The restriction excludes contingencies that don’t essentially involve perceptual systems. Of course if the ‘sensory’ in ‘sensorimotor’ were to be understood mentalistically, the thesis would not be of much interest, so I assume that these contingencies are to be understood non-mentalistically. Contrary to their view, experience is (...) a matter of what mediates between input and output, not input-output relations all by themselves. However, instead of mounting a head-on collision with their view, I think it will be more useful to consider a consequence of their view that admits of obvious counterexamples. The consequence consists of two claims: (1) any two systems that share that highly restricted set of input-output relations are therefor experientially the same and (2) conversely, any two systems that share experience must share these sensorimotor contingencies. Once stated, the view is so clearly wrong that my ascription of it to them might be challenged. At least it is a consequence of a major strand in their view. Perhaps this will be an opportunity for them to disassociate themselves from it. I will limit myself to (1). (shrink)

Austrian economics - the school of thought associated with Carl Menger, Frederick von Weiser, Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, and in this century, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Murray N. Rothbard, and Israel Kirzner - is based on a framework of methodological principles and assumptions much at variance with those of traditional or 'orthodox' economists. Robert Nozick, in his 'On Austrian Methodology', focuses attention on the most fundamental features of this framework, and subjects them to a thoroughgoing and scathing analysis. Singled out (...) for detailed and critical review are: (1) the praxeological concepts of methodological individualism; (2) the claim that economics is an a priori science of human action; (3) the nature of preference and its relation to choice and action; and (4) the assumptions of time-preference theory. Although Nozick does not consider Austrian views on business cycles, market process analysis, the coordinative and informational effects of the price system, competition, and several other fundamental aspects of praxeology, his criticism strikes at the very root of the praxeological school. This paper attempts to refute each criticism made of the praxeological school by Nozick on a point-by-point basis. It thus follows the same pattern as the original paper, and scrutinizes in detail the arguments made by its author. (shrink)

Inchoate crime consists of acts that are regarded as crimes despite the fact that they are only partial or incomplete in some respect. This includes acts that do not succeed in physically harming the victim or are only indirectly related to such a result. Examples include attempts (as in attempted murder that does not eventuate in the killing of anyone), conspiracy (in which case the crime has only been planned, not yet acted out) and incitement (where the inciter does not (...) himself commit the crime he is urging others to undertake). The present paper attempts to analyze these inchoate crimes from a libertarian perspective, based on the non-aggression principle. (shrink)

The present article considers, and rejects, four arguments against the privatization of roads, and in favor of our present system of road socialism. They are 1. Eminent domain is cheap, efficient, and necessary, but only government can avail itself of their “benefits.” 2. Roads are not perfectly competitive, but rather, necessarily, are characterized by monopolistic elements, which only the state can address. 3. Roads are different then everything else; people impose waiting costs on others without taking them into account; this (...) externalities problem is a market failure that, again, only government can solve. 4. Road privatization is unfair to abutting property owners. In section 3, the paper deals with five objections to, or difficulties with, street and highway privatization: 1. The government has violated “Non-Compete” clauses to protect private investors in roadways. 2. Private industry would find it impossible to discern rational prices for its services. 3. Should public roads be commercialized before being privatized? That is, should the state first charge a price for these services and then privatize, or do the opposite? 4. Road privatization would be a public relations nightmare. How should this be dealt with? (shrink)

Modern microeconomic theory is based on a foundation of ordinal preference relations. Good textbooks stress that cardinal utility functions are artificial constructions of convenience, and that economics does not attribute any meaning to “utils.” However, we argue that despite this official position, in practice mainstream economists rely on techniques that assume the validity of cardinal utility. Doing so has turned mainstream economic theorizing into an exercise of reductionism of objects down to the preferences of ‘ideal type’ subjects.

Background A team-based approach has been advocated for advance care planning in nursing homes. While nurses are often put forward to take the lead, it is not clear to what extent other professions could be involved as well. Objectives To examine to what extent engagement in advance care planning practices, knowledge and self-efficacy differ between nurses, care assistants and allied care staff in nursing homes. Design Survey study. Participants/setting The study involved a purposive sample of 14 nursing homes in Flanders, (...) Belgium. Nurses, care assistants and allied care staff completed a survey. Ethical considerations The study was approved by the University Hospital of Brussels, as part of a cluster randomized controlled trial. Results One hundred ninety-six nurses, 319 care assistants and 169 allied staff participated. After adjusting for confounders, nurses were significantly more likely than care assistants to have carried out advance care planning conversations and documented advance care planning ; differences not found between allied staff and care assistants. Advance care planning knowledge total scores differed significantly, with nurses ; 95% confidence interval 0.08–0.17; p < 0.001) and allied staff scoring higher than care assistants. We found no significant differences regarding self-efficacy. Discussion While nursing home nurses conducted more advance care planning conversations and documentation than allied care staff and care assistants, these two professional groups may be a valuable support to nurses in conducting advance care planning, if provided with additional training. Conclusions Allied care staff and care assistants, if trained appropriately, can be involved more strongly in advance care planning to enhance relational and individual autonomy of nursing home residents, alongside nurses. Future research to improve and implement advance care planning should consider this finding at the intervention development stage. (shrink)

In this article, drawing on the discursive psychology of Rom Harré, we show how mapping the exchange of words among people might disclose a complex reality; not merely that which farmers explicitly talk ‘about’ but the reality implicitly at stake within the communication. More specifically, we show how discourses involving modern farmers reveal an underlying placing in an abstract space, having sub-spaces defined by the life-orientation, sense of self and according self-positioning of modern people. In this way, we construct a (...) road map of a set of ‘individualities’ characterizing the life of modern farmers: an individuality of citizenship, an individuality of geographies and an individuality of experience. Consequently, farmers face the problem that this multiplicity of individuality prevents them from communicating, as we will call it, univocally in the public by contrast to the univocal voices of other established social groups. We will analyse the structure of that problem by viewing diverse relations between the authority and the authenticity of different partners in the conversation on land use. (shrink)

The block relation B(x,y) in a linear order is satisfied by elements that are finitely far apart; a block is an equivalence class under this relation. We show that every computable linear order with dense condensation-type (i.e., a dense collection of blocks) but no infinite, strongly η-like interval (i.e., with all blocks of size less than some fixed, finite k ) has a computable copy with the nonblock relation ¬ B(x,y) computably enumerable. This implies that every computable (...) linear order has a computable copy with a computable nontrivial self-embedding and that the long-standing conjecture characterizing those computable linear orders every computable copy of which has a computable nontrivial self-embedding (as precisely those that contain an infinite, strongly η-like interval) holds for all linear orders with dense condensation-type. (shrink)

This paper argues that social trust is the emergent product of a complex system of property relations, backed up by a sub-system of mutual monitoring. This happens in a context similar to Ostrom’s commons, where cooperation is necessary for the management of resources, in the absence of external authorities to enforce sanctions. I show that social trust emerges in this context because of an institutional structure that enables individuals to develop a generalized disposition to internalize the external effects of their (...) actions. This is made possible by the “patrimonial” nature of this structure. (shrink)

There are three related criteria that a concept of fitness should be able to meet: it should render the principle of natural selection non-tautologous and it should be explanatory and predictive. I argue that for fitness to be able to fulfill these criteria, it cannot be a property that changes over the course of an individual's life. Rather, I introduce a fitness concept--Block Fitness--and argue that an individual's genes and environment fix its fitness in such a way that each individual's (...) fitness has a fixed value over its lifetime. (shrink)

The authors of the concept Health-Related Digital Autonomy have laid the first building block to examine the interactions between artificial intelligence, social media, and depression f...

Examination of naturally occurring cases in which a person reports that a word is on the tip of his or her tongue has led several theorists to propose that an important role is played by blocking words whose intrusions hinder access to the correct targets. As yet, however, the blocking mechanism appears to have received little direct investigation experimentally. It was studied here by adapting the classic method of Brown and McNeill in which a person is presented with (...) a definition of a rare word and uses it to attempt to generate that target word. The adaptation that was made was to append a potential blocking word to the presentation of each definition. The potential blocking words were either phonologically related to the target or not, either semantically related to the target or not, and either rare or not. Only the first of these factors exerted a significant effect—more cases of tip of the tongue were experienced when the potential blocking word was phonologically related to the target than when it was not. This result suggests that the recall of a word on the basis of its meaning may proceed via an intermediate stage characterised by partial retrieval of its phonology. (shrink)

In the human context, the ubiquitous faculty of imagination is taken for granted. Whether we are singularly equipped with this ability or whether it is an evolved faculty also present in other life forms is a question that has been an issue ever since Darwin. A variety of research projects have indicated the presence of mental processes in non-human taxa and the faculty of imagination developed with increasing complexity over time, to its present status in humans. As an evolved faculty, (...) encompassing a variety of non-humans, it serves as a useful tool to ascertain and understand the origins and unique quality of human mental processes, even to the extent of informing certain medical issues and problems in education. Several pointers exist that argue for human imagination as an evolved faculty that is shared within broad spectrum of taxa. Paleoanthropological research has provided insights as to the role of imagination in the early manifestations of religious behaviour in humans, the construction of effective stone tools by anatomically modern humans employing pyro technology, as well as their ability to mentally link ostensibly non-related natural phenomena like tidal fluctuations and the phases of the moon. Contribution: This review article explores imagination as an evolved faculty in an intersectional and interdisciplinary manner. This evolutionary reflection fits well with the purpose and inclusive nature of this special collection on the building blocks of our past, present and future. (shrink)

The various problems associated with co-authorship of research articles have attracted much attention in recent years. We believe that this growing awareness is a very welcome development. However, we will argue that the particular and increasing importance of authorship and the harmful implications of current practices of research authorship for junior researchers have not been emphasised enough. We will use the case of our own research area to illustrate some of the pitfalls of current publishing practices—in particular, the impact on (...) the evaluation of one’s work in the area of employment or funding. Even where there are explicit guidelines, they are often disregarded. This disregard, which is often exemplified through the inflation of co-authorship in some research areas, may seem benign to some of us; but it is not. Attribution of co-authorship for reasons other than merit in relation to the publication misrepresents the work towards that publication, and generates unfair competition. We make a case for increasing awareness, for transparency and for more explicit guidelines and regulation of research co-authorship within and across research areas. We examine some of the most sensitive areas of concern and their implications for researchers, particularly junior ones, and we suggest several strategies for future action. (shrink)

David Friedman posed a number of libertarian philosophical problems (Friedman 1989). This essay criticizes Walter Block’s Rothbardian responses (Block 2011) and compares them with J C Lester’s critical-rationalist, libertarian-theory responses (Lester [2000] 2012). The main issues are as follows. 1. Critical rationalism and how it applies to libertarianism. 2.1. How libertarianism is not inherently about law and is inherently about morals. 2.2. How liberty relates to property and can be maximized: carbon dioxide and radio waves. 2.3. Applying the theory to (...) flashlights. 2.4. Applying the theory to the probability of imposed risks. 2.5. “Homesteading” or initial acquisition. 2.6 What is “essential” for a “true libertarian.” 2.7. Crime and punishment. 2.8. Extent of punishment. 2.9. The libertarian response to a madman with a gun. 2.10. How contradictions in rights are possible. 2.11. The draft. 3.1. Utilitarian libertarianism and “nose counting”. 3.2. How interpersonal comparisons of utility are possible and utility monsters are not a threat. 3.3. Why it is not utilitarian in practice to kill an innocent prisoner to prevent a riot. 3.4. Why David Friedman should not be forced to give up one of his eyes. 3.5. How utilitarians can be libertarians. Conclusion: a proper theory of liberty combined with critical rationalism offers superior solutions to Friedman’s problems. Appendix: replies to two commentators. (shrink)

Scholars such as Renaud Barbara and Bernhard Waldenfels and Regula Giuliani have emphasized time’s central role in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, and Michael Kelly has shown how the Phenomenology’s “Temporality” chapter already broaches his later ontological concerns. I deepen our understanding of this temporal–ontological nexus by showing how Merleau-Ponty’s temporal ontology in fact erupts even earlier in the Phenomenology, as an underlying theme that unifies part two, on “The Perceived World,” as leading into the “Temporality” chapter. I do this via a close (...) study of the chapter, “The Thing and the Natural World,” first explicating some profound but easily overlooked points about time implied in Merleau-Ponty’s initial remarks on the constancy of form and size. I then closely analyze his study of color constancy in relation to his central source, David Katz’s The World of Colour, to show how color leads him to conceptualize things as what I call “time-things”—and more generally to conceptualize things, the world, and nature, as being in such a way that temporality is ingredient in their being. This leads to some implications for his temporal ontology. (shrink)

In our text, we follow the traces of a (1) paradox, (2) an ambivalence and (3) a dialectic that constitute digitalized public spheres and discuss the resulting tensions in discourse-ethical and political-theoretical perspectives using the blocking of Donald J. Trump’s Twitter account as an example. Starting from this, we determine the conditions of constitution of the digital public sphere and locate the dynamics of its development in the dialectical tension between private and public: The fact that the two other (...) relations of autonomy and heteronomy, intensification and polarization come to such a head is based on an insufficient socialization of all those means of production that produce the current digital public sphere. Using the example of Donald J. Trump’s recently suspended Twitter account and with a view to Habermas’s discourse ethics, we illustrate the extent to which Trump’s partly racist and conspiracy-theoretical post violates discourse ethics standards and is also highly problematic with regard to the political; however, banishment from a part of the digital public sphere is certainly not an act that should be incumbent on a private company. From this, we conclude that the normative potentials of digital public spheres can only be vol. (shrink)

We provide a Camusian/Peircean notion of inquiry that emphasises an attitude of fallibilism and sustained epistemic dissonance as a conceptual framework for a theory of classroom practice founded on Deep Reflective Thinking (DTR), in which the cultivation of collective doubt, reflective evaluation and how these relate to the phenomenological aspects of inquiry are central to communities of inquiry. In a study by Fynes-Clinton, preliminary evidence demonstrates that if students engage in DRT, they more frequently experience cognitive dissonance and as a (...) result improve their ability to engage in further and more frequent DRT. Sustained intellectual progress occurs when the inquiry reaches a point whereby students can thoughtfully move between the position of disequilibrium (doubt) and equilibrium (belief) whilst understanding the impermanency of any fixed belief, which, in turn, enables reconstruction of thinking and appropriation of learning in the context of collaborative philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

The surviving portion of the tenth-century Egyptian Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Tamīmī’s recently edited Ṭīb al-ʿarūs has several formulas relating to the dying and perfuming of textiles. Some refer to the use of carved molds to impress designs upon textiles. Tamīmī’s formulas treat in particular the application of gold leaf and perfumed dye pastes with blocks, but presuppose the technology of using blocks to apply designs to textiles and include a vocabulary of technical terms for the process. This textual evidence provides (...) additional context for surviving early medieval Islamic block-printed gilded textiles. The attestation of the use of blocks to decorate textiles is contemporary with the use of blocks to print Arabic amulet texts, known by the tenth century from extant specimens and some literary evidence. (shrink)

Copresence, the idea that the presence of other actors shapes individual behavior, links macro- and micro-theorizing about social interaction. Traditionally, scholars have focused on the physical proximity of other people, assuming copresence to be a given, objective condition. However, recent empirical evidence on technologically mediated (e.g., e-mail), imaginary (e.g., prayer), and parasocial (e.g., watching a television show) interactions challenges classic copresence assumptions. In this article we reconceptualize copresence to provide theoretical building blocks (definitions, assumptions, and propositions) for a revitalized research (...) program that allows for the explicit assessment of copresence as an endogenous, subjective variable dynamically related to social context. We treat copresence as the degree to which an actor perceives mutual entrainment (i.e., synchronization of attention, emotion, and behavior) with another actor. We demonstrate the ramifications of this reconceptualization for classic theorizing on micro-macro linkages and contemporary research questions, including methodological artifacts in laboratory research and disparities in patient-provider rapport. (shrink)

This replies to Block 2019 (B19), which responds to Lester 2014 (L14). The main issues in the, varyingly sized, sections are as follows. 1 Further explanations of critical rationalism, the theory of liberty, and problems with the non-aggression principle. 2.1 The relationships among law, morality, and libertarianism. 2.2 The objective invasiveness of low-level radiation and that it is therefore an initiated imposition (albeit trivial) if someone inflicts it on non-consenting people. 2.3 The objective and subjective aspects of initiated impositions; and (...) how clashes can be resolved. 2.4 How liberty relates to risk and self-ownership. 2.5 Libertarian initial acquisition versus absolute property rights by labour-mixing. 2.6 Organisational note. 2.7 Libertarianism and mens rea. 2.8 Libertarian rectification versus lex-talionis doubling. 2.9 Indirectly clashing rights, self-preservation, trespasser-hiker, flagpole-grasper, and landmine-layer. 2.10 A logical point is not a moral point. 2.11 Pacifism and libertarianism. 3.1 A weak criticism of utilitarianism. 3.2 Hedonometers; approximate interpersonal comparisons of utility imply libertarianism; what a libertarian is; libertarian rankings. 4. Libertarian philosophy versus propertarian dogma. Coda: the need to take seriously the philosophical problems with propertarian-justificationist libertarianism. (shrink)

We point out a yet unnoticed flaw in Dutch Book arguments that relates to a link between degrees of belief and betting quotients. We offer a set of precise conditions governing when a nonprobabilist is immune to the classical Dutch Book argument. We suggest that diachronic Dutch Book arguments are also affected.

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of somatic maturation in anthropometric, physical, and game-related variables in youth basketball age groups under-13 and under-15. One-hundred and eighty-five basketball players performed anthropometrical and physical tests during a non-official youth basketball tournament. Predicted maturity offset and game-related variables were also analyzed. Cluster analysis was used to analyze the between-maturation status differences in all parameters in each age group. Also, regularized generalized canonical correlation analysis was used to assess relative contributions (...) of maturational, physical, and game-related variables within each age group. Based on MO, two different clusters were identified within each age category. Greater differences in MO were identified among U-13 clusters than among U-15 clusters. No significant differences were observed between clusters in terms of physical and game-related variables. High correlations between maturational, physical, and game-related variables were found for boys. In girls, different trends in terms of correlations were observed. The strongest association between blocks was observed between physical tests and game-related variables in all age categories, except for U-15 girls. Knowing and identifying performance profiles according to biological age is of upmost importance since it allows the coach to create challenging situations adjusted to the individual’s needs. (shrink)

Mackinlay, Shane The opening of the legal year is marked by many events, including a range of religious celebrations. These celebrations are part of a long tradition, dating back nearly eight hundred years. The first religious ceremony recorded as marking the start of the legal year was a Mass celebrated in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1245. Then, it would have been a completely obvious thing to do, as it was unquestioned that those holding civic authority did so only (...) because it had been entrusted to them from God, and that they exercised it on his behalf. A range of powerful symbols made this relation very evident. The religious character of weighty ceremonies such as coronations was complemented by the integral place of faith in the broader culture; religious belief was not so much chosen as an expression of individual commitment, but was simply one characteristic among many others of national culture and identity. (shrink)

In the Periodic Tables the transition from atoms to double-charged cations is accompanied by alterations in the composition of s and p blocks and reciprocal location of blocks, as well as by changes in the composition and length of periods. We have previously described the relationship between the atom properties and the total number of differentiating electrons. This paper demonstrates that, despite the above transition-related alterations, this relationship is also valid for the description of the properties of double-charged cations. This (...) can be exemplified by the dependence of the ionization energy on the total number of p electrons in p block, d electrons in d block, and f electrons in f block. Furthermore, a single periodic equation is sufficient for the description of properties of all of double-charged cations from each block. (shrink)

States of affairs involving a non-symmetric relation such as loving are said to have a relational order, something that distinguishes, for instance, Romeo’s loving Juliet from Juliet’s loving Romeo. Relational order can be properly understood by appealing to o-roles, i.e., ontological counterparts of what linguists call thematic roles, e.g., agent, patient, instrument, and the like. This move allows us to meet the appropriate desiderata for a theory of relational order. In contrast, the main theories that try to do without (...) o-roles, proposed by philosophers such as Russell, Hochberg, and Fine, are in trouble with one or another of these desiderata. After discussing some alternatives, it is proposed that o-roles are best viewed as very generic properties characterizable as ways in which objects jointly exemplify a relation. This makes for exemplification relations understood as complex entities having o-roles as building blocks. (shrink)

To have an ontology is to interpret a world. In this paper we argue that the brain, viewed as a representational system aimed at interpreting our world, possesses an ontology too. It creates primitives and makes existence assumptions. It decomposes target space in a way that exhibits a certain invariance, which in turn is functionally significant. We will investigate which are the functional regularities guiding this decomposition process, by answering to the following questions: What are the explicit and implicit assumptions (...) about the structure of reality, which at the same time shape the causal profile of the brain's motor output and its representational deep structure, in particular of the conscious mind arising from it (its ''phenomenal output'')? How do they constrain high-level phenomena like conscious experience, the emergence of a first-person perspective, or social cognition? By reviewing a series of neuroscientific results and integrating them with a wider philosophical perspective, we will emphasize the contribution the motor system makes to this process. As it will be shown, the motor system constructs goals, actions, and intending selves as basic constituents of the world it interprets. It does so by assigning a single, unified causal role to them. Empirical evidence demonstrates that the brain models movements and action goals in terms of multimodal representations of organism-object-relations. Under a representationalist analysis, this process can be conceived of as an internal, dynamic representation of the intentionality-relation itself. We will show how such a complex form of representational content, once it is in place, can later function as a functional building block for social cognition and for a more complex, consciously experienced representation of the first-person perspective as well. (shrink)

The Einstellung effect occurs when the first idea that comes to mind, triggered by familiar features of a problem, prevents a better solution being found. It has been shown to affect both people facing novel problems and experts within their field of expertise. We show that it works by influencing mechanisms that determine what information is attended to. Having found one solution, expert chess players reported that they were looking for a better one. But their eye movements showed that they (...) continued to look at features of the problem related to the solution they had already thought of. The mechanism which allows the first schema activated by familiar aspects of a problem to control the subsequent direction of attention may contribute to a wide range of biases both in everyday and expert thought - from confirmation bias in hypothesis testing to the tendency of scientists to ignore results that do not fit their favoured theories. (shrink)

This book defends a relational theory of the passage of time. The realist view of passage developed in this book differs from the robust, substantivalist position. According to relationism, passage is nothing over and above the succession of events, one thing coming after another. Causally related events are temporally arranged as they happen one after another along observers’ worldlines. There is no unique global passage but a multiplicity of local passages of time. After setting out this positive argument for relationism, (...) the author deals with five common objections to it: (a) triviality of deflationary passage, (b) a-directionality of passage, (c) the impossibility of experiencing passage, (d) fictionalism about passage, and (e) the incompatibility of passage with perduring objects. (shrink)

Within bioethics as well as in broader clinical practice, support for transgender and gender‐questioning adolescent access to pubertal suppression has often relied heavily on the desire to prevent risky, self‐destructive, and suicidal behavior. We argue that framing justifications for access to puberty suppression in this way can actually be harmful to both individual patients as well as to the broader trans population. This justification for access to care makes such access precarious, limits its scope, and introduces perverse incentives to the (...) patient population that is being served. We go on to offer an alternative, positive defense of access to puberty‐blocking treatment for transgender youth grounded in the child's right to an open future. We argue that decisions related to pubertal suppression are both importantly weighty and potentially irreversible, and show why this justification is preferable to so‐called “informed consent” approaches. (shrink)

Agricultural intensification, now commonly referred to as sustainable intensification, is presented in development discourse as a key means to simultaneously improve food security and reduce rural poverty without harming the environment. Taking a village in Laos as a case study, we show how government agencies and farmers could perceive the idea of agricultural intensification differently. The study illustrates how farmers with the opportunities for groundwater use typically choose to grow vegetables and high valued cash crops rather than intensify rice production. (...) This contrasts with government and donor supported efforts to promote rice intensification as a means to increase food security and reduce rural poverty. The article’s main message is that farmers’ differing strategies are related to a variety of household characteristics and that farmers’ strategies should be central to the current discussion on sustainable intensification. (shrink)

Recently, creative deviance has been lauded to be an innovation-enhancing approach with applications in many new and high-tech domains. Previous study on antecedents to creative deviance remains scattered and vague. Our research conceptualizes creative deviance from the perspective of independent innovation and explores its antecedents, mechanisms, as well as conditions. Team authoritarian leadership is conceptualized as a contradictory unity as it mixes advantages and disadvantages. However, it is surprising to find that there are very few researches that have examined its (...) relevant influence mechanisms and boundary conditions for authoritarian leadership. Contributing to an advanced understanding of authoritarian leadership in research and development teams, we investigated whether team authoritarian leadership is positively or negatively related to creative deviance. Drawing on social information processing theory and regulatory focus theory, we supposed that team authoritarian leadership facilitates creative deviance when the degree is low and inhibits it when the degree is high; dual occupational stress and prevention regulatory focus play mediation roles between team authoritarian leadership and creative deviance respectively, both variables play a chain mediation role in that relationship; and the mindfulness characteristic of an individual moderates the inverted-U team authoritarian leadership-creative deviance association, such that this association is weaker with low individual mindfulness. With two-phase questionnaire data collected from 433 members in 82 R&D teams of high-tech enterprises in electronic information technology, new material technology, new medical technology, resource and environment technology and advanced manufacturing technology randomly selected from five provinces in eastern China, these hypotheses are supported empirically. Overall, we find that, our study broadens antecedents and the relevant occurrence mechanisms of creative deviance when studied through a leadership management lens. Moreover, our research enriches the cognate studies on authoritarian leadership by empirically demonstrating that team authoritarian leadership may function as an double-edged sword of creative deviance in the R&D workplace. These above findings offer insightful thoughts to scholars in the field of authoritarian leadership and bring practical suggestions for team superiors who seek to implement best innovation practice. (shrink)

Previous research suggests that children can infer causal relations from patterns of events. However, what appear to be cases of causal inference may simply reduce to children recognizing relevant associations among events, and responding based on those associations. To examine this claim, in Experiments 1 and 2, children were introduced to a “blicket detector”, a machine that lit up and played music when certain objects were placed upon it. Children observed patterns of contingency between objects and the machine’s activation that (...) required them to use indirect evidence to make causal inferences. Critically, associative models either made no predictions, or made incorrect predictions about these inferences. In general, children were able to make these inferences, but some developmental differences between 3- and 4- year-olds were found. We suggest that children’s causal inferences are not based on recognizing associations, but rather that children develop a mechanism for Bayesian structure learning. Experiment 3 explicitly tests a prediction of this account. Children were asked to make an inference about ambiguous data based on the base-rate of certain events occurring. Fouryear-olds, but not 3-year-olds were able to make this inference. (shrink)

The built environment matters for democracy: certain forms of political action require particular types of physical space, and decisions about designing such spaces are eminently political. Specific spaces have received more attention than others, though. Relatively few theorists have sought to identify the functions of streets in a democracy. This article revisits, but also relativizes two arguments for democratic street life: an epistemic-cum-moral one about the experience of diversity, and one concerning political community-building. The article argues that streets remain crucial (...) for certain forms of protest, and that the advantages of street life to do with diversity and community-building might in fact most plausibly be realized in moments of protest. Finally, two threats to political street life are discussed and suggestions are offered of how they might be countered. (shrink)

Jacobson finds two distinct meanings of “dignity” in the literature on dignity and health: intrinsic human dignity and social dignity constituted through interactions with caregivers. Especially the latter has been central in empirical health research and warrants further exploration. This article focuses on the social dignity of people marginalized by mental illness, substance abuse and comparable conditions in extramural settings. 35 studies published between 2007 and 2017 have addressed this issue, most of them identifying norms for social dignity: civilized interactions, (...) non-stigmatizing treatment, treatment as unique individuals, being taken seriously, maintaining a positive identity, experiencing independence, relating to others, and participating in daily life. We argue that these norms belong to ideal theory, whereas we agree with Robeyns and others that improving practice is better served by non-ideal theory. Towards this end, we derive from the literature four building blocks for a non-ideal theory of dignity: avoid violations of dignity rather than seeking to promote it; dignity is not a goal to be reached; it requires ongoing effort; promoting dignity is a balancing act; contradictory norms can make it impossible to realize; and dignity can be undermined by organizational and discursive constraints. (shrink)

Ned Block’s Overflow Argument purports to establish that the neural basis of phenomenal consciousness is independent of the neural basis of access consciousness. In a recent paper, Block’s argument has been challenged by Peter Carruthers. Carruthers concedes the truth of one of the argument’s key steps, namely, that phenomenal consciousness overflows what is in working memory. At the same time, he rejects the conclusion of the argument by developing an account of this overflow that is alternative to Block’s. In this (...) paper, I argue that Carruthers’s account does not pose a real threat to the Overflow Argument. The overall plausibility of Carruthers’s account rests on the empirical plausibility of a claim concerning global broadcasting which, albeit intuitively plausible in light of a lightly-sketched picture of the impact of attention upon neural matters, he offers no sufficient empirical evidence for. Drawing on some important imaging studies that reveal striking facts about neural responses to visual stimuli, I argue for two intimately related claims: first, that the intuitive plausibility of claims like Carruthers’s is not a guarantee of empirical plausibility; second, that as concerns the same claims, strong empirical evidence is needed before confident judgments of empirical plausibility can reasonably be formulated. (shrink)