This paper focuses on the cognitive/computational and evolutionary levels. It describes three proposals to make cognition computationally tractable, namely: Resource Rationality, the Adaptive Toolbox and Massive Modularity. While each of these proposals appeals to evolutionary considerations to dissolve the intractability of cognition, Rich, Blokpoel, de Haan, and van Rooij argue that, in each case, the intractability challenge is not resolved, but just relocated to the level of evolution.

This paper focuses on the cognitive/computational and evolutionary levels. It describes three proposals to make cognition computationally tractable, namely: Resource Rationality, the Adaptive Toolbox and Massive Modularity. While each of these proposals appeals to evolutionary considerations to dissolve the intractability of cognition, Rich, Blokpoel, de Haan, and van Rooij argue that, in each case, the intractability challenge is not resolved, but just relocated to the level of evolution.

Ethnographically, “fecal free” is a lexical marker that invokes a form of industrialized swine husbandry used in large-scale confinement hog production. Using participant observation and interview research with Illinois contract hog producers, I explore the basis of this husbandry in the biological fragility of confinement hogs. Rather than biology being a simplistic “state of nature,” as it was in early neo-Marxist and populist studies of the 1970s, the frailty of confinement hogs suggests that industrial hog biology is a socially constructed (...) state that justifies the use of contract-based hog production units and their coordination with animal processors. The frailty of confinement hogs results from their genetic characteristics, from the conditions in which they are raised, and from a production rationality that equates animal health with production efficiency. I detail the multiple-site methods, confinement technologies, and contract-based production organization required to raise biologically fragile hogs. And I link hog biology directly to the unequal contract-based relations between actors in industrial pork networks. My study emphasizes the relevance of ethnographic analyses within a political economy of agriculture by describing specific relations of inequalities in local and regional production units and distribution networks that form the building blocks of larger global agro-food systems. (shrink)

Many compelling examples have recently been provided in which people can achieve impressive epistemic success, e.g. draw highly accurate inferences, by using simple heuristics and very little information. This is possible by taking advantage of the features of the environment. The examples suggest an easy and appealing naturalization of rationality: on the one hand, people clearly can apply simple heuristics, and on the other hand, they intuitively ought do so when this brings them high accuracy at little cost.. The ‘ought-can’ (...) principle is satisfied, and rationality is meaningfully normative. We show, however, that this naturalization program is endangered by a computational wrinkle in the adaptation process taken to be responsible for this heuristics-based (‘ecological’) rationality: for the adaptation process to guarantee even minimal rationality, it requires astronomical computational resources, making the problem intractable. We consider various plausible auxiliary assumptions in attempt to remove this obstacle, and show that they do not succeed; intractability is a robust property of adaptation. We discuss the implications of our findings for the project of naturalizing rationality. (shrink)

Preparing the Next Generation of Oral Historians is an invaluable resource to educators seeking to bring history alive for students at all levels. Filled with insightful reflections on teaching oral history, it offers practical suggestions for educators seeking to create curricula, engage students, gather community support, and meet educational standards. By the close of the book, readers will be able to successfully incorporate oral history projects in their own classrooms.

Philosopher Emmanuel Levinas's ethics as first philosophy explicates a human obligation and responsibility to and for the Other that is an unending and an imperfect commitment. In Levinas's Rhetorical Demand: The Unending Obligation of Communication Ethics, Ronald C. Arnett underscores the profundity of Levinas's insights for communication ethics. Arnett outlines communication ethics as a primordial call of responsibility central to Levinas's writing and mission. Arnett analyzes communication ethics through a Levinasian lens with examination of social artifacts ranging from the (...) Heidegger-Cassirer debate to Rupert Murdoch's News of the World story concerning illicit possession of information. Levinas's Rhetorical Demand offers an account of Levinas's project and the pragmatic implications of attending to a call of responsibility to and for the Other. This book yields a rich and nuanced understanding of Levinas's work, revealing the practical importance of his insights, and including a discussion of a constellation of related theorists and thinkers. (shrink)

The Theaetetus provides Plato's fullest discussion of human knowledge and is a rich vehicle for reflection upon its topic. Polansky's commentary demonstrates that the dialogue in fact holds the complete Platonic account of knowledge -- an account which is as sophisticated as any offered by contemporary philosophers.

One of the more powerful impressions created by vision is that of a coherent, richly-detailed world where everything is present simultaneously. Indeed, this impression is so compelling that we tend to ascribe these properties not only to the external world, but to our internal representations as well. But results from several recent experiments argue against this latter ascription. For example, changes in images of real-world scenes often go unnoticed when made during a saccade, flicker, blink, or movie cut. This "change (...) blindness" provides strong evidence against the idea that our brains contain a picture-like representation of the scene that is everywhere detailed and coherent. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is now widely recognized as an alternative to Kantian and consequentialist ethical theories. However, moral philosophers have been slow to bring virtue ethics to bear on topics in applied ethics. Moreover, environmental virtue ethics is an underdeveloped area of environmental ethics. Although environmental ethicists often employ virtue-oriented evaluation and appeal to role models for guidance, environmental ethics has not been well informed by contemporary work on virtue ethics. With _Character and Environment_, Ronald Sandler remedies each of these (...) deficiencies by bringing together contemporary work on virtue ethics with contemporary work on environmental ethics. He demonstrates the many ways that any ethic of character can and should be informed by environmental considerations. He also develops a pluralistic virtue-oriented environmental ethic that accommodates the richness and complexity of our relationship with the natural environment and provides effective and nuanced guidance on environmental issues. These projects have implications not only for environmental ethics and virtue ethics but also for moral philosophy more broadly. Ethical theories must be assessed on their theoretical and practical adequacy with respect to all aspects of the human ethical situation: personal, interpersonal, and environmental. To the extent that virtue-oriented ethical theory in general, and Sandler's version of it in particular, provides a superior environmental ethic to other ethical theories, it is to be preferred not just as an environmental ethic but also as an ethical theory. _Character and Environment_ will engage any reader with an interest in environmental ethics, virtue ethics, or moral philosophy. (shrink)

This book explores a much-neglected area of moral philosophy--the typology of immorality. Ronald D. Milo questions the adequacy of Aristotle's suggestion that there are two basic types of immorality--wickedness and moral weakness--and argues that we must distinguish between at least six different types of immoral behavior. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts (...) of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Written by the world's best-known political and legal theorist, Freedom's Law: The Moral Reading of the American Constitution is a collection of essays that discuss almost all of the great constitutional issues of the last two decades, including abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, homosexuality, pornography, and free speech. Professor Dworkin offers a consistently liberal view of the Constitution and argues that fidelity to it and to law demands that judges make moral judgments. He proposes that we all interpret the abstract language (...) of the Constitution by reference to moral principles about political decency and justice. His `moral reading therefore brings political morality into the heart of constitutional law. The various chapters of this book were originally published separately and are now drawn together to provide the reader with a rich, full-length treatment of Dworkin's general theory of law. (shrink)

Using the theoretical approach he introduced in his acclaimed Religious Reason (Oxford, 1978), and drawing on contemporary rationalist ethical theory as well as a variety of religious traditions and issues, Ronald M. Green here provides a simple, effective model for understanding the complexity of religious life. He shows clearly and convincingly that the basic processes of religious reasoning are the same everywhere and that they give rise, in perfectly understandable ways, to the rich diversity of religious expression worldwide. (...) This is a major resource for courses in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

This book develops a theory of existential security. It demonstrates that the publics of virtually all advanced industrial societies have been moving toward more secular orientations during the past half century, but also that the world as a whole now has more people with traditional religious views than ever before. This second edition expands the theory and provides new and updated evidence from a broad perspective and in a wide range of countries. This confirms that religiosity persists most strongly among (...) vulnerable populations, especially in poorer nations and in failed states. Conversely, a systematic erosion of religious practices, values and beliefs has occurred among the more prosperous strata in rich nations. (shrink)

The fiction of Australian novelist Alex Miller has long been exploring the dynamics of friendship, but in Landscape of Farewell (2007) he provides the most ambitious, and in my view the most comprehensive and perceptive, treatment of the subject of any contemporary novel, Australian or otherwise. This essay explores this profound view of friendship, which goes quite beyond mateship, and examines the ways in which Miller represents and embodies that vision in fiction. Through its brilliant handling of the complexities of (...) tone and its rich deployment of the dynamics of gift exchange, Landscape of Farewell confronts the stark realities of suffering and death and finds within the darkness itself the deepest sources of light. (shrink)

: Texts bear traces of complex struggles. For scientific texts, issues to do with the meaning of words and their reference are often where such struggles occur. In texts too identity is fashioned in the social realm and texts are woven closely into human cognition. The focus on how texts function to produce meaning, characteristic of recent literary theory, provides remarkable resources for locating these features in scientific texts. The project sketched here in a preliminary manner seeks to bring such (...) resources to bear on Michael Faraday's writings and explores in Faraday's rich and reflexive "textual space" his persistent concern to stabilize the meaning and reference of words as well as the less conscious subtle complexities associated with the production of meaning. Both weave closely into his scientific theorizing and fashioning of identity. (shrink)

According to one model of social theory, the social theorist seeks to give as rich an account as possible of a society's own self?understanding or self?interpretation. The second model, by contrast, involves challenging the society's self?understanding on the basis of a radical vision of ultimate standards of. judgment. Charles Taylor claims that neither of these models should be privileged over the other, that both are equiprimordial ways of theorizing social life. However, Taylor does privilege the first model in his (...) own practice of social theory?which can be summed up in the phrase, ?the rhetoric of understanding.? (shrink)

The scientific field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) began in the 1950s but the concept of artificial intelligence, the idea of something with mind-like attributes, predates it by centuries. This historically rich concept has served as a blueprint for the research into intelligent machines. But it also has staggering implications for our notions of who we are: our psychology, biology, philosophy, technology and society. This reference work provides scholars in both the humanities and the sciences with the material essential for (...) charting the development of this concept. The set brings together; * primary texts from antiquity to the present, including the crucial foundational texts which defined the field of AI * historical accounts, including both comprehensive overviews and detailed snapshots of key periods * secondary material discussing the intellectual issues and implications which place the concept in a wider context. (shrink)

This title was first published in 2001. This book focuses on the rich web of interrelations between aesthetic and wider human concerns. Among topics explored are concepts of truth and falsity, superficiality and depth in aesthetic appreciation of nature, moral beauty and ugliness, the projects of integrating a life, of fashioning a life as a work of art, experiments in the aesthetic re-working of the 'sacred', the role of imagination within religion and in our attempts to place and identify (...) ourselves within the cosmos. The essays are both interlinked and distinct, allowing them to be read in any order, and providing useful themes for discussion groups and seminars. The author aims to arouse in the reader something of his enjoyment in unravelling the connections of ideas that come into view when one approaches aesthetics in its widest setting. (shrink)

As societies industrialize, the age profile of consumption tilts strongly toward the elderly, while elder labor supply drops. Low fertility and long life lead to population aging. For millennia, material resources have, on net, flowed downward from older to younger within populations, but now in many rich societies net flows have reversed and go upwards from young to old.

This book confronts one of the central questions of political science: how people choose to accept or not to accept particular governments. In contrast to the prevailing view that citizens' decisions about the legitimacy of their governments are strongly conditioned by political culture and socialization and are hence largely non-rational, Ronald Rogowski argues that such decisions may indeed be the product of rational choice. The book proceeds both from recent work in the theory of voting and constitutional choice and (...) from the older tradition of contract theory to postulate that decisions about legitimacy are really choices among alternative regimes. The author suggests that members of a society choose among these alternative regimes on the basis of a knowledge of ethnic and occupational divisions in their society. From these postulates a general theory is derived, which finds expression in numerous testable hypotheses. Originally published in 1974. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

In the mid to late 1980s a debate arose over the moral and legal authority of advance medical directives. At the center of this debate were two point-counterpoint law journal articles by Rebecca Dresser and Nancy Rhoden. What appeared to have the makings of an ongoing critical dialogue ended with the untimely death of Nancy Rhoden. Rebecca Dresser, however, has continued her challenge of advance directives in numerous publications, most recently in a critique of Ronald Dworkin's Life's Dominion. Like (...) Rhoden, Dworkin has been a staunch advocate of advance directives as an exercise of what has come to be referred to as prospective or precedent autonomy. In this paper I will consider a number of the issues that Dresser has repeatedly raised about the infirmities of advance directives, and suggest that it is from an understanding of and appreciation for the narrative dimension of the life of a person that advanced directives draw one of their most powerful justifications. (shrink)

In 1898 men and women from all over the world converged on Alaska. Gold had been discovered. In the Yukon Territory, all winter long eager gold seekers struggled over the mountain passes connecting Canada with the United States. A small group of photographers chronicled this epic, creating images of men and women laboring through blinding snowstorms over the windswept, ice-covered mountains. One of that group was a young Swedish immigrant by the name of P. E. Larson. Frozen in Silver documents (...) how this man used the recent medium of photography to earn a living as a merchant and tradesman. From the relative tranquility of a Minnesota photographic studio, he moved westward. And, like thousands of others, he made his way to the Klondike Gold Rush, although with camera in hand. In addition to preserving the rich photographic record of the Great Stampede to the Klondike, Larson recorded contemporary Western life and culture, including that of the hard rock mining community of Goldfield, Nevada. Frozen in Silver is a riveting story of one man's trek through a time and place that have been captured on film and now in print. (shrink)

“Even the statement ‘There are no such things as moral duties’ is a claim about moral duties. There is no neutral position. If I say, ‘Are there any such things as moral duties?’ and you say, ‘No’, you’re not being neutral. You’re making a decision. You’re deciding that rich people have no duty to help poor people. That’s what you’re saying.”.

In the mid to late 1980s a debate arose over the moral and legal authority of advance medical directives. At the center of this debate were two point-counterpoint law journal articles by Rebecca Dresser and Nancy Rhoden. What appeared to have the makings of an ongoing critical dialogue ended with the untimely death of Nancy Rhoden. Rebecca Dresser, however, has continued her challenge of advance directives in numerous publications, most recently in a critique of Ronald Dworkin's Life's Dominion. Like (...) Rhoden, Dworkin has been a staunch advocate of advance directives as an exercise of what has come to be referred to as prospective or precedent autonomy. In this paper I will consider a number of the issues that Dresser has repeatedly raised about the infirmities of advance directives, and suggest that it is from an understanding of and appreciation for the narrative dimension of the life of a person that advanced directives draw one of their most powerful justifications. (shrink)

The heterodox economic agent is a creature best addressed from a pragmatist perspective. We show how the American Institutional Economics concept of agent offers an essential perspective when evaluating political economic concerns of today. Closely linked to pragmatist literature, American Institutionalism adds a contextual richness to agency theory that is absent from conventional economics. The agent of American Institutionalism, and heterodox economics in general, is a pragmatic creature, operating in real time, constantly trying to solve problems and adapt to ever (...) changing reality. This guides political economic thought toward an evolutionary view and provides an important perspective on the democratic process. (shrink)

Using the theoretical approach he introduced in his acclaimed Religious Reason, and drawing on contemporary rationalist ethical theory as well as a variety of religious traditions and issues, Ronald M. Green here provides a simple, effective model for understanding the complexity of religious life. He shows clearly and convincingly that the basic processes of religious reasoning are the same everywhere and that they give rise, in perfectly understandable ways, to the rich diversity of religious expression worldwide. This is (...) a major resource for courses in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Written by an international assembly of leading philosophers, this volume offers students, teachers and general readers a rich and sophisticated introduction to the major non-Western philosophical traditions - particularly Chinese, Indian, Buddhist and Islamic philosophies. African and Polynesian thinking are also covered by way of historical and contemporary survey articles.The text is organized around a series of central topics concerning conceptions of reality and divinity, of causality, of truth, of the nature of rationality, of selfhood, of humankind and nature, (...) of the good, of aesthetic values, and of social and political ideals. Outstanding scholars present essays that articulate the distinctive ways in which these specific problems have been formulated and addressed in the non-Western traditions against the background of their varied historical and cultural presuppositions. (shrink)

The burden of this piece is to draw together into a coherent whole the somewhat diverse strands of Israel Scheffler's thought on the philosophy of religion. Extrapolating from personal discussions with Professor Scheffler, various of his books, articles, and other unpublished materials authored and kindly provided by him, I contend that he adumbrates a post-empiricist rendering of religious belief which masterfully avoids some philosophical problems, while unwittingly giving rise to others. Committed to the view that the methodology of science – (...) in one or other of its more acceptable guises – provides the most reliable measure of the content and structure of reality. Scheffler is bound conceptually to redefine Jewish belief in such a way that the traditional conflict between religion and science never emerges. Consistent with this end, he is concerned to divest traditional Judaism of its metaphysical garb, so that what remains are simply the matters of living to which religion ought properly on his view address itself. The Bible is thus reconceptualized as a piece of rich literature, of no real difference in logical kind to any other piece of rich literature, except that it defines uniquely, along with the Torah and other relevant Jewish literature, the history of the particular community whose perception of human values and meaningfulness forms the core of what it is to be Jewish. (shrink)

In his professional life, Richard Posner is addressed as inasmuch as he is Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He is also a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. Finally, he is a prolific author of books and articles in scholarly journals in which he expounds at length and with copious footnotes his particular views of jurisprudence and public policy. One of his frequent intellectual adversaries, legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin, wryly (...) described Judge Posner as. (shrink)

In May 1998, a distinguished group of philosophers met in Munich to discuss the rationality of theism. This volume is a collection of the papers read at that conference. While in recent years the rationality of theistic belief has been widely discussed, the Munich conference was an event of some moment in the history of philosophical dialogue: for the first time German- and English-speaking philosophers of religion, representatives of both the Continental and the Anglo-Saxon traditions, joined together to grapple with (...) a common philosophical theme. This multiplicity of perspectives brought a unique richness to the analysis of rationality that no one tradition by itself could provide. Readers will find that richness displayed in the pages of this book. Professional philosophers will find here a great deal to stimulate and challenge them; but graduate students, capable undergraduates, and all others with a serious interest in the philosophy of religion will be well rewarded for their efforts to come to grips with these thought-provoking papers. (shrink)

In May 1998, a distinguished group of philosophers met in Munich to discuss the rationality of theism. This volume is a collection of the papers read at that conference. While in recent years the rationality of theistic belief has been widely discussed, the Munich conference was an event of some moment in the history of philosophical dialogue: for the first time German- and English-speaking philosophers of religion, representatives of both the Continental and the Anglo-Saxon traditions, joined together to grapple with (...) a common philosophical theme. This multiplicity of perspectives brought a unique richness to the analysis of rationality that no one tradition by itself could provide. Readers will find that richness displayed in the pages of this book. Professional philosophers will find here a great deal to stimulate and challenge them; but graduate students, capable undergraduates, and all others with a serious interest in the philosophy of religion will be well rewarded for their efforts to come to grips with these thought-provoking papers. (shrink)

In his professional life, Richard Posner is addressed as “Your Honor,” inasmuch as he is Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He is also a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. Finally, he is a prolific author of books and articles in scholarly journals in which he expounds at length and with copious footnotes his particular views of jurisprudence and public policy. One of his frequent intellectual adversaries, legal philosopher Ronald (...) Dworkin, wryly described Judge Posner as “the lazy judge who writes a book before breakfast, decides several cases before noon, teaches all afternoon at the Chicago Law School, and performs brain surgery after dinner.”. (shrink)

This is the first publication of these ideas in book form. 'It is a rare treat--important, original philosophy that is also a pleasure to read.

This chapter contains section titled: Part I Part II Part III Part IV.

Many people assume that the claims of scientists are objective truths. But historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science have long argued that scientific claims reflect the particular historical, cultural, and social context in which those claims were made. The nature of scientific knowledge is not absolute because it is influenced by the practice and perspective of human agents. Scientific Perspectivism argues that the acts of observing and theorizing are both perspectival, and this nature makes scientific knowledge contingent, as Thomas Kuhn (...) theorized forty years ago. Using the example of color vision in humans to illustrate how his theory of “perspectivism” works, Ronald N. Giere argues that colors do not actually exist in objects; rather, color is the result of an interaction between aspects of the world and the human visual system. Giere extends this argument into a general interpretation of human perception and, more controversially, to scientific observation, conjecturing that the output of scientific instruments is perspectival. Furthermore, complex scientific principles—such as Maxwell’s equations describing the behavior of both the electric and magnetic fields—make no claims about the world, but models based on those principles can be used to make claims about specific aspects of the world. Offering a solution to the most contentious debate in the philosophy of science over the past thirty years, Scientific Perspectivism will be of interest to anyone involved in the study of science. (shrink)

The underlying thesis of the research in ethical autonomy for lethal autonomous unmanned systems is that they will potentially be capable of performing more ethically on the battlefield than are human soldiers. In this article this hypothesis is supported by ongoing and foreseen technological advances and perhaps equally important by an assessment of the fundamental ability of human warfighters in today's battlespace. If this goal of better-than-human performance is achieved, even if still imperfect, it can result in a reduction in (...) noncombatant casualties and property damage consistent with adherence to the Laws of War as prescribed in international treaties and conventions, and is thus worth pursuing vigorously. (shrink)

In Dangerous Minds, Ronald Beiner traces the deeper philosophical roots of such far-right ideologues as Richard Spencer, Aleksandr Dugin, and Steve Bannon, to the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger—and specifically to the aspects of their thought that express revulsion for the liberal-democratic view of life.

Despite both positive and negative perceptions of the current state of higher education, the contemporary debate over what it is to be a university is limited. Most of all, it is limited imaginatively. The range of imagined options is narrow. The imagination has not been given anything even approaching a wide scope. As a result, our sense as to what a university could be and could become in the modern age is itself impoverished. If we are seriously to develop a (...) wide range of ideas of the university that is adequate to the challenges of the modern world, the imagination itself needs to be freed. Imagining the University seeks to address each of these sets of issues and will do so by first, identifying a very wide range of ideas of the university as it is now unfolding and could become; secondly, by evaluating those conceptions of the university with a classification of ideas of the university; and thirdly, by reflecting on the imagination itself, its current impoverishment and its possibilities. Whether studying, researching or deciding policy, this book is vital reading to all those involved in the planning and delivery of higher education. (shrink)

Religious atheism? -- The universe -- Religious freedom -- Death and immortality.

Ronald Barnett pursues this quest through an exploration of pairs of contending concepts that speak to the idea of the university such as space and time; being ...

All these specialist aspects of one life are different facets of the intellectual diamond which scintillates in the huge quarry of The Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. This is the quintessential man, the bundle of contradictions passionately dedicated to intellect, at times carrying the rational argument to irrational extremes; the natural-born emotional adventurer forever hampered by orphaned youth and too-early marriage. This Russell in the round is greater than the sum of his constituent parts, a man of (...) epic proportions, struggling through a lifetime beset with frustration and near-disaster; in youth the constitutional sceptic, in old age the sometimes splendid figure with "courage never to submit or yield.". (shrink)

Inner speech is commonly understood as the conscious experience of a voice within the mind. One recurrent theme in the scientific literature is that the phenomenon involves a representation of overt speech, for example, a representation of phonetic properties that result from a copy of speech instructions that were ultimately suppressed. I propose a larger picture that involves some embodied objects and their misperception. I call it “the Body Error Theory,” or BET for short. BET is a form of illusionism, (...) but the particular version I favor is a cross-modal illusion. Newly described here, my hypothesis is that the experience of inner speech arises from a mix of interoception and audition. Specifically, there is the detection of slight but well-confirmed activities in the speech musculature that occur during inner speech, which helps to transform representations of normal but quiet nonverbal sounds that inevitably occur during inner speech, from breathing to background noise, into a mistaken perception of inner speech. Simply put, activities in the speech musculature mix with sounds to create the appearance of speech sounds, which thus explains the “voice within the mind.” I also show how BET’s cross-modal system fits with standard information processing accounts for speech monitoring and how it accommodates the central insights of leading theories of inner speech. In addition, I show how BET is supported by data from experience-sampling surveys and how it can be empirically tested against its rivals. (shrink)

The part that the university plays is increasingly of external and economic value, ignoring the importance of the value of knowledge in itself. By analyzing the university's current relationship with knowledge, this book tackles the problem head-on. It considers how the concept of knowledge can be reclaimed in an era of post truth and alternative fact, provides conceptual tools for people to think and debate about knowledge and education in new ways and offers a clear focus for the future development (...) of academia. This fascinating book is recommended reading to anyone engaged with the idea of rethinking universities in the 21st century. (shrink)

Meaning and communication -- Mighty dead: Kant and Hegel -- Scorekeeping -- Sentence meaning, term meaning, Anaphora -- Empirical content and empirical knowledge -- Logical discourse -- Representation and communication -- Objectivity and phenomenalism about norms.

Forty years ago, Vaughn Ball demonstrated that the then received notion of conditional relevance served no useful purpose, as it would only come into effect if the probability of an element were 0.0. But, if the probability of an element were 0.0, a directed verdict would be in order and so once again conditional relevancy was doing no work. I extended that analysis to include the relationship between proffers of evidence and facts of consequence to demonstrate that the work that (...) conditional relevancy was supposedly doing was isomorphic to that done by relevancy in all significant ways, and yet the Federal Rules of Evidence provide different standards for the two situations to determine admissibility. I thus proposed an amendment to FRE 104(b) to provide for the same standard to be applied to ‘relevancy’ and ‘conditional relevancy’. In a recent article, Matthew Kotzen appears to subject this work to intense scrutiny and criticism, yet at the same time reaches, so far as I can tell, identical conclusions. This raises the question, which I examine, whether this is an example of cross-disciplinary difficulties in communication. (shrink)