We propose a method for estimating subjective beliefs, viewed as a subjective probability distribution. The key insight is to characterize beliefs as a parameter to be estimated from observed choices in a well-defined experimental task and to estimate that parameter as a random coefficient. The experimental task consists of a series of standard lottery choices in which the subject is assumed to use conventional risk attitudes to select one lottery or the other and then a series of betting choices in (...) which the subject is presented with a range of bookies offering odds on the outcome of some event that the subject has a belief over. Knowledge of the risk attitudes of subjects conditions the inferences about subjective beliefs. Maximum simulated likelihood methods are used to estimate a structural model in which subjects employ subjective beliefs to make bets. We present evidence that some subjective probabilities are indeed best characterized as probability distributions with non-zero variance. (shrink)

The philosophical background important to Mill’s theory of induction has two major components: Richard Whately’s introduction of the uniformity principle into inductive inference and the loss of the idea of formal cause.

IntroductionApproaches to improve heart rate variability and reduce stress such as breathing retraining are more frequently being integrated into psychotherapy but little research on their effectiveness has been done to date. Specifically, no studies to date have directly compared using a breathing pacer at 6 breaths per minute with compassion focused soothing rhythm breathing.Current StudyIn this randomized controlled experiment, 6 breaths per minute breathing using a pacer was compared with compassion focused soothing rhythm breathing, with a nature video being used (...) as a control group condition.MethodsHeart rate variability measures were assessed via electrocardiogram and respiration belt, and an automated blood pressure machine was used to measure systolic diastolic blood pressure, and heart rate. A total of 96 participants were randomized into the three conditions. Following a 5-min baseline, participants engaged in either 6 breath per minute breathing, soothing rhythm breathing, or watched a nature video for 10 min. To induce a stressful state, participants then wrote for 5 min about a time they felt intensely self-critical. Participants then wrote for 5 min about a time they felt self-compassionate, and the experiment ended with a 10-min recovery period.ResultsConditions did not significantly differ at baseline. Overall, HRV, as measured by standard deviation of NN intervals, low frequency HRV, and LF/HF ratio, increased during the intervention period, decreased during self-critical writing, and then returned to baseline levels during the recovery period. High frequency HRV was not impacted by any of the interventions. The participants in the 6 breath per minute pacer condition were unable to consistently breathe at that rate and averaged about 12 breaths per minute. Time by Condition analyses revealed that both the 6 breaths per minute pacer and soothing breathing rhythm conditions lead to significantly higher SDNN than the nature video condition during breathing practice but there were no significant differences between conditions in response to the self-critical and self-compassionate writing or recovery periods. The 6 breath per minute pacer condition demonstrated a higher LF HRV and LF/HF ratio than the soothing rhythm breathing condition, and both intervention conditions had a higher LF HRV and LF/HF ratio than the nature video.ConclusionsAlthough the 6 breath per minute pacer condition participants were not able to breath consistently at the low pace, both the participants attempting to breathe at 6 breaths per minute as well as those in the soothing rhythm breathing condition effectively increased HR variability as measured by SDNN, and attempting to breathe at 6 breaths per minute led to the highest LF HRV and LF/HF ratio. Both breathing approaches impacted HRV more than watching a relaxing nature video and can potentially be used as key adjuncts in psychotherapy to aid in regulating physiological functioning, although it appears that consistent breathing practice would be needed. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Much attention has been devoted to the different tensions and conflicts between science and religion in the modern age. ...

Regular musical activity as a complex multimodal lifestyle activity is proposed to be protective against age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. This cross-sectional study investigated the association and interplay between musical instrument playing during life, multi-domain cognitive abilities and brain morphology in older adults from the DZNE-Longitudinal Cognitive Impairment and Dementia Study study. Participants reporting having played a musical instrument across three life periods were compared to controls without a history of musical instrument playing, well-matched for reserve proxies of education, (...) intelligence, socioeconomic status and physical activity. Participants with musical activity outperformed controls in global cognition, working memory, executive functions, language, and visuospatial abilities, with no effects seen for learning and memory. The musically active group had greater gray matter volume in the somatosensory area, but did not differ from controls in higher-order frontal, temporal, or hippocampal volumes. However, the association between gray matter volume in distributed frontal-to-temporal regions and cognitive abilities was enhanced in participants with musical activity compared to controls. We show that playing a musical instrument during life relates to better late-life cognitive abilities and greater brain capacities in OA. Musical activity may serve as a multimodal enrichment strategy that could help preserve cognitive and brain health in late life. Longitudinal and interventional studies are needed to support this notion. (shrink)

Als Signatur moderner demokratischer Gesellschaften gilt heute weithin, was John Rawls zu Beginn der 1990er Jahre als „vernünftigen Pluralismus“ bezeichnet hat. Mit ihm einher geht die Frage, wie divergierende Lebensformen miteinander ins Gespräch gebracht werden können und wie sich dabei zu legitimen politischen Urteilen kommen lässt. Ich werde in meinem Beitrag argumentieren, dass sich die genannte Frage lösen lässt, wenn wir uns der jüngeren Diskussion von Arendts Theorie der Urteilskraft von Linda Zerilli zuwenden und diese mit Rahel Jaeggis Überlegungen (...) zur Kritik von Lebensformen verbinden. Dafür werde ich zunächst Arendts Überlegungen zur politischen Urteilskraft rekonstruieren und zeigen, wie diese Kants Modell der ästhetischen Urteilskraft auf den Bereich des Politischen zu übertragen versucht. Ich werde argumentieren, dass Arendt diese Transposition nur teilweise gelingt und eine Reihe von wichtigen Fragen ungelöst bleibt. Arendts Überlegungen sind damit jedoch keineswegs obsolet, sondern müssen vielmehr weiter gedacht werden. Zerilli hat hierfür jüngst einen wegweisenden Vorschlag vorgelegt, der Arendts Theorie der Urteilskraft nicht mehr im Ausgang von Kant, sondern von Wittgenstein zu denken versucht. Die damit einhergehende Perspektivverschiebung erlaubt es, den Streit zwischen divergierenden Lebensformen mit Jaeggi als eine mit den Mitteln der immanenten Kritik geführte Auseinandersetzung um deren Lernfähigkeit zu begreifen, was am Beispiel des Streits zwischen den Lebensformen der Kleinfamilie und der Kommune deutlich gemacht werden soll. (shrink)

In this discussion paper, I seek to challenge Hylarie Kochiras’ recent claims on Newton’s attitude towards action at a distance, which will be presented in Section 1. In doing so, I shall include the positions of Andrew Janiak and John Henry in my discussion and present my own tackle on the matter . Additionally, I seek to strengthen Kochiras’ argument that Newton sought to explain the cause of gravity in terms of secondary causation . I also provide some specification (...) on what Kochiras calls ‘Newton’s substance counting problem’ . In conclusion, I suggest a historical correction .Keywords: Isaac Newton ; Action at a distance; Cause of gravity; Fourth letter to Bentley. (shrink)

John Searle has argued that the aim of strong AI of creating a thinking computer is misguided. Searle’s Chinese Room Argument purports to show that syntax does not suffice for semantics and that computer programs as such must fail to have intrinsic intentionality. But we are not mainly interested in the program itself but rather the implementation of the program in some material. It does not follow by necessity from the fact that computer programs are defined syntactically that the (...) implementation of them cannot suffice for semantics. Perhaps our world is a world in which any implementation of the right computer program will create a system with intrinsic intentionality, in which case Searle’s Chinese Room Scenario is empirically (nomically) impossible. But, indeed, perhaps our world is a world in which Searle’s Chinese Room Scenario is empirically (nomically) possible and that the silicon basis of modern day computers are one kind of material unsuited to give you intrinsic intentionality. The metaphysical question turns out to be a question of what kind of world we are in and I argue that in this respect we do not know our modal address. The Modal Address Argument does not ensure that strong AI will succeed, but it shows that Searle’s challenge on the research program of strong AI fails in its objectives. (shrink)

John Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities of objects has meet resistance. In this paper I bypass the traditional critiques of the distinction and instead concentrate on two specific counterexamples to the distinction: Killer yellow and the puzzle of multiple dispositions. One can accommodate these puzzles, I argue, by adopting Thomas Reid’s version of the primary/secondary quality distinction, where the distinction is founded upon conceptual grounds. The primary/secondary quality distinction is epistemic rather than metaphysical. A consequence of Reid’s (...) primary/ secondary quality distinction is that one must deny the original version of Molyneux’s question, while one must affirm an amended version of it. I show that these two answers to Molyneux’s question are not at odds with current empirical research. (shrink)

John Searle has argued that the aim of strong AI to create a thinking computer is misguided. Searle's "Chinese Room Argument" purports to show that syntax does not suffice for semantics and that computer programs as such must fail to have intrinsic intentionality But we are not mainly interested in the program itself, but rather the implementation of the program in some material. It does not follow by necessity from the fact that computer programs are defined syntactically that the (...) implementation of them cannot suffice for semantics. Perhaps our world is a world in which any implementation of the right computer program will create a system with intrinsic intentionality, in which case Searle's "Chinese Room Scenario" is empirically impossible. But perhaps our world is a world in which Searle's "Chinese Room Scenario" is empirically possible, and the silicon basis of modern-day computers is one kind of material unsuited to give you intrinsic intentionality. The metaphysical question turns out to be a question of what kind of world we are in, and I argue that in this respect we do not know our model address. The "Model Address Argument" does not ensure that strong AI will succeed, but it shows that Searle's challenge to the research program of strong AI fails in its objectives. (shrink)

In this article, we document how, in the public arena, British readers of the first edition of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (1687) tried to make sense of the relation between gravity, matter, and divine and natural causation—an issue on which Newton had remained entirely silent in the first edition of the Principia. We show that readers attached new meanings to the Principia so that parts of it migrated to a different intellectual debate. It will be shown that one (...) particular result Newton obtained in the Principia, namely the rejection of a vacuum in Corollary 3 to Proposition 6 in Book 3, was the most important locus in debates on the relation between gravity, matter, and causation. (shrink)

In this essay, I take the role as friendly commentator and call attention to three potential worries for John D. Norton’s material theory of induction. I attempt to show that his “principle argument” is based on a false dichotomy, that the idea that facts ultimately derive their license from matters of fact is debatable, and that one of the core implications of his theory is untenable for historical and fundamental reasons.

A philosopher argues that state-sponsored cyberattacks against central military or civilian targets are always acts of war. What is this philosopher doing? According to conceptual analysts, the philosopher is making a claim about our concept of war. According to philosophical realists, the philosopher is making a claim about war per se. In a quickly developing literature, a third option is being explored: the philosopher is engineering the concept of war. On this view, the philosopher is making a proposal about which (...) concept we should have – even if it deviates from the extant concept, and even if it does not capture ‘what war really is’. The activity or method of proposing such revisionary definitions, as well as the metaphilosophical reflection on it, has become known as conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering concerns the assessment and improvement of our concepts. But how can proposals to engineer concepts be implemented in the real world? This is known as the implementation challenge to conceptual engineering. In this paper, I am concerned with the meta-philosophical implications of the implementation challenge. Specifically, must we overcome the implementation challenge prior to undertaking conceptual engineering? Some critics have recently answered this question affirmatively. I intend to show that they are mistaken. I argue as follows. First, successful (...) implementation is not an integral part of conceptual engineering. Second, the idea that the value of conceptual engineering relies on successful implementation is in tension with widespread assumptions about normative theorizing. (shrink)

Bayesian approaches for estimating multilevel latent variable models can be beneficial in small samples. Prior distributions can be used to overcome small sample problems, for example, when priors that increase the accuracy of estimation are chosen. This article discusses two different but not mutually exclusive approaches for specifying priors. Both approaches aim at stabilizing estimators in such a way that the Mean Squared Error of the estimator of the between-group slope will be small. In the first approach, the MSE is (...) decreased by specifying a slightly informative prior for the group-level variance of the predictor variable, whereas in the second approach, the decrease is achieved directly by using a slightly informative prior for the slope. Mathematical and graphical inspections suggest that both approaches can be effective for reducing the MSE in small samples, thus rendering them attractive in these situations. The article also discusses how these approaches can be implemented in Mplus. (shrink)

This chapter examines the series of drastic epistemological and methodological transformations in the status of hypotheses in British natural philosophy during the seventeenth century. It explains that hypotheses played a rather marginal role in Francis Bacon's methodological thought because he believed they lacked any physical content, although they occupied a centre stage in the Bacon-inspired natural philosophy program of Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke. The chapter mentions that Boyle and Hooke provided a new definition of hypothesis, which is that of (...) something conceived of as causally sufficient and probable explications of natural phenomena that stand in an evidential relation to the natural phenomena they serve to elucidate. (shrink)

Connecting human minds to various technological devices and applications through brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) affords intriguingly novel ways for humans to engage and interact with the world. Not only do BCIs play an important role in restorative medicine, they are also increasingly used outside of medical or therapeutic contexts (e.g., gaming or mental state monitoring). A striking peculiarity of BCI technology is that the kind of actions it enables seems to differ from paradigmatic human actions, because, effects in the world are (...) brought about by devices such as robotic arms, prosthesis, or other machines, and their execution runs through a computer directed by brain signals. In contrast to usual forms of action, the sequence does not need to involve bodily or muscle movements at all. A motionless body, the epitome of inaction, might be acting. How do theories of action relate to such BCI-mediated forms of changing the world? We wish to explore this question through the lenses of three perspectives on agency: subjective experience of agency, philosophical action theory, and legal concepts of action. Our analysis pursues three aims: First, we shall discuss whether and which BCI-mediated events qualify as actions, according to the main concepts of action in philosophy and law. Secondly, en passant, we wish to highlight the ten most interesting novelties or peculiarities of BCI-mediated movements. Thirdly, we seek to explore whether these novel forms of movement may have consequences for concepts of agency. More concretely, we think that convincing assessments of BCI-movements require more fine-grained accounts of agency and a distinction between various forms of control during movements. In addition, we show that the disembodied nature of BCI-mediated events causes troubles for the standard legal account of actions as bodily movements. In an exchange with views from philosophy, we wish to propose that the law ought to reform its concept of action to include some, but not all, BCI-mediated events and sketch some of the wider implications this may have, especially for the venerable legal idea of the right to freedom of thought. In this regard, BCIs are an example of the way in which technological access to yet largely sealed-off domains of the person may necessitate adjusting normative boundaries between the personal and the social sphere. (shrink)

Worte verletzen und kränken. Woher aber kommt diese Verletzungsmacht? Während in der deutschsprachigen Philosophie Sprache meist als Gegenmittel zur Gewalt begriffen wird, hat die US-amerikanische Debatte um "hate speech" gezeigt, dass das Sprechen Gewalt nicht nur androhen oder verhindern, sondern selbst eine Form von Gewaltausübung sein kann. Wie nun sind sprachliche Verletzung, Ausgrenzung und Missachtung zu erklären und zu verstehen? Aus der Sicht verschiedener Disziplinen untersuchen die Beiträge dieses Bandes, welcher Logik, Grammatik und Rhetorik unser verletzendes Sprechen gehorcht. Mit Beiträgen (...) von u.a. Pierre Bourdieu, Penelope Brown/Stephen Levinson, Harold Garfinkel und Rae Langton. Steffen Kitty Herrmann (M.A.) und Hannes Kuch (M.A.) sind wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter am Institut für Philosophie der Freien Universität Berlin und arbeiten im Forschungsprojekt”Zur Performanz sprachlicher Gewalt“am Sonderforschungsbereich 447”Kulturen des Performativen“. Sybille Krämer ist Professorin für Philosophie an der FU Berlin und Permanent Fellow am Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin. (shrink)

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.

In this article, we draw on established views of CSR dysfunctionalities to show how and why CSR is regularly observed to be both shaped by and supportive of capitalism. We proceed to show that these dysfunctionalities are maintained by both the pro- and anticapitalist approaches to CSR, both of which imply an ill-defined separation of the economy and society as well an overly strong problem or solution focus on political and economic issues. Finally, we present a post-capitalist approach to CSR (...) that overcomes (1) the ill-defined separation of the economy and society, (2) the capitalist bias towards economic rationalities, and (3) the overidentification of society with its political system; this approach thus helps to manage the abovementioned CSR dysfunctionalities. (shrink)

Genes induced by the plant hormone auxin are probably involved in the execution of vital cellular functions and developmental processes. Experimental approaches designed to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of auxin action have focused on auxin perception, genetic dissection of the signaling apparatus and specific gene activation. Auxin‐responsive promoter elements of early genes provide molecular tools for probing auxin signaling in reverse. Functional analysis of several auxin‐specific promoters of unrelated early genes suggests combinatorial utilization of both conserved and variable elements. These (...) elements are arranged into autonomous domains and the combination of such modules generates uniquely composed promoters. Modular promoters allow for auxin‐mediated transcriptional responses to be revealed in a tissue‐ and development‐specific manner. (shrink)

George Spencer Brown, a polymath and author of Laws of Form, brought together mathematics, electronics, engineering and philosophy to form an unlikely bond. This book investigates Design with the NOR, the title of the yet unpublished 1961 typescript by Spencer Brown. The typescript formed through the author's experiences as technical engineer and developer of a new form of switching algebra for Mullard Equipment LTD., a British manufacturer of electronic components. Related essays contextualise the typescript drawing on a variety of backgrounds (...) from mathematics and engineering to philosophy and sociology. (shrink)

The idea of "spirit" has manifold meanings and plays a crucial role in Early Modern medicine, psychology, religion, natural philosophy, and cosmology. This book contains twenty papers, written by international experts; it explores how those disciplines conceived of the spirits and shows that knowledge of the spirits is an essential prerequisite for the understanding of Renaissance literature and music. The volume focuses on the way in which the spirits act upon the soul's perception, imagination, and cognition, and on the cultural (...) practices which aim to use, purge, or ban the spirits. (shrink)

La notion de "Bildung" (culture) de Humboldt au National-socialisme dans les états allemands modernes.