In this paper I argue that, according to a particular physicalist conception of information, information is both alethically neutral or non-alethic, and is intrinsically semantic. The conception of information presented is physicalist and reductionist, and is contrary to most current pluralist and non-reductionist philosophical opinion about the nature of information. The ontology assumed for this conception of information is based upon physicalist non-eliminative ontic structural realism. However, the argument of primary interest is that information so construed is intrinsically semantic on (...) a reductionist and non-alethic basis where semantic content is constituted by indication along causal pathways. Similar arguments have been presented by philosophers with respect to representation. I suggest the conception of information that I present is correct by the lights of the best applied mathematical and scientific theories of information. If so, there is no need for any separate theory of semantic information. Thus I present a theory of intrinsically semantic information which also constitutes an informational theory of truth where truth reduces to information. In the last section I discuss weakly and strongly semantic information, and reject them in favour of alethically neutral intrinsically semantic information. (shrink)

This study examines the relationship between procedural justice and employee job insecurity, and the boundary conditions of this relationship. Drawing upon uncertainty management theory and ethical leadership research, we hypothesized that procedural justice is negatively related to job insecurity, and that this relationship is moderated by ethical leadership. We further predicted that the moderating relationship would be more pronounced among employees with a low power distance orientation. We tested our hypotheses using a sample of 381 workers in Macau and Southern (...) China. The results support all of our hypotheses. The implications of these results for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

The objective of this thesis is to present a naturalised metaphysics of information, or to naturalise information, by way of deploying a scientific metaphysics according to which contingency is privileged and a-priori conceptual analysis is excluded (or at least greatly diminished) in favour of contingent and defeasible metaphysics. The ontology of information is established according to the premises and mandate of the scientific metaphysics by inference to the best explanation, and in accordance with the idea that the primacy of physics (...) constraint accommodates defeasibility of theorising in physics. This metametaphysical approach is used to establish a field ontology as a basis for an informational structural realism. This is in turn, in combination with information theory and specifically mathematical and algorithmic theories of information, becomes the foundation of what will be called a source ontology, according to which the world is the totality of information sources. Information sources are to be understood as causally induced configurations of structure that are, or else reduce to and/or supervene upon, bounded (including distributed and non-contiguous) regions of the heterogeneous quantum field (all quantum fields combined) and fluctuating vacuum, all in accordance with the above-mentioned quantum field-ontic informational structural realism (FOSIR.) Arguments are presented for realism, physicalism, and reductionism about information on the basis of the stated contingent scientific metaphysics. In terms of philosophical argumentation, realism about information is argued for primarily by way of an indispensability argument that defers to the practice of scientists and regards concepts of information as just as indispensable in their theories as contingent representations of structure. Physicalism and reductionism about information are adduced by way of the identity thesis that identifies the substance of the structure of ontic structural realism as identical to selections of structure existing in re to combined heterogeneous quantum fields, and to the total heterogeneous quantum field comprised of all such fields. Adjunctly, an informational statement of physicalism is arrived at, and a theory of semantic information is proposed, according to which information is intrinsically semantic and alethically neutral. (shrink)

I will analyse Floridi’s rejection of digital ontologies and his positive proposal for an informational structural realism. I intend to show that ISR is still fundamentally a digital ontology, albeit with some different metaphysical commitments to those that Floridi rejects. I will argue that even though Floridi deploys the method of levels of abstraction adapted from computer science, and has established a Kantian transcendentalist conception of both information and structure, ISR still reduces to a discretised binary, and therefore digital, ontology. (...) The digital ontologies that Floridi rejects are John Wheeler’s “It from Bit” conception and computational metaphysics. They’re rejected predominantly on the basis that they rely upon a false dichotomy between digital discrete and continuous metaphysics. ISR involves a Kantian transcendentalist conception of de re relations that is intended to avoid this false dichotomy. However, I’ll argue that the binary, discrete, digital component of digital ontology is retained in ISR, and therefore ISR is still a digital ontology since its conception of information reduces to binary discrete de re relations. As such, ISR comes down on one side of the rejected ontic dichotomy of digital metaphysics, and so an informational metaphysics that is not a digital ontology is still a promissory note in the philosophy of information. (shrink)

R James Long - Essays in Medieval Philosophy and Theology in Memory of Walter H. Principe, CSB: Fortresses and Launching Pads - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.3 495-497 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by R. James Long Fairfield University James R. Ginther and Carl N. Still, editors. Essays in Medieval Philosophy and Theology in Memory of Walter H. Principe, CSB: Fortresses and Launching Pads. Aldershot-Burlington: Ashgate, 2005. Pp. (...) ix + 177. Cloth, $99.95. Sir Maurice Powicke famously wrote that one must live in the valley before one can appreciate the height of the mountains. Walter Principe spent much of his academic career editing and studying lesser and long-neglected masters of theology before ascending the heights represented by the thought of the Common Doctor. It is fitting, therefore, that this collection of studies to honor his memory—with contributions from colleagues and former students—reflect the full range of.. (shrink)

Genesis 16 tells of Abraham conceiving Ishmael with his wife Sarai's servant Hagar. Dominican Friar Richard Fishacre (ca. 1200-1248) used this Biblical narrative to explore the relationship of the natural and Divine sciences. Fishacre believed that the theologian must first study the world, before he could be fruitful as a theologian. How do the natural sciences, in short, help us better understand the Scriptures? Fishacre, like his contemporaries Albert the Great (ca. 1200-1280) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) looked at ways that (...) the newly-translated natural philosophy of Aristotle, with its empirical emphasis and a belief that knowledge begins in sense perception, could supplement the more otherworldly Neoplatonic approach to philosophy and the sciences inherited from St. Augustine. Hagar's Vocation is a collection of fifteen essays which focus on the contributions of Richard Fishacre, the first Dominican theologian at Oxford to have left a written legacy. The questions addressed by Fishacre include his arguments for God's existence, the multi-faceted problem of the human soul, the eternity of the world, the nature of light, the free choice of the will, angels and "spiritual matter," interiority and self-knowledge, undoing the past and God's absolute power, the magical arts, and the role of philosophy in a theology of creation. R. James Long, the world's leading authority on Fishacre, in this volume promises to establish this hitherto little studied English friar as a major figure in the development of a learned or philosophically grounded theology that remains the great achievement of High Scholasticism. (shrink)

I argue that although Ockham’s Razor (OR) has its origins in a-priorist ontological mandates according to the purposes of natural theology and natural philosophy as influenced by it, the principle has taken on significant empirical and contingent materialist connotations and conceptual content since the scientific revolution. I briefly discuss the pluralism of the concept of OR historically and in contemporary science and philosophy. I then attempt to align scientific metaphysics with contemporary conceptions of OR, and to demonstrate that ontic parsimony (...) is an indispensable element of scientific (contingent and anti-a-priorist) metaphysics. I then further deploy that scientific metaphysics to propose a contingently grounded semi-formal approach, with set theoretic features, and then with information theoretic features, to provide a way of assessing when a scientific theory and its ontology are aligned with OR appropriately in the context of the proposed scientific metaphysics. (shrink)

I will analyse Floridi’s rejection of digital ontologies and his positive proposal for an informational structural realism. I intend to show that ISR is still fundamentally a digital ontology, albeit with some different metaphysical commitments to those that Floridi rejects. I will argue that even though Floridi deploys the method of levels of abstraction adapted from computer science, and has established a Kantian transcendentalist conception of both information and structure, ISR still reduces to a discretised binary, and therefore digital, ontology. (...) The digital ontologies that Floridi rejects are John Wheeler’s “It from Bit” conception and computational metaphysics. They’re rejected predominantly on the basis that they rely upon a false dichotomy between digital discrete and continuous metaphysics. ISR involves a Kantian transcendentalist conception of de re relations that is intended to avoid this false dichotomy. However, I’ll argue that the binary, discrete, digital component of digital ontology is retained in ISR, and therefore ISR is still a digital ontology since its conception of information reduces to binary discrete de re relations. As such, ISR comes down on one side of the rejected ontic dichotomy of digital metaphysics, and so an informational metaphysics that is not a digital ontology is still a promissory note in the philosophy of information. (shrink)

This book investigates the interplay between two new and influential subdisciplines in the philosophy of science and philosophy: contemporary scientific metaphysics and the philosophy of information. Scientific metaphysics embodies various scientific realisms and has a partial intellectual heritage in some forms of neo-positivism, but is far more attuned than the latter to statistical science, theory defeasibility, scale variability, and pluralist ontological and explanatory commitments, and is averse to a-priori conceptual analysis. The philosophy of information is the combination of what has (...) been called the informational turn in philosophy and ontology, with the informational turn in logic. The book explores the intersecting theoretical commitments and metaphysical basis of both. It applies scientific metaphysics to the philosophy of information, and also correspondingly proposes a new informational interpretation of scientific metaphysics. These are applied to numerous outstanding ontological, philosophical, and theoretical problems in the philosophy of information, scientific realism, cognitive science, theories of semantic information, and informational logic. The book investigates known and new problems, and advances debates and insights in the philosophy of information. It will be of interest to philosophers of information and science, metaphysicians, and cognitive scientists. (shrink)

_Yanomami_ raises questions central to the field of anthropology—questions concerning the practice of fieldwork, the production of knowledge, and anthropology's intellectual and ethical vision of itself. Using the Yanomami controversy—one of anthropology's most famous and explosive imbroglios—as its starting point, this book draws readers into not only reflecting on but refashioning the very heart and soul of the discipline. It is both the most up-to-date and thorough public discussion of the Yanomami controversy available and an innovative and searching assessment of (...) the current state of anthropology. The Yanomami controversy came to public attention through the publication of Patrick Tierney's best-selling book, _Darkness in El Dorado,_ in which he accuses James Neel, a prominent geneticist who belonged to the National Academy of Sciences, as well as Napoleon Chagnon, whose introductory text on the Yanomami is perhaps the best-selling anthropological monograph of all time, of serious human rights violations. This book identifies the ethical dilemmas of the controversy and raises deeper, structural questions about the discipline. A portion of the book is devoted to a unique roundtable in which important scholars on different sides of the issues debate back and forth with each other. This format draws readers into deciding, for themselves, where they stand on the controversy’s—and many of anthropology’s—central concerns. All of the royalties from this book will be donated to helping the Yanomami improve their healthcare. (shrink)

This study investigated attitudes toward the use of deception in negotiation, with particular attention to the distinction between deception regarding the informational elements of the interaction (e.g., lying about or misrepresenting needs or preferences) and deception about emotional elements (e.g., misrepresenting one's emotional state). We examined how individuals judge the relative ethical appropriateness of these alternative forms of deception, and how these judgments relate to negotiator performance and long-run reputation. Individuals viewed emotionally misleading tactics as more ethically appropriate to (...) use in negotiation than informational deception. Approval of deception predicted negotiator performance in a negotiation simulation and also general reputation as a negotiator, but the nature of these relationships depended on the kind of deception involved. (shrink)

A review of Sandra D. Mitchell's excellent book "Unsimple Truths" -/- I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in: -/- - Scientific metaphysics - Philosophy of science - Emergence - Science and epistemology - Philosophy of complexity and complex systems - Non-reductive physicalism - Philosophical analyses of simulations - Prediction .

Lapses in ethical conduct by those in corporate and public authority worldwide have given business researchers and practitioners alike cause to re-examine the antecedents to personal ethical values. We explore the relationship between ethical values and an individual’s long-term orientation or LTO, defined as the degree to which one plans for and considers the future, as well as values traditions of the past. Our study also examines the role of work ethic and conservative attitudes in the formation of a (...) person’s long-term orientation and consequent ethical beliefs. Empirically testing these hypothesized relationships using data from 292 subjects, we find that long-term perspectives on tradition and planning indeed engender higher levels of ethical values. The results also support work ethic’s role in fostering tradition and planning, as well as conservatism’s positive association with planning. Additionally, we report how tradition and planning mediate the influence of conservatism and work ethic on the formation of ethical values. Limitations of the study and future research directions, as well as implications for business managers and academics, are also discussed. (shrink)

We argue that although E-Z Reader does a good job in simulating many basic facts related to readers' eye movements, two phenomena appear to pose a challenge to the model. The first has to do with word length mediating the way compound words are identified; the second concerns the effects of initial fixation position in a word on eye behavior.

Saturn and Melancholy remains an iconic text in art history, intellectual history, and the study of culture, despite being long out of print in English. Rooted in the tradition established by Aby Warburg and the Warburg Library, this book has deeply influenced understandings of the interrelations between the humanities disciplines since its first publication in English in 1964. This new edition makes the original English text available for the first time in decades. Saturn and Melancholy offers an unparalleled inquiry (...) into the origin and development of the philosophical and medical theories on which the ancient conception of the temperaments was based and discusses their connections to astrological and religious ideas. It also traces representations of melancholy in literature and the arts up to the sixteenth century, culminating in a landmark analysis of Dürer's most famous engraving, Melencolia I. This edition features Raymond Klibansky's additional introduction and bibliographical amendments for the German edition, as well as translations of source material and 155 original illustrations. An essay on the complex publication history of this pathbreaking project - which almost did not see the light of day - covers more than eighty years, including its more recent heritage. Making new a classic book that has been out of print for over four decades, this expanded edition presents fresh insights about Saturn and Melancholy and its legacy as a precursor to modern interdisciplinary studies. (shrink)

Studies of childhood abuse and neglect haveimportant lessons for considerations of natureand nurture. While each child has uniquegenetic potentials, both human and animalstudies point to important needs that everychild has, and severe long-term consequencesfor brain function if those needs are not met. The effects of the childhood environment,favorable or unfavorable, interact with all theprocesses of neurodevelopment (neurogenesis,migration, differentiation, apoptosis,arborization, synaptogenesis, synapticsculpting, and myelination). The time coursesof all these neural processes are reviewed herealong with statements of core principles forboth genetic (...) and environmental influences onall of these processes. Evidence is presentedthat development of synaptic pathways tends tobe a ``use it or lose it'' proposition.Abuse studies from the author's laboratory,studies of children in orphanages who lackedemotional contact, and a large number of animaldeprivation and enrichment studies point to theneed for children and young nonhuman mammals tohave both stable emotional attachments with andtouch from primary adult caregivers, andspontaneous interactions with peers. If theseconnections are lacking, brain development bothof caring behavior and cognitive capacities isdamaged in a lasting fashion.These effects of experience on the brainimply that effects of modern technology can bepositive but need to be monitored. Whiletechnology has raised opportunities forchildren to become economically secure andliterate, more recent inadvertent impacts oftechnology have spawned declines in extendedfamilies, family meals, and spontaneous peerinteractions. The latter changes have deprivedmany children of experiences that promotepositive growth of the cognitive and caringpotentials of their developing brains. (shrink)

Foreword -- 1. The War Within -- 2. The Cult of Experience -- 3. The Long March -- 4. America's Transformers -- 5. American Restoration -- 6. Twenty-twenty Vision -- Acknowledgments.

Philosophy long sought to set knowledge on a firm foundation, through derivation of indubitable truths by infallible rules. For want of such truths and rules, the enterprise foundered. Nevertheless, foundationalism's heirs continue their forbears' quest, seeking security against epistemic misfortune, while their detractors typically espouse unbridled coherentism or facile relativism. Maintaining that neither stance is tenable, Catherine Elgin devises a via media between the absolute and the arbitrary, reconceiving the nature, goals, and methods of epistemology. In Considered Judgment, she (...) argues for a reconception that takes reflective equilibrium as the standard of rational acceptability. A system of thought is in reflective equilibrium when its components are reasonable in light of one another, and the account they comprise is reasonable in light of our antecedent convictions about the subject it concerns.Many epistemologists now concede that certainty is a chimerical goal. But they continue to accept the traditional conception of epistemology's problematic. Elgin suggests that in abandoning the quest for certainty we gain opportunities for a broader epistemological purview--one that comprehends the arts and does justice to the sciences. She contends that metaphor, fiction, emotion, and exemplification often advance understanding in science as well as in art. The range of epistemology is broader and more variegated than is usually recognized. Tenable systems of thought are neither absolute nor arbitrary. Although they afford no guarantees, they are good in the way of belief. (shrink)

With the Supreme Court’s landmark _Brown_ decisions of 1954 and 1955, American education changed forever. But _Brown_ was just the beginning, and Raymond Wolters contends that its best intentions have been taken to unnecessary extremes. In this compelling study, a scholar who has long observed the traumas of school desegregation uncovers the changes and difficulties with which public education has dealt over the last fifty years—and argues that some judicial decisions were ill-advised. Dealing candidly with matters usually considered (...) taboo in academic discourse, Wolters argues that the Supreme Court acted correctly and in accordance with public sentiment in _Brown_ but that it later took a wrong turn by equating desegregation with integration. Retracing the history of desegregation and integration in America’s schools, Wolters distinguishes between several Court decisions, explaining that while _Brown_ called for desegregation by requiring that schools deal with students on a racially nondiscriminatory basis, subsequent decisions—_Green, Swann, Keyes_—required actual integration through racial balancing. He places these decisions in the context of educational reform in the 1950s that sought to encourage bright students through advanced placement and honors courses—courses in which African American and Hispanic students were less likely to be enrolled. Then with the racial unrest of the 1960s, the pursuit of academic excellence yielded to concerns for uplifting disadvantaged youths and ensuring the predominance of middle-class peer groups in schools. Wolters draws on rich historical records to document the devastating consequences of requiring racial balance and sheds new light on America’s legal, social, and cultural landscapes. He reexamines the educational theories of Kenneth Clark and James Coleman, and he challenges statistics that support the results of racial balancing by describing how school desegregation and integration actually proceeded in several towns, cities, and counties. _Race and Education_ is a bold challenge to political correctness in education and a corrective to the now widely accepted notion that desegregation and racially balanced integration are one and the same. It is essential reading for scholars of law and education and a wake-up call for citizens concerned about the future of America’s schools. (shrink)

The current paper synthesizes theory and data from the field of life history (LH) evolution to advance a new developmental theory of variation in human LH strategies. The theory posits that clusters of correlated LH traits (e.g., timing of puberty, age at sexual debut and first birth, parental investment strategies) lie on a slow-to-fast continuum; that harshness (externally caused levels of morbidity-mortality) and unpredictability (spatial-temporal variation in harshness) are the most fundamental environmental influences on the evolution and development of LH (...) strategies; and that these influences depend on population densities and related levels of intraspecific competition and resource scarcity, on age schedules of mortality, on the sensitivity of morbidity-mortality to the organism’s resource-allocation decisions, and on the extent to which environmental fluctuations affect individuals versus populations over short versus long timescales. These interrelated factors operate at evolutionary and developmental levels and should be distinguished because they exert distinctive effects on LH traits and are hierarchically operative in terms of primacy of influence. Although converging lines of evidence support core assumptions of the theory, many questions remain unanswered. This review demonstrates the value of applying a multilevel evolutionary-developmental approach to the analysis of a central feature of human phenotypic variation: LH strategy. (shrink)

At its inception innocent of philosophical or metaphysical designs, the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis was soon liberated from the precincts of scientific cultivation to enter into cultural free association. Nonetheless, scientific and scholarly attention and debate have long precipitated a bona fide discourse of Gaia theory. Moreover, intellectually serious extra-scientific figures of Gaia have also been on the rise in the last decade. This essay treats a selection of these newer Gaian figures, specifically, Isabelle Stengers’s (...) Gaia the Intruder and Bruno Latour’s secular Gaia, in relation to Lovelock’s Gaia and Lynn Margulis’s evocations of autopoietic Gaia. When nuanced through second-order systems theory, the discourse of autopoietic Gaia satisfies Stengers’s and Latour’s demands for a non-holistic, heterogeneous yet coherent Gaia concept fit for communicative efficacy in the so-called Anthropocene epoch. (shrink)

Introduction. During the past two decades philosophers of psychology have considered a large variety of computational models for philosophy of mind and more recently for cognitive science. Among the suggested models are computer programs, Turing machines, pushdown automata, linear bounded automata, finite state automata and sequential machines. Many philosophers have found finite state automata models to be the most appealing, for various reasons, although there has been no shortage of defenders of programs and Turing machines. A paper by Arthur Burks (...) convinced me long ago that “all natural human functions” are, or can be fruitfully modeled to be, finite state automata with output. Further work in the field has reinforced this conviction. There is room, however, for the use of any of the above models in philosophy of mind and in the ongoing development of cognitive science. (shrink)