This paper is concerned with the relationship between paradigms of explication and the practice of conceptual engineering. It defends three interrelated claims: First, the predominant functionalist attitude in the present debate on conceptual engineering is due to its roots in Carnapian explication, which identifies the explicandum with a precursor concept. Second, alternative metaphysical paradigms of explication locate the explicandum in a part of a concept-independent reality (‘field explication‘, as I will call it). Third, field explication may be a better paradigm (...) than Carnapian functionalism for certain instances of socio-political conceptual engineering. In these instances, we adjust our concepts to more adequately capture differences in our concept-independent (felt) reality. To demonstrate this, I will contrast the metaphysical to the functionalist paradigm concerning the example of Heimat. [in German]. (shrink)

The Neo-Fregean view individuates concepts at the level of Fregean senses. It is an internalist view according to which concepts can be described as ways of thinking that imply classifications and epistemic/normative inferences. In this paper, I argue that the Neo-Fregean view of concepts adequately characterises the targets of conceptual engineering (CE), which I depict as the activity of purposefully changing our concepts in order to change classifications and/or concept-implicit inferences. I discuss and reject rival views that either reduce the (...) targets of CE to linguistic meanings or classification procedures or characterise concepts in a psychological or concept-externalist manner. I argue that the Neo-Fregean view is a more encompassing and adequate characterisation of the targets of CE. (shrink)

This article presents a community-based account of salience as an alternative and a complement to the ‘natural salience’ approach which is endorsed by almost all game theorists who use this concept. While in the naturalistic approach, salience is understood as an objective and natural property of some entities, the community-based account claims that salience is a function of community membership. Building on David Lewis’s theory of common knowledge and on some of its recent refined accounts, I suggest that salience acts (...) as a correlating device in a correlated equilibrium. What is constitutive of salience is common understanding, the fact that agents have common knowledge that they share the same modes of reasoning with respect to a well-identified set of events. I argue that the basis for common understanding is community membership. The relevance of this account stems from the fact that it answers the objection that salience is either unnecessary or unable to account for coordination between rational agents. (shrink)

Using panel data of 4,244 company years, we examine whether and how corporate social performance (CSP) affects a firm’s capacity to achieve profitable sales in foreign markets. Based on our extension of instrumental stakeholder theory into the international arena, we hypothesized a U-shaped relationship between CSP and multinationality. Results supported our contention that multinational enterprises (MNEs) need to be substantially committed to social performance objectives if they are to recoup the cost of their CSP investments, and improve their capacity to (...) compete in foreign markets. MNEs engaged in intermediate levels of CSP achieve lower levels of multinationality than firms operating at either anchor of the social performance continuum. In addition, this study demonstrates that CSP moderates a well-established relationship in international business literature – the relationship between R&D investment and a firm’s multinationality. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Various errors can affect scientific code and detecting them is a central concern within computational science. Could formal verification methods, which are now available tools, be widely adopted to guarantee the general reliability of scientific code? After discussing their benefits and drawbacks, we claim that, absent significant changes as regards features like their user-friendliness and versatility, these methods are unlikely to be adopted throughout computational science, beyond certain specific contexts for which they are well-suited. This issue exemplifies the epistemological heterogeneity (...) of computational science: profoundly different practices can be appropriate to meet the reliability challenge that rises for scientific code. (shrink)

Pylyshyn makes a convincing case that early visual processing is cognitively impenetrable, and although I question the utility of binary oppositions such as penetrable/impenetrable, for the most part I am in agreement. The author does not provide explicit designations or denotations for the terms penetrable and impenetrable, which appear quite arbitrary. Furthermore, the use of focal attention smacks of an homunculus, and the account appears to slip too easily between the perceptual, the cognitive, and the neurophysiological.

Schyns, Goldstone & Thibaut oppose the notion of fixed feature analysis, suggesting the possibility of flexible feature creation in object recognition and categorisation. Such proposals cannot be assessed until clear definitions of the objects in question and their decompositions are formulated. Flexibility may come from the decompositions of objects rather than from feature creation.

This paper analyses Heidegger’s controversial advancement of Husserl’s idea of philosophy and phenomenological research towards ‘the Being-Question’ and its relation to ‘Dasein’. It concentrates on Heidegger’s elision of Dilthey and Husserl’s different concepts of ‘Descriptive Psychology’ in his 1925 Summer Semester lecture-course, with Husserl’s concept losing out in the competition, as background to the formulation of ‘the Being-Question’ in Being and Time (1927). It argues that Heidegger establishes his own position within phenomenology on the basis of a partial appropriation of (...) Dilthey’s hermeneutical manner of thinking, an appropriation that was later radically called into question by Levinas on Diltheyean-hermeneutical-philosophical grounds. (shrink)

This essay explores the possible justification that liberal perfectionism may provide to an epistocratic regime. I suggest that epistocratic mechanisms and rules can maintain and improve epistemic autonomy, which itself contributes to the form of personal autonomy to which perfectionists grant a moral priority. Though not decisive, I claim that the Perfectionist Argument for Epistocracy partially justifies epistocracy. Because this argument is developed in the context of liberal social forms, this indicates the conceptual possibility of liberal epistocracy.

ABSTRACTDeliberative and decisional groups play crucial roles in most aspects of social life. But it is not obvious how to organize these groups and various socio-cognitive mechanisms can spoil debates and decisions. In this paper we focus on one such important mechanism: the misrepresentation of views, i.e. when agents express views that are aligned with those already expressed, and which differ from their private opinions. We introduce a model to analyze the extent to which this behavioral pattern can warp deliberations (...) and distort the decisions that are finally taken. We identify types of situations in which misrepresentation can have major effects and investigate how to reduce these effects by adopting appropriate deliberative procedures. We discuss the beneficial effects of holding a sufficient number of rounds of expression of views; choosing an appropriate order of speech, typically a random one; rendering the deliberation dissenter-friendly; having agents express fined-grained views. These applicable procedures help improve deliberations because they dampen conformist behavior, give epistemic minorities more opportunities to be heard, and reduce the number of cases in which an inadequate consensus or majority develops. (shrink)

S.J. Cyril Barrett; VI—Concepts and Concept Formation, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 63, Issue 1, 1 June 1963, Pages 127–144, https://doi.org/.

:Most game-theoretic accounts of institutions reduce institutions to behavioural patterns the players are incentivized to implement. An alternative account linking institutions to rule-following behaviour in a game-theoretic framework is developed on the basis of David Lewis’s and Ludwig Wittgenstein's respective accounts of conventions and language games. Institutions are formalized as epistemic games where the players share some forms of practical reasoning. An institution is a rule-governed game satisfying three conditions: common understanding, minimal awareness and minimal practical rationality. Common understanding has (...) a strong similarity with Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of lebensform while minimal awareness and minimal practical rationality capture the idea that rule-following is community-based. (shrink)

According to Woodward’s causal model of explanation, explanatory information is relevant for manipulation purposes and indicates by means of invariant causal relations how to change the value of certain target explanandum variables by intervening on others. Therefore, the depth of an explanation is evaluated through the size of the domain of invariance of the generalization involved. In this article, I argue that Woodward’s account of explanatory relevance is still unsatisfactory and claim that the depth of an explanation should be explicated (...) in terms of the size of the domain of circumstances which it designates as leaving the explanandum unchanged. (shrink)

This text expounds and relates the ethical and religious views of a philosopher that are usually discussed in terms of language. (Philosophy).

A philosopher and a cognitive neuroscientist conversed with Buddhist lama Tilmann Lhündrup Borghardt (TLB) about the unresolved phenomenological concerns and logical questions surrounding “pure” consciousness or minimal phenomenal experience (MPE), a quasi-contentless, non-dual state whose phenomenology of “emptiness” is often described in terms of the phenomenal quality of luminosity that experienced meditators have reported occurs in deep meditative states. Here, we present the excerpts of the conversation that relate to the question of how it is possible to first have and (...) later retrieve such non-dual states of selflessness and timelessness that are unrelated to sensory input. According to TLB, a “pure” experience of consciousness contains the phenomenal quality of luminous clarity, which is experienced solely in the transitional phase from the non-dual state of absolute emptiness to the state of minimal emptiness, when the person gradually returns to duality. However, this quality of luminous clarity can also be experienced in non-minimal states as in the experiential mode of being awakened. TLB describes this transition as a kind of ephemeral afterglow in the form of a maximally abstract phenomenal quality, i.e., luminosity, which justifies the conclusion of having been in a state of “pure” consciousness. (shrink)

"Yin-Yang" est le nom donné en chinois au fonctionnement de tout le vivant. Cette unité changeante, ce mouvement incessant, cette danse de tout l'univers se dit en un seul mot. Or, en français comme dans toutes les langues occidentales, "Yin" et "Yang" sont deux mots. Voilà où commence le quiproquo. Avec le talent narratif et pédagogique qui a fait le succès de ses nombreux livres, Cyrille Javary nous introduit dans l'esprit chinois à travers cette clé essentielle : "Yin" n'est pas (...) plus une entité que "Yang", ils n'ont pas d'existence propre. Car l'hiver n'est pas "l'hiver", mais ce qui deviendra l'été, avant de redevenir hiver... Chacun est le futur et le passé de l'autre, sans qu'on puisse leur attribuer une substance, une quelconque fixité. S'il heurte toutes nos habitudes de pensée, ce genre d'énoncés peut nous conduire à une compréhension plus subtile du monde, et nous aider à mieux aborder les problèmes que nous rencontrons. Ainsi que l'écrit Danielle Elisseeff dans sa postface, " cet ouvrage opère une petite révolution. Tout se passe comme s'il parvenait à déplacer le curseur de nos perceptions et de nos émotions. ".. A travers mille exemples concrets, l'auteur nous entraîne dans un passionnant voyage dans le temps, jusqu'à l'aube du néolithique... (shrink)

Cet ouvrage presente les elements du debat contemporain sur la possibilite et la realite du libre arbitre. Le debat traditionnel sur l'existence du libre arbitre, menacee par diverses formes de necessite, est repousse apres le debat qu'ont inspire les philosophes qui ont defendu la compatibilite du libre arbitre et de la necessite. La partie principale du livre envisage le rapport du libre arbitre et du determinisme causal, et soutient la these de leur incompatibilite, puis celle de l'existence du libre arbitre, (...) ce qui definit une position libertarienne. Les deux commentaires, de textes de Neslon Pike et Peter van Inwagen, sont l'occasion d'evoquer le debat sur le fatalisme logique, dans sa version theologique qui fait peser une menace sur le libre arbitre a partir de la prescience, et le debat sur la possibilite et l'intelligibilite de l'action libre dans l'hypothese de l'indeterminisme. (shrink)

Provides a critical and analytical history of ancient Greek theories on the nature of pleasure, and of its value and rolein human lfie, from the ealriest times down to the period of Epicurus and the early Stoics.

Nous pensons avoir souvent le choix entre plusieurs options et considérons que les personnes humaines qui exercent normalement ce pouvoir peuvent être tenues pour responsables de leurs actes. Ces croyances, en la liberté, en la responsabilité et en leur relation nécessaire, ont pu être entendues de manières différentes, voire niées. L'idée que les actions humaines sont déterminées par des facteurs qui ne dépendent pas des agents humains, comme le sont tous ou la plupart des événements de ce monde, est une (...) croyance ancienne (destin, prédestination) et moderne (déterminisme des lois de la nature). Et la pensée qu'une indétermination des actions humaines ne serait pas plus favorable à la liberté et à la responsabilité peut conduire à la conclusion que ces dernières sont impossibles. Pour affronter ce problème, il faut élucider les concepts, et évaluer les analyses ainsi que les arguments proposés de part et d'autre. En s'appuyant sur l'état contemporain de la discussion, ce livre défend la possibilité et la plausibilité de la conception "libertarienne" de la liberté. Elle serait incompatible avec le déterminisme et compatible avec l'indéterminisme, qui est la condition de la responsabilité morale."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS OF MODERN SCIENCE By the same Author ESSAYS IN COMMON-SENSE PHILOSOPHY Second Impression Published by the Oxford University Press MATTER, ...

Présentation de l'indice de la distance intertextuelle et de ses propriétés. Discussion des limites du calcul : influence des décimales et des différences de taille entre textes comparés. Examen de la contribution à la distance des vocables classés en fonction de leurs catégories grammaticales et de leurs fréquences. L'indice de la distance inter-textuelle fournit un outil intéressant pour la mesure des ressemblances et des dissemblances au sein des grandes bases de textes.