Dijkerman & de Haan (D&dH) propose a convincing model of somatosensory organization that is inspired by earlier perception-action models of the visual system. In this commentary, we suggest that the dorsal and ventral visual streams both contribute to the control of action, but in different ways. Using the example of grip and load force calibration, we show how the ventral stream can invoke stored information about the material properties of objects originally derived from the somatosensory system.

Impact sourcing is the practice of employing socio-economically disadvantaged individuals at business process outsourcing centres to reduce poverty and create secure jobs. One of the pioneers of impact sourcing is Sama, a training-data company that focuses on annotating data for artificial intelligence (AI) systems and claims to support an ethical AI supply chain through its business operations. Drawing on fieldwork undertaken at three of Sama’s East African delivery centres in Kenya and Uganda and follow-up online interviews, this article interrogates Sama’s (...) claims regarding the benefits of its impact sourcing model. Our analysis reveals alarming accounts of low wages, insecure work, a tightly disciplined labour management process, gender-based exploitation and harassment and a system designed to extract value from low-paid workers to produce profits for investors. We argue that competitive market-based dynamics generate a powerful force that pushes such companies towards limiting the actual social impact of their business model in favour of ensuring higher profit margins. This force can be resisted, but only through countervailing measures such as pressure from organised workers, civil society, or regulation. These findings have broad implications related to working conditions for low-wage data annotators across the sector and cast doubt on the ethical nature of AI products that rely on this form of AI data work. (shrink)

The visual system is known to extract summary representations of visually similar objects which bias the perception of individual objects toward the ensemble average. Although vision plays a large role in guiding action, less is known about whether ensemble representation is informative for action. Motor behavior is tuned to the veridical dimensions of objects and generally considered resistant to perceptual biases. However, when the relevant grasp dimension is not available or is unconstrained, ensemble perception may be informative to behavior by (...) providing gist information about surrounding objects. In the present study, we examined if summary representations of a surrounding ensemble display influenced grip aperture and orientation when participants reached-to-grasp a central circular target which had an explicit size but importantly no explicit orientation that the visuomotor system could selectively attend to. Maximum grip aperture and grip orientation were not biased by ensemble statistics during grasping, although participants were able to perceive and provide manual estimations of the average size and orientation of the ensemble display. Support vector machine classification of ensemble statistics achieved above-chance classification accuracy when trained on kinematic and electromyography data of the perceptual but not grasping conditions, supporting our univariate findings. These results suggest that even along unconstrained grasping dimensions, visually-guided behaviors toward real-world objects are not biased by ensemble processing. (shrink)

The emerging concern about software piracy and illegal or unauthorized use of information technology and software has been evident in the media and open literature for the last few years. In the course of conducting their academic assignments, the authors began to compare observations from classroom experiences related to ethics in the use of software and information technology and systems. Qualitatively and anecdotally, it appeared that many if not most, students had misconceptions about what represented ethical and unethical behaviors in (...) these realms. Clearly, one can argue that if college students are uncertain about what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate behavior then this uncertainty will be carried forward into their workplaces upon graduation. Furthermore, if their workplaces don't provide ethics training as a component of a new employee orientation program, one can project a potential for unintentional violations and infringements of copyrights and law in the field. This study was conducted among graduate and undergraduate students to gain insight into their attitudes, perceptions and understanding of some of the relevant ethics issues. A questionnaire of 11 statements was employed that described ubiquitous but most likely unethical (or surely dubious) behaviors in the prevailing business and academic environments. Each respondent was asked to evaluate each statement twice (once for “self” and once for “colleague”) on a five-option highly ethical (5) to neutral (3) to highly unethical (1) scale. The statements were worded such that lower instrument score was associated with higher ethical responses. The questionnaire's two-part structure was designed to solicit honest answers. The encouraging learning from this study was that the overall sample and its various sub-samples did not consider any of the eleven behaviors to be “ethical” or “highly ethical.” It was also encouraging to note that the overall sample and all sub-samples considered “highly unethical” those behaviors associated with personal privacy or property or outright theft. This indicated that moral judgment and probity prevail. The discouraging learning was that behaviors associated with the use of enterprise property were viewed as “neutral” i.e., neither “ethical” nor “unethical.” These findings suggested confusion and lack of clarity and definition around workplace deportment as it regards ethics in software and information technology use. The current study suggests that additional research needs to be conducted to define and clarify the issues, which in turn can form the basis for programs to rectify or at least ameliorate the situation. (shrink)

Several recent lines of inquiry have pointed to the amygdala as a potential lesion site in autism. Because one function of the amygdala may be to produce autonomic arousal at the sight of a signi¢cant face, we compared the responses of autistic children to their mothers’ face and to a plain paper cup. Unlike normals, the autistic children as a whole did not show a larger response to the person than to the cup. We also monitored sympathetic activity in (...) autistic children as they engaged in a wide range of everyday behaviours. The children tended to use self-stimulation activities in order to calm hyper-responsive activity of the sympathetic (`¢ght or £ight’) branch of the autonomic nervous system. A small percentage of our autistic subjects had hyporesponsive sympathetic activity, with essentially no electrodermal responses except to self-injurious behaviour. We sketch a hypothesis about autism according to which autistic children use overt behaviour in order to control a malfunctioning autonomic nervous system and suggest that they have learned to avoid using certain processing areas in the temporal lobes. (shrink)

The thesis explored in this essay is that contemporary educational thought has suffered a loss of significance, manifested when our language and concepts fail to be experienced as signifiers of commitment. A certain reluctance can be observed, among academics and others, against the notion of defending any cause or idea – with notable exceptions such as “respect for difference”. One may of course contest that a special kind of commitment is needed in education; but problems emerge when the educational values (...) in place are no longer experienced as very significant for education itself, because the lack of investment in turn reduces the need to criticize and question these values. The problem concerns the lack of reflexive creativity, not the lack of ideals per se. The idea of a loss of signification is elaborated in two examples: “dannelse” and “kritikk”. In a further step, the loss of signification is discussed in relation to the lack of a larger, social project, where the discussion of the Anthropocene is one example of how such a project might be formulated today. (shrink)

Now we should have to answer the question: when were the questions on Perihermeneias written? Little is known about the chronology of Buridan's works. Even a relative date is difficult to establish. However, some remarks can be made. First, there is the fact that the questions on Perihermeneias are quoted several times in Tractatus I of the Summule (4), in a way that makes it highly probable that the Summule were written after the Questiones on Perihermeneias (5). Now, according to (...) professor Pinborg the first lectura of the Summule may be dated as early as the late 1320es (6), that is at the very beginning of Buridan's career as a teacher of philosophy at the university of Paris. This may be an indication for an early date of the Questiones on Perihermeneias, possibly as early as 1325. There are two other reasons for assuming that the commentary on Perihermeneias is one of Buridan's first works. The first clue is given by the places where Buridan refers to one of his own works: once he refers to his commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge (7), twice to his commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics (8), and six times to his commentary on the Physics (9). The way in which he refers to these tracts seems also to be significant: the reference to his commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge shows that this work is of an earlier date than the present work. As to the other two works, he only refers to the number of the book in which he is going to treat a particular subject, not to the number of the question. A (cross)reference to the Summule is not given, although, as Pinborg remarks, there is a general doctrinal concordance between the two works. The questions on Metaphysics do not contain a (cross)-reference to the questions on Perihermeneias, at least not on the places where one would expect them. I am not certain about possible references occurring in the commentary on Physics. However, we should be very careful to draw conclusions from the occurrence of references, since it is always possible that we are dealing with a second or third lectura of the text.. (shrink)

When K. Grue-Sørensen became a professor of pedagogy at the University of Copenhagen in 1955, he was inline with the dominant historical-hermeneutical approach to humanities. From the late 1960s until retirementin 1974, his approach was challenged by both technical and critical alternatives. Both these alternative havesince grown steadily, while the historical-hermeneutical view has been in the defensive. But Grue-Sørensenand the tradition he represented have three signifi cant points for today’s pedagogy, whether it is technicalor critical: pedagogy can and should (...) not deliver effi ciency technology, pedagogy should as far as possible useeveryday language, and fi nally that the educational history can make us wiser. (shrink)

One’s own face possesses two properties that make it prone to grab attention: It is a face, and, in addition, it is a self-referential stimulus. The question of whether the self-face is actually an especially attention-grabbing stimulus was addressed by using a face– name interference paradigm. We investigated whether interference from a flanking self-face on the processing of a target classmate’s name was stronger than interference from a classmate’s flanking face on the processing of one’s own name as the target. (...) In a control condition a third familiar face served as the flanker for both decisions from the participant’s own name and from the classmate’s name. The presentation of the self-face as a flanker produced significantly more interference on the identification of a classmate’s name than the presentation of that classmate’s face did on the identification of one’s own name. This result was due to the interfering power of the self-face and not to a particular resistance of one’s name to interfering facial stimuli. We argue that the emotional value or the high familiarity of one’s own face may explain its attention-grabbing property. (shrink)

Professor Franklin is correct to say that there are significant areas of agreement between his account of formal science (Franklin, 1994) and my critique of his account. We both agree that the domain-independence exhibited by the formal sciences is ontologically and epistemically interesting, and that the concept of ‘structure’ must be central in any analysis of domain-independence. We also agree that knowledge of the structural, relational properties of physical systems should count as empirical knowledge, and that it makes sense to (...) talk about an empirical ‘science’ of structure. Where we disagree is over the frequency of occasions where ‘practical certainty’ is actually attained: Franklin argues that practical certainty is not uncommon in the formal sciences, while I argue that there are barriers to practical certainty that Franklin fails to appreciate. In Franklin’s response, he briefly presents and offers criticisms of my two main arguments against his central thesis. Franklin asserts that the flaw in my first argument is that it does not appreciate that modern mathematical models exhibit structural stability, and thus that many of their predictions are robust under small variations in input or parameter values (and hence, insensitive to the inevitable gaps between estimates and actual values). Nevertheless, what I had in mind in using the term ‘realistic modelling situations’ were models of fairly complex natural systems, such as the dripping faucet, spruce budworm and ecosystem ecology examples. My objection is not that mathematical models of such systems cannot legitimately and accurately describe structural properties that are genuinely predicable of real-world systems, but simply that for.. (shrink)

On the basis of the works The Notion of Moral Good and Evil in Contemporary Philosophy and Cant Stefan Baley’s views on social morality are analysed. It is shown that Baley supports conscious ethical creativity and the responsibility of the individual to society and to himself. It is proven that Baley follows the ethical principles of the Lvov-Warsaw philosophical school. Kazimierz Twardowski required following these principles as well.

Applied analytical political philosophy has not been a thriving enterprise in the United States in recent years. Certainly it has made little discernible impact on public culture. Political philosophers absorb topics and ideas from the Zeitgeist, but it shows little inclination to return the favor. After the publication of his monumental work A Theory of Justice back in 1971, John Rawls became a deservedly famous intellectual, but who has ever heard political critics or commentators refer to the difference principle or (...) fair equality of opportunity in discussions aimed at a wide audience? Writing philosophically astute and beautifully accessible prose, often in not strictly academic journals of opinion, Ronald Dworkin has been in some ways the very model of a public intellectual, but the only reference to his opinions that I have seen in any newspaper occurred in a New York Times review of a restaurant near London along the Thames (as I recall, Dworkin was quoted as saying it was at the very least the best restaurant in the northern hemisphere). You might chalk up the situation to the fact that political philosophers tend to be liberal and the public political culture in the United States has been growing decidedly conservative, but that mismatch can hardly be the whole story. Right-wing libertarianism is a popular doctrine, but Robert Nozick’s classical and never superseded 1974 exploration of that view in his brilliant Anarchy, State, and Utopia is not cited. Nor is there a significant literature that seeks to derive practical policy recommendations from Nozick’s theory and relevant factual claims. Moreover, the isolation of political philosophy stands in marked contrast to the wide influence of theory in some disciplines. For example, consider the enormous germinating impact of Richard Posner’s ideas on law and economics over the past thirty years on academic and extra-academic American legal culture. (shrink)

Nova Scotia’s recently updated Involuntary Psychiatric Treatment Act signii cantly updated mental health law in the province in many respects. However, s.39 of the Act deviates from this record in that it contains a clause that permits overriding the competent prior wishes of involuntarily committed psychiatric patients. This is problematic because it displaces established Canadian common law and legislation on advance directives for psychiatric patients but not other patients, suggesting possible discrimination The paper explores whether s.39 might survive challenge under (...) s.15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as either an ai rmative action program under s.15 of the Charter or as an overriding societal concern under s.1 of the Charter. (shrink)

Scholars today are divided on the motivation behind what is often called Jefferson’s “moral agrarianism”. On the one hand, some scholars take Jefferson at his word when he mentions that agrarianism is a moral vision. For these individuals, Jefferson’s agrarianism is a moral vision and an indispensible part of the good life. On the other hand, other scholars maintain that Jefferson’s moral agrarianism is merely a bit of propaganda that insidiously sheaths a political or economic ideal. For them, Jefferson is (...) through and throughout a politician, and expressions of agrarianism as a moral ideal amount to mere cant. In this paper, I examine arguments for and against Jefferson’s moral agrarianism. I defend the position that Jefferson was an aboveboard moral agrarianist and that the ideal of agrarianism was not just one that was suited for Americans, given their surfeit of land and want of laborers, but an ideal that also applied universally. I end with thoughts on Jefferson’s recognition of the rise of manufacturing in American cities throughout his life. (shrink)

This article considers why institutionalized commemoration of the Holocaust in the United Kingdom developed in the 1990s. It finds that the answer may have less to do with Jewish lobbies, or the influence of a “Holocaust Industry” and much, more to do with state political objectives in the ebb of the Cold War. It argues that by repackaging and ritualizing the Holocaust into a “sacred” event in which Western states themselves were absolved of responsibility but also sought to come to (...) Jewish rescue, it became an invaluable prop with which to promulgate Western values while at the same time acting as a moral alibi for interventions against anti-Western regimes. By focusing on the example of specifically British relations with Iraq, it is demonstrated that the moral high ground which Western states have attempted to milk from a Holocaust association is meretricious cant.Appalling and inhuman acts of genocide changed the course of history in the twentieth century. Millions of people perished or had their lives hideously damaged. This is an opportunity for us to recognize and act upon the lessons of the past. Our aim in the twenty-first century must be to work towards a tolerant and diverse, society which is based upon the notions of universal dignity and equal rights and responsibilities for all citizens. The Holocaust Memorial Day is a symbol of this. (shrink)

This paper offers an experimental test of a version of Rubinstein’s bargaining model in which the players’ discount factors are unequal. We find that learning, rationality, and fairness are all significant in determining the outcome. In particular, we find that a model of myopic optimization over time predicts the sign of deviations in the opening proposal from the final undiscounted agreement in the previous period rather well. To explain the amplitude of the deviations, we then successfully fit a perturbed version (...) of the model of myopic adjustment to the data that allows for a bias toward refusing inequitable offers. (shrink)

Attempts to establish a dialogue between the natural sciences and theology were made in the 20th century along with, among other things, the arrival of new groundbreaking theories in physics, but these attempts met with many content-related and methodological challenges. Philosophy, which plays an essential role as an intermediary in this relationship, has often proven to be a significant obstacle. The failure of neo-Thomism’s reception to Einstein’s theory in Poland led the Polish cosmologist, philosopher, and theologian Michael Heller to introduce (...) the concept of philosophy in science as a possible basis for dialogue. It proved fruitful, and years later, Heller was awarded the Templeton Prize for building bridges between science and theology. As it later transpired, the notion of philosophy in science has considerable intellectual potential for enriching the dialogue between natural sciences and theology. This article briefly discusses some examples of how the theory of relativity was received by some Polish neo-Thomists. Furthermore, the paper presents the sources of inspiration for Heller’s approach and the benefits it offers. Finally, another project that he named the theology of science is also discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Richard Eldridge ON KNOWING HOW TO LIVE: COLERIDGE'S "FROST AT MIDNIGHT" How ought human beings to live? It is both hard to ignore this question and hard to see how to go about answering it rationally. Moral philosophers have typically presented their works as deserving serious attention because they have supposed them to contain well-argued answers to this question. One very general way of describing the strategy of moral (...) philosophers is to say that they have begun by attempting to specify precisely the sense of "ought" as it is used in this question. Thus "ought" has alternately been taken to mean such things as "would it be profitable for," "in society is it necessary for," "it is typical of ideal," and "would it be rational for." In concert, moral philosophy has alternately been conceived of as a part of a theory of happiness, a theory of civil society, a theory of perfection, or a theory of rationality. But which, if any, of these ways of doing moral philosophy is the correct one? The very proliferation of approaches and answers to the question of how human beings ought to live encourages a kind of despair about whether any rules of conduct can be rationally justified for people in general. Noticing this proliferation, philosophers of a skeptical cast of mind have denied that any rules about how human beings ought to live can be rationally defended. AU putative rational defenses of such rules, so it has been claimed, amount to nothing more than pieces of cant and dogma. Reflecting this intuition, "moralistic" has come sometimes to mean "priggishly preachy." Thus Richard Rorty has observed that "the attempt to answer... the moral agent's request for justifications [of answers to such questions as "What ought we to do with ourselves?" and "How ought we to live?"] with descriptions of a privileged domain [wherein such justifications can be discovered] is the philosopher's special form of bad faith — his special way of substituting pseudo-cognition for morad choice."1 Moral philosophers, or those who would attempt rationally to defend rules about how to live, so Rorty would apparently have it, talk not good scientific sense auid not liberating or entertaining poetic nonsense, but pure humbug. (Rorty adds that "the positivists were absolutely right in thinking it imperative to 213 214Philosophy and Literature extirpate metaphysics, when 'metaphysics' means die attempt to give knowledge of what science cannot know.") We are urged to take a pragmatic attitude toward moral rules. AU diere is to know about rules about how to live is that sometimes some people have made them up and found them useful, not that any of diem have any deeper rational basis. "[T]he claim that the customs of a given society are 'grounded in nature' is not one which [the pragmatist] knows how to argue about. He is a pragmatist because he catnnot see what it would be like for a custom to be so grounded."2 Rorty does not claim that naturalistic talk or the talk of what he calls "atoms-in-the-void science" is die only sensible kind of talk. The remarks of sociologists, psychoanalysts, critics, and so forth are not senseless, according to Rorty. But he does hold diat traditional philosophical talk of knowing morad rules through reflection or reasoning is senseless. The reason for diis is diat no one has ever succeeded in giving "ought" a clear sense in such a way that amy claims of the form "human beings ought to do *" can be rationally justified to everyone. Failing to possess incontrovertibly sound demonstrative arguments for claims diat all human beings ought to adopt certain rules of conduct and failing to possess a mediod, or even a glimmer of a mediod, for constructing such arguments, it may well seem difficult not to feel compelled to adopt Rorty's skeptical attitude toward moral philosophy. Rorty's attitude is not extraordinary ; it is increasingly shared by a public which fails to find in works of moral philosophy the sort of rational defense of rules about how to live which it has been promised. What form could a rational justification of a claim of die form "human beings... (shrink)

‘‘Quid est ergo tempus? si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio’’. Augustine’s statement made 1,600 years ago still rings true. Paul Ricoeur goes so far as to assert that it is impossible to grasp time conceptually (Ricoeur 1984: 11 ff.). Nevertheless, or perhaps due to these aporias, time remains one of the most significant and intriguing themes for human imagination and philosophy. Nearly a century ago Edmund Husserl raised the hopes for a comprehensive philosophy of time (...) with his Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, published much later in 1928 by Martin Heidegger (but put together in most part by Edith Stein). Husserl’s subsequent steps on the stairway to a philosophy of time remained unpublished until the recent volumes Husserl (2001, 2006). These publications have awakened new interest in Husserl’s philosophy of time, and two recent monographs reconstruct and interpret it with a focus on subjectivity. (shrink)

In his Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant presents four antinomies. In his attempt to solve the first of these antinomies he examines and analyzes "thesis" and "antithesis" more thoroughly and employs the terms `part', `whole' and `boundary' in his argumentation for their validity. According to Kant, the whole problem surrounding the antinomy was caused by applying the concept of the world to nature and then using both terms interchangeably. While interesting, this solution is still not that much more than (...) a well thought out idea if it does not also include an adequate formal explication. Since the aforementioned terms all have counterparts in modern mereotopology, a discipline that has seen significant progress in recent times, we will apply these concepts to Kant's analysis in an attempt to evaluate Kant's solution in light of modern analytic philosophy. (shrink)

(2) There is significant cultural variation in the way people reason, categorize, and react to various aspects of the world. A proper understanding of such variation has implications for theories about human nature – and cognitive architecture – and its malleability. In turn, these theories have implications for theories about the status and generalisability of psychological explanations (see Nisbett 2003), for theories about the extent to which social engineering and social reform is possible (see Singer 2000), etc.

If the new and rapidly expanding discipline of neuroethics is to have a signii cant impact on patient care, the neuroscience clinicians must become familiar with the discipline, and be competent and comfortable in applying its cognitive base and principles to clinical decisionmaking. Familiarity with and practical experience in the application of basic biomedical knowledge and principles to clinical decision- making in the neurosciences becomes the essential foundation on which to begin to integrate neuroethics into medical education. The place (...) where the building of this foundation and the initial exposure to neuroethics must begin is in the residency program. This article describes the approach developed in the neurology residency education program at the University of Calgary to move toward achieving this goal. The key elements for the development and successful implementation of the program are outlined and a brief overview of the topics covered in the sessions is described. (shrink)

A Review of Outward Signs: The Powerlessness of External Things in Augustine’s Thought by Phillip Cary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), xxiv + 344 pp. -/- Phillip Cary has written another highly significant book on Augustine, and his writing displays the art of a master stylist. A complement to his Inner Grace, Outward Signs extends Cary’s thesis in Augustine and the Invention of the Inner Self: that Augus- tine’s Trinitarian and semiotic theology, groundbreaking as it was, remains beholden to a (...) Platonist privileging of inner vs. outer and idea over sacramental performance. Outward Signs should be of special interest to readers of Modern Theology, because the inwardness Cary interrogates displays a dimension of Augustine’s work that receives significant attention from a number of Modern Theology authors. Once again, Cary has offered an appropriate warning about any uncritical embrace of Augustine as theologian for the church today: the embrace could bring with it a turn to spiritualism, subjectivism, intellectualism, and also supersessionism (since the Old Testament and Jewish “law” belong to the merely outward life of the Word). Like Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Richard Rorty before him, Cary captures the line of potential influence that moves from Plato to Augustine to Descartes and Kant. Here, knowledge tends to ocular knowing, and Cary shows how inadequate that model is to account for performative knowing in the church, of which sacramental life is one instance. But performative knowing would apply, as well, to the study of Augustine’s writ- ings. Read “outwardly,” Augustine’s corpus generates several possible vectors of theological practice. The stronger vectors may point “inward,” but readers should also attend to those (weak or strong) which point to that which is inward, outward, both, and neither. (shrink)

Grice's distinction between what is said by a sentence and what is implicated by an utterance of it is both extremely familiar and almost universally accepted. However, in recent literature, the precise account he offered of implicature recovery has been questioned and alternative accounts have emerged. In this paper, I examine three such alternative accounts. My main aim is to show that the two most popular accounts in the current literature still face signifi cant problems. I will then conclude (...) by suggesting that an alternative account, emerging from semantic minimalism, is best placed to accommodate Grice's distinction. (shrink)

“Aristotle's successor as director of the Lyceum was Theophrastus, his friend and disciple; Eudemus, another of the Stagirite's important disciples should also be mentioned. Other philosophers belonging to the Peripatetic school were: Aristoxenus, Dikaiarchos, Phanias, Straton, Duris, Chamaeleon, Lycon, Hieronymus, Ariston, Critolaus, Phormio, Sotion, Hermippus, Satyrus and others. Straton even succeeded Theophrastus as director of the Lyceum but his name and those of the other Peripatetics of Aristotle's old school should not be considered in a history of logic as they (...) were mainly concerned with history and the natural sciences. Theophrastus rejoiced in an enormous prestige at this time and for long afterwards. Diogenes Laertius attributes a tremendous number of works to him. Of them a significant proportion are writings on logic: Analytica Priora (3 books); Analytica Posteriora (7 books); Analysis of Syllogisms (1 book); Summary of the Analytic s (1 book); Polemic on the Theory of Euristic Arguments. On Definition (1 book); The First Premises (18 books); The Sophisms (2 books); On the Solution of Syllogisms (1 book); Topics (2 books); On Artless Demonstrations (1 book); On Negation (1 book); On Intellect (1 book); Classifications (2 books); On Entymemes (1 book); On the Appreciation of Syllogism (1 book); On Lies and Truth (1 book); Argumentations (2 books); Theses (3 books); On Definition (2 books); On the Data of Problems (1 book); On the Liar (3 books); Preface to the Topics (1 book); On Arguments proper (1 book); Specifications on The Texts of Syllogisms (1 book). Eudemus also wrote some treatises on logic, concerning which some information has come down to us; Ammonius, in his Commentary On Aristotle's Categories attributes to him a writing on The Analytics -- 'Analitika', and another On Expressions -- Peri lexeos, in which he deals with the grammatical and logical functions of the sentence. The commentator David in Prolegomena to Isagoge by Porphiry also mentions these works.. (shrink)

A significant portion of the world’s text is tagged by readers on social bookmarking websites. Credit attribution is an inherent problem in these corpora because most pages have multiple tags, but the tags do not always apply with equal specificity across the whole document. Solving the credit attribution problem requires associating each word in a document with the most appropriate tags and vice versa. This paper introduces Labeled LDA, a topic model that constrains Latent Dirichlet Allocation by defining a one-to-one (...) correspondence between LDA’s latent topics and user tags. This allows Labeled LDA to directly learn word-tag correspondences. We demonstrate Labeled LDA’s improved expressiveness over traditional LDA with visualizations of a corpus of tagged web pages from del.icio.us. Labeled LDA outperforms SVMs by more than 3 to 1 when extracting tag-specific document snippets. As a multi-label text classifier, our model is competitive with a discriminative baseline on a variety of datasets. (shrink)

Consider a certain red rose. The proposition that the rose is red is true because the rose is red. One might say as well that the proposition that the rose is red is made true by the rose’s being red. This, it has been thought, does not commit one to a truthmaker of the proposition that the rose is red. For there is no entity that makes the proposition true. What makes it true is how the rose is, and how (...) the rose is is not an entity over and above the rose. It is against this view that I shall argue in this paper. I shall argue that a significant class of true propositions, including inessential predications like the proposition that the rose is red, are made true by entities. "No truthmaking without truthmakers" is my slogan. Although I have my view about what kinds of entities are truthmakers, I shall not argue for or presuppose that view here. All I shall argue for here is that if a proposition is made true by something, it is made true by some thing, but my argument will leave it open what kind of thing that thing is: it could be a fact or state of affairs, a trope, or any other sort of entity. (shrink)

In Hippolytus, in Cant. II, 3 we find the Georgian term შჯულ-ი (šǯul-i) several times. G. Garitte rendered it in his Latin translation always as lex, causing quite a bit of obscurity in Hippolytus’ lines. The solution appears when we recognize that it can be traced both to the Greek νόμος and to διαϑήκη. If we take this into account, the text now flows harmoniously with other passages in the works of Hippolytus and with the literal tenor of the (...) terms chosen by the Greek epitomist from the Interpretatio Cantici canticorum of Hippolytus. (shrink)

We discuss the philosophical implications of formal results showing the con- sequences of adding the epsilon operator to intuitionistic predicate logic. These results are related to Diaconescu’s theorem, a result originating in topos theory that, translated to constructive set theory, says that the axiom of choice (an “existence principle”) implies the law of excluded middle (which purports to be a logical principle). As a logical choice principle, epsilon allows us to translate that result to a logical setting, where one can (...) get an analogue of Diaconescu’s result, but also can disentangle the roles of certain other assumptions that are hidden in mathematical presentations. It is our view that these results have not received the attention they deserve: logicians are unlikely to read a discussion because the results considered are “already well known,” while the results are simultaneously unknown to philosophers who do not specialize in what most philosophers will regard as esoteric logics. This is a problem, since these results have important implications for and promise signif i cant illumination of contem- porary debates in metaphysics. The point of this paper is to make the nature of the results clear in a way accessible to philosophers who do not specialize in logic, and in a way that makes clear their implications for contemporary philo- sophical discussions. To make the latter point, we will focus on Dummettian discussions of realism and anti-realism. Keywords: epsilon, axiom of choice, metaphysics, intuitionistic logic, Dummett, realism, antirealism. (shrink)

This special issue collects together nine new essays on logical consequence :the relation obtaining between the premises and the conclusion of a logically valid argument. The present paper is a partial, and opinionated,introduction to the contemporary debate on the topic. We focus on two influential accounts of consequence, the model-theoretic and the proof-theoretic, and on the seeming platitude that valid arguments necessarilypreserve truth. We briefly discuss the main objections these accounts face, as well as Hartry Field’s contention that such objections (...) show consequenceto be a primitive, indefinable notion, and that we must reject the claim that valid arguments necessarily preserve truth. We suggest that the accountsin question have the resources to meet the objections standardly thought to herald their demise and make two main claims: (i) that consequence, as opposed to logical consequence, is the epistemologically significant relation philosophers should be mainly interested in; and (ii) that consequence is a paradoxical notion if truth is. (shrink)

A recent no-go theorem (Frauchiger and Renner in Nat Commun 9(1):3711, 2018) establishes a contradiction from a specific application of quantum theory to a multi- agent setting. The proof of this theorem relies heavily on notions such as ‘knows’ or ‘is certain that’. This has stimulated an analysis of the theorem by Nurgalieva and del Rio (in: Selinger P, Chiribella G (eds) Proceedings of the 15th international conference on quantum physics and logic (QPL 2018). EPTCS 287, Open Publishing Association, Waterloo, (...) 2018), in which they claim that it shows the “[i]nadequacy of modal logic in quantum settings” (ibid.). In this paper, we will offer a significantly extended and refined reconstruction of the theorem in multi-agent modal logic. We will then show that a thorough reconstruction of the proof as given by Frauchiger and Renner requires the reflexivity of access relations (system T). However, a stronger theorem is possible that already follows in serial frames, and hence also holds in systems of doxastic logic (such as KD45). After proving this, we will discuss the general implications for different interpretations of quantum probabilities as well as several options for dealing with the result. (shrink)

Many people who believe that abortion may often be justified by appeal to the pregnant woman’s interests also believe that a woman’s infliction of significant but nonlethal injury on her fetus can seldom be justified by appeal to her interests. Yet the second of these beliefs can seem to cast doubt on the first. For the view that the infliction of prenatal injury is seriously morally objectionable may seem to presuppose a view about the status of the fetus that challenges (...) the permissibility of abortion. The fear of being interpreted as implicitly endorsing such a view has thus led some defenders of abortion to be reluctant for tactical reasons to condemn the infliction of prenatal injury. In this they are encouraged by those who exploit the issue of prenatal injury in their campaign against abortion. When, for example, the House and Senate in 2004 passed legislation recognizing two victims of an assault against a pregnant woman, many viewed this as a tactic in a larger strategy to restrict access to abortion. This tactic is potentially effective. For people may find it compelling to infer that, if injuring a fetus is seriously objectionable, abortion must be even more objectionable, since killing is normally more seriously objectionable than merely injuring. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer an analysis of the notion of artificial moral agent (AMA) and of its impact on human beings’ self-understanding as moral agents. Firstly, I introduce the topic by presenting what I call the Continuity Approach. Its main claim holds that AMAs and human moral agents exhibit no significant qualitative difference and, therefore, should be considered homogeneous entities. Secondly, I focus on the consequences this approach leads to. In order to do this I take (...) into consideration the work of Bostrom and Dietrich, who have radically assumed this viewpoint and thoroughly explored its implications. Thirdly, I present an alternative approach to AMAs—the Discontinuity Approach—which underscores an essential difference between human moral agents and AMAs by tackling the matter from another angle. In this section I concentrate on the work of Johnson and Bryson and I highlight the link between their claims and Heidegger’s and Jonas’s sug-gestions concerning the relationship between human beings and technological products. In conclusion I argue that, although the Continuity Approach turns out to be a necessary postulate to the machine ethics project, the Discontinuity Approach highlights a relevant distinction between AMAs and human moral agents. On this account, the Discontinuity Approach generates a clearer understanding of what AMAs are, of how we should face the moral issues they pose, and, finally, of the difference that separates machine ethics from moral philosophy. (shrink)

Just War Theory debates discussing the principle of the Moral Equality of Combatants involve the notion of Invincible Ignorance; the claim that warfi ghters are morally excused for participating in an unjust war because of their epistemic limitations. Conditions of military deployment may indeed lead to genuinely insurmountable epistemic limitations. In other cases, these may be overcome. This paper provides a preliminary sketch of heuristics designed to allow a combatant to judge whether or not his war is just. It delineates (...) the sets of relevant facts uncontroversially accessible and inaccessible to contemporary professional soldiers. Relevant facts outside these two sets should by default be treated as inaccessible until proven otherwise. Even such a rudimentary heuristic created in this way demonstrates that practical recommendations of MEC-renouncing Just War Theory are not too challenging to follow and still signifi cantly impact a compliant combatant’s behavior. (shrink)

We propose a critique of normativism, defined as the idea that human thinking reflects a normative system against which it should be measured and judged. We analyze the methodological problems associated with normativism, proposing that it invites the controversial “is-ought” inference, much contested in the philosophical literature. This problem is triggered when there are competing normative accounts (the arbitration problem), as empirical evidence can help arbitrate between descriptive theories, but not between normative systems. Drawing on linguistics as a model, we (...) propose that a clear distinction between normative systems and competence theories is essential, arguing that equating them invites an “is-ought” inference: to wit, supporting normative “ought” theories with empirical “is” evidence. We analyze in detail two research programmes with normativist features – Oaksford and Chater’s rational analysis and Stanovich and West’s individual differences approach – demonstrating how, in each case, equating norm and competence leads to an is-ought inference. Normativism triggers a host of research biases in the psychology of reasoning and decision making: focusing on untrained participants and novel problems, analyzing psychological processes in terms of their normative correlates, and neglecting philosophically significant paradigms when they do not supply clear standards for normative judgement. For example, in a dual-process framework, normativism can lead to a fallacious “ought-is” inference, in which normative responses are taken as diagnostic of analytic reasoning. We propose that little can be gained from normativism that cannot be achieved by descriptivist computational-level analysis, illustrating our position with Hypothetical Thinking Theory and the theory of the suppositional conditional. We conclude that descriptivism is a viable option, and that theories of higher mental processing would be better off freed from normative considerations. (shrink)

Extant models of moral judgment assume that an action’s intentionality precedes assignments of blame. Knobe (2003b) challenged this fundamental order and proposed instead that the badness or blameworthiness of an action directs (and thus unduly biases) people’s intentionality judgments. His and other researchers’ studies suggested that blameworthy actions are considered intentional even when the agent lacks skill (e.g., killing somebody with a lucky shot) whereas equivalent neutral actions are not (e.g., luckily hitting a bull’s-eye). The present five studies offer an (...) alternative account of these provocative findings. We suggest that people see the morally significant action examined in previous studies (killing) as accomplished by a basic action (pressing the trigger) for which an unskilled agent still has sufficient skill. Studies 1 through 3 show that when this basic action is performed unskillfully or is absent, people are far less likely to view the killing as intentional, demonstrating that intentionality judgments, even about immoral actions, are guided by skill information. Studies 4 and 5 further show that a neutral action such as hitting the bull’s-eye is more difficult than killing and that difficult actions are less often judged intentional. When difficulty is held constant, people’s intentionality judgments are fully responsive to skill information regardless of moral valence. The present studies thus speak against the hypothesis of a moral evaluation bias in intentionality judgments and instead document people’s sensitivity to subtle features of human action. (shrink)

Drawing on many areas of expertise, from paleontology to psychology, Tomasello offers a plausible, evolutionary story abouthow our ancestors are likely to have developed cooperative behaviors and collaborative lifeways in order to survive and thrive.He also claims that this narrative explains why they would have begun to think in characteristically cooperative and moral ways,developing a “we is greater than me” [we>me] psychological orientation. Do the arguments offered support this extra claim? Thisarticle suggests that they do not. It seeks to alleviate (...) this shortcoming by drawing upon some conceptual resources offered bySartre’s Theory of Practical Ensembles. The centerpiece of the article consists of a detailed analysis of Sartre’s account of the genesisof the “group-in-fusion,” seeking to show that the genesis of a we-way of thinking in a group made up of many requires themediation of what Sartre calls a “third party” (le tiers). After closely examining Sartre’s treatment of the “third party” in theapocalyptic genesis of the “group-in-fusion,” I evaluate the success of this notion in resolving those questions that Tomasello’saccount raises while, at the same time, addressing the ontological question concerning the nature of the individual-grouprelation, in a way that suggests new and significant alternatives to standard dilemmas in contemporary social philosophy. (shrink)

Recent debates over the use of sham surgery as a control for studies of fetal tissue transplantation for Parkinson’s disease have focused primarily on rival interpretations of the US federal regulations governing human-subjects research. Using the core ethical and methodological considerations that underwrite the equipoise requirement, we nd strong prima facie reasons against using sham surgery as a control in studies of cellular-based therapies for Parkinson’s disease and more broadly in clinical research. Additionally, we believe that these reasons can be (...) generalized to apply to the use of other placebo controls that carry signi cant risks of positive harms in and of themselves. As a result, our arguments are centrally relevant to the emerging drive to subject therapies with a surgical component to the same rigorous standards of evaluation as those governing the approval of new pharmaceuticals. (shrink)

Does strolling through an art museum, admiring the old masters, improve us morally and spiritually? Would government subsidies of "high art" (such as big-city opera houses) be better spent on local community art projects? In What Good are the Arts? John Carey--one of Britain's most respected literary critics--offers a delightfully skeptical look at the nature of art. In particular, he cuts through the cant surrounding the fine arts, debunking claims that the arts make us better people or that judgements (...) about art are anything more than personal opinion. Indeed, Carey argues that there are no absolute values in the arts and that we cannot call other people's aesthetic choices "mistaken" or "incorrect," however much we dislike them. Along the way, Carey reveals the flaws in the aesthetic theories of everyone from Emanuel Kant to Arthur C. Danto, and he skewers the claims of "high-art advocates" such as Jeannette Winterson. But Carey does argue strongly for the value of art as an activity and for the superiority of one art in particular: literature. Literature, he contends, is the only art capable of reasoning, and the only art that can criticize. Language is the medium that we use to convey ideas, and the usual ingredients of other arts--objects, noises, light effects--cannot replicate this function. Literature has the ability to inspire the mind and the heart towards practical ends far better than any work of conceptual art. Here then is a lively and stimulating invitation to debate the value of art, a provocative book that will pique the interest of anyone who loves painting, music, or literature. (shrink)

Extant philosophical accounts of schizophrenic alien thought neglect three clinically signifi cant features of the phenomenon. First, not only thoughts, but also impulses and feelings, are experienced as alien. Second, only a select array of thoughts, impulses, and feelings are experienced as alien. Th ird, empathy with experiences of alienation is possible. I provide an account of disownership that does justice to these features by drawing on recent work on delusions and selfknowledge. Th e key idea is that disownership (...) occurs when there is a failure of rational control over one’s mind. Th is produces a clash between the deliverances of introspection and practical enquiry as ways of knowing one’s mind. Th is explanation places disownership on a continuum with more common aspects of our psychological life, such as addiction, akrasia, obsessional thinking, and immoral, selfi sh or shameful thoughts. I conclude by addressing objections, and exploring the relevance of my account to questions in the philosophy of psychiatry concerning the validity of our current taxonomy of symptoms, and the nature of psychiatric classifi cation.. (shrink)

Gödel appears to have believed strongly that the human mind cannot be explained in terms of any kind of computational physics, but he remained cautious in formulating this belief as a rigorous consequence of his incompleteness theorems. In this chapter, I discuss a modification of standard Gödel-type logical arguments, these appearing to strengthen Gödel’s conclusions, and attempt to provide a persuasive case in support of his standpoint that the actions of the mind must transcend computation. It appears that Gödel did (...) not consider the possibility that the laws of physics might themselves involve noncomputational procedures; accordingly, he found himself driven to the conclusion that mentality must lie beyond the actions of the physical brain. My own arguments, on the other hand, are from the scientific standpoint that the mind is a product of the brain’s physical activity. Accordingly, there must be something in the physical actions of the world that itself transcends computation. We do not appear to find such noncomputational action in the known laws of physics, however, so we must seek it in currently undiscovered laws going beyond presently accepted physical theory. I argue that the only plausibly relevant gap in current understanding lies in a fundamental incompleteness in quantum theory, which reveals itself only with significant mass displacements between quantum states (“Schrödinger’s cats”). I contend that the need for new physics enters when gravitational effects just begin to play a role. In a scheme developed jointly with Stuart Hameroff, this has direct relevance within neuronal microtubules, and I describe this (still speculative) scheme in the following. (shrink)

The thesis of situationism says that situational factors can exert a signi cant in uence on how we act, o en without us being consciously aware that we are so in uenced. In this paper, I examine how situational factors, or, more speci cally, our lack of conscious awareness of their in uence on our behavior, a ect di erent measures of control. I further examine how our control is a ected by the fact that situational factors also seem (...) to prevent us from becoming consciously aware of our reasons for action. I argue that such lack of conscious awareness decreases the degree of control that agents have. However, I propose that while being in uenced by situational factors in such ways may impair and diminish one’s control, it (typically) does not eradicate one’s control. I further argue that being in uenced by situational factors, in the way set out above, also decreases one’s degree of moral responsibility. (shrink)

The present paper proposes to analyse the role of the practical syllogism in G.E.M. Anscombe’s theory of action. To this end, I have rst of all chosen to examine, even if in broad terms, the conception of practical syllogism as it is present in the Aristotelian doctrine, and to reveal/delineate some critical points found within it. The following section is the central part of the paper, where, starting from § 33 of Intention, a re ection is carried out on the (...) practical syllogism, which is among Aristotle’s most signi cant discoveries, chie y bringing into focus its teleological prospective. Action, in Anscombe’s thought, almost seems be the cornerstone of a profound, and in a certain sense “contextual”, comprehension of the subject. (shrink)

How to explain the existence of evil if being by its very nature is good? My paper examines an interesting and perhaps signifi cant parallel between two exponents of the metaphysical tradition usually thought to stand widely apart, Thomas Aquinas and Hegel. I argue that Hegel’s system shares certain features of Aquinas’ convertibility thesis, that upon closer inspection will yield a set of interesting refl ections not only about the problem of evil, but also about the limits and possibilities (...) of metaphysical method. I discuss Aquinas’ thesis of the convertibility of being and good and how it determines his treatment of evil. I then construct a Hegelian version of convertibility and argue that Hegel’s system fails for similar reasons to provide a satisfactory account of the problem of evil. This leads to my central question: should the inadequacy of traditional approaches to evil call for a reversal or abandonment of metaphysics, or invite a deeper refl ection about reality that would not subsume the world’s darkness under what Hans Blumenberg once called “metaphysics of light”? (shrink)

The Epistola de morte apostolorum Petri et Pauli (CPG 6631, CANT 197) is addressed to Timothy, the disciple of the apostle Paul, and attributed to Denys the Areopagite. It contains a hymn on St. Paul, the lament for the loss of Paul and Peter and an eyewitness report on St. Paul’s martyrdom in Rome. Its aim is to legitimize Denys as heir of St. Paul’s theology by linking him with Timothy to whom the main tractates of the Corpus Dionysiacum (...) were sent. There are two recensions of the letter’s text. One recension exists in Syriac and Arminian, the other in Georgian and Latin, both part of hagiographic collections and both translating (lost) Greek exemplars. The two recensions are presented here in first critical editions, provided with philological introductions and a German translation. The oldest witness is a Syriac codex of the 9th century; the Georgian version is in a legendary of the 10th century. The Latin version surfaces in the 13th century and was taken up by the Legenda aurea. An Early New High German translation is edited as well. In addition there is an edition and analysis of the homily BHL 2187, a neglected document (end of the 8th century) for the fusion of Denys, the martyr bishop of Paris, with Denys the Areopagite. (shrink)