Examines the findings of scientific research into the thought processes of animals and argues that animals are capable of conscious thought.

The Twentieth Century has seen a dramatic rise in the use of probability and statistics in almost all fields of research. This has stimulated many new philosophical ideas on probability. _Philosophical Theories of Probability_ is the first book to present a clear, comprehensive and systematic account of these various theories and to explain how they relate to one another. Gillies also offers a distinctive version of the propensity theory of probability, and the intersubjective interpretation, which develops the subjective theory.

Social revolutions--that is critical periods of decisive, qualitative change--are a commonly acknowledged historical fact. But can the idea of revolutionary upheaval be extended to the world of ideas and theoretical debate? The publication of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962 led to an exciting discussion of revolutions in the natural sciences. A fascinating, but little known, off-shoot of this was a debate which began in the United States in the mid-1970's as to whether the concept of revolution could (...) be applied to mathematics as well as science. Michael Grove declared that revolutions never occur in mathematics, while Joseph Dauben argued that there have been mathematical revolutions and gave some examples. This book is the first comprehensive examination of the question. It reprints the original papers of Grove, Dauben, and Mehrtens, together with additional chapters giving their current views. To this are added new contributions from nine further experts in the history of mathematics, who each discuss an important episode and consider whether it was a revolution. The whole question of mathematical revolutions is thus examined comprehensively and from a variety of perspectives. This thought-provoking volume will interest mathematicians, philosophers, and historians alike. (shrink)

Cognitive neuroscientists have anticipated the union of neural and behavioral science with ethics (Gazzaniga 2005). The identification of an ethical rule—the dictum that we should treat others in the manner in which we would like to be treated—apparently widespread among human societies suggests a dependence on fundamental human brain mechanisms. Now, studies of neural and molecular mechanisms that underlie the feeling of fear suggest how this form of ethical behavior is produced. Counterintuitively, a new theory presented here states that it (...) is actually a loss of social information that leads to sharing others' fears with our own, thus allowing us to treat others as we would like to be treated. Adding to that hypothetical mechanism is the well-studied predilection toward affiliative behaviors. Thus, even as Chomsky hypothesizes that humans are predisposed to utter grammatical sentences, we propose that humans are 'wired for reciprocity'. However, these two neural forces supporting ethical behavior do not explain individual or collective violence. At any given moment, the ability to produce behavior that obeys this ethical rule is proposed to depend on a balance between mechanisms for prosocial and antisocial behaviors. That balance results not only from genetic influences on temperament but also from environmental effects particularly during critical neonatal and pubertal periods. (shrink)

For most of the two hundred years or so that have passed since the publication of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith's writings on political and economic questions have been viewed within a liberal capitalist perspective of nineteenth- and twentieth- century provenance. This essay in interpretation seeks to provide a more historical reading of certain political themes which recur in Smith's writings by bringing eighteenth-century perspectives to bear on the problem. Contrary to the view that sees Smith's work as marking (...) the point at which 'politics' was being eclipsed by 'economics', it claims that Smith has a 'politics' which goes beyond certain political attitudes connected with the role of the state in economic affairs. It argues that he employs a consistent mode of political analysis which cannot be encompassed within the standard liberal capitalist categories, but can be understood by reference to the language and qualities of contemporary political debate, and of the eighteenth-century science of politics cultivated by Montesquieu and, above all, Hume, particularly as revealed by recent scholarship. A concluding chapter draws the various strands of the interpretation together to form a portrait of what Smith might legitimately be said to have been doing when he wrote on these matters. (shrink)

If a bit of perceptual behavior is a trope, so is any response to a stimulus, and so is the stimulus, and so therefore, more generally, is every effect and its cause. When we say that the sunlight caused the blackening of the film we assert a connection between two tropes; when we say that Sunlight in general causes Blackening in general, we assert a corresponding relation between the corresponding universals. Causation is often said to relate events, and generally speaking (...) any event is a trope: a smile, a sneeze, a scream, an election, a cold snap, a storm, a lightning flash, a conspiracy, perhaps a wave, and so on up to such big and important events that they have proper names, like the Passover and Lulu the H-bomb explosion. We have called a trope a "case" of its universal, while the universal is the "kind" of the trope, so it is no surprise that a medical "case" is a trope--in the sense, at any rate, in which a person is said to have a case of typhoid fever rather than to be a case of it. A high-school boy, uncoached, has assured me, "Of course there's such a thing as Redness--this pencil has a case of it." When a scientist reports a temperature or a velocity or a viscosity he is reporting a trope--not a universal, because it is a once-for-all occurrence, but not a concrete thing either, though doubtless a component of one. He is likely to call it an "aspect" of the thing or, preferably, a "state," and generally speaking a "state" of a thing or a nation is a trope. Recent developments in sub-atomic physics, a none too reliable oracle, suggest that an electron, e.g., just is an existent state, and that the common-sense philosophy of concreta here abdicates altogether in favor of the trope. (shrink)

We may think of principles which purport to fairly and reasonably adjudicate conflicting claims among human beings as principles of justice. To identify such principles John Rawls investigates what principles would be chosen by rational, self-interested persons who are ignorant of certain features of themselves which might be taken into account to promote their own advantage. The impartial viewpoint obtained by participants in a modified “original position” might be used, to identify principles which would reasonably and fairly adjudicate conflicting claims (...) among sentient creatures, i.e., human beings and animals. In what follows I attempt to sketch the beginnings of such a strategy, some reasons for exploring it, and conjecture as to a few of its implications for current disputes about the treatment of animals. (shrink)

It is not uncommon to be frustrated by the outcome of an election or a decision in voting, law, economics, engineering, and other fields. Does this 'bad' result reflect poor data or poorly informed voters? Or does the disturbing conclusion reflect the choice of the decision/election procedure? Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow's famed theorem has been interpreted to mean 'no decision procedure is without flaws'. Similarly, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen dashes hope for individual liberties by showing their incompatibility with societal needs. (...) This highly accessible book offers a new, different interpretation and resolution of Arrow's and Sen's theorems. Using simple mathematics, it shows that these negative conclusions arise because, in each case, some of their assumptions negate other crucial assumptions. Once this is understood, not only do the conclusions become expected, but a wide class of other phenomena can also be anticipated. (shrink)

The generation of evidence is integral to the work of public health and health service providers. Traditionally, ethics has been addressed differently in research projects, compared with other forms of evidence generation, such as quality improvement, program evaluation, and surveillance, with review of non-research activities falling outside the purview of the research ethics board. However, the boundaries between research and these other evaluative activities are not distinct. Efforts to delineate a boundary – whether on grounds of primary purpose, temporality, underlying (...) legal authority, departure from usual practice, or direct benefits to participants – have been unsatisfactory. (shrink)

This paper sets out to give sufficient detail to the notion of mental simulation to allow an appraisal of its contribution to ‘mindreading’ in the context of the ‘false-belief tasks’ used in developmental psychology. We first describe the reasoning strategy of ‘modified derivation’, which supports counterfactual reasoning. We then give an analysis of the logical structure of the standard false-belief tasks. We then show how modified derivation can be used in a hybrid strategy for mindreading in these tasks. We then (...) formulate the hypothesis that children become able (around the age of 4 years) to pass these tasks when they acquire the counterfactual reasoning ability required in this strategy. We find this to be consistent with various empirical findings. We then discuss the implications for the theory/simulation debate, meta-representation and pretence. (shrink)

Understanding the nature of pain at least partly depends on recognizing its inherent first person epistemology and on using a first person experiential and third person experimental approach to study it. This approach may help to understand some of the neural mechanisms of pain and consciousness by integrating experiential–phenomenological methods with those of neuroscience. Examples that approximate this strategy include studies of second pain summation and its relationship to neural activities and brain imaging-psychophysical studies wherein sensory and affective qualities of (...) pain are correlated with cerebral cortical activity. The experiential paradigm of Price and Barrell offers the possibility of improved designs and methods for investigating neural mechanisms underlying pain and consciousness. (shrink)

'Davidson, aside from being one of the most influential philosophers of the last century, shares with many of his generation a capacity to write intelligibly.' -The Philosophers' MagazineDonald Davidson presents a new edition of the 1984 volume which set out his enormously influential philosophy of language. Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation has been a central point of reference and a focus of controversy in the subject ever since, and its influence has extended into linguistic theory, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. (...) The central question which these essays address is what it is for words to mean what they do. This new edition features an additional essay, previously uncollected. 'a classic in its field.' P. F. Strawson. (shrink)

Charles Hartshorne: Theistic and Anti-Theistic Arguments Charles Hartshorne is well known in philosophical circles for his rehabilitation of Anselm’s ontological argument. Indeed, he may have written more on that subject than any other philosopher. He considered it to be the argument that, more than any other, reveals the logical status of theism. Nevertheless, he always … Continue reading Hartshorne Theistic and Anti-Theistic Arguments →.

Zu Arnauld und im Discours de métaphysique sagt Leibniz, daß alle Wahrheiten begrifflich (prädikativ) und manche gleichwohl kontingent sind. Ich untersuche das Problem im Hinblick auf mögliche Wesen, die ich als möglich auch betrachte und versuche nachzuweisen, daß die Position keinen Widerspruch enthält, weil Leibniz zwei Arten begrifflichen Enthaltenseins unterscheidet -logisch und kausal: Die erste ist notwendig, die zweite jedoch kontingent und nur hypothetisch notwendig, notwendig also lediglich unter der Voraussetzung des vorgegebenen freien Willens Gottes. Es gibt insofern auch zwei (...) Arten vollständiger Begriffe - logisch und kausal vollständig: Kausal vollständige Begriffe sind logisch unvollständig und enthalten gleichwohl logisch (hypothetisches Enthaltensein) Gründe für die fehlenden Prädikate. Diese Begriffe sind Begriffe von zeitlichen Zuständen, die in einem Individuum durch Gottes wohlbegründete freie Ratschlüsse verbunden sind - solche Zustände lassen sich zwar separieren, jedoch nicht neu zusammenfügen. Diese Interpretation ist vereinbar mit dem inesse-Prinzip, mit Gottes Wissen um zukünftige zufällige Ereignisse sowie Leibniz' Ablehnung des Konzepts weltübergreifender Identität und kann durch die Einbeziehung des Kontingenz-Kriteriums einer unendlichen Analyse sowie einer Theorie der Gegenstücke zur Erklärung des Kontrafaktischen problemlos erweitert werden. (shrink)

Leibniz raises three main objections to the doctrine of occasionalism: (1) it is inconsistent with the supposition of finite substances; (2) it presupposes the occurrence of "perpetual miracles"; (3) it requires that God "disturb" the ordinary laws of nature. At issue in objection (1) is the proper understanding of divine omnipotence, and of the relationship between the power of God and that of created things. I argue that objections (2) and (3), on the other hand, derive from a particular conception (...) of the intelligibility of nature, a conception to which Leibniz is firmly committed and that occasionalists like Malebranche no less firmly reject. (shrink)

Charles Hartshorne: Dipolar Theism From the beginning to the end of his career Charles Hartshorne maintained that the idea that “God is love” was his guiding intuition in philosophy. This “intuition” presupposes both that there is a divine reality and that that reality answers to some positive description of being a loving God. This article … Continue reading Hartshorne, Charles : Dipolar Theism →.

Por medio del rechazo a la supremacía judicial en la interpretación constitucional, este artículo argumenta que entender la interpretación de una constitución como un práctica estrictamente legal y judicial, excluye a la ciudadanía de dicha actividad. El artículo ofrece una clasificación de análisis de interpretación constitucional. Primero, las tesis implícitas discuten sobre la interpretación sin reflexionar sobre si dicha actividad puede ser también llevada a cabo por instituciones no judiciales. Segundo, las tesis explícitas cuestionan si la interpretación constitucional es un (...) asunto que ha de ser tratado por los tribunales, y responden afirmativamente. Crítico ambos grupos de argumentos. Las tesis implícitas no explican porqué la interpretación constitucional es de naturaleza puramente judicial. Las tesis explícitas no justifican suficientemente por qué la judicatura es la institución ideal para dotar de significado final a la constitución de manera autoritativa, tanto en términos instrumentales como normativos. Finalizo sugiriendo caminos para investigaciones futuras. (shrink)