I reconstruct Aristotle’s analytical procedure in Prior Analytics I.45 and its metalogical implications. Aristotle’s analysis unfolds three groups of syllogisms: symmetrically analysable, asymmetrically analysable, and non-analysable syllogisms. From the first and the third group could be extracted 27 combinations of the two mutually non-derivable deductive rules. Aristotle’s reduced deductive system in APr. I.7 with the two moods in the first figure (traditionally called Barbara and Celarent) follows this pattern. I demonstrate that the deductive system with Barbara and Celarent is just (...) one of 27 possible complete deductive systems with the two mutually non-derivable syllogistic rules. On top of that, given the fact that there are two combinations of mutually non-derivable conversion rules, I conclude that Prior Analytics hides in itself 54 complete deductive systems with a minimal number of mutually non-derivable rules. Finally, it is commented what might be the role of analysis; to what extent Aristotle could be aware of possibilities presented here; why he still prefers only one deductive system to many others with the same deductive power. (shrink)

We present a model for studying communities of epistemically interacting agents who update their belief states by averaging the belief states of other agents in the community. The agents in our model have a rich belief state, involving multiple independent issues which are interrelated in such a way that they form a theory of the world. Our main goal is to calculate the probability for an agent to end up in an inconsistent belief state due to updating. To that end, (...) an analytical expression is given and evaluated numerically, both exactly and using statistical sampling. It is shown that, under the assumptions of our model, an agent always has a probability of less than 2% of ending up in an inconsistent belief state. Moreover, this probability can be made arbitrarily small by increasing the number of independent issues the agents have to judge or by increasing the group size. A real-world situation to which this model applies is a group of experts participating in a Delphi-study. (shrink)

In this article, we provide an ethical analysis of the first porcine cardiac xenotransplant, performed in Maryland, USA in early 2022. David Bennett was offered the experimental procedure after he was deemed ineligible for human heart transplantation and mechanical circulatory support, based on a history of non-compliance. It was reported that Mr Bennett’s previous instances of non-compliance were for medically non-life-threatening conditions years earlier, where the risks of non-compliance were not as high. We argue that, in Mr Bennett’s case, a (...) history of non-compliance in a different context, should not necessarily rule him ineligible for a potentially life-saving treatment now. Furthermore, using previous non-compliance to exclude individuals from donor organs may have the unintended effect of placing the burden of testing xenotransplantation on those who are already disadvantaged. We then argue that it is not enough to rely on patient consent to ethically justify xenotransplantation research. Taking a broad ethical perspective is crucial when mapping a clinical pathway for xenotransplantation. (shrink)

A paper on how to adapt your probabilisitc beliefs when learning a conditional.

Natural language provides motivation for studying modal backwards-looking operators such as “now”, “then” and “actually” that evaluate their argument formula at some previously considered point instead of the current one. This paper investigates the expressive power over models of both propositional and first-order basic modal language enriched with such operators. Having defined an appropriate notion of bisimulation for first-order modal logic, I show that backwards-looking operators increase its expressive power quite mildly, contrary to beliefs widespread among philosophers of language and (...) formal semanticists. That in turn presents a strong argument for the use of operator-based systems in the semantics of natural language, instead of systems with explicit quantification over worlds and times that have become a de-facto standard for such applications. The popularity of such explicit-quantification systems is shown to be based on the misinterpretation of a claim by Cresswell, which led many philosophers and linguists to assume that introducing “now” and “then” is expressively equivalent to explicitly quantifying over worlds and times. (shrink)

Desde el inicio de los _Troubles_ la situación en Irlanda del Norte estuvo marcada por la violencia del IRA y la confrontación sectaria entre las comunidades católicas y protestantes. En el inicio de la década de los años 90 se abrió un nuevo panorama de esperanza a la hora de poner fin al terrorismo, gracias a los Acuerdos del Viernes Santo (10 de abril de 1998). Este artículo analiza las claves y el contexto del filme _The Boxer_ (1997), del reconocido (...) director dublinés Jim Sheridan, desde la metodología de las relaciones de historia y cine. La película, previa a los acuerdos, establece como el cine de ficción puede ser una manera de influir (positivamente) en la sociedad, además de convertirse en un retrato real y simbólico sobre la crudeza y afección de la violencia y la sinrazón más manifiesta que tanto daño provocó en la sociedad norirlandesa. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, EarlyView.

The idea that knowledge is conceptually related to practical reasoning is becoming increasingly popular. In defending this idea, philosophers have been relying on a conception of practical reasoning that drastically deviates from one which has been more traditionally advocated in analytic philosophy and which assigns no special role to knowledge. This paper argues that these philosophers have failed to give good reasons for thinking that the conception of practical reasoning they have been assuming is the right one, and that hence (...) they have been rash to conclude that there is a conceptual relation between knowledge and practical reasoning. (shrink)

Topoi in Critical Discourse Analysis Topos is one of the most widely-used concepts from classical argumentation theory. It found its way not only in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and linguistics; it found its way in everyday life and everyday conversation as well.In this article, I will examine the role that topoi play in Critical Discourse Analysis. Starting with definitions from Aristotle and Cicero, contrasting them with new conceptualisations by Perelman and Toulmin, and examining the superficial use of topoi in everyday conversation, (...) I will try to show that Critical Discourse Analysis relies mostly on simplified, unreflected use of topoi as found in everyday use, thus neglecting much more productive, theoretical elaborations of the concept. (shrink)

We give a negative solution to the problem, posed by A. Chagrov and M. Zakharyaschev, of whether every quasi-normal propositional modal logic can be axiomatized by an independent set of axioms, with the inference rules of Substitution and Modus Ponens.

Invariantism proposed by Braun (Linguistics and Philosophy 35(6):461–489, 2012) aims to maintain full identity of semantic content between all uses of ‘might’. I invoke well-known facts regarding diachronic change in meanings of modals to argue that invariantism commits us to implausible duplication of familiar processes of lexical semantic change on the level of “lexical pragmatics”, with no obvious payoff.

Increasingly, the private sector is playing a greater role in supporting peace building efforts in conflict and post-conflict areas by providing critical expertise, know-how, and capital. However, reports of the corrupt practices of both governments and businesses have plagued international peace building efforts, deepening the distrust of stricken communities. Businesses are perceived as being selfish and indifferent to the impact their operations may have on the social and political development of local communities. Additionally, the corruption of local governments has been (...) cited as interfering with the creation of stability in conflict areas. Within this framework, multinational Public-Private Partnerships can exert two forms of influence: they can either exacerbate these problems, or they can become part of the solution. Without a relationship of trust among local businesses, government, and the private sector, peace building efforts will at best be mixed, and could possibly perpetuate violence in fragile states. Public and private interests are better served when Public-Private Partnerships are based upon collaboration and assist in establishing principles of good governance in conflict areas. This in turn can help build trust and regain the credibility of both sectors among local communities, which are essential in making Public— Private Partnerships more effective. (shrink)

Every scientific theory is a simulacrum of reality, every written story a simulacrum of the canon, and every conceptualization of a subjective perspective a simulacrum of the consciousness behind it—but is there a shared essence to these simulacra? The pursuit of answering seemingly disparate fundamental questions across different disciplines may ultimately converge into a single solution: a single ontological answer underlying grand unified theory, hard problem of consciousness, and the foundation of mathematics. I provide a hypothesis, a speculative approximation, supported (...) by a comprehensive overview of scientific evidence and philosophical literature, of a unified epistemic and phenomenological model and, in doing so, propose a parsimonious solution to the hard problem of consciousness. -/- The proposition of the hypothesis bears important implications for cross-disciplinary study between linguistics, mathematics, physics, and computer science, and offers new epistemic, ontological, and ethical propositions about the nature of AI consciousness, as well as existential risk mitigation. (shrink)

Mindwandering is associated with both positive and negative outcomes. Among the latter, negative mood and negative cognitions have been reported. However, the underlying mechanisms linking mindwandering to negative mood and cognition are still unclear. We hypothesized that MW could either directly enhance negative thinking or indirectly heighten the accessibility of negative thoughts. In an undergraduate sample we measured emotional thoughts during the Sustained Attention on Response Task which induces MW, and accessibility of negative cognitions by means of the Scrambled Sentences (...) Task after the task. We also measured depressive symptoms and rumination. Results show that in individuals with elevated levels of depressive symptoms MW during SART predicts higher accessibility of negative thoughts after the task, rather than negative thinking during the task. These findings contribute to our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of MW and provide insight into the relationship between task-involvement and affect. (shrink)

It has been claimed that epistemic peers, upon discovering that they disagree on some issue, should give up their opposing views and ‘split the difference’. The present paper challenges this claim by showing, with the help of computer simulations, that what the rational response to the discovery of peer disagreement is—whether it is sticking to one’s belief or splitting the difference—depends on factors that are contingent and highly context-sensitive.Keywords: Peer disagreement; Computer simulations; Opinion dynamics; Hegselmann–Krause model; Social epistemology.

The sequent system LDJ is formulated using the same connectives as Gentzen's intuitionistic sequent system LJ, but is dual in the following sense: (i) whereas LJ is singular in the consequent, LDJ is singular in the antecedent; (ii) whereas LJ has the same sentential counter-theorems as classical LK but not the same theorems, LDJ has the same sentential theorems as LK but not the same counter-theorems. In particular, LDJ does not reject all contradictions and is accordingly paraconsistent. To obtain a (...) more precise mapping, both LJ and LDJ are extended by adding a "pseudo-difference" operator which is the dual of intuitionistic implication. Cut-elimination and decidability are proved for the extended systems and , and a simply consistent but -inconsistent Set Theory with Unrestricted Comprehension Schema based on LDJ is sketched. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with formal solutions to the lottery paradox on which high probability defeasibly warrants acceptance. It considers some recently proposed solutions of this type and presents an argument showing that these solutions are trivial in that they boil down to the claim that perfect probability is sufficient for rational acceptability. The argument is then generalized, showing that a broad class of similar solutions faces the same problem. An argument against some formal solutions to the lottery paradox The (...) argument generalized Some variations Adding modalities Anticipated objections. (shrink)

Interest in the topic of wisdom-focused education has so far not resulted in empirically validated programs for teaching wisdom. To start filling this void, we explore the emerging empirical evidence concerning the fundamental elements required for understanding how one can foster wisdom, with a particular focus on wise reasoning. We define wise reasoning through a combination of intellectual humility, recognition of world in flux/change, open-mindedness to diverse viewpoints, and search for compromise/integration of diverse perspectives. In this article, we review evidence (...) concerning how wise reasoning can be facilitated through experiences, teaching materials, environments and cognitive strategies. We also focus on educators, reviewing emerging evidence on how the process of explaining and guiding others impacts one’s wisdom. We conclude by discussing the development of wisdom-focused education, proposing that greater attention to the situational demands and the variability in wisdom-related characteristics across social contexts should play a critical role in its development. (shrink)

With the passage of the Physician Payment Sunshine Act as part of the federal health care reform law, pharmaceutical manufacturers are now required to disclose a wide range of payments made by manufacturers to physicians. We review current state regulation of pharmaceutical marketing and consider how the federal sunshine provision will affect existing marketing regulation. We analyze the legal and practical implications of the Physician Payment Sunshine Act.

In 2008 pharmaceutical companies spent over $12 billion on product promotion and detailing aimed at U.S. health care practitioners. Drug and device manufacturers rely on a workforce of detailers and physician speakers to reach health care practitioners and nudge their prescribing habits. To prevent undue influence and protect the public fisc, a number of states began regulating these marketing practices, requiring companies to disclose all gifts to practitioners, prohibiting the commercialized sale of prescription data, and prohibiting certain gifts altogether. The (...) 2010 enactment of the Physician Payment Sunshine Act marks the first Congressional involvement in the regulation of disclosure related to pharmaceutical marketing. Overall, the Act improves transparency in pharmaceutical marketing to physicians and expands the regulation of disclosure of pharmaceutical marketing activities in important substantive ways. (shrink)

Although a substantial number of papers is published on the topic of consciousness, there is still little consensus on what its nature is and how the physical and phenomenal worlds are connected. Most published research establishes a causal relation between the brain and the mind, but it lacks a cogent theory of how this relation comes to be. In contrast, this paper uses a set of thought experiments grounded in quantum information theory to derive a framework for resolving the hard (...) problem of consciousness. Despite the common tendency to treat the problem purely philosophically, in this paper, consciousness and qualia are analyzed through established formal theory deriving conclusions regarding their relation which provide counter-arguments for the commonly held dualist view. Through the informational monism framework, a case is made for a fundamentally phenomenal nature of information. (shrink)

Tradução do texto originalmente intitulado "Dissertation sur la politique des Romains dans la religion", de Charles-Louis de Secondat, barão de La Brède e de Montesquieu. Trata-se de trabalho apresentado no dia 18 de junho de 1716 à Academie Royale des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts de Bordeaux e somente publicado após a sua morte.

This paper looks closely at previously enunciated axioms that specifically include phenomenology as the sense of a self in a perceptual world. This, we suggest, is an appropriate way of doing science on a first-person phenomenon. The axioms break consciousness down into five key components: presence, imagination, attention, volition and emotions. The paper examines anew the mechanism of each and how they interact to give a single sensation. An abstract architecture, the Kernel Architecture, is introduced as a starting point for (...) building computational models. The thrust of the paper is to relate the axioms to the kernel architecture and indicate that this opens a way of discussing some first-person issues: tests for consciousness, animal consciousness and Higher Order Thought. (shrink)

Increasingly, the private sector is playing a greater role in supporting peace building efforts in conflict and post-conflict areas by providing critical expertise, know-how, and capital. However, reports of the corrupt practices of both governments and businesses have plagued international peace building efforts, deepening the distrust of stricken communities. Businesses are perceived as being selfish and indifferent to the impact their operations may have on the social and political development of local communities. Additionally, the corruption of local governments has been (...) cited as interfering with the creation of stability in conflict areas. Within this framework, multinational Public-Private Partnerships can exert two forms of influence: they can either exacerbate these problems, or they can become part of the solution. Without a relationship of trust among local businesses, government, and the private sector, peace building efforts will at best be mixed, and could possibly perpetuate violence in fragile states. Public and private interests are better served when Public-Private Partnerships are based upon collaboration and assist in establishing principles of good governance in conflict areas. This in turn can help build trust and regain the credibility of both sectors among local communities, which are essential in making Public— Private Partnerships more effective. (shrink)

The standard approach to the so-called paradoxes of identity has been to argue that these paradoxes do not essentially concern the notion of identity but rather betray misconceptions on our part regarding other metaphysical notions, like that of an object or a property. This paper proposes a different approach by pointing to an ambiguity in the identity predicate and arguing that the concept of identity that figures in many ordinary identity claims, including those that appear in the paradoxes, is not (...) the traditional philosophical concept but one that can be defined in terms of relevant similarity. This approach to the paradoxes will be argued to be superior to the standard one. (shrink)

We introduce a general representation of unary hyperintensional modalities and study various hyperintensional modal logics based on the representation. It is shown that the major approaches to hyperintensionality known from the literature, that is state-based, syntactic and structuralist approaches, all correspond to special cases of the general framework. Completeness results pertaining to our hyperintensional modal logics are established.

The article analyzes the effectiveness of quantum theories of mental experience in relation to two ontological problems - the problem of the existence of consciousness in the material world and the problem of the interaction of consciousness and body. A critical analysis of the quantum theories of consciousness by Penrose-Hameroff, M. Tegmark, G. Stapp, M. Fischer and M.B. Mensky shows that they fail to fully explain how complex physical systems generate mental experience without violating the principle of causal closure of (...) the physical world and the principle of epistemological completeness of physics. Quantum mechanics provides specific processes that are the physical basis of the psyche, but do not explain the phenomenal aspect of subjective reality. Nevertheless, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle gives an understanding of how the interaction of consciousness and body within the scientific picture of the world can be carried out without violating the law of energy conservation. It is shown that the quantum theories of consciousness currently being developed have a predominantly panprotopsychic character, which faces a problem due to the fact that the protomental property of physical systems must be expressed quantitatively and correspond to the value included in the physical equations. As a result, it is concluded that in order to develop quantum theories of consciousness more effectively, it is necessary to give an emergent character, not jumping from the quantum level to the psychic, but explaining the mechanism of the emergence of systemic properties during the sequential transition between different ontological regions of existence, including physical, chemical, biological, neurophysiological and psychic. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Paragrana Jahrgang: 23 Heft: 2 Seiten: 115-127.

While some argue that the only way to make a place for Philosophy for Children in today's strict, standardised classroom is to measure its efficacy in promoting reasoning, we believe that this must be avoided in order to safeguard what is truly unique in P4C dialogue. When P4C acquiesces to the very same quantitative measures that define the rest of learning, then the philosophical dimension drops out and P4C becomes yet another progressive curriculum and pedagogy for enhancing argumentation skills that (...) can easily be appropriated by any content area. What we want to offer in this article is a reevaluation of P4C that remains faithful to a radical kernel that we find when we do philosophy with children and young adults. To theorise the potential for P4C, we draw heavily on Agamben's work, and in particular his reflections on speech and infancy. We propose that the redemption of P4C necessitates a shift from a community of inquiry to a community of infancy. Such a community is not a community that operates according to predefined rules or standardised assessment protocols but rather is an inoperative community that is defined by letting ends idle. On our account, a community of infancy is an example of dialogic studious play that is neither ritual nor just play, thus avoiding the extreme polarities of the ritualised classrooms of high-stakes testing and the ‘ludic’ postmodern classroom of free play. What is at stake here is to preserve the last vestige of freedom within the school. (shrink)

In van Fraassen's The Scientific Image we are told that the scientific anti‐realist need not appeal to some special semantics for scientific language. He can allegedly hold – just like his direct opponents typically do – that truth‐conditional semantics is appropriate both for claims about the observable and claims about the unobservable. However, I shall point out that this kind of semantics goes badly with the anti‐realist's epistemic attitude vis‐his the unobservable. In this paper an alternative semantics shall be outlined (...) that is perfectly compatible with the rest of the anti‐realist's position. Although this alternative semantics will be seen to fly in the face of the established doctrine in the field, I shall argue that there is currently no good reason not to adopt it. It will further be pointed out that this semantics has something to be recommended from a realist perspective as well. (shrink)

Conditionals are sentences of the form 'If A, then B', and they play a central role in scientific, logical, and everyday reasoning. They have been in the philosophical limelight for centuries, and more recently, they have been receiving attention from psychologists, linguists, and computer scientists. In spite of this, many key questions concerning conditionals remain unanswered. While most of the work on conditionals has addressed semantical questions - questions about the truth conditions of conditionals - this book focuses on the (...) main epistemological questions that conditionals give rise to, such as: what are the probabilities of conditionals? When is a conditional acceptable or assertable? What do we learn when we receive new conditional information? In answering these questions, this book combines the formal tools of logic and probability theory with the experimental approach of cognitive psychology. It will be of interest to students and researchers in logic, epistemology, and psychology of reasoning. (shrink)

Conceptual spaces have become an increasingly popular modeling tool in cognitive psychology. The core idea of the conceptual spaces approach is that concepts can be represented as regions in similarity spaces. While it is generally acknowledged that not every region in such a space represents a natural concept, it is still an open question what distinguishes those regions that represent natural concepts from those that do not. The central claim of this paper is that natural concepts are represented by the (...) cells of an optimally designed similarity space. (shrink)

In recent years, various computational models have been developed for studying the dynamics of belief formation in a population of epistemically interacting agents that try to determine the numerical value of a given parameter. Whereas in those models, agents’ belief states consist of single numerical beliefs, the present paper describes a model that equips agents with richer belief states containing many beliefs that, moreover, are logically interconnected. Correspondingly, the truth the agents are after is a theory (a set of sentences (...) of a given language) rather than a numerical value. The agents epistemically interact with each other and also receive evidence in varying degrees of informativeness about the truth. We use computer simulations to study how fast and accurately such populations as wholes are able to approach the truth under differing combinations of settings of the key parameters of the model, such as the degree of informativeness of the evidence and the weight the agents give to the evidence. (shrink)

Ifeel that Iam apartof, but separatefrom an 'out there' world. 2. Ifeel that my perception of the world mingles with feelings of past experience. 3. My experienceof the world is selective and purposeful. 4. I am thinking ahead allthe timeintrying ...

In this study, I have outlined the path through which the “monster” typology in its multiple meanings came to be defined in the context of the history of classical antiquity. In following this path, attention was paid more to the monstrous entities of the Greek mythological tradition.