While there is a general consensus around the role of religion in the abolition of the Slave Trade, historians continue to give little to no detail on exactly how Christian theology influenced the abolitionist movement. This article seeks to interrogate one major theological factor inherent in the spirituality that underpinned the activism of the British abolitionists, namely their notion of Divine Providence, and particularly its moral-emotive correlate: the fear of God’s wrath. These theological notions are discussed based mainly on the (...) analysis of the primary sources and within the theoretical framework of judicial providentialism, aptly captured by John Coffey among others. (shrink)

While there is a general consensus around the role of religion in the abolition of the Slave Trade, historians continue to give little to no detail on exactly how Christian theology influenced the abolitionist movement. This article seeks to interrogate one major theological factor inherent in the spirituality that underpinned the activism of the British abolitionists, namely their notion of Divine Providence, and particularly its moral-emotive correlate: the fear of God’s wrath. These theological notions are discussed based mainly on the (...) analysis of the primary sources and within the theoretical framework of judicial providentialism, aptly captured by John Coffey among others. (shrink)

We discuss McMillan et al. (2005) paper devoted to study brain activity during comprehension of sentences with generalized quantifiers. According to the authors their results verify a particular computational model of natural language quantifier comprehension posited by several linguists and logicians (e. g. see van Benthem, 1986). We challenge this statement by invoking the computational difference between first-order quantifiers and divisibility quantifiers (e. g. see Mostowski, 1998). Moreover, we suggest other studies on quantifier comprehension, which can throw more light on (...) the role of working memory in processing quantifiers. (shrink)

A key component of the susceptibility to cognitive biases is the ability to monitor for conflict between intuitively cued “heuristic” answers and logical principles. While there is evidence that pe...

Cognitive architectures have often been applied to data from individual experiments. In this paper, I develop an ACT-R reader that can model a much larger set of data, eye-tracking corpus data. It is shown that the resulting model has a good fit to the data for the considered low-level processes. Unlike previous related works, the model achieves the fit by estimating free parameters of ACT-R using Bayesian estimation and Markov-Chain Monte Carlo techniques, rather than by relying on the mix of (...) manual selection + default values. The method used in the paper is generalizable beyond this particular model and data set and could be used on other ACT-R models. (shrink)

The aim the paper is to present Wittgenstein’s idea of analysis of language and his arguments in favour of his thesis that simple things exist. Starting point of the paper is Wittgenstein’s claim that the idea of simple things results from the assumption that what is complex may be analyzed. He claims also that postulate of there being simple elements is a consequence of postulates according to which propositions do have defi nite meanings and that world has definite structure: if (...) a proposition has no simple signs then it does not have specified sense, and if there were no simple objects then the world would not have a specified structure. What is lacking in Wittgenstein is a comprehensive reasoning in favour of the postulate of existence of simple things. The article gives a reconstruction of such reasoning. In order to accomplish this, following issues are presented and clarified: Wittgenstein’s understanding of the analysis of language; the difference between Wittgenstein’s and Russell’s approach to language analysis; actual meaning of assertion that meaning of a proposition is definite and that world has definite structure; philosophical interpretation of quantifiers and symbols of complexes. Key words WITTGENSTEIN, SIMPLE THINGS. (shrink)

We examine the verification of simple quantifiers in natural language from a computational model perspective. We refer to previous neuropsychological investigations of the same problem and suggest extending their experimental setting. Moreover, we give some direct empirical evidence linking computational complexity predictions with cognitive reality.<br>In the empirical study we compare time needed for understanding different types of quantifiers. We show that the computational distinction between quantifiers recognized by finite-automata and push-down automata is psychologically relevant. Our research improves upon hypothesis and (...) explanatory power of recent neuroimaging studies as well as provides<br>evidence. (shrink)

The endorsement of epistemically suspect (i.e., paranormal, conspiracy, and pseudoscientific) beliefs is widespread and has negative consequences. Therefore, it is important to understand the reasoning processes – such as lower analytic thinking and susceptibility to cognitive biases – that might lead to the adoption of such beliefs. In two studies, I constructed and tested a novel questionnaire on epistemically suspect beliefs (Study 1, N = 263), and used it to examine probabilistic reasoning biases and belief bias in syllogistic reasoning as (...) predictors of the endorsement of those beliefs, while accounting for analytic thinking and worldview variables (Study 2, N = 397). Probabilistic reasoning biases, analytic thinking, religious faith, and political liberalism consistently predicted various epistemically suspect beliefs, whereas the effect of syllogistic belief bias was largely restricted to pseudoscientific beliefs. Further research will be needed to examine the role the biased evaluation of evidence plays in the endorsement of epistemically suspect beliefs. (shrink)

The endorsement of epistemically suspect (i.e., paranormal, conspiracy, and pseudoscientific) beliefs is widespread and has negative consequences. Therefore, it is important to understand the reasoning processes – such as lower analytic thinking and susceptibility to cognitive biases – that might lead to the adoption of such beliefs. In two studies, I constructed and tested a novel questionnaire on epistemically suspect beliefs (Study 1, N = 263), and used it to examine probabilistic reasoning biases and belief bias in syllogistic reasoning as (...) predictors of the endorsement of those beliefs, while accounting for analytic thinking and worldview variables (Study 2, N = 397). Probabilistic reasoning biases, analytic thinking, religious faith, and political liberalism consistently predicted various epistemically suspect beliefs, whereas the effect of syllogistic belief bias was largely restricted to pseudoscientific beliefs. Further research will be needed to examine the role the biased evaluation of evidence plays in the endorsement of epistemically suspect beliefs. (shrink)

This volume on the semantic complexity of natural language explores the question why some sentences are more difficult than others. While doing so, it lays the groundwork for extending semantic theory with computational and cognitive aspects by combining linguistics and logic with computations and cognition. -/- Quantifier expressions occur whenever we describe the world and communicate about it. Generalized quantifier theory is therefore one of the basic tools of linguistics today, studying the possible meanings and the inferential power of quantifier (...) expressions by logical means. The classic version was developed in the 1980s, at the interface of linguistics, mathematics and philosophy. Before this volume, advances in "classic" generalized quantifier theory mainly focused on logical questions and their applications to linguistics, this volume adds a computational component, the third pillar of language use and logical activity. This book is essential reading for researchers in linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, logic, AI, and computer science. (shrink)

Quantifiers in phrasal and clausal comparatives often seem to take distributive scope in the matrix clause: for instance, the sentence John is taller than every girl is is true iff for every girl it holds that John is taller than that girl. Broadly speaking, two approaches exist that derive this reading without postulating the wide scope of the quantifier: the negation analysis and the interval analysis of than-clauses. We propose a modification of the interval analysis in which than-clauses are not (...) treated as degree intervals but as degree pluralities. This small change has significant consequences: it yields a straightforward account of differentials in comparatives and it correctly predicts the existence of hitherto unnoticed readings, viz. cumulative readings of clausal comparatives. Finally, this paper also makes the case that using degree pluralities is conceptually appealing: it allows us to restrict the analysis of comparatives by mechanisms that are postulated independently in the semantics of pluralities. (shrink)

According to some interpreters, Foucault's encounter with the Greek and Roman ethics led him to reconsider his earlier work and to turn away from politics. Drawing mostly from Foucault's last and hitherto unpublished lecture course, this paper argues that Foucault's turn to ethics should not be interpreted as a turn away from his previous work, but rather as its logical continuation and an attempt to resolve some of the outstanding questions. I argue that the 1984 lectures on parrhesia should be (...) interpreted as Foucault's philosophical apology, as an attempt to defend himself against the charges of moral and epistemological nihilism, which were raised in response to his earlier work. In his last lectures, the Nietzschean Foucault somewhat surprisingly describes his earlier work as authentic Socratic philosophy and as ethical practice of freedom. In the conclusion, I assess the plausibility of Foucault's apology and speculate in which direction his work might have developed, had it not been cut off by his death. (shrink)

Despite its elusiveness as a concept, ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) is becoming part of everyday life, and a range of empirical and methodological approaches to social studies of AI now span many disciplines. This article reviews the scope of ethnomethodological and conversation analytic (EM/CA) approaches that treat AI as a phenomenon emerging in and through the situated organization of social interaction. Although this approach has been very influential in the field of computational technology since the 1980s, AI has only recently emerged (...) as such a pervasive part of daily life to warrant a sustained empirical focus in EM/CA. Reviewing over 50 peer-reviewed publications, we find that the studies focus on various social and group activities such as task-oriented situations, semi-experimental setups, play, and everyday interactions. They also involve a range of participant categories including children, older participants, and people with disabilities. Most of the reviewed studies apply CA’s conceptual apparatus, its approach to data analysis, and core topics such as turn-taking and repair. We find that across this corpus, studies center on three key themes: openings and closing the interaction, miscommunication, and non-verbal aspects of interaction. In the discussion, we reflect on EM studies that differ from those in our corpus by focusing on praxeological respecifications of AI-related phenomena. Concurrently, we offer a critical reflection on the work of literature reviewing, and explore the tortuous relationship between EM and CA in the area of research on AI. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel psycholinguistic parser and tests it against experimental and corpus reading data. The parser builds on the recent research into memory structures, which argues that memory retrieval is content‐addressable and cue‐based. It is shown that the theory of cue‐based memory systems can be combined with transition‐based parsing to produce a parser that, when combined with the cognitive architecture ACT‐R, can model reading and predict online behavioral measures (reading times and regressions). The parser's modeling capacities are tested (...) against self‐paced reading experimental data (Grodner & Gibson, 2005), eye‐tracking experimental data (Staub, 2011), and a self‐paced reading corpus (Futrell et al., 2018). (shrink)

The article discusses the ecological aspects of John Milbank’s thought in the context of the growing climate crisis. For this purpose, the concept of integral ecology is interpreted in the spirit of Milbank’s integralism, which rejects the notion of “pure nature” as a manifestation of secularism and calls for theological grounding of the environmental discourse. This perspective allows us to see the limitations of the modern way of thinking, caught up in the metaphors of “conquest of nature” and “return to (...) nature.” As an alternative, the concept of “kenotic anthropocentrism” is proposed, which sees man as a rational, social, creative and religious animal, that somehow transcends his own nature, being called to union with God. On the one hand, such an approach proclaims the ontological superiority of man over other creatures, and on the other, it reminds us of his role as the guardian—and not the owner—of the Earth. Thus, it differs significantly from Clive Hamilton’s “modest anthropocentrism,” whose call to care for the environment is ultimately based on arbitrary freedom and the imperative of self-preservation. Milbank’s position is closer to Bruno Latour’s anthropocentrism emphasizing the role of man as a political representative of silent earthlings—rivers, mountains and animals. However, Milbank advocates a strong ontological hierarchy rejected by Latour, which makes him less sensitive to the material dimension of climate change. Moreover, Milbank’s militant anti-secularism may be an obstacle to a much needed broader discussion of the ecological crisis, even if his critique of modernity is hard to ignore. (shrink)

The article shows a difference in Aristotle’s ethical theory between the Protrepticus and Eudemian Ethics on the one hand and the Nicomachean Ethics on the other. The difference is explicated by means of the interpretation of the concept of ὅρος (standard) in these writings. The Protrepticus and Eudemian Ethics present ethical theory as an expertise which – together with other sciences – has a standard for decisions and actions taken from nature and the divine. The ethical theory presented in the (...) Nicomachean Ethics does not entail such a strong concept of ὅρος and it treats ethics in contrast to other, more exact, sciences. Finally, the article presents a tentative suggestion as to why it seems that the Nicomachean Ethics VI,1 raises hopes that it will provide a detailed account of ὅρος when in fact there is no discussion of it. (shrink)

The chapter relates Alcibiades's speech in the Symposium to the dialogue Alcibiades I. I believe, the encomium on Socrates in the Symposium should be interpreted together with the Alcibiades I. There, Plato offers a fuller picture of the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades, one that gives a possible explanation of Alcibiades' failure and moral collapse, while keeping Socrates' position as a moral teacher intact. This approach presupposes that Plato wrote some of the dialogues in a deliberate order of the fictional (...) chronology. Interpreting the Symposium together with the Alcibiades I allows me then to make a broader claim concerning Plato's conception of the personal self. (shrink)

In this paper, we address reports of “selfless” experiences from the perspective of active inference and predictive processing. Our argument builds upon grounding self-modelling in active inference as action planning and precision control within deep generative models – thus establishing a link between computational mechanisms and phenomenal selfhood. We propose that “selfless” experiences can be interpreted as cases in which normally congruent processes of computational and phenomenal self-modelling diverge in an otherwise conscious system. We discuss two potential mechanisms – within (...) the Bayesian mechanics of active inference – that could lead to such a divergence by attenuating the experience of selfhood: “self-flattening” via reduction in the depth of active inference and “self-attenuation” via reduction of the expected precision of self-evidence. (shrink)

Philosophical views of habit were deeply influenced by Aristotle. If we understand habit in relation to hexis, to the acquired disposition to act in a certain way, then habit becomes a key phenomenon of ethics. According to the famous quotation, "It makes no small difference, whether we form habits of one kind or of another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference."1 And yet we can understand habit also as a dull and (...) rigid mechanism, as something that moves us away from humanity, as we read in Immanuel Kant: "The reason for being disgusted with someone's acquired habits lies in the fact that the animal here predominates over the man."2 Is habit more an expression of our... (shrink)

Anthropomorphism is a phenomenon that describes the human tendency to see human-like shapes in the environment. It has considerable consequences for people’s choices and beliefs. With the increased presence of robots, it is important to investigate the optimal design for this tech- nology. In this paper we discuss the potential benefits and challenges of building anthropomorphic robots, from both a philosophical perspective and from the viewpoint of empir- ical research in the fields of human–robot interaction and social psychology. We believe (...) that this broad investigation of anthropomorphism will not only help us to understand the phenomenon better, but can also indicate solutions for facil- itating the integration of human-like machines in the real world. (shrink)

In his paper "What Metaphors Mean", Donald Davidson attacks various theories of the metaphorical meaning. His radical thesis is that the metaphor has except the literal meaning no other (metaphorical or secondary) meaning. He refuses primarily the idea that the metaphor is some sort of communication-the speaker puts a hidden message in it and the recipient have to decode it. Davidson supported this negative attitude with a number of more or less conclusive arguments. I would like to discuss some of (...) them in this essay. My interpretation of Davidson's argumentation can be summed up as that the idea of the metaphorical meaning is not nonsensical, but it is unsuitable for explaining the intricate role of metaphors in our language. A positive theory of metaphor was only suggested by Davidson, but not properly elaborated. This was a task of his followers, in the first place of Richard Rorty. He emphasized, however, the causal character of a metaphorical effect, which radicalizes Davidson's account. As opposed to Rorty, Davidson shared with his predecessors an opinion that in a metaphor one thing is seen as another thing. None of the authors was able to explain this metaphorical definition of the metaphor. (shrink)

The present paper is an attempt to show that Walter Block’s defense of the ostensibly libertarian character of evictionism against my original criticisms is unsuccessful, thought certainly informative and thought-provoking. In my exploration of Block’s counter-criticisms, I focus in particular on the role played in his account by the principle of proportionality, as well as on the putative disanalogy between cases of abortion and child abandonment on the one hand and my airplane thought experiment on the other hand.

We show how to extend any finite probability space into another finite one which satisfies the conditional construal of conditional probability for the original propositions, given some maximal allowed degree of nesting of the conditional. This mitigates the force of the well-known triviality results.

“Is every definition persuasive?” If essentialist views on definition are rejected and a pragmatic account adopted, where defining is a speech act which fixes the meaning of a term, then a problem arises: if meanings are not fixed by the essence of being itself, is not every definition persuasive? To address the problem, we refer to Douglas Walton’s impressive intellectual heritage—specifically on the argumentative potential of definition. In finding some non-persuasive definitions, we show not every definition is persuasive. The persuasiveness (...) lies not in syntactic or semantic properties, but the context. We present this pragmatic account and provide rules for analysing and evaluating persuasive definition—a promising direction for further research. (shrink)

According to panqualityism, a form of Russellian monism defended by Sam Coleman and others, consciousness is grounded in fundamental qualities, i.e. unexperienced qualia. Despite panqualityism’s significant promise, according to David Chalmers panqualityism fails as a theory of consciousness since the reductive approach to awareness of qualities it proposes fails to account for the specific phenomenology associated with awareness. I investigate Coleman’s reasoning against this kind of phenomenology and conclude that he successfully shows that its existence is controversial, and so Chalmers’s (...) critique is inconclusive. I then present a critique of panqualityism that avoids this controversial posit, arguing that the panqualityist treatment of awareness faces an explanatory gap, failing to account for the intimate cognitive access to qualities which we are afforded, i.e. for our ‘strong awareness’ of qualities. The real worry for panqualityists is thus not the contested phenomenology of awareness, which Chalmers relies on, but rather the special way in which we are aware of qualities. (shrink)

We introduce and study model-theoretic connected components of rings as an analogue of model-theoretic connected components of definable groups. We develop their basic theory and use them to describe both the definable and classical Bohr compactifications of rings. We then use model-theoretic connected components to explicitly calculate Bohr compactifications of some classical matrix groups, such as the discrete Heisenberg group ${\mathrm {UT}}_3({\mathbb {Z}})$, the continuous Heisenberg group ${\mathrm {UT}}_3({\mathbb {R}})$, and, more generally, groups of upper unitriangular and invertible upper triangular (...) matrices over unital rings. (shrink)

Tim Whitmarsh’s collection of essays has seen the light of day at a time when the academic world is again reconsidering “classicism” and modernity’s relationship to the “classical.” This is even mo...

This paper aims to develop the criteria for assessing semantic arguments. However, while this notion constituted the core of ancient dialectics and is addressed in several approaches to argument analysis, the criteria for evaluating such arguments are insufficient. This paper intends to address this problem by combining the insights of classical and contemporary logic and testing them against some controversies involving controversial definitions or classifications. Through detailed case studies of the argumentative uses involving the (re)definitions of racism, war, peace, and (...) feminism, we formulated and tested eight evaluation criteria that may be expressed as critical questions. Résumé: Cet article vise à développer les critères d’évaluation des arguments sémantiques. Cependant, bien que cette notion constitue le coeur de la dialectique ancienne et soit abordée dans plusieurs approches de l’analyse des arguments, les critères d’évaluation de ces arguments sont insuffisants. Cet article vise à résoudre ce problème en combinant les idées de la logique classique et contemporaine et en les testant par rapport à certaines controverses impliquant des définitions ou des classifications controversées. À travers des études de cas détaillées sur les usages argumentatifs impliquant les (re)définitions du racisme, de la guerre, de la paix et du féminisme, nous avons formulé et mis à l’épreuve huit critères d'évaluation qui peuvent être exprimés sous forme de questions critiques. (shrink)

In the renewed Russian Fundamental Law, in addition to a number of provisions introducing changes to the political system, there are also statements of programmatic importance, as well as several provisions with symbolic and identity function. In this article these provisions are subject to functional and semiotic-cultural analysis. Particular emphasis has been placed on legally irrelevant content transmitted by the new regulations, on their semantic connections with the content of the preamble and on their cultural context. The research procedure carried (...) out allows us to state that, compared with the 1993 text, the Russian Constitution in its current version participates to a much greater extent in the complex system of transmission of symbolic content, as well as the narratives that contribute to social memory, cultural and historical identity. In doing so, it goes beyond its genre limitations, opening the basic text to the functions assigned to the preamble. In the fragments I have analysed in the paper there are undoubtedly functional and genre disturbances, and with them changes the mode of semiosis of the legal text, both in its normative and programmatic form. Renewed Constitution is the case in which a legal text, by its very nature designing the possible future world, does so through ideas about the past. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present a concept of mind by the ethnologist Sergei Mikhailovich Shirokogoroff, as a precursor for a specific turn taking place in contemporary cognitive science. Such a turn is visible in the discarding of explanations focusing on brain or on other vehicles of cognitive processes, which are typical of traditional cognitive science. The followers of this traditional trend are united by the methodological assumption that the key to understanding cognitive processes lies in the precise (...) comprehension of the vehicle’s functioning. Currently, cognitive science is developing a paradigm describing cognition as being embodied, embedded and extended. Similarly, Shirokogoroff's research in the anthropology of religion is part of his general concept of mind understood to be a set of cognitive processes linked with a broadly viewed environment (combining its material, ecological, biological, cultural and ritual aspects). (shrink)

This article explores the role and modes of operation of metaphorical framing in ancient Greek and modern European and American political discourse. It looks at how concepts such as citizenship, ownership, family, morality, finance, sport, war, domination, human life, and animals are used to reframe political issues in ways promoted by the speaker, and how they may continue to be reshaped in the ongoing political discourse. The analysis of examples of ancient Athenian public rhetoric and of modern European and American (...) political debates reveals the differences and some striking similarities in the ways political and civic values were expressed and reframed in antiquity and how they are used today. This essay also discusses the potential effects of such framing in antiquity and in more recent times. (shrink)

This essay traces the Greek and Roman roots of Polish sixteenth- to eighteenth-century political thought by discussing the Polish nobility’s concept of the “Golden Freedom”. By focusing on the Roman and the Greek concepts of liberty and the mixed constitution, it argues that the Golden Freedom, a notion central to the Polish-Lithuanian nobility’s self-identification, was based on Roman political ideals and practices that were incompatible with the political reality of the Commonwealth.

The traditional conception of lying, according to which to lie is to make an assertion with an intention to deceive the hearer, has recently been put under pressure by the phenomenon of bald-faced lies i.e. utterances that _prima facie_ look like lies but because of their blatancy allegedly lack the accompanying intention to deceive. In this paper we propose an intuitive way of reconciling the phenomenon of bald-faced lies with the traditional conception by suggesting that the existing analyses of the (...) phenomenon overlook a non-obvious category of hearers whom the speakers of bald-faced lies intend to deceive. Those hearers are institutions represented by the people involved, such as courts or secret police. We also criticize two recent rival accounts (Jessica Keiser’s and Daniel Harris’s) that attempt to save the traditional conception by saying that some bald-faced lies are not assertions, because they are conventional—rather than illocutionary—speech acts. (shrink)