Both contemporary popular and scholarly discourse on teacher development and evaluation assumes the truth of a certain view of normative human behavior, one that holds that skill in a given domain is predicated upon the application of maxims, rules, or principles in a given situation. Such a view would allow one to isolate behaviors associated with expert practice, distill the rules that give rise to them, and both develop new teachers and evaluate practicing teachers on the basis (...) of such maxims. In this essay, Derek Gottlieb argues that the phenomenon of skillful teaching, and studies thereof, expose the inconsistencies and confusion underlying this model, encouraging the field generally to consider alternative holistic accounts of expert teacher practice as we seek to train and appraise great teachers. (shrink)

Se realizó revisión bibliográfica sobre la adquisición de las habilidades de razonamiento clínico en los estudiantes de medicina y sus principales deficiencias, los principios didácticos que rigen la actividad y el desarrollo de las habilidades en la Educación General, así como su aplicación en el proceso de enseñanza- aprendizaje en la carrera de Medicina, concretados en cómo realizar el enfoque de dicho proceso en los diferentes momentos de la actividad: orientación, ejecución y control. A bibliographical revision on Medicine students acquisition (...) of clinical reasoning skills and its main shortcomings, the didactic principles that rule the activity and development of skills in General education as well as its implementation in the teaching learning process in medicine, focused on how to approach to such a process in the different stages of the activity: guidance, implementation and control, was carried out. (shrink)

Play is becoming increasingly central to our society. This is not only confirmed by the excessive attention for sports in mass media. In the corporate world also, particularly in management, the importance of play is acknowledged, as well in, for instance, role training, meeting skills, and team-building. The annual “outward bound” business retreat often includes group play. Metaphorically as well, life and professional life have come to be viewed as a game. Without batting an eyelid, speculators play their virtual game (...) in the financial markets as if they were no longer aware that their actions also affect the real economy. More and more people increasingly lose themselves in play. Since the 1950s, play has also... (shrink)

In the late 1980s, there were many who heralded the emergence of connectionism as a new paradigm – one which would eventually displace the classically symbolic methods then dominant in AI and Cognitive Science. At present, there remain influential connectionists who continue to defend connectionism as a more realistic paradigm for modeling cognition, at all levels of abstraction, than the classical methods of AI. Not infrequently, one encounters arguments along these lines: given what we know about neurophysiology, it is just (...) not plausible to suppose that our brains are digital computers. Thus, they could not support a classical architecture. I argue here for a middle ground between connectionism and classicism. I assume, for argument's sake, that some form(s) of connectionism can provide reasonably approximate models – at least for lower-level cognitive processes. Given this assumption, I argue on theoretical and empirical grounds that most human mental skills must reside in separate connectionist modules or sub-networks. Ultimately, it is argued that the basic tenets of connectionism, in conjunction with the fact that humans often employ novel combinations of skill modules in rule following and problem solving, lead to the plausible conclusion that, in certain domains, high level cognition requires some form of classical architecture. During the course of argument, it emerges that only an architecture with classical structure could support the novel patterns of information flow and interaction that would exist among the relevant set of modules. Such a classical architecture might very well reside in the abstract levels of a hybrid system whose lower-level modules are purely connectionist. (shrink)

Many have thought that exercises of skill are intentional. The argument of the paper is that this thesis fails to account for important types of mistakes and errors. In what psychologists and linguists call “verbal slips with semantic bias”, a speaker mistakenly switches, reverses, or blends certain conceptual contents. Nevertheless, the speaker has successfully exercised an intellectual skill, insofar as her slip uses concepts in conformity to semantic and logical rules. To flesh out how one might successfully (...) exercise skills without doing so intentionally, the paper appeals to the idea of habit. Verbal slips thus show how human skillfulness has a considerably wider scope than is often supposed. (shrink)

The nature of the cognition-motor interface has been brought to prominence by Butterfill & Sinigaglia, who argue that the representations employed by the cognitive and motor systems should not be able to interact with each other. Here I argue that recent empirical evidence concerning the interface contradicts several of the assumptions incorporated in Butterfill & Sinigaglia’s account, and I seek to develop a theoretical picture that will allow us to explain the structure of the interface presented by this evidence. The (...) central idea is that neural plasticity incorporates metarepresentational rules for constructing representational systems and linking them. The structure of the cognition-motor interface is constructed flexibly during development and skill learning based on information processing demands. (shrink)

In this paper I explore what the P4C philosophical novel can contribute to deciding how we should use ethical rules in moral education. As I see it the philosophical novel urges us to regard ethical rule-following with some suspicion. Instead we are directed to appreciate the particular contexts and circumstances of ethical thinking, saying, and doing. But if we don’t teach ethics by the rules, then what is the alternative pedagogy? One possibility is to cultivate ethical expertise by (...) analogy to an epistemic skill model of practical activity, as some moral particularists have urged. Employing a skill model has significant implications for teaching ethics in a wide range of institutional settings where general rules and principles typically prevail. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to investigate the trending term: “Netiquette” as an important element in the effective digital citizenship. The research suggests a systematic framework of netiquette rules in the field of online education based on the classical core rules of netiquette and according to the digital citizenship scale (DCS). The research also studies the corresponding responsibilities of both educators and students to raise awareness towards using technology in a balanced, safe, smart and ethical way as the shift (...) towards the digital activities increased significantly in the post-corona time. Design/methodology/approach The research used the qualitative data that were based on the everyday observation and analysis of the online education experience at the university of Jordan in the academic year 2020/2021; the online group discussions of students and teachers; and investigating the guidelines of the online learning netiquette rules in various academic institutes. Comparative analysis was conducted to merge and eliminate redundant rules and to add sub rules, and then to cluster them into groups. The suggested clustered groups were distributed into the classical core rules outline of netiquette. In each core rule, the sub rules were reclassified and recategorized according to the DCS by studying the complexity levels and their corresponding factors. The suggested framework updates and adds DCS levels and factors considering the exceptional experience of online education through the pandemic. Findings The research finds that “Netiquette” had been neglected in cyber ethics literature, and so it has to be rediscovered through the lens of digital citizenship that becomes very noticeable issue in the post-COVID era. So, the research presents a systematic framework that outlines more than 150 netiquette sub rules in the field of online education, and that were clustered according to DCS and the classical core rules of netiquette. It also adds a new factor to the bottom level of DCS which is the primarily skills and traits, and also updates the internet and political activism fac-tor by adding the social perspective. Originality/value A novel classification of the classical core rules of netiquette was proposed in the field of online education to serve as a spectrum of identifying the complexity of digital citizenship levels and factors. This research can be a starting point of more works on netiquette research in online education and on other fields such as online business meetings, social media networking and online gaming. (shrink)

The nature of the cognition-motor interface has been brought to prominence by Butterfill & Sinigaglia, who argue that the representations employed by the cognitive and motor systems should not be able to interact with each other. Here I argue that recent empirical evidence concerning the interface contradicts several of the assumptions incorporated in Butterfill & Sinigaglia’s account, and I seek to develop a theoretical picture that will allow us to explain the structure of the interface presented by this evidence. The (...) central idea is that neural plasticity incorporates metarepresentational rules for constructing representational systems and linking them. The structure of the cognition-motor interface is constructed flexibly during development and skill learning based on information processing demands. (shrink)

We assume that acting ethically is a skill. We then use a phenomenological description of five stages of skill acquisition to argue that an ethics based on principles corresponds to a beginner’s reliance on rules and so is developmentally inferior to an ethics based on expert response that claims that, after long experience, the ethical expert learns to respond appropriately to each unique situation. The skills model thus supports an ethics of situated involvement such as that of (...) Aristotle, John Dewey, and Carol Gilligan against the detached, rationalist ethics of Kant, John Rawls, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Jürgen Habermas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fashioning the "Order of Saint Clare." A Rule illuminated by Neri da Rimini:Princeton University Library MS 83 in contextFrances Andrews (bio) and Louise Bourdua (bio)KeywordsRule of Urban IV, Clare of Assisi, Urbanist Clare nuns, Manuscript illumination, Neri da RiminiIntroduction1This interdisciplinary essay is an investigation of an illuminated, early 14th-century copy of the rule of the "Order of Saint Clare" issued by Pope Urban IV in 1263, now in Princeton. (...) It examines the unprecedented visual language adopted in a female Franciscan context to authorize their way of life, and places the manuscript in context, exploring how it relates to other early representations showing Saints Francis and Clare together and documenting the production of this and comparable early rule manuscripts, including a previously unpublished copy now in Venice.2Thousands of manuscript copies of rules of life were produced in and for late medieval religious houses and their members, good numbers of which remain extant, though these are scarce remnants of what must originally have been produced. Rules do sometimes appear in extant library inventories,3 but unlike individual books destined for personal [End Page 75] prayer or study and ultimately deposit in a conventual library, their primary purpose was as legal texts binding all who professed them.4 In their iterative function, read and reread, alone or aloud in the community, they were comparable to liturgical books, though they were not for use in church nor kept in the sacristy.5 In the rule of Urban IV for the Order of Saint Clare investigated here, chapter twenty-four required that the rule be read and explained annually by the visitator, while the final chapter emphasized that it be read once each fortnight lest the sisters neglect it.6 This sort of repetition must have ensured most nuns knew the rule by memory, having first encountered its details as novices, with no need to own the text. Copies were perhaps in the hands of the abbess, a visitator, or other monastic superior, or kept in the chapter room or refectory, ready for routine use.7 Nonetheless, wealthier women may have had a copy prepared or received one as a gift, either on entering the religious life or on becoming a superior responsible for its observance.8Princeton University Library, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, MS 83, contains a Latin, [End Page 76] professionally made and illuminated copy of the text designed to substitute existing rules, including the 1219 Forma Vitae issued by Cardinal Hugolino and the rule of Innocent IV from 1247.9 Clare's own hard-fought for rule, approved in 1253, was initially for the San Damiano community alone and was followed in subsequent decades by a very small group of houses.10 The making of Urban IV's rule, adopted instead by hundreds of communities, has been much discussed, but the survival of this early illuminated copy has gone unnoticed outside the library catalog.11 The manuscript includes the earliest extant sequence known to us showing Clare of Assisi receiving the rule from the pope and in turn taking the profession of her sisters, images designed to legitimize the new order by building ties to its "founder" while yet acknowledging its papal origins. Among extant imagery it is pioneering. The large, illuminated initials have been recognized as painted by Nerius da Rimini and his workshop but the case has never been set out and PUL MS 83 has [End Page 77] not been included in accounts of this artist's production.12 Better known as "Neri," he is a comparatively well-documented manuscript illuminator whose signatures sometimes survive on his work, a rare practice at this date.13Historians of medieval women religious are by now familiar with books produced by women themselves.14 A beautiful manuscript, for example, containing Bonaventure's Legenda Maior of Saint Francis, the Vita beati Antonii and documents relating to the Portiuncula indulgence was written in Latin in 1337 by two sisters, Elspet von Amberk and Katerina von Purchausen, perhaps living in the Paradies convent in Diessenhofen (Switzerland).15 Other women have been identified as skilled illuminators.16 The prolific activity of... (shrink)

In defending the view that justice is the advantage of the stronger, Thrasymachus puzzlingly claims that rulers never err and that any practitioner of a skill or expertise (τέχνη) is infallible. In what follows, Socrates offers a number of arguments directed against Thrasymachus’ views concerning the nature of skill, ruling, and justice. Commentators typically take a dim view of both Thrasymachus’ claims about skill (which are dismissed as an ungrounded and purely ad hoc response to Socrates’ initial (...) criticisms) and Socrates’ latter arguments (which are deemed extremely weak). In this paper, I clarify Thrasymachus’ views (and those of several other ancients) concerning qua locutions and the nature of skill and ability and I reconstruct Socrates’ arguments against Thrasymachus’ views concerning skill and justice. I argue that Thrasymachus’ views are not ungrounded or ad hoc and that Socrates’ arguments are rather different (and significantly stronger) than often supposed. (shrink)

This article explores how high-functioning children with autism navigate in the social world, specifically how they orient in the realm of norms and standards. In particular, this investigation focuses on rule violations episodes and sheds light on how these children account for their conduct and position themselves in the moral framework. This analysis shows that high-functioning children with autism can actively engage in discourse about norms and transgressions in an initiatory capacity, thereby displaying a mastery of social rules as (...) a guide for appropriate conduct and interpretation of others’ behavior. Furthermore, this article argues that these social skills are linked with the ability to operate with sequentially based understandings: Prior courses of action constitute for the autistic children the fundamental source for reaching an understanding of the normative mechanics of everyday life, and subsequently for constructing their own lines of conduct and themselves as moral agents. (shrink)

Given Bernard Suits’ stature in the philosophy of sport, his take on strategic fouling, surprisingly, hasn’t been given much attention in the literature. Rather than relying on a purely empirical or ‘ethos’ approach to justify the Strategic Foul he provides a mixed justification. Suits’ account combines a priori and a posteriori elements. He introduces a third kind of rule, which appears to be unlike rules of skill or constitutive rules, into his conceptual scheme. Suits claims that it (...) is sometimes tactically correct to break such a rule in order to gain an advantage. I will argue that the a priori element in his justification of strategic fouling is unconvincing because there is nothing special about ‘third type’ rule-violations, which incur a ‘fixed penalty’. Furthermore, the a posteriori element ultimately reduces to a rule of skill, and it is doubtful whether it has sufficient normative force to warrant breaking a rule. But, most importantly, the a posteriori element degrades the power of the a priori element. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present the results of our analysis regarding the development of critical thinking skills for the subject Macedonian language for specific purposes 2, research conducted in the online teaching period in the academic 2019-2020. The appearance of COVID-19 virus in March 2020 and the pandemic that it caused seriously affected the educational process. But the well-established Google Meet and Google Classroom platforms have proven to be a solid foundation for teaching in extraordinary circumstances at (...) SEEU. Our goal in the past period was mainly aimed at developing and improving the critical thinking skills which are clearly defined in the syllabus. Definitions of the term critical thinking are given, as well as the results of our research regarding the development of critical thinking skills during online teaching. In terms of methodology, for each skill an exercise was given, which was assessed by the professor and the students received feedback. Our research covers 7 critical thinking skills. An analysis is emphasized as one of the key skills for developing critical thinking. The ability to apply established personal, professional and social rules and criteria reflects students’ ability to present information in their own way. In the modern world, access to information is readily available. The development of critical thinking by mastering the skill of logical reasoning was aimed at establishing correlations and conclusions that are supported or determined by the above data in the form of a debate on the criteria for successful professional communication. The ability to distinguish is emphasized as one of the skills for developing critical thinking. The novelties in the future should be mainly focused on the main challenge, which is the motivation of the students for active participation because according to our expected results there was more pressure for their activity on Google Meet, but they showed significant interest in the exercises that affected the final grade (according to our previous experience, that was characteristic for the period of teaching with physical presence). The active involvement of the students, but also the additional engagement of the professors in these extraordinary circumstances will contribute to a quality and smooth mastering of the skills for critical analysis. (shrink)

Stichter’s The Skillfulness of Virtue provides an original and contemporary discussion of virtue-acquisition from an interdisciplinary standpoint. By equating virtues to skills, he offers an empirically informed progression towards virtue expertise. With the focus on gaining proficiency, there is little room to analyse the status of the virtue-novice, who is equated to a novice in any other skill: an agent consciously following simple rules, gaining experience in order to respond to normatively-laden situations with more automaticity in the following (...) stages of skill-acquisition. This paper argues for a disanalogy between the virtue novice and novices in other skills, resulting from the understanding that follows from learning virtue words such as ‘kindness’ and ‘honesty’. Our brains are structured to find and subsequently use patterns to skilfully move around in our environment. These patterns can be represented in what Stichter calls ‘schemas’ or mental models of categorisations. Virtue words refer to patterns that would be difficult to categorise without linguistic labels, as instances of these categories are highly divergent. Virtue words are thus learned through examples of virtuous behaviour. Moreover, as virtue words are thick ethical concepts, they contain a normative load. I argue that due to these characteristics, novices who use virtue vocabulary are in a more advanced position than novices in other skills. So, a kindness novice who understands the word ‘kind’ has a better idea of how to act kindly than the chess novice has an idea of how to play chess by understanding the word ‘chess’. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDiffraction gratings are famously associated with Henry Rowland of Johns Hopkins University but there were precursors. Although gratings were first made and used in Europe, reliable machines for ruling gratings were developed in the USA, and two men, Lewis Rutherfurd and William Rogers, tackled the problem before Rowland. Rutherfurd, a wealthy independent astronomer, designed and built the first screw-operated engine for ruling diffraction gratings, the fore-runner of almost all subsequent ruling engines. With it he and his assistant D. C. Chapman (...) ruled many gratings which he generously distributed to practising scientists, thereby materially advancing the science of spectroscopy. Rogers was a Harvard astronomer who developed an interest in the ruling of fine lines on glass that led him to construct a ruling engine with which he investigated the causes of the errors in the rulings he had examined. He continued to seek improvements with a second engine designed for ruling diffraction gratings. He ceased developing this engine when Rowland’s excellent gratings began to be available, concentrating instead on related problems to which he could apply the knowledge and skills he had gained, but his investigations assisted Rowland and other later ruling engine builders. This paper brings together what is known about the ruling engines of Rutherfurd and Rogers, their development, the gratings they produced, their quality and the work that was done with them, and assesses and compares their achievements and the impacts of the work of these two men. (shrink)

Austin's distinction between locutionary and illocutionary acts has offered a fruitful way of focussing the relation between language and communication. In particular, by adopting the distinction we attend to linguistic and communicative subjects as actors, not just processors or conduits of information. Yet in many attempts to explicate the constitution of illocutionary acts the subject as actor is subsumed within the role of linguistic rules or conventions. I propose an account of illocutionary acts in which rules or conventions (...) are secondary to what I call communicative skills. These skills are taken as the primary component of communicative competence. They are derived from the principle that linguistic communication is not ultimately a linguistic matter, but relates instead to the way a communicator uses language. This principle is found in the work of Donald Davidson, but Davidson has tended to concentrate on semantics, and leaves the details of linguistic communication for pragmatics. The aim of this paper is to defend the general principle and supply some pragmatic details. (shrink)

The Hoffman Report scandal demonstrates that ethics is not objective and ahistorical, contradicting the comforting progressive story about ethics many students receive. This modern-day ethical failure illustrates some of the weaknesses of the current ethics code: it is rule-based, emphasizes punishments for noncompliance, and assumes a rational actor who can make tricky ethical decisions using a cost–benefit analysis. This rational emphasis translates into pedagogy: the cure for unethical behavior is more education. Yet such an approach seems unlikely to foster ethical (...) behavior in the real world, either for students or for mature scientists. This article argues for an alternative ethical system and a different way of teaching ethical behavior. Virtue ethics emphasizes the development of ethical habits and traits through regular practice and reflection. We show how virtue ethics complements a feminist approach to science, in which scientists are encouraged to reflect on their own biases, rather than attempting to achieve an impossible objectivity. Our article concludes with pedagogical suggestions for teaching ethical behavior as a practical and intelligent skill. (shrink)

Today, after the family, the school is the first institution in which children experience the implementation of social rules and the behaviors that follow from them. It is useful, therefore, to insert paths that favor the consolidation of a system made up of rules, inspired by the principles of transparency, fairness and solidarity, which can be the first and most effective lesson of democratic legality. In this perspective, teaching activities can appropriately refer to the programmatic contents of the (...) disciplines which, not only with regard specifically to civic education and law, but also with regard to other cultural areas, are bearers of explicit information and formative experiences. Particular attention is paid today to the planning of “Percorsi per le Competenze Trasversali e l’Orientamento” [Paths for Soft Skills and Guidance] (PCTO), which will also have an implicit educational value, that consisting in showing, through field experiences, the convergence of multiple cultural interests towards the purpose of education to legality. (shrink)

The corporate scandals of the twenty-first century have necessitated ethical behavior as a major component of the organizational process. These scandals occurred despite the ethical rules and laws in place, implying that rules and laws might not be effective in ensuring the ethical behavior of organizational participants at all times. Hence, a better approach to handling ethical decisions may be virtue ethics which demand the building of ethical character that intrinsically drives ethical behavior. Prudence was studied as a (...) virtue which builds character and can moderate ethical behavior. The moderating role of prudence was studied in the context of organizational political behavior. Employee political behavior in organizations can have either positive or negative consequences; hence, it is in the realm of ethical decision-making. Since studies have not identified how individuals can self-regulate their desire for political behavior, the study proposed political prudence, a character-building virtue, as a self-regulating variable which can be used by individuals to avoid drifting to the dark side of political behavior. The study participants were drawn from three organizations in Lagos, Nigeria, and a cross-sectional research design was adopted for data collection. The results confirmed that political prudence moderated the effects of political will on political behavior such that individuals engaged in benevolent political will and avoided self-serving political will. The importance of the findings is that organizations have a means of steering participants away from the dark side to the bright side of political behavior which is useful for productivity. (shrink)

My goal in this article is to explore the extent to which the conception of rule-following which emerges from Wittgenstein’s later works can also yield important insights concerning the nature of technological practices. In particular, this article aims to examine how two interrelated themes of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations can be applied in the philosophical analysis of technology. Our first theme concerns linguistic practice; broadly construed, it is the claim that the use of language cannot be understood as determined by a (...) system of context independent rules. The second, interrelated theme emerges as a consequence of the first; that the meaning of language is rendered indeterminate when analyzed in isolation from contexts of practice. Following the common tendency in the sociology of technology to draw analogies between language and technology, I aim to show how the arguments that Wittgenstein makes for these two claims concerning language can also help us to understand the relation between technical artifacts and technological practices. For, similar to Wittgenstein’s account of rules, it will be shown how artifacts cannot be adequately understood in isolation from a wider background of skillful practice and interpretation. To illustrate this idea, we will examine the case of the Geiger counter, with a view towards illustrating how important aspects of the function of the device are rendered indeterminate when assessed on the basis of physical design alone. (shrink)

In spite of numerous outstanding recent contributions on Aristotle’s dialectic, it seems that our picture of dialectic in the Topics is not yet clear enough to settle the questions concerning the purpose and utility of dialectic. Thegoalofthispaperisamore modest one, simply to clarify our notion of dialectic and the skills involved. Thisinvestigation will allow us to draw some conclusions concerning their relevance to Aristotle’s philosophical inquiry.The paper formulates and systematizes the rules for dialectica ldisputations in Topics Book I and III (...) so as to reveal their epistemic, logical, and psychological peculiarities. First, it is argued that so-called constitutive rules offer a framework for both good and bad, fair and unfair argumentative discourse in question-answer form. Second, strategic rules are demonstrated to yield logical and epistemic moves to enhance good argument and the search for justified truth claims through debate. (shrink)

Skilful expertise is grounded in practical, performative knowledge-how, not in detached, spectatorial knowledge-that, and knowledge-how is embodied by habitual dispositions, not representation of facts and rules. Consequently, as action control is a key requirement for the intelligent selection, initiation, and regulation of skilful performance, habitual action control, i.e. the kind of action control based on habitual dispositions, is the true hallmark of skill and the only veridical criterion to evaluate expertise. Not only does this imply that knowledge-that does (...) not make your actions more skilful, but it also implies that it makes them less skilful. This thesis, that I call Radical Habitualism, finds a precursor in Hubert Dreyfus. His approach is considered extreme by most philosophers of skill & expertise: an agent –says Dreyfus– does not perform like an expert when they lack the embodied dispositions necessary to control their action habitually or when they stop relying on such dispositions to control their actions. Thus, one cannot perform skilfully if their actions are guided by representations (isomorphic schemas, explicit rules, and contentful instructions), as the know-that that they convey disrupts or diminishes the agent’s habitual engagement with the task at hand. In defence of Radical Habitualism, I will argue that only the contentless know-how embedded in habitual dispositions fulfils (i) the genetic, (ii) the normative, and (iii) the epistemic requirements of skilful performance. I will examine the phenomenological premises supporting Dreyfus’ approach, clarify their significance for a satisfactory normative and explanatory account of skilful expertise, and rebut the most common objections raised by both intellectualists and conciliatory habitualists, concerning hybrid actions guided by a mix of habitual and representational forms of control. In revisiting Dreyfus anti-representationalist approach, I will particularly focus on its epistemological implications, de-emphasizing other considerations related to conscious awareness. (shrink)

We study the uncertain dichotomous choice model. In this model a set of decision makers is required to select one of two alternatives, say ‘support’ or ‘reject’ a certain proposal. Applications of this model are relevant to many areas, such as political science, economics, business and management. The purpose of this paper is to estimate and compare the probabilities that different decision rules may be optimal. We consider the expert rule, the majority rule and a few in-between rules. (...) The information on the decisional skills is incomplete, and these skills arise from an exponential distribution. It turns out that the probability that the expert rule is optimal far exceeds the probability that the majority rule is optimal, especially as the number of the decision makers becomes large. (shrink)

This book describes a novel methodology for studying algorithmic skills, intended as cognitive activities related to rule-based symbolic transformation, and argues that some human computational abilities may be interpreted and analyzed as genuine examples of extended cognition. It shows that the performance of these abilities relies not only on innate neurocognitive systems or language-related skills, but also on external tools and general agent–environment interactions. Further, it asserts that a low-level analysis, based on a set of core neurocognitive systems linking numbers (...) and language, is not sufficient to explain some specific forms of high-level numerical skills, like those involved in algorithm execution. To this end, it reports on the design of a cognitive architecture for modeling all the relevant features involved in the execution of algorithmic strategies, including external tools, such as paper and pencils. The first part of the book discusses the philosophical premises for endorsing and justifying a position in philosophy of mind that links a modified form of computationalism with some recent theoretical and scientific developments, like those introduced by the so-called dynamical approach to cognition. The second part is dedicated to the description of a Turing-machine-inspired cognitive architecture, expressly designed to formalize all kinds of algorithmic strategies. (shrink)

While sport has been practised since pre-historic times, it is a relatively new subject of systematic philosophical enquiry. Indeed, the philosophy of sport as an academic sub-field dates back only to the 1970s. Yet, in this short time, it has grown into a vibrant area of philosophical research that promises both to deepen our understanding of sport and to inform sports practice. Recent controversies at the elite and professional level have highlighted the ethical dimensions of sport in particular. Lance Armstrong’s (...) use of performance-enhancing drugs raised new issues in the ethics of cheating, middle-distance runner Caster Semenya has challenged prevailing rules around sex classification in sport, and Oscar Pistorius’s prosthesis has problematized the distinction between able-bodied and disabled sport. While philosophical analysis may help to achieve a deeper understanding of sport, such analysis may also illuminate problems of philosophy beyond sport, ranging from the nature of skill to the ethics of altruism. -/- This entry proceeds in three sections. Section 1 introduces the philosophy of sport with particular emphasis on the history of systematic philosophical thinking about sport. Section 2 examines the nature and value of sport, and it considers the main normative theories of sport developed in the literature. Section 3 addresses a cluster of topics that are central to the philosophy of sport, including: sportsmanship; cheating; performance enhancement; violent and dangerous sport; sex, gender, and race; fans and spectators; disability sport; and the aesthetics of sport. (shrink)

Theories of skill acquisition have made radically different predictions about the role of general problem‐solving methods in acquiring rules that promote effective transfer to new problems. Under one view, methods that focus on reaching specific goals, such as means‐ends analysis, are assumed to provide the basis for efficient knowledge compilation (Anderson, 1987), whereas under an alternative view such methods are believed to disrupt rule induction (Sweller, 1988). We suggest that the role of general methods in learning varies with (...) both the specificity of the problem solver's goal and the systematicity of the strategies used for testing hypotheses about rules. In the absence of a specific goal people are more likely to use a rule‐induction learning strategy, whereas provision of a specific goal fosters use of difference reduction, which tends to be a non‐rule‐induction strategy. We performed two experiments to investigate the impact of goal specificity and systematicity of rule‐induction strategies in learning and transfer within a complex dynamic system. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that during free exploration of a problem space, greater learning occurred if participants adopted more systematic strategies for rule induction, and that participants come to favor such strategies. Experiment 2 revealed that participants who were provided with a specific goal performed well on the initial problem but were impaired on a transfer test using a similar problem with a different goal. Instruction on a systematic rule‐induction strategy facilitated solution for both the initial and transfer problems, but participants' use of this strategy declined if they had a specific goal. Our results support Sweller's (1988) proposal that general problemsolving methods applied to a specific goal foster acquisition of knowledge about an isolated solution path but do not provide an effective way of learning the overall structure of a problem space. We interpret these results in terms of dualspace theories of search through problem space. (shrink)

Pierre Bourdieu has developed a philosophy of social science, grounded in the phenomenological tradition, which treats knowledge as a practical ability embodied in skilful behaviour, rather than an intellectual capacity for the representation and manipulation of propositional knowledge. He invokes Wittgenstein’s remarks on rule-following as one way of explicating the idea that knowledge is a skill. Bourdieu’s conception of tacit knowledge is a dispositional one, adopted to avoid a perceived dilemma for methodological individualism. That dilemma requires either the explanation (...) of regularities in social behaviour as the result of the tacit representation of procedural rules (‘legalism’) or the self-conscious representation of behavioural goals (‘voluntarism’) by individuals. After explaining the apparent dilemma, I then argue that Wittgenstein’s remarks on rule following actually undermine, rather than support, a dispositional solution. Nonetheless, the philosophy of social science can survive without a dispositional account of knowledge. Such a social science needs, firstly, to embrace one horn of the dilemma, voluntarism, provided that the relevant regularities can be explained as unintended consequences of agents’ self-represented intentions. Secondly, such a social science should treat theorists’ interpretations as unifying generalizations, not hypotheses about the acquisition of tacit knowledge. Finally, where appeal to cognitive psychology can distinguish otherwise equivalent theories in social science, social science should incorporate the data of cognitive psychology concerning tacit mental processes. (shrink)

My goal in this article is to explore the extent to which the conception of rule-following which emerges from Wittgenstein’s later works can also yield important insights concerning the nature of technological practices. In particular, this article aims to examine how two interrelated themes of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations can be applied in the philosophical analysis of technology. Our first theme concerns linguistic practice; broadly construed, it is the claim that the use of language cannot be understood as determined by a (...) system of context independent rules. The second, interrelated theme emerges as a consequence of the first; that the meaning of language is rendered indeterminate when analyzed in isolation from contexts of practice. Following the common tendency in the sociology of technology to draw analogies between language and technology, I aim to show how the arguments that Wittgenstein makes for these two claims concerning language can also help us to understand the relation between technical artifacts and technological practices. For, similar to Wittgenstein’s account of rules, it will be shown how artifacts cannot be adequately understood in isolation from a wider background of skillful practice and interpretation. To illustrate this idea, we will examine the case of the Geiger counter, with a view towards illustrating how important aspects of the function of the device are rendered indeterminate when assessed on the basis of physical design alone. (shrink)

The present study investigates shared representations of syntactic knowledge in music and action. We examined whether expectancy violations in musical harmonic sequences are also perceived as violations of the movement sequences necessary to produce them. Pianists imitated silent videos showing one hand playing chord sequences on a muted keyboard. Results indicate that, despite the absence of auditory feedback, imitation of a chord is fastest when it is congruent with the preceding harmonic context. This suggests that the harmonic rules implied (...) by observed actions induce expectations that influence action execution. As evidence that these predictions are derived at a high representational level, imitation was more accurate for harmonically incongruent chords than for congruent chords executed with unconventional fingering. The magnitude of the effects of context and goal prioritization increased with musical training. Thus, musical training may lead to a domain-general representation of musical grammar, i.e., to a grammar of action. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an ecological-enactive perspective on the role rules play in linguistic behaviour. I formulate and motivate the hypothesis that metalinguistic reflexivity – our ability to talk about talking – is constitutive of linguistic normativity. On first sight, this hypothesis might seem to fall prey to a regress objection. By discussing the work of Searle, I show that this regress objection originates in the idea that learning language involves learning to follow rules from the very (...) start. I propose an ecological-enactive response to the regress objection. The key move is to deny that language learning consists initially in learning rules. A child first engages in regular communicative behaviour, by learning first-order linguistic skills, and then retroactively interprets her own behaviour in normative metalinguistic terms, i.e., as being guided by rules by relying on reflexive or second-order linguistic skills. On this view, metalinguistic reflexivity enables regulation of already regular communicative behaviour, and thereby constitutes linguistic normativity. Finally, I argue that linguistic rules are resources: they are available to participants in order to (re)negotiate properties of situated language behaviour and thereby reorganize linguistic practices. The account developed in this paper thus allows us to understand the constitutive role of metalinguistic reflexivity for linguistic normativity without falling prey to the regress objection. (shrink)

In the last chapter of The Public and its Problems John Dewey outlines the alleged fallacy of "the democratic creed". According to him the fallacy is described as conflating emancipation with the capacity to rule, i.e. the capacity to make policy decisions. His point is that the power to make decisions does not entail a capacity to make good choices. Capable are those in the know, the experts who are "intellectually qualified". The answer to the fallacy is to propose epistocracy: (...) The rule of experts – as Walter Lippman had come close to arguing. But Dewey tries to refute the argument for epistocracy. He rehearses the old platonic wisdom that the harmonious state... (shrink)

One of the most rooted topics in Arabic poetry is the dirge. It shows that during the Jāhiliyya period, people lamented the dead at the graves and remembered their beautiful qualities. A similar situation continued in terms of content in the dirges that were said in the following periods. However, with the change of social, political and cultural conditions in time, there have been partial changes in the writing styles and purposes of the dirges. For example, the effects of political (...) and sectarian factors were felt more in the process that started with the Umayyad period and continued in the following centuries. On the other hand, it has been observed that poets wrote dirges not only for the people they love but also for themselves, the animals they owned and the cities they lived in. In Arabic literature, dirges written for cities became famous and widespread, especially during the Andalusian period. However, considering that the poets of the Jahiliyya period lament the lands abandoned by the beloved, especially in the first part of the ode, it can be said that the tradition of writing elegies for cities dates back to much earlier times. On the other hand, the destruction of cities during the Abbasid period due to many wars, especially the Mongol invasion, caused many poets to recite dirges for these destroyed cities. One of the cities damaged during this period is Baghdad, one of the most important cities of Islamic culture and civilization. As it is known, Baghdad was occupied by the Mongols in 1258. As a result of this occupation, also known as the Baghdad disaster, many of the material and spiritual wealth of the city were destroyed. For this reason, the event had great repercussions in Arabic poetry, and many poets who could not remain unresponsive to what happened elegized for Baghdad. One of these poets is Shamsaddīn al-Kūfī (d. 675/1256), whose al-Kasīda al-Nūniya is the subject of our study. Shamsaddīn al-Kūfī, who was born in 623/1226 in Kufa, is one of the leading literary scholars and poets of his period. Due to the fact that the Baghdad disaster affected his poems to a great extent, he was given the title of Poet of Baghdad Disaster. When his poems are examined in general, it can be said that the dirges he sang for family members, friends, children of his friends and the city of Baghdad, which was destroyed by the Mongolian invasion, are at the forefront. The poet, who uses verbal arts such as tibāq and rad al ajuz alā al sadr intensively, places more importance on the meaning dimension of the issue in his dirges and uses arts related to meaning skillfully. al-Kasīda al-Nūniya, written by Shamsaddīn al-Kūfī in the Kamil bahr for Baghdad, is composed of 27 couplets. The theme of complaint about separation is addressed in the introduction part of the kasīda. Then, the main subject of the kasīda was put forward with the themes of the effects of the Mongolian occupation in Baghdad, the poet's feelings about this occupation, and the longing for the beautiful days in Baghdad. In the conclusion part, by returning to the theme of complaint about separation, a different internal structure from the contents of traditional Arabic poetry is displayed. This organization, while in keeping with the spirit of the type of city dirge that reflects the disaster experienced in a city, also provides fluency. While words that are easy to pronounce and suitable for morphology rules are preferred in general, attention has been paid to the rules of eloquence. On the other hand, the poet mostly preferred informative sentences in which he conveyed the Baghdad disaster to the reader with all its truth. However, in the sections where he felt the need to express his emotional intensity in a more striking way, he enriched his expression with sentence types such as wonder, interrogation, oath and interjection. Shamsaddīn al-Kūfī frequently used jinās in his poems. In addition, the art of tibāk, which is one of the arts related to meaning, is one of the badī (creative) arts in its couplets. As a result, it was seen that the Mongol invasion had a considerable effect on Arab poetry within the framework of this city dirge, which Shamsaddīn al-Kūfī had recited, and that historical facts were transferred to the next periods with a poignant style in these poems. (shrink)

Many traditional martial artists assert that MMA is not a martial art, denying that the ‘martial skill’ of MMA constitutes a ‘martial art’, and citing the sportive and entertainment aspects of MMA competitions as antithetical to the spirit of martial arts, lacking the integrity, discipline, and tradition found in martial arts. Today, these criticisms are even more relevant in light of the fact that the typical MMA fighter no longer practices a single discipline but is versed in a variety (...) of techniques and utilizes a variety of strength and conditioning modalities. In addition, with the development of social media and mainstream media’s acceptance of MMA as a legitimate sport, MMA is now more than ever about entertainment. We argue that MMA is a martial art, but it is not always practiced as one. By drawing upon Socrates’ distinction in Plato’s Gorgias between ‘knacks’ and ‘crafts’, we clarify the difference between ‘martial skills’ and ‘martial arts’. Using this distinction, we examine whether the sportive and entertainment aspects of MMA are, in fact, antithetical to the spirit of martial arts. We argue that the latter is, but the former is not. (shrink)

The Golden Rule is endorsed in oneform or another by most cultures and majorreligions and is still espoused byphilosophers, business ethicists, and popularbusiness authors. Because it also resonateswith undergraduate business majors, it can bean effective teaching tool. This paperdescribes a way of teaching the Golden Rulethrough a series of business-oriented examplesintended to bring out its strengths andweaknesses. The method described alsointroduces students to some basic moralreasoning skills and acquaints them with a widerange of moral issues that arise in business. Kant's (...) Formula of Humanity is discussed in thefinal section as a principle that overcomes atleast some of the Golden Rule's defects. (shrink)

The author proposes a neural-network-based explanation of how a brain might acquire intuitive expertise. The explanation is intended merely to be suggestive and lacks many complexities found in even lower animal brains. Yet significantly, even this simplified brain model is capable of explaining the acquisition of simple skills without developing articulable rules for behavior or a model of the skill domain or an explicit identification of which observables in the environment are necessary for skillful behavior. Furthermore, no memories (...) of prior experiences during the learning phase are explicitly stored and accessed during behavior. The explanation thus calls into doubt many conventional and intuitively reasonable assumptions concerning the learning and production of intuitive expertise. (shrink)

PLEASE NOTE: This is the corrected 2nd eBook edition, 2021. ●●●●● _Critique of Impure Reason_ has now also been published in a printed edition. To reduce the otherwise high price of this scholarly, technical book of nearly 900 pages and make it more widely available beyond university libraries to individual readers, the non-profit publisher and the author have agreed to issue the printed edition at cost. ●●●●● The printed edition was released on September 1, 2021 and is now available through (...) all booksellers, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and brick-and-mortar bookstores under ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6. ●●●●● In light of the length of this book, readers who would like to have a more detailed description of the book's objectives and method may find it helpful to read the detailed and clearly written Wikipedia entry about this work: From the Wikipedia search page, use the search phrase "Critique of Impure Reason". At least at the time of this writing (11/29/2021), the Wikipedia entry is well-researched and accurate. ●●●●● In addition, a "Primer on Bartlett's CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON" has been made available by the author. It is available under its title through PhilPapers and other philosophy online archives. ●●●●● COMMENDATIONS OF THIS WORK, from the back cover of the published edition: ●●●●● “I admire its range of philosophical vision.” – Nicholas Rescher, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, author of more than 100 books. ●●●●● “Bartlett’s _Critique of Impure Reason_ is an impressive, bold, and ambitious work. Careful scholarship is balanced by original analyses that lead the reader to recognize the limits of meaning, knowledge, and conceptual possibility. The work addresses a host of traditional philosophical problems, among them the nature of space, time, causality, consciousness, the self, other minds, ontology, free will and determinism, and others. The book culminates in a fascinating and profound new understanding of relativity physics and quantum theory.” – Gerhard Preyer, Professor of Philosophy, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, author of many books including _Concepts of Meaning_, _Beyond Semantics and Pragmatics_, _Intention and Practical Thought_, and _Contextualism in Philosophy_. ●●●●● “[This work’s] goal is of a unique and difficult species: Dr. Bartlett seeks to develop a formal logical calculus on the basis of transcendental philosophical arguments; in fact, he hopes that this calculus will be the formal expression of the transcendental foundation of knowledge.... I consider Dr. Bartlett’s work soundly conceived and executed with great skill.” – C. F. von Weizsäcker, philosopher and physicist, former Director, Max-Planck-Institute, Starnberg, Germany. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written an American “Prolegomena to All Future Metaphysics.” He aims rigorously to eliminate meaningless assertions, reach bedrock, and place philosophy on a firm foundation that will enable it, like science and mathematics, to produce lasting results that generations to come can build on. This is a great book, the fruit of a lifetime of research and reflection, and it deserves serious attention.” — Martin X. Moleski, former Professor, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, studies of scientific method, the presuppositions of thought, and the self-referential nature of epistemology. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written a book on what might be called the underpinnings of philosophy. It has fascinating depth and breadth, and is all the more striking due to its unifying perspective based on the concepts of reference and self-reference.” – Don Perlis, Professor of Computer Science, University of Maryland, author of numerous publications on self-adjusting autonomous systems and philosophical issues concerning self-reference, mind, and consciousness. ●●●●● ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning_ comprises a major and important contribution to philosophy. Thanks to the generosity of its publisher, this massive 885-page volume has been published as a free open access eBook (3.75MB) as well as an open access printed edition. It inaugurates a revolutionary paradigm shift in philosophical thought by providing compelling and long-sought-for solutions to a wide range of philosophical problems. In the process, the work fundamentally transforms the way in which the concepts of reference, meaning, and possibility are understood. The book includes a Foreword by the celebrated German philosopher and physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. ●●●●● In Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_ we find an analysis of the preconditions of experience and of knowledge. In contrast, but yet in parallel, the new _Critique_ focuses upon the ways—unfortunately very widespread and often unselfconsciously habitual—in which many of the concepts that we employ _conflict_ with the very preconditions of meaning and of knowledge. ●●●●● This is a book about the boundaries of frameworks and about the unrecognized conceptual confusions in which we become entangled when we attempt to transgress beyond the limits of the possible and meaningful. We tend either not to recognize or not to accept that we all-too-often attempt to trespass beyond the boundaries of the frameworks that make knowledge possible and the world meaningful. ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason_ proposes a bold, ground-breaking, and startling thesis: that a great many of the major philosophical problems of the past can be solved through the recognition of a viciously deceptive form of thinking to which philosophers as well as non-philosophers commonly fall victim. For the first time, the book advances and justifies the criticism that a substantial number of the questions that have occupied philosophers fall into the category of “impure reason,” violating the very conditions of their possible meaningfulness. ●●●●● The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to enable us to recognize the boundaries of what is referentially forbidden—the limits beyond which reference becomes meaningless—and second, to avoid falling victims to a certain broad class of conceptual confusions that lie at the heart of many major philosophical problems. As a consequence, the boundaries of _possible meaning_ are determined. ●●●●● Bartlett, the author or editor of more than 20 books, is responsible for identifying this widespread and delusion-inducing variety of error, _metalogical projection_. It is a previously unrecognized and insidious form of erroneous thinking that undermines its own possibility of meaning. It comes about as a result of the pervasive human compulsion to seek to transcend the limits of possible reference and meaning. ●●●●● Based on original research and rigorous analysis combined with extensive scholarship, the _Critique of Impure Reason_ develops a self-validating method that makes it possible to recognize, correct, and eliminate this major and pervasive form of fallacious thinking. In so doing, the book provides at last provable and constructive solutions to a wide range of major philosophical problems. ●●●●● CONTENTS AT A GLANCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Preface ▪▪▪▪▪ Foreword by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker ▪▪▪▪▪ Acknowledgments ▪▪▪▪▪ Avant-propos: A philosopher’s rallying call ▪▪▪▪▪ Introduction ▪▪▪▪▪ A note to the reader ▪▪▪▪▪ A note on conventions ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART I ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ WHY PHILOSOPHY HAS MADE NO PROGRESS AND HOW IT CAN ▪▪▪▪▪ 1 Philosophical-psychological prelude ▪▪▪▪▪ 2 Putting belief in its place: Its psychology and a needed polemic ▪▪▪▪▪ 3 Turning away from the linguistic turn: From theory of reference to metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 4 The stepladder to maximum theoretical generality ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART II ▪▪▪▪▪ THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ A New Approach to Deductive, Transcendental Philosophy ▪▪▪▪▪ 5 Reference, identity, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 6 Self-referential argument and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 7 Possibility theory ▪▪▪▪▪ 8 Presupposition logic, reference, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 9 Transcendental argumentation and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 10 Framework relativity ▪▪▪▪▪ 11 The metalogic of meaning ▪▪▪▪▪ 12 The problem of putative meaning and the logic of meaninglessness ▪▪▪▪▪ 13 Projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 14 Horizons ▪▪▪▪▪ 15 De-projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 16 Self-validation ▪▪▪▪▪ 17 Rationality: Rules of admissibility ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART III ▪▪▪▪▪ PHILOSOPHICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Major Problems and Questions of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science ▪▪▪▪▪ 18 Ontology and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 19 Discovery or invention in general problem-solving, mathematics, and physics ▪▪▪▪▪ 20 The conceptually unreachable: “The far side” ▪▪▪▪▪ 21 The projections of the external world, things-in-themselves, other minds, realism, and idealism ▪▪▪▪▪ 22 The projections of time, space, and space-time ▪▪▪▪▪ 23 The projections of causality, determinism, and free will ▪▪▪▪▪ 24 Projections of the self and of solipsism ▪▪▪▪▪ 25 Non-relational, agentless reference and referential fields ▪▪▪▪▪ 26 Relativity physics as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 27 Quantum theory as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 28 Epistemological lessons learned from and applicable to relativity physics and quantum theory ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART IV ▪▪▪▪▪ HORIZONS ▪▪▪▪▪ 29 Beyond belief ▪▪▪▪▪ 30 _Critique of Impure Reason_: Its results in retrospect ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ SUPPLEMENT ▪▪▪▪▪ The Formal Structure of the Metalogic of Reference ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX I ▪▪▪▪▪ The Concept of Horizon in the Work of Other Philosophers ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX II ▪▪▪▪▪ Epistemological Intelligence ▪▪▪▪▪ References ▪▪▪▪▪ Index ▪▪▪▪▪ About the author. 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One of the barriers between ordinarily compassionate animal researchers and pro-animal ethicists is that the ethicists are usually seen as asking for far too much. They are perceived as demanding the complete abandonment of careers. In consequence, the ethicist is often ignored. Ethicists rarely give clear-cut rules to animal researchers as to how they can continue in animal research while at the same time adopting an increasingly moral approach. The purpose of this paper is to provide some rules (...) to help the animals by aiding conscientious researchers who are not in a position to give up their careers entirely. These are ethical rules and not, therefore, in quite the same category as Russell and Burch's or the proposal that experimenters should seek proper training and retraining in animal care, and in the skills of euthanasia, anaesthesia, and analgesia. Nor are ethical rules quite the same as the requirement that all experimenters should acquaint themselves with the latest techniques for improving the animals' quality of life or the need to keep themselves up to date in alternative research techniques that do not use animals. All these steps are of great importance and should be taken in addition to the ethical rules I propose. (shrink)

We live in a world of one-size-fits-all law. People are different, but the laws that govern them are uniform. "Personalized Law" - rules that vary person by person - will change that. Here is a vision of a brave new world, where each person is bound by their own personally-tailored law. "Reasonable person" standards would be replaced by a multitude of personalized commands, each individual with their own "reasonable you" rule. Skilled doctors would be held to higher standards of (...) care, the most vulnerable consumers and employees would receive stronger protections, age restrictions for driving or for the consumption of alcohol would vary according the recklessness risk that each person poses, and borrowers would be entitled to personalized loan disclosures tailored to their unique needs and delivered in a format fitting their mental capacity. The data and algorithms to administer personalize law are at our doorstep, and embryos of this regime are sprouting. Should we welcome this transformation of the law? Does personalized law harbor a utopic promise, or would it produce alienation, demoralization, and discrimination? This book is the first to explore personalized law, offering a vision of law and robotics that delegates to machines those tasks humans are least able to perform well. It inquires how personalized law can be designed to deliver precision and justice and what pitfalls the regime would have to prudently avoid. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Intellectual Ethics of Revealed Truth:A Thomistic ApproachRoger PouivetIAt the beginning of the Summa contra gentiles [SCG], Thomas Aquinas says that "we must first show what way is open to us in order that we may make known the truth which is our object" (SCG I, ch., 3, no. 1).1 To question ourselves in this way is to do what we, today, call epistemology. So, in my opinion, in (...) the first chapters of the SCG, Aquinas examines questions belonging to the so-called "Epistemology of religious beliefs."2 Aquinas wonders how we may have the right to claim that God exists and what his attributes are, and to believe the revealed truths.So understood, epistemology of religious beliefs is part of what I will call "intellectual ethics." It is less about beliefs themselves—to know whether or not they are justified—than about believers, about persons and their intellectual virtues. Do they have a blameless and even a superior intellectual life? Or, are they immoral in having received their religious beliefs in the way that they did? In particular, it raises as a central question whether it is consistent with intellectual virtue for a person to receive beliefs by revelation, that is in the name of God. Is it possible to receive truths from the divine external source and donor, through the biblical text itself, or even through those who are purportedly in charge of manifesting the Word of God, and be an epistemologically virtuous, irreproachable person? [End Page 1289]My hypothesis is that the opening chapters of the SCG may be viewed as a step into the field of intellectual ethics examining the acquisition of religious beliefs from the perspective of intellectual virtue and defending the legitimacy of certain intellectual attitudes.IILet us distinguish two accounts of epistemology. What we may call an "epistemology of justification" deals with the norms or rules whose observance ensures the justification of our beliefs and the legitimacy of our claims to knowledge. It does not concern itself with the norms of behavior of a seeker after knowledge, but rather with the question whether what someone believes or claims is backed by evidence; and it debates what does or does not count as evidence and which are the rules by means of which evidence may support, or fail to support, beliefs or knowledge claims. Such an epistemology likewise concerns itself with the reflective control that we exert over our beliefs.In the second account, epistemology explores intellectual virtues as qualities of character. Our epistemic life is laudable when our acquisition of beliefs depends upon these virtues. However, in the perspective that we find in Aquinas, virtues are not understood simply as skills (or competences) that ensure that we arrive at beliefs that are justified by evidence, in the usual meanings given to that term. So, this second account of which I speak here differs from so-called "virtue reliabilism," for which, ultimately, virtues are simply faculties functioning properly for the maximization of our knowledge.3 An "epistemology of intellectual virtues" in a Thomistic approach addresses the question of what a "good epistemic life" is. So, it is not intended to define justification or knowledge to indicate what are the right rules (as in an epistemology of justification) to control beliefs, or even not what are the right procedures (as in an epistemology of skills) to acquire beliefs.In epistemology of the first type, the main epistemic commandment to persons is to believe only on the basis of sufficient evidence. It is essential that this evidence be recognized internally, through an examination of the reasons to believe. Any defense of the legitimacy of revealed beliefs or of any claim to know through revelation will prove, on this basis, utterly [End Page 1290] implausible, and so epistemically blameworthy. Revealed beliefs suppose our complete intellectual dependence upon an external source. We are not in the position to exert any internal control. The standard of such control would itself be received from the same source, and not grounded in our own epistemological initiative. So, in modern epistemology, the primacy of the rule of evidence has led to religious beliefs being deemed to... (shrink)

In this essay, I provide a new argument for Intellectualism about knowing how, one that does not rest on controversial assumptions about how knowing how is ascribed in English. In particular, I argue that the distinctive intentionality of the manifestations of knowing how ought to be explained in terms of a propositional attitude of belief about how to perform an action.

The first part of the article examines some recent studies on the early development of social norms that examine young children’s understanding of codified rule games. It is argued that the constitutive rules than define the games cannot be identified with social norms and therefore the studies provide limited evidence about socio-normative development. The second part reviews data on children’s play in natural settings that show that children do not understand norms as codified or rules of obligation, and (...) that the norms that guide social interaction are dynamic, situated, and heterogeneous. It is argued that normativity is intersubjective and negotiable and starts to develop in the first year, emerging as a practical skill that depends on participatory engagement. Three sources of compliance are discussed: emotional engagement, nonverbal agreement, and conversation. (shrink)

I argue that in purely professional games of pure chance, such as slot machines, roulette, baccarat or pachinko, any instance of cheating that successfully deceives the judge can be ‘part of the game’. I examine, and reject, various proposals for the ‘ethos’ that determines how we ought to interpret the formal rules of games of pure chance, such as being a test of skill, a matter of entertainment, a display of aesthetic beauty, an opportunity for hedonistic pleasure, and (...) a fraternal activity. Ultimately, I argue that ‘winning the benefit’ is the only ethos that can apply in purely professional games of pure chance, and that if we interpret the formal rules according to this ethos, cheating that is undertaken with respect for the judge’s authority, but that attempts to cause the judge of the game to ‘voluntarily’ relinquish the benefit of the game by deceiving them into thinking that the formal rules of the game have been followed, is impermissible but acceptable cheating, and is therefore within, rather than outside, the game. Here, I define ‘games of pure chance’ as games in which chance is the only determinant of winning. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Donald Davidson's rejection of the notion of language, as commonly understood in philosophy and linguistics, is justified. However, I argue that his position needs to be supplemented by an account of the development and nurture of pre-linguistic communicative skills. Davidson argues (in ‘A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs' and elsewhere) that knowledge of a language (conceived of as a set of rules or conventions) is neither sufficient nor necessary for 'linguistic' communication. The strongest argument (...) against the initial formulation is that while Davidson may have shown that knowledge of a language is not sufficient, he failed to show that it is not necessary. Subsequently, Davidson has invoked his Triangulation' thesis, to show that understanding can rest on the apprehension of mutuality in a shared objective world, and does not presuppose the sharing of rules or practices. I argue that the starting position arrived at from the triangulation thesis itself presupposes the possibility of communication. The triangulation thesis needs, therefore, to be supplemented by a (non-reductive) naturalistic account of non-linguistic communicative skills. In such an account we must posit shared practices (practices of mutual engagement with a shared world), but not an account of practices conceived on the model of rules or conventions. I note, finally, that by adopting such an approach we offer a way of explicating the formulation of passing theories, which in Davidson's account are the point at which communicative understanding occurs. (shrink)

Robert Veatch and others have questioned whether there are internal moral rules of medicine. This paper examines the legal regulatory model for governing professions as the autonomous exercise of professional skills and asks whether there is a theoretical basis for this model. Taking John Rawls’s distinction between the justification of a practice and justification of the rules internal to the practice, this paper argues that the autonomous exercise of professional skills is justified so long as it benefits society. (...) In opposition to Christopher Boorse, it is argued that medicine is pathocentric and that physicians exercise skills in treating pathologies. The autonomous treatmentof pathologies is justified because non-interference with physicians will lead to greater treatment of pathologies and so benefit society. Finally, the analysis of medicine as the autonomous exercise of skills in treating pathologies yields the rule that physicians not be forced to cause pathologies. (shrink)

Joan McGregor argues that “colleges and universities should adopt as part of their core mission the development of skills of civil discourse” rather than engaging in the practice of restricting controversial speakers from making presentations on campuses. I agree with McGregor concerning the need for increased civil discourse. However, this does not mean universities should welcome speakers to publicly present any material they wish without restriction or oversight. In this paper, I make three main arguments: (i) Colleges and universities have (...) a duty to protect members of the campus community from the harm and exclusion resulting from hateful or harmful speech, in the same way that they must protect them from sexual assaults and concussions. (ii) In the vast majority of cases, this duty can be fulfilled by holding speakers to standards of discourse that prevail in academic debate, and insisting on a number of procedural requirements. (iii) We should be wary of conservative arguments framed in terms of free speech, because they can be deployed to undermine important functions of the university in a democratic society, namely, to teach students how to be discerning citizens, and to protect thinkers willing to be critical of the government and the ruling classes. (shrink)

I argue that Donald Davidson's rejection of the notion of language, as commonly understood in philosophy and linguistics, is justified. However, I argue that his position needs to be supplemented by an account of the development and nurture of pre-linguistic communicative skills. Davidson argues (in 'A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs' and elsewhere) that knowledge of a language (conceived of as a set of rules or conventions) is neither sufficient nor necessary for 'linguistic' communication. The strongest argument against the initial (...) formulation is that while Davidson may have shown that knowledge of a language is not sufficient, he failed to show that it is not necessary. Subsequently, Davidson has invoked his 'triangulation' thesis, to show that understanding can rest on the apprehension of mutuality in a shared objective world, and does not presuppose the sharing of rules or practices. I argue that the starting position arrived at from the triangulation thesis itself presupposes the possibility of communication. The triangulation thesis needs, therefore, to be supplemented by a (non-reductive) naturalistic account of non-linguistic communicative skills. In such an account we must posit shared practices (practices of mutual engagement with a shared world), but not an account of practices conceived on the model of rules or conventions. I note, finally, that by adopting such an approach we offer a way of explicating the formulation of passing theories, which in Davidson's account are the point at which communicative understanding occurs. (shrink)