Molyneux’s question, whether the newly sighted might immediately recognize tactilely familiar shapes by sight alone, has produced an array of answers over three centuries of debate and discussion. I propose the first pluralist response: many different answers, both yes and no, are individually sufficient as an answer to the question as a whole. I argue that this is possible if we take the question to be cluster concept of sub-problems. This response opposes traditional answers that isolate specific perceptual features as (...) uniquely applicable to Molyneux’s question and grant viability to only one reply. Answering Molyneux’s question as a cluster concept may also serve as a methodology for resolving other philosophical problems. (shrink)

Trial by jury is a fundamental feature of democratic governance. But what form should jury decision-making take? I argue against the status quo system in which juries are encouraged and even required to engage in group deliberation as a means to reaching a decision. Jury deliberation is problematic for both theoretical and empirical reasons. On the theoretical front, deliberation destroys the independence of jurors’ judgments that is needed for certain attractive theoretical results. On the empirical front, we have evidence from (...) both legal and non-legal contexts that group deliberation often leads to group judgments that are worse in a number of respects than judgments generated by non-interactional methods of judgment aggregation. Finally, I examine some possible alternatives to free-wheeling jury deliberation, including the constrained and structured deliberation embodied in the DELPHI method, voting, and averaging of probabilistic judgments. (shrink)

Tarski’s conceptual analysis of the notion of logical consequence is one of the pinnacles of the process of defining the metamathematical foundations of mathematics in the tradition of his predecessors Euclid, Frege, Russell and Hilbert, and his contemporaries Carnap, Gödel, Gentzen and Turing. However, he also notes that in defining the concept of consequence “efforts were made to adhere to the common usage of the language of every day life.” This paper addresses the issue of what relationship Tarski’s analysis, and (...) Béziau’s further generalization of it in universal logic, have to reasoning in the everyday lives of ordinary people from the cognitive processes of children through to those of specialists in the empirical and deductive sciences. It surveys a selection of relevant research in a range of disciplines providing theoretical and empirical studies of human reasoning, discusses the value of adopting a universal logic perspective, answers the questions posed in the call for this special issue, and suggests some specific research challenges. (shrink)

While some branches of complexity theory are advancing rapidly, the same cannot be said for our understanding of emergence. Despite a complete knowledge of the rules underlying the interactions between the parts of many systems, we are often baffled by their sudden transitions from simple to complex. Here I propose a solution to this conceptual problem. Given that emergence is often the result of many interactions occurring simultaneously in time and space, an ability to intuitively grasp it would require the (...) ability to consciously think in parallel. A simple exercise is used to demonstrate that we do not possess this ability. Our surprise at the behaviour of cellular automata models, and the natural cases of pattern formation they mimic, is then explained from this perspective. This work suggests that the cognitive limitations of the mind can be as significant a barrier to scientific progress as the limitations of our senses. (shrink)

Data are never free of philosophical encumbrances. Nevertheless, philosophical issues are often considered peripheral to method and evidence. Historical perspectives likewise are not considered integral to most data-driven disputes in contemporary psychological science. This paper examines the history of the investigation of hypnosis over the last 75 years to illuminate how evidence and method are entangled with epistemology and ontology, how new research directions are forged by changes in the cultural and philosophical landscape, and how unacknowledged philosophical assumptions can result (...) in confusion and empirical cul-de-sacs. Theoretical disputes that appear to be simple empirical matters often entail hidden philosophical issues, and apparent historical continuity at the theoretical level can belie discontinuity at the ontological level. The lesson of hypnosis is that philosophical analysis is as important as methodological rigor. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In the first full-length analysis of Wittgenstein's Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, Brian R. Clack presents a fresh and innovative interpretation of Wittgenstein's conception of religion. While previous commentators have tended to sideline the Remarks on Frazer, Clack shows how the key to Wittgenstein's thought on religion lies in these remarks on primitive magico-religious observances. This book shows that Wittgenstein neither embraces expressivism, as it is generally assumed, nor straightforwardly denies instrumentalism. Focusing instead on Wittgenstein's suggestion that magic is (...) somehow akin to metaphysics, a view of ritual as the spontaneous expression of human beings is presented. (shrink)

Semantic networks were developed in cognitive science and artificial intelligence studies as graphical knowledge representation and inference tools emulating human thought processes. Formal analysis of the representation and inference capabilities of the networks modeled them as subsets of standard first-order logic (FOL), restricted in the operations allowed in order to ensure the tractability that seemed to characterize human reasoning capabilities. The graphical network representations were modeled as providing a visual language for the logic. Sub-sets of FOL targeted on knowledge representation (...) came to be called description logics, and research on these logics has focused on issues of tractability of subsets with differing representation capabilities, and on the implementation of practical inference systems achieving the best possible performance. Semantic network research has kept pace with these developments, providing visual languages for knowledge entry, editing, and presenting the results of inference, that translate unambiguously to the underlying description logics. This paper discusses the design issues for such semantic network formalisms, and illustrates them through detailed examples of significant generic knowledge structures analyzed in the literature, including determinables, contrast sets, genus/differentiae, taxonomies, faceted taxonomies, cluster concepts, family resemblances, graded concepts, frames, definitions, rules, rules with exceptions, essence and state assertions, opposites and contraries, relevance, and so on. Such examples provide important test material for any visual language formalism for logic. (shrink)

In this response to D. Z. Phillips's critique of my interpretation of Wittgenstein's view of magic and ritual, I counter Phillips's claim that I have misrepresented the Wittgensteinian view of ritual, consider the instrumentalist dimension of the Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, offer some objections to Phillips's expressivist view that a ritual ‘says itself’, and detect obscurantism in his approach to the study of religion.

Over the past dozen years numerous overseas based businesses with dominant shareholders have become quoted on the London Stock Exchange, prominent examples of which have joined the ‘blue chip’ FTSE 100 stock market index. While this trend has generated concerns about the ‘undermining’ of UK corporate governance and has fostered reform proposals by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) it has thus far escaped academic attention. This article explains why companies with dominant shareholders have been migrating to London and discusses the (...) policy implications. In so doing it shows that the FSA’s proposals mostly cover familiar ground rather than being innovative but maintains that the case for radical reform has in fact not yet been made out. (shrink)

In the field of comparative corporate governance, a thesis that is currently influential is that the ‘law matters’. The thinking is that laws which allow investors to feel confident about owning a tiny percentage of shares in a firm constitute the crucial ‘bedrock’ that underpins a US‐style economy where widely held public companies dominate. The paper outlines the normative implications which the ‘law matters’ thesis has for countries where diffuse share ownership is not the norm. It also draws upon the (...) historical experience in the US and the UK to cast doubt on whether law is as pivotal as the thesis implies. Finally, the paper considers the dynamics that are likely to affect the pace of legislative change when reforms designed to foster the confidence of minority shareholders are on the agenda. (shrink)

This Article discusses why a “corporate governance movement” that commenced in the United States in the 1970s became an entrenched feature of American capitalism and describes how the chronology differed in a potentially crucial way for banks. The Article explains corporate governance’s emergence and staying power by reference to changing market conditions and a deregulation trend that provided executives with unprecedented managerial discretion as the twentieth century drew to a close. With banking the historical pattern paralleled general trends in large (...) measure. Still, while the “imperial” CEO who achieved prominence in the 1980s became outmoded for the most part after corporate scandals at the start of the 2000s, this was not the case with large financial companies. The continued boldness of “star” CEOs in the financial services industry plausibly contributed to the market turmoil of 2008, but the financial crisis emphatically ended the corporate governance “free pass” banks had enjoyed. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's views concerning anthropology emerge predominantly from his notes on Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough, and have as their focus the interpretation of ritual phenomena and the nature of anthropological explanation. In addition to criticizing Frazer's interpretation of ritual phenomena, Wittgenstein also appears to make a number of corrective suggestions regarding the methodology appropriate for anthropological investigations. The nominal purpose of The Golden Bough is to explain a peculiar ritual of classical antiquity, namely the rule regulating the succession to (...) the priesthood at Nemi, Italy. According to the intellectualist approach, therefore, the foundation of religion is theoretical and speculative, with ritual actions being practical applications of that underlying intellectual theory. An expressivist account of magic will deny that ceremonial actions are intended to effect some desired change in the natural world, and will instead envisage them as expressive of desires, feelings, and values. (shrink)

Negotiations are central to the operation of the international system, found at the heart of every conflict and every act of cooperation. Negotiation is the primary vehicle that states use to manage conflict and build prosperity in a complicated and dangerous international system. International Relations as Negotiation provides an overview of world politics that is both approachable and detailed. It explores the factors that help or undermine efforts to negotiate solutions to international problems. Key topics including international conflict and security, (...) the global economy, international law and governance, and environmental sustainability are explored in turn. The history of the international system is traced through major treaty agreements and peace conferences, and the future of the international system is projected. The result is a survey of world politics that provides a seamless narrative about conflict and cooperation in the international system. (shrink)

Mimesis and the portrayal of reflective life in action : Aristotle's Poetics and Sophocles' Oedipus the King -- The portrayal of reflective life in action in poetry : Shakespeare's dramatization of the poet in Sonnets 1-126 -- The portrayal of reflective life in action in music : Bach's Prelude and Fugue in B flat minor (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1) and Beethoven's String Quartet in A minor, opus 132 -- The portrayal of reflective life in action in painting : discovery (...) of the inner life of sensory perception in watercolours by Turner and oil paintings by Cézanne. (shrink)

The primary intention of this book is to elucidate the relations between sensory perception and art as a form of knowledge. This enables us to understand how different kinds of art are given their meaning not only from observation, resemblance and reason but also from an artist’s sensitivity to the inner form of sensory experience as it is realized in perception, reflection, memory and imagination. By assuming a number of different points of view, Part 1 shows how the physical object (...) and the act of sensory perception are logically interdependent, and I give my elaboration of this argument two kinds of emphasis. In the first place, it opposes all arguments that support a merging of the mental and physical, as in idealism, materialism, neutral monism and panpsychism. A conceptual distinction is observed because sensory perception gives the physical object its identity. This idea also implies that the physical object is only realized by sentient life - self-aware inner life and a world become possible simultaneously. The second emphasis concerns the mind-body problem, and towards the end of Part 1 I offer an argument which places this problem in a certain light by representing the brain not as a physical counterpart to inner experience but as essentially instrumental to perception and self-awareness, and related experience. The argument in Part 2 is distinguished by a sense of continuity between the nature of sensory perception and the formal resources of artists in both physical and literary media. Hence, in a discussion of Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin, I indicate ways in which the painter conveys the inner experience and character of the figures in the painting by means of compositional design, light and colour, and thereby uses these and other sensuous resources to portray human life and experience. This is followed by a discussion of two sonnets by Shakespeare, in which the same general aim is pursued by using the literary resources of figurative language. Finally, a discussion of Hamlet shows how, in this work, the augmentation of figurative language by dramatic form strengthens the view that art can provide a form of knowledge that is based as completely upon intuition about our sensory experience as it is upon reason and observation. Just as my (true) perception of a cup as a vessel for drinking tea or coffee arises immediately from past experience, so the dramatist can see immediately from his or her past experience how a character might perceive things and behave. -/- . (shrink)

Company Law: Theory, Structure and Operation is the first United Kingdom law text to use economic theory to provide insights into corporate law, an approach widely adopted in the United States. In this book, Brian Cheffins discusses the inner workings of companies, examines the impact of the legal system on corporate activities, and evaluates the merits of governmental regulatory strategies. The book covers core areas of the undergraduate company law syllabus in a stimulating and theoretically enlightening fashion and addresses (...) important company law topics such as: * limited liability of shareholders * shareholders' remedies * corporate governance * executive pay * the role of self-regulation in United Kingdom securities markets * the impact of European Union Directives on company law in the UK Brian Cheffins also examines in detail a number of questions which have not been fully explored elsewhere. These include: * What are the justifications for legal regulation of company affairs? * What are the drawbacks associated with government intervention? * How can one ascertain the optimal format for company law rules? (shrink)

Man and machine are rife with fundamental differences. Formal research in artificial intelligence and robotics has for half a century aimed to cross this divide, whether from the perspective of understanding man by building models, or building machines which could be as intelligent and versatile as humans. Inevitably, our sources of inspiration come from what exists around us, but to what extent should a machine's conception be sourced from such biological references as ourselves? Machines designed to be capable of explicit (...) social interaction with people necessitates employing the human frame of reference to a certain extent. However, there is also a fear that once this man-machine boundary is crossed that machines will cause the extinction of mankind. The following paper briefly discusses a number of fundamental distinctions between humans and machines in the field of social robotics, and situating these issues with a view to understanding how to address them. (shrink)

R. M. Cook has recently pointed out that the transport of warships across the Isthmus of Corinth was not the normal use of the diolkos since there was no regular need for such transport. Rather, the diolkos from its inception served a commercial function and its use provided the Corinthian state with a source of revenue.

Throughout the Peloponnesian War, no state remained as aggressively hostile toward Athens as Corinth. Following the affairs of Corcyra and Poteidaia, Corinth successfully argued that war be declared against Athens. After ten years of fighting, when Sparta agreed to the Peace of Nikias, Corinth refused to accept its terms and make peace with Athens. We know that Corinth and Athens were directly engaged in hostilities in 419 and 416 and were on opposing sides in the fighting between Epidauros and Argos (...) in 418. After Athens sent forces against Sicily in the summer of 415, Corinth voted independently to support Syracuse and encouraged Sparta to increase hostilities against Athens in both Greece and Sicily. When the Peloponnesian War came to an end in 404 with the final Athenian defeat, Corinth continued to oppose peace with Athens and urged that the city be destroyed. (shrink)

Chow attacks statistical power analysis on theoretical grounds. I argue that if significance testing is defensible, so is power analysis. A number of Chow's criticisms seem to suggest that power analysts are confused about certain fundamental issues. I claim that few power analysts make the mistakes Chow describes. Finally, I address Chow's claim that power analysis is irrelevant to NHSTP because it deals with a different issue.

According to embodied cognition theory, our physical embodiment influences how we conceptualize entities, whether natural or supernatural. In serving central explanatory roles, supernatural entities (e.g., God) are represented implicitly as having unordinary properties that nevertheless do not violate our sensorimotor interactions with the physical world. We conjecture that other supernatural entities are similarly represented in explanatory contexts.

This abridgement of _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ preserves the dynamism of Edmund Burke’s polemic while excising a number of detail-laden passages that may be of less interest to modern readers. Brian R. Clack’s introduction offers a compelling overview of the text and explores the consistency and coherence of Burke’s views on revolution. Burke’s critique of revolutionary politics is illuminated further by the extensive supplementary materials collected in a number of themed appendices.

Philosophy and the Human Condition brings together essential readings on the crucial philosophical problems related to the human condition and human nature. This collection includes traditional works of Western philosophers from Plato to the present day; relevant extracts from religious texts;and contributions by women, traditions outside of the Western philosophical canon, and other disciplines.

Many of the problems studied in cognitive science are inductive problems, requiring people to evaluate hypotheses in the light of data. The key to solving these problems successfully is having the right inductive biases—assumptions about the world that make it possible to choose between hypotheses that are equally consistent with the observed data. This article explores a novel experimental method for identifying the biases that guide human inductive inferences. The idea behind this method is simple: This article uses the responses (...) produced by a participant on one trial to generate the stimuli that either they or another participant will see on the next. A formal analysis of this “iterated learning” procedure, based on the assumption that the learners are Bayesian agents, predicts that it should reveal the inductive biases of these learners, as expressed in a prior probability distribution over hypotheses. This article presents a series of experiments using stimuli based on a well-studied set of category structures, demonstrating that iterated learning can be used to reveal the inductive biases of human learners. (shrink)

No Moonlight in My Cup: Sinitic Poetry from the Japanese Court, Eighth to the Twelfth Centuries. Edited and translated by Judith N. Rabinovitch and Timothy R. BradstocK. East Asian Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 10. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Pp. xxvi + 474. $232.

The flood of interpretive work regarding Wittgenstein’s thinking on matters religious shows little sign of abating. At the same time, one may feel that little that is new or illuminating is being added to these discussions: what is known as ‘Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion’ may appear to be at a standstill. There is thus a great deal to be said for Thomas Carroll’s contention that it is ‘time for a reassessment of Wittgenstein and philosophy of religion’ , though a reader (...) may ultimately be left with the conclusion that Carroll’s book does not quite provide the reassessment that is required.The first three chapters of the book explore Wittgenstein’s work and its reception within the philosophy of religion. Firstly, Carroll outlines the range of sources drawn upon by those working on Wittgenstein and religion: Wittgenstein’s texts explicitly focused on religious phenomena (such as the ‘Lectures on Religious Belief’ and the ‘Remarks on Frazer’s .. (shrink)