Disinterring Kant -- Kant's first critique and the problem of reification -- The aesthetic, the beautiful and praxis -- The aesthetic and class interests -- The sublime in Kant's philosophical architecture -- Labour, the aesthetic, and nature -- On Marxism and metaphor -- In the laboratory of Kant's aesthetic.

Are people rational? This question was central to Greek thought and has been at the heart of psychology and philosophy for millennia. This book provides a radical and controversial reappraisal of conventional wisdom in the psychology of reasoning, proposing that the Western conception of the mind as a logical system is flawed at the very outset. It argues that cognition should be understood in terms of probability theory, the calculus of uncertain reasoning, rather than in terms of logic, the calculus (...) of certain reasoning. (shrink)

In response to calls for greater interdisciplinary involvement from the social sciences and humanities in the development, governance, and study of artificial intelligence systems, this paper presents one sociologist’s view on the problem of algorithmic bias and the reproduction of societal bias. Discussions of bias in AI cover much of the same conceptual terrain that sociologists studying inequality have long understood using more specific terms and theories. Concerns over reproducing societal bias should be informed by an understanding of the ways (...) that inequality is continually reproduced in society—processes that AI systems are either complicit in, or can be designed to disrupt and counter. The contrast presented here is between conservative and radical approaches to AI, with conservatism referring to dominant tendencies that reproduce and strengthen the status quo, while radical approaches work to disrupt systemic forms of inequality. The limitations of a conservative approach to racial bias are discussed through the specific example of biased criminal risk assessments and Indigenous overrepresentation in Canada’s criminal justice system. This illustrates the dangers of treating racial bias as a generalizable problem and equality as a generalizable solution, emphasizing the importance of considering inequality in context. Societal issues can no longer be out of scope for AI and machine learning, given the impact of these systems on human lives. This requires engagement with a growing body of critical AI scholarship that goes beyond biased data to analyze structured ways of perpetuating inequality, opening up the possibility for interdisciplinary engagement and radical alternatives. (shrink)

Over the last decade, fully distributed models have become dominant in connectionist psychological modelling, whereas the virtues of localist models have been underestimated. This target article illustrates some of the benefits of localist modelling. Localist models are characterized by the presence of localist representations rather than the absence of distributed representations. A generalized localist model is proposed that exhibits many of the properties of fully distributed models. It can be applied to a number of problems that are difficult for fully (...) distributed models, and its applicability can be extended through comparisons with a number of classic mathematical models of behaviour. There are reasons why localist models have been underused, though these often misconstrue the localist position. In particular, many conclusions about connectionist representation, based on neuroscientific observation, can be called into question. There are still some problems inherent in the application of fully distributed systems and some inadequacies in proposed solutions to these problems. In the domain of psychological modelling, localist modelling is to be preferred. Key Words: choice; competition; connectionist modelling; consolidation; distributed; localist; neural networks; reaction-time. (shrink)

Nations are in relations with each other in cultural, economic, political and military fields. It is unthinkable for the languages of nations to be independent of this relationship and closed to influence. Interlingual interaction, exchange of words and phrases is a requirement of the natural structure of the language. Therefore, languages have exchanged words with each other. Throughout history, Turkish has borrowed words from other languages and given them words. Arabic is one of the languages with which Turkish exchanges words. (...) In this study, some words used in the dialects of Karaman and Konya region and thought to be related to Arabic were emphasized. In the process of selecting and compiling the words, first of all, the literature was reviewed and the dictionary parts of the studies on the dialects of the mentioned regions were examined in detail. The words compiled by the literature review were confirmed from the first mouths, sometimes by structured and sometimes semi-structured interview method. In this way, example sentences about the use of words were recorded and the regions where they were used were pointed out. The words identified during the compilation process were classified as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and pronouns in terms of type. It was seen that all of them would exceed the volume of one article and it was necessary to consider them in separate studies. In this respect, in this study, words such as adjectives, adverbs and pronouns used in the dialects of Karaman and Konya regions and thought to be of Arabic origin are discussed, and it is planned to examine nouns and verbs in other studies. The words were compared with the information in the Compilation Dictionary (Dictionary of Turkish Dialects), it was seen that some words were not included in the Compilation Dictionary and it was proposed to add these words to the dictionary. In the study, a total of 37 words, 22 in the Compilation Dictionary and 15 not in the Compilation Dictionary, were discussed. (shrink)

How can a critical analysis of entrepreneurial intention inform an appreciation of ethics in social enterprise business models? In answering this question, we consider the ethical commitments that inform entrepreneurial action and the hybrid organisations that emerge out of these commitments and actions. Ethical theory can be a useful way to reorient the field of social enterprise so that it is more critical of bureaucratic and market-driven enterprises connected to neoliberal doctrine. Social enterprise hybrid business models are therefore reframed as (...) outcomes of both ethical and entrepreneurial intentions. We challenge the dominant conceptualisation of social enterprise as a hybrid blend of mission and market by reframing hybridity in terms of the moral choice of economic system and social value orientation. We deconstruct the political foundations of charitable trading activities, co-operative and mutual enterprises and socially responsible businesses by examining the rationalities and ethical commitments that underpin them. Whilst conceptual modelling of social enterprise is not new, this paper contributes to knowledge by developing a theory of social enterprise ethics based on the moral/political choices that are made by entrepreneurs when choosing between systems of economic exchange and social value orientation, then expressing it through a legal form. (shrink)

An extension of Alasdair MacIntyre's concept of 'virtues of acknowledged dependence', to include relationships with the non-human world, offers an organising principle for environmental virtue ethics. It situates ecological virtue among more traditional virtues of inter-human relationships, and may thereby contribute to an ethical reconciliation of policies aimed at encouraging ecological virtue with those aimed at protecting the freedoms required for personal autonomy. Within this eudaimonist framework, ecological virtue may be understood and promoted as directly contributing to a good life.

Contemporary discussions of skepticism often frame the skeptic's argument around an instance of the closure principle. Roughly, the closure principle states that if a subject knows p, and knows that p entails q, then the subject knows q. The main contention of this paper is that the closure argument for skepticism is defective. We explore several possible classifications of the defect. The closure argument might plausibly be classified as begging the question, as exhibiting transmission failure, or as structurally inefficient. Interestingly, (...) perhaps, each of these has been proposed as the correct classification of Moore's proof of an external world. (shrink)

Part of understanding the meaning and power of algorithms means asking what new demands they might make of ethical frameworks, and how they might be held accountable to ethical standards. I develop a definition of networked information algorithms as assemblages of institutionally situated code, practices, and norms with the power to create, sustain, and signify relationships among people and data through minimally observable, semiautonomous action. Starting from Merrill’s prompt to see ethics as the study of “what we ought to do,” (...) I examine ethical dimensions of contemporary NIAs. Specifically, in an effort to sketch an empirically grounded, pragmatic ethics of algorithms, I trace an algorithmic assemblage’s power to convene constituents, suggest actions based on perceived similarity and probability, and govern the timing and timeframes of ethical action. (shrink)

A recent article in Anthropology of Consciousness entitled ‘Imaginal research for unlearning mastery: Divination with Tarot as a decolonizing methodology’ argues that the Western Tarot may be a useful tool to facilitate decolonization despite (or perhaps in spite) of the colonial and imperial imprints of the accumulating class. This response points out the Tarot is in fact a tool developed by the accumulating class, designed specifically to facilitate the imposition of elite master narratives. This letter calls into question the appropriateness (...) and effectiveness of using the Tarot as a tool for decolonization. (shrink)

The dead donor rule justifies current practice in organ procurement for transplantation and states that organ donors must be dead prior to donation. The majority of organ donors are diagnosed as having suffered brain death and hence are declared dead by neurological criteria. However, a significant amount of unrest in both the philosophical and the medical literature has surfaced since this practice began forty years ago. I argue that, first, declaring death by neurological criteria is both unreliable and unjustified but (...) further, the ethical principles which themselves justify the dead donor rule are better served by abandoning that rule and instead allowing individuals who have suffered severe and irreversible brain damage to become organ donors, even though they are not yet dead and even though the removal of their organs would be the proximal cause of death. (shrink)

Disagreement holds the key: the possibility of agreeing or disagreeing with a state of mind makes that state of mind act logically like accepting a claim. Charles Stevenson was quite right to begin his presentation of emotivism with disagreement.—Allan Gibbard.

The paper aims to show that, if S5 is the logic of metaphysical necessity, then no state of affairs in any possible world constitutes any non-trivial evidence for or against the existence of the traditional God. There might well be states of affairs in some worlds describing extraordinary goods and extraordinary evils, but it is false that these states of affairs constitute any (non-trivial) evidence for or against the existence of God. The epistemological and metaphysical consequences for philosophical theology of (...) assuming that S4 or Kσρ is the logic of metaphysical necessity are equally untenable. S4 guarantees that God does not exist if there is the slightest evidence against the existence of God. And Kσρ guarantees that God might survive the loss or acquisition of any essential property at all. (shrink)

Setting aside some complexities, Koplin and Wilkinson1 argue: 1. Moral status is uncertain if there is a non-zero chance that an entity has, or would develop, full moral status. 2. If its moral status is uncertain, then moral caution is warranted towards that entity. 3. The moral status of both non-chimeric pigs and human-pig chimaeras is uncertain. Therefore, consistency demands that moral caution is warranted towards both non-chimeric pigs and human-pig chimaeras. 4. The commonly held view is that moral caution (...) is warranted towards human-pig chimaeras, but not non-chimeric pigs. Therefore, the commonly held view is inconsistent. This is a valid argument. The authors claim that the inconsistency they expose in conclusion 2 could be resolved in favour of either commonly held view, or by revising both to equivalency. However, it is clear from conclusion 1, and the paper more generally, that the authors are arguing for moral caution to be applied to the treatment of pigs of both types. I will focus on evaluating premises 1 and 2, and the generalisability of the argument in light of this. In doing so, I will attempt to show that the argument has implausible logical implications, and that the moral caution warranted towards human-pig chimaeras of uncertain moral status does not require confidence that they lack full moral status, as the authors claim. According to premise 1, if an entity might currently have moral …. (shrink)

This essay argues for the fruitfulness of Beck’s idea of cosmopolitanism for understanding the changing political, sociological and psychological attributes of climate change. This argument is illustrated through brief examinations of how climate change is contributing to the dissolution of three modern dualisms: nature-culture, present-future and global-local. Not only does the cosmopolitan perspective help to understand the ways in which science and society are mutually constructing the phenomenon of climate change, it also offers us a way of asking ‘what can (...) climate change do for us?’ rather than ‘what can we do for climate change?’ Sociologists are needed for answering this question. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, humans are the rational animal. The borderline between rationality and irrationality is fundamental to many aspects of human life including the law, mental health, and language interpretation. But what is it to be rational? One answer, deeply embedded in the Western intellectual tradition since ancient Greece, is that rationality concerns reasoning according to the rules of logic – the formal theory that specifies the inferential connections that hold with certainty between propositions. Piaget viewed logical reasoning as defining (...) the end-point of cognitive development; and contemporary psychology of reasoning has focussed on comparing human reasoning against logical standards. (shrink)

Nance reads these texts against the social and cultural conditions of their making, establishing a solid historical basis for the interpretation of key beliefs and doctrines.

The “Cosmological Constant Problem” is widely considered a crisis in contemporary theoretical physics. Unfortunately, the search for its resolution is hampered by open disagreement about what is, strictly, the problem. This disagreement stems from the observation that the CCP is not a problem within any of our current theories, and nearly all of the details of those future theories for which the CCP could be made a problem are up for grabs. Given this state of affairs, I discuss how one (...) ought to make sense of the role of the CCP in physics and generalize some lessons from it. (shrink)

A number of Christian theologians and philosophers have been critical of overly moralizing approaches to the doctrine of sin, but nearly all Christian thinkers maintain that moral fault is necessary or sufficient for sin to obtain. Call this the “Moral Consensus.” I begin by clarifying the relevance of impurities to the biblical cataloguing of sins. I then present four extensional problems for the Moral Consensus on sin, based on the biblical catalogue of sins: (1) moral over-demandingness, (2) agential unfairness, (3) (...) moral repugnance, and (4) moral atrocity. Next, I survey several partial solutions to these problems, suggested by the recent philosophical literature. Then I evaluate two largely unexplored solutions: (a) genuine sin dilemmas and (b) defeasible sinfulness. I argue that (a) creates more problems than it solves and that, while (b) is well-motivated and solves or eases each of the above problems, (b) leaves many biblical ordinances about sin morally misleading, creating (5) a pedagogical problem of evil. I conclude by arguing that (5) places hefty explanatory burdens on those who would appeal to (b) to resolve the four extensional problems discussed in this paper. So Christian thinkers may need to consider a more radical separation of sin and moral fault. (shrink)

The minimal God exemplifies essential omnipotence, omniscience, and moral perfection, but none of the other properties of the traditional God. I examine the consequences of the minimal God in augmented S5, S4, and Kρσ. The metaphysical consequences for the minimal God in S5 include the impossibility that God—or any other object—might acquire, lose, or exchange an essential property. It is impossible that an essentially divine being might become essentially human, for instance. The epistemological consequences include the impossibility of agnosticism—it is (...) impossible that P(◻︎FG |E) = P(~◻︎FG| E). Indeed, every weaker forms of agnosticism are also impossible—it is impossible that P(◻︎FG |E) = n, n(0 < n < 1). The metaphysical and epistemological consequences for the minimal God in S4 are equally untenable. I show that we can avoid all of these unwelcome epistemological consequences for the minimal God in Kρσ. But Kρσ has some extraordinary metaphysical consequences for the minimal God. All of the problems for the minimal God generalize to the maximal God. (shrink)

Philosophers and psychologists have long worried that the human tendency to anthropomorphize leads us to err in our understanding of nonhuman minds. This tendency, which I call intuitive anthropomorphism, is a heuristic used by our unconscious folk psychology to understand nonhuman animals. The dominant understanding of intuitive anthropomorphism underestimates its complexity. If we want to understand and control intuitive anthropomorphism, we must treat it as a cognitive bias and look to the empirical evidence. This evidence suggests that the most common (...) control for intuitive anthropomorphism, Morgan’s Canon, should be rejected, while others are incomplete. It also suggests new approaches. (shrink)

Google Trends reveals that at the time we were writing our article on ‘The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology’ in 2007 almost nobody was searching the internet for ‘Big Data’. It was only towards the very end of 2010 that the term began to register, just ahead of an explosion of interest from 2011 onwards. In this commentary we take the opportunity to reflect back on the claims we made in that original paper in light of more recent discussions about (...) the social scientific implications of the inundation of digital data. Did our paper, with its emphasis on the emergence of, what we termed, ‘social transactional data’ and ‘digital byproduct data’ prefigure contemporary debates that now form the basis and rationale for this excellent new journal? Or was the paper more concerned with broader methodological, theoretical and political debates that have somehow been lost in all of the loud babble that has come to surround Big Data. Using recent work on the BBC Great British Class Survey as an example this brief paper offers a reflexive and critical reflection on what has become – much to the surprise of its authors – one of the most cited papers in the discipline of sociology in the last decade. (shrink)

This study explores the capability of academic staff assisted by the Turnitin Artificial Intelligence (AI) detection tool to identify the use of AI-generated content in university assessments. 22 different experimental submissions were produced using Open AI’s ChatGPT tool, with prompting techniques used to reduce the likelihood of AI detectors identifying AI-generated content. These submissions were marked by 15 academic staff members alongside genuine student submissions. Although the AI detection tool identified 91% of the experimental submissions as containing AI-generated content, only (...) 54.8% of the content was identified as AI-generated, underscoring the challenges of detecting AI content when advanced prompting techniques are used. When academic staff members marked the experimental submissions, only 54.5% were reported to the academic misconduct process, emphasising the need for greater awareness of how the results of AI detectors may be interpreted. Similar performance in grades was obtained between student submissions and AI-generated content (AI mean grade: 52.3, Student mean grade: 54.4), showing the capabilities of AI tools in producing human-like responses in real-life assessment situations. Recommendations include adjusting the overall strategies for assessing university students in light of the availability of new Generative AI tools. This may include reducing the overall reliance on assessments where AI tools may be used to mimic human writing, or by using AI-inclusive assessments. Comprehensive training must be provided for both academic staff and students so that academic integrity may be preserved. (shrink)

Despite a continued focus exploring the factors related to plagiarism, the relationship between English language ability and plagiarism occurrences is not fully understood. Multiple studies involving student or faculty self-reporting of plagiarism have shown that students often claim English language ability is one of the main reasons why they commit plagiarism offences; however, little research has tested these claims in a rigorous, quantitative manner. This paper presents the findings of an analysis of data collected in a private, international university located (...) in Vietnam, from non-native English speaking students studying business degrees. Analysis of the data builds on previous studies by showing that there are statistically significant differences in the English language abilities of students who have previously committed plagiarism offences, compared to students who have not, suggesting that programmes designed to improve the academic English skills of non-native English speaking students may help reduce incidences of plagiarism. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of Molyneux's problem within contemporary philosophy of mind tend to characterize the problem as primarily concerned with the role innately known principles, amodal spatial concepts, and rational cognitive faculties play in our perceptual lives. Indeed, for broadly similar reasons, rationalists have generally advocated an affirmative answer, while empiricists have generally advocated a negative one, to the question Molyneux posed after presenting his famous thought experiment. This historical characterization of the dialectic, however, somewhat obscures the role Molyneux's problem has (...) played in spawning debates within the empiricist tradition. Fortunately, the differences between various empiricist accounts have been widely recognized and discussed among historians of philosophy working on the topic. The focus of the present essay is to develop an interpretation of John Locke's views on Molyneux's problem that best coheres with his other views on human understanding as well as with the predominant scientific opinion about the nature of perception during the period in which he lived. (shrink)

This book shows how these developments have led researchers to view people's conditional reasoning behaviour more as succesful probabilistic reasoning rather ...

The issue of the proper goals of science education and science teacher education have been a focus of the science education and philosophy of science communities in recent years. More particularly, the issue of whether belief/acceptance of evolution and/or understanding are the appropriate goals for evolution educators and the issue of the precise nature of the distinctions among the terms knowledge, understanding, belief, and acceptance have received increasing attention in the 12 years since we first published our views on these (...) subjects. During that time, our own views about these issues have evolved, and this article presents a reconsideration of both these distinctions and the propriety of these goals. In particular, the present paper continues our discussion of the nature of belief as it relates to science education, and more specifically to evolution education. We extend that work to consider the import of the distinction between belief and acceptance. (shrink)

In this paper I present an interpretation of J. G. Fichte's transcendental argument for the necessity of mutual recognition in Foundations of Natural Right. Fichte's argument purports to show that, as a condition of the possibility of self-consciousness, we must take ourselves to stand in relations of mutual recognition with other agents like ourselves. After reconstructing the steps of Fichte's argument, I present what I call the ‘modal dilemma’, which highlights a serious ambiguity in Fichte's deduction. According to the modal (...) dilemma, the conclusion to Fichte's transcendental argument—that as a condition of the possibility of our self-consciousness, we must recognize and be recognized by others—expresses either metaphysical or normative necessity. However, no normative conclusion follows from Fichte's premises, and the metaphysical claim that does follow from his argument appears to be implausibly strong. Thus the argument looks like a failure on either interpretation of the conclusion's modality. In the penultimate section of the paper, I propose a new interpretation of the argument that avoids the modal dilemma and provides a normative grounding of Fichte's concept of right. (shrink)

This paper addresses the following questions: what is Fichte’s first principle of right, how does he argue for it, and how does it function as the first principle of his substantive political theory? To answer these questions, the paper offers an overview of the main steps of Fichte’s derivation of the principle of right, explains its relationship to Fichte’s account of individual personhood, and then specifies some of the senses in which the resulting principle serves as the foundation of the (...) rest of Fichte’s political and economic theory. I focus on the developmental logic of Fichte’s account of the “summons” and the “relation of right.” This developmental logic, I argue, is both recapitulated and completed within Fichte’s political theory and political economy. (shrink)