There has been debate between those who maintain that indexical expressions are not essential and those who maintain that such indexicals cannot be dispensed with without an important loss of content. This version of the essentialist view holds that thoughts must also have indexical elements. Indexical thoughts appear to be in tension with the computational theory of mind. In this case we have the following inconsistent triad: De se thoughts are essential. De se thoughts are indexical, they have a character. (...) Computations can only take the syntactic type into account, they cannot take tokens into account. If is correct, then it seems we cannot make sense of a thought which uses a character such that its referent could vary from tokening to tokening. I argue that need not cause a problem, while maintaining the CTM. I claim that computations need not be sensitive to the features of a tokened symbol in the way that character demands. This job may be performed by a non‐modular part of the mind. Resolving the triad in this way provides a reason to accept that indexicals in thought are possible. (shrink)

This book suggests that the umbrella academic organizations step forward and draft a model code of ethics for the profession of higher education.

Williamson argues for the contention that substructural logics are ‘ill-suited to acting as background logics for science’. That contention, if true, would be very important, but it is refutable, given what is already known about certain substructural logics. Classical Core Logic is a substructural logic, for it eschews the structural rules of Thinning and Cut and has Reflexivity as its only structural rule. Yet it suffices for classical mathematics, and it furnishes all the proofs and disproofs one needs for the (...) hypothetico-deductive method in science. We explain exactly what Classical Core Logic is, why it is a substructural logic par excellence, and what the basic requirements would be for a logic to be ‘suited to acting as [a] background logic for science’. We also explain how Classical Core Logic meets all these requirements. We end by examining Williamson’s argument in order to expose where its error lies. (shrink)

This is a study of Aristotle's moral philosophy as it is contained in the Nicomachean Ethics. Hardie examines the difficulties of the text; presents a map of inescapable philosophical questions; and brings out the ambiguities and critical disagreements on some central topics, inclduing happiness, the soul, the ethical mean, and the initiation of action.

Visual narratives like comics involve a range of complex cognitive operations in order to be understood. The Parallel Interfacing Narrative‐Semantics (PINS) Model integrates an emerging literature showing that comprehension of wordless image sequences balances two representational levels of semantic and narrative structure. The neurocognitive mechanisms that guide these processes are argued to overlap with other domains, such as language and music.

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) hold considerable promise for maintaining aging adults’ mobility as they develop impairments in driving skill. Nonetheless, attitudes can be a significant barrier to adoption as has been shown for other technologies. We investigated how different introductions to AV, video with a driver in the front seat, the rear seat, and a written description, affected attitudes, as well as how individual difference variables such as age, gender, prior knowledge, and personality traits predict attitudes within a middle-aged (Median age (...) = 34, IQR = 20, n = 441) Amazon Mechanical Turk sample. The 16-item attitude survey uncovered three factors: Concern with AV, Eagerness to Adopt AV technology, and Willingness to Relinquish Driving Control. ANOVAs showed that only age (younger less concerned) and gender, (females more concerned) were significant factors in Concern with AV. Only gender affected Willingness to Relinquish Driving Control, with males more willing. Multiple regressions that included previous knowledge level and personality traits showed a different pattern. Female gender and greater conscientiousness were associated with greater Concern about AV. Prior knowledge of AV was associated with less concern. Emotional stability and openness to experience were positive predictors of Eagerness to Adopt AV, whereas conscientiousness was a negative predictor. Prior knowledge and openness to experience, positively, and extraversion, negatively, were associated wi... (shrink)

Shows how to program on a computer (in Prolog) the effective skills taught in introductory and intermediate logic courses. The topics include the relevance of relevance, representing formulae and proofs, avoiding loops and blind alleys, and other aspects. Of interest to computational logicians, proof-theorists, cognitive scientists, and workers in artificial intelligence. Distributed by Columbia U. Press. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This paper assessed whether belief in conspiracy theories was associated with a particularly cognitive style (worldview). The sample comprised 223 volunteers recruited via convenience sampling and included undergraduates, postgraduates, university employees and alumni. Respondents completed measures assessing a range of cognitive-perceptual factors (schizotypy, delusional ideation and hallucination proneness) and conspiratorial beliefs (general attitudes towards conspiracist thinking and endorsement of individual conspiracies). Positive symptoms of schizotypy, particularly the cognitive-perceptual factor, correlated positively with conspiracist beliefs. The best predictor of belief in conspiracies (...) was delusional ideation. Consistent with the notion of a coherent conspiratorial mindset, scores across conspiracy measures correlated strongly. Whilst findings supported the view that belief in conspiracies, within the sub-clinical population, was associated with a delusional thinking style, cognitive-perceptual factors in combination accounted for only 32% of the variance. (shrink)

It’s widely held that a lack of intellectual humility is part of the reason why flagrantly unjustified beliefs proliferate. In this paper, I argue that an excess of humility also plays a role in allowing for the spread of misinformation. Citing experimental evidence, I show that inducing intellectual humility causes people inappropriately to lower their confidence in beliefs that are actually justified for them. In these cases, they manifest epistemic humility in ways that make them epistemically worse off. I argue (...) that epistemic humility may fail to promote better beliefs because it functions for us against the background of our individualistic theory of responsible epistemic agency: until we reject such theories, intellectual humility is as much a problem as a solution to epistemic ills. Virtue epistemology is inadequate as a response to unjustified beliefs if it does not look beyond the virtues to our background beliefs. (shrink)

Tacit knowledge is the form of implicit knowledge that we rely on for learning. It is invoked in a wide range of intellectual inquiries, from traditional academic subjects to more pragmatically orientated investigations into the nature and transmission of skills and expertise. Notwithstanding its apparent pervasiveness, the notion of tacit knowledge is a complex and puzzling one. What is its status as knowledge? What is its relation to explicit knowledge? What does it mean to say that knowledge is tacit? Can (...) it be measured? Recent years have seen a growing interest from philosophers in understanding the nature of tacit knowledge. Philosophers of science have discussed its role in scientific problem-solving; philosophers of language have been concerned with the speaker's relation to grammatical theories; and phenomenologists have attempted to describe the relation of explicit theoretical knowledge to a background understanding of matters that are taken for granted. This book seeks to bring a unity to these diverse philosophical discussions by clarifying their conceptual underpinnings. In addition the book advances a specific account of tacit knowledge that elucidates the importance of the concept for understanding the character of human cognition, and demonstrates the relevance of the recommended account to those concerned with the communication of expertise. The book will be of interest to philosophers of language, epistemologists, cognitive psychologists and students of theoretical linguistics. (shrink)

This article investigates the application of Philip Pettit's concept of freedom as non-domination to the issues of educational standards and the negotiated curriculum. The article will argue that freedom as non-domination shines a critical light on governmental practice in England over the past two decades. Joshua Cohen's proposal of an ideal deliberative procedure is offered as a potential mechanism for the facilitation of debating contestations between stakeholders over the curriculum. Cohen places particular importance on the participants being ‘formally and substantively (...) equal’ in the proceedings and being able to ‘recognize one another as having deliberative capacities’. It will be argued that formal and substantive equality between children and responsible adults is highly problematic due to the ‘considerable interference’ teachers and adults have to make in children's lives. However, the article does offer examples of children's deliberative capacities on the issue of the curriculum. (shrink)

An account of how a rational agent should revise beliefs in the light of new evidence.

It is a common complaint against moral philosophers that their abstract theorising bears little relation to the practical problems of everyday life. Professor Braithwaite believes that this criticism need not be inevitable. With the help of the Theory of Games he shows how arbitration is possible between two neighbours, a jazz trumpeter and a classical pianist, whose performances are a source of mutual discord. The solution of the problem in the lecture is geometrical, and is based on the formal analogy (...) between the logic of the situation and the geometry of a parabola. But an appendix provides the alternative algebraic treatment of a general two-person collaboration situation. (shrink)

This paper addresses an objection raised by Timothy Williamson to the ‘restriction strategy’ that I proposed, in The Taming of The True, in order to deal with the Fitch paradox. Williamson provides a new version of a Fitch-style argument that purports to show that even the restricted principle of knowability suffers the same fate as the unrestricted one. I show here that the new argument is fallacious. The source of the fallacy is a misunderstanding of the condition used in stating (...) the restricted knowability principle. I also rebut Williamson’s criticism of my argument for the claim that any proposition of the form ‘it is known that ϕ’ is decidable if ϕ is decidable. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Virtual Gallery*Neil Hertz Click for larger view View full resolutionPhotograph by Neil Hertz. Click for larger view View full resolutionPhotograph by Neil Hertz. Click for larger view View full resolutionPhotograph by Neil Hertz. Click for larger view View full resolutionPhotograph by Neil Hertz. Click for larger view View full resolutionPhotograph by Neil Hertz. Click for larger view View full resolutionPhotograph by Neil (...) Hertz. Click for larger view View full resolutionPhotograph by Neil Hertz. Click for larger view View full resolutionPhotograph by Neil Hertz. Click for larger view View full resolutionPhotograph by Neil Hertz.Footnotes* The photographs on the cover and back cover and pages 2, 14, 29, 43, 53, 66, and 80 were taken in Baltimore by Neil Hertz.Copyright © 1999 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Drawn sequences of images, like those in comics and picture stories, are a pervasive and fundamental way that humans have communicated for millennia. Yet, the study of visual narratives has only recently gained traction in Cognitive Science. Here we explore what has held back the study of the cognition of visual narratives, and why researchers should join in scholarship of this ubiquitous aspect of expression.

All parties to the proceedings that follow concur with DS. The question is whether there is anything more to truth than can be gleaned from DS alone. Deflationism holds that there is nothing more to truth than this. Now it would appear that 'warrantedly assertible' can play the role of T in DS. Hence it would appear that the deflationist would be able to identify truth with warranted assertibility.

Dewey continues to offer arguments that remain powerful on the need to break down the divisions between ‘academic’ and ‘vocational’ in terms of his specific theory of knowledge. Dewey's writings are used to argue that a democratic curriculum needs to challenge such divisions to encompass the many forms of knowledge necessary in the contemporary classroom. Gandin and Apple's investigation of community participation (Orçamento Participativo or Participatory Budgeting) in the curriculum of the Citizen School in Porto Alegre, Brazil, will be explored (...) as an example of democratic structures informing educational planning. The work of Paul Hirst, Atli Harđarson and Chris Jane Brough is analysed regarding the issue of curriculum aims and student negotiation. Dewey's emphasis on learning as a collective enterprise will resonate here. Brough offers innovative research on student-centred curriculum integration that suggests even very young children are able to participate in debate over their own learning. Hirst and Harđarson provide contrasting views on the issue of curriculum aims—Hirst arguing that a curriculum cannot exist without definable aims while Harđarson challenges the very notion of settled aims if students are to be reflexive regarding their education. The article also refers to the work of Alexander on the use of dialogic questioning in the classroom. Such questioning, it is suggested, enhances and encourages collaborative forms of enquiry necessary for a democratic curriculum through discussion between teachers, students and other stakeholders. (shrink)

The system of natural deduction that originated with Gentzen , and for which Prawitz proved a normalization theorem, is re-cast so that all elimination rules are in parallel form. This enables one to prove a very exigent normalization theorem. The normal forms that it provides have all disjunction-eliminations as low as possible, and have no major premisses for eliminations standing as conclusions of any rules. Normal natural deductions are isomorphic to cut-free, weakening-free sequent proofs. This form of normalization theorem renders (...) unnecessary Gentzen's resort to sequent calculi in order to establish the desired metalogical properties of his logical system.Ultimate normal forms are well-adapted to the needs of the computational logician, affording valuable constraints on proof-search. They also provide an analysis of deductive relevance. There is a deep isomorphism between natural deductions and sequent proofs in the relevantized system. (shrink)

The current study investigates how native speakers of a morphologically complex language handle uncertainty related to linguistic forms that have gaps in their inflectional paradigms. We analyze their strategies of dealing with paradigmatic defectivity and how these strategies are motivated by subjective contemporaneousness, frequency, acceptability, and other lexical and structural characteristics of words. We administered a verb production task with Finnish native speakers using verbs from a small non-productive inflectional type that has many paradigmatic gaps and asked participants to inflect (...) the verbs in a given context. Inflectional uncertainty was measured by the number of different forms the participants produced for each verb. We classified produced forms that were not expected as either synonymous or novel and measured their optimal string alignment distance to expected forms. Our analyses revealed that a usage-based approach to paradigmatic defectivity fits better with the obtained results than a classical approach typically met in dictionaries and descriptive grammars. Thus, we argue, that paradigmatic defectivity can be better described as a dynamic rather than a static system, where gaps represent a continuum of possible inflectional choices rather than a lack of an inflectional variant. (shrink)

RésuméJaegwon Kim a montré de façon convaincante que les versions habituelles de la survenance décrivent en fait de simples relations de covariance et laissent échapper l'idée de dépendance. Mais puisque la dépendence du mental à l'endroit du physique est requise même par la version la plus faible du physicalisme, il semblerait bien que les notions actuelles de survenance n'accomplissent pas ce qu'on attendait d'elles. Je soutiens qu'en concevant la survenance dans une optique davidsonienne, comme une relation entre prédicats plutôt qu'entre (...) propriétés, on évite les inconvénients des versions plus familières, et que l'on donne prise, de la sorte, à un usage physicaliste de la survenance. (shrink)

We see unique opportunities to advance emotional research by studying an overlooked environmental problem. The biodiversity crisis is caused by land use, in particular by reducing and damaging habitats, such as deforestation for cattle grazing. Biodiversity processes are proximate and personally moving, like when a person is causing or experiencing changes to livelihood-providing ecosystems, and we suggest this affect-rich context is useful for studying social and psychological processes. In contrast, much research on far-away populations thinking about climate change effects involves (...) more abstract and distant cognitions. We also suggest biodiversity-related emotions have consequential outcomes for health and behavior, and provide advice for shaping research programs on specific populations and wildlife interactions. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Jaegwon Kim a montré de façon convaincante que les versions habituelles de la survenance décrivent en fait de simples relations de covariance et laissent échapper l’idée de dépendance. Mais puisque la dépendance du mental à l’endroit du physique est requise même par la version la plus faible du physicalisme, il semblerait bien que les notions actuelles de survenance n’accomplissent pas ce qu’on attendait d’elles. Je soutiens qu’en concevant la survenance dans une optique davidsonienne, comme une relation entre prédicats plutôt (...) qu’entre propriétés, on évite les inconvénients des versions plus familières, et que l’on donne prise, de la sorte, à un usage physicaliste de la survenance. (shrink)

We bring together some facts about the weak pigeonhole principle from bounded arithmetic, complexity theory, cryptography and abstract model theory. We characterize the models of arithmetic in which WPHP fails as those which are determined by an initial segment and prove a conditional separation result in bounded arithmetic, that PV + lies strictly between PV and S21 in strength, assuming that the cryptosystem RSA is secure.

A prominent feature of the ongoing politics of welfare state restructuring is the development of workfare policies, defined as the attachment of a work condition to entitlement to basic income support. Workfare rejects unconditional rights of social citizenship, which formed the basis of social democratic political reforms and advocacy throughout the twentieth century. Nevertheless, workfare has received notable theoretical justification from egalitarian political theorists. This paper addresses four egalitarian arguments for workfare: the arguments from recipient self-respect, rational paternalism, fair reciprocity, (...) and equal opportunity for active citizenship. It attempts to demonstrate the tensions between each and egalitarian justification, and it is argued that none of the arguments successfully ground workfare policies in an egalitarian framework. (shrink)