Many consumers are motivated to attend Farmers’ Markets because of the opportunity to purchase fresh and local products. The subsequent interactions at FMs provide an important pathway for the direct exchange of information. While previous research suggests that people value local food and the FM shopping experience and that purchasing directly from producers can lead to transformative learning, little is known about exactly how the shopping experience at FMs can influence consumer purchasing behavior. This study examines the extent of and (...) mechanism for such “influencing.” Using data from surveys, observations, and interviews gathered at six FMs, we analyze the interactions between consumers and vendors, including the motivations and values of both parties. We explore the question, “How do farmers’ markets facilitate change in consumer purchasing behavior?” We propose that the dynamic of change in consumer purchasing behavior at FMs takes root in the exchange of information between consumers and vendors during interactions. Our results suggest that there are three specific characteristics shared by FM consumers and vendors that lead to these meaningful interactions at FMs: symmetry of motivations to attend FMs, shared values, and mutual dependence on interactions. Then, when a consumer learns new information from a FM vendor during an interaction, the consumer is more likely to make a change in their immediate purchase. Information about the products for sale and the modes of production of those items can especially impact consumers’ immediate purchases at FMs. We found that FM interactions can also impact long-term purchasing behavior, such as purchasing more organic or locally produced foods. Our results suggest that FM interactions may have significant implications for consumer health, local economies, and the environment. (shrink)

In this paper, I claim that the personal/subpersonal distinction is first and foremost a distinction between two kinds of psychological theory or explanation: it is only in this form that we can understand why the distinction was first introduced, and how it continues to earn its keep. I go on to examine the different ontological commitments that might lead us from the primary distinction between personal and subpersonal explanations to a derivative distinction between personal and subpersonal states. I argue that (...) on one of the most common metaphysical interpretations of the explanatory distinction, talk of a distinction between personal and subpersonal states simply makes no sense. When people insist on applying the personal/subpersonal terminology to psychological states, I allow that they are often making a genuine distinction, but one that it is best understood in terms of Stich's (1978) distinction between doxastic and subdoxastic states. I end the paper by considering some other common misinterpretations of the personal/subpersonal distinction, such as those involving consciousness, normativity, or autonomy. (shrink)

Fictionalists propose that some apparently fact-stating discourses do not aim to convey factual information about the world, but rather allow us to engage in a fiction or pretense without incurring ontological commitments. Some philosophers have suggested that using mathematical, modal, or moral discourse, for example, need not commit us to the existence of mathematical objects, possible worlds, or moral facts. The mental fictionalist applies this reasoning to our mental discourse, suggesting that we can use ‘belief’ and ‘desire’ talk without committing (...) to the existence of beliefs and desires as mental entities. Most arguments for mental fictionalism are based on two key suppositions: first, that there are ontological concerns about mental entities; and second, that these ontological concerns justify a fictionalist interpretation of mental discourse. This paper challenges both suppositions and argues that the standard arguments for mental fictionalism are substantially weaker than arguments for other forms of fictionalism in the philosophical literature. (shrink)

Many philosophers subscribe to the view that philosophy is a priori and in the business of discovering necessary truths from the armchair. This paper sets out to empirically test this picture. If this were the case, we would expect to see this reflected in philosophical practice. In particular, we would expect philosophers to advance mostly deductive, rather than inductive, arguments. The paper shows that the percentage of philosophy articles advancing deductive arguments is higher than those advancing inductive arguments, which is (...) what we would expect from the vantage point of the armchair philosophy picture. The results also show, however, that the percentages of articles advancing deductive arguments and those advancing inductive arguments are converging over time and that the difference between inductive and deductive ratios is declining over time. This trend suggests that deductive arguments are gradually losing their status as the dominant form of argumentation in philosophy. (shrink)

Perception provides us with access to the external world, but that access is shaped by our own experiential histories. Through perceptual learning, we can enhance our capacities for perceptual discrimination, categorization, and attention to salient properties. We can also encode harmful biases and stereotypes. This article reviews interdisciplinary research on perceptual learning, with an emphasis on the implications for our rational and normative theorizing. Perceptual learning raises the possibility that our inquiries into topics such as epistemic justification, aesthetic criticism, and (...) moral knowledge should include not only an examination of cognition but also of perception. (shrink)

Two very different forms of externalism about mental states appear prima facie unrelated: Williamson’s (1995, 2000) claim that knowledge is a mental state, and Clark & Chalmers’ (1998) extended mind hypothesis. I demonstrate, however, that the two approaches justify their radically externalist by appealing to the same argument from explanatory generality. I argue that if one accepts either Williamson’s claims or Clark & Chalmers’ claims on considerations of explanatory generality then, ceteris paribus, one should accept the other. This conclusion has (...) implications for philosophy of mind, epistemology, and cognitive science. (shrink)

According to a traditional picture, perception and belief have starkly different epistemic roles. Beliefs have epistemic statuses as justified or unjustified, depending on how they are formed and maintained. In contrast, perceptions are “unjustified justifiers.” Core cognition is a set of mental systems that stand at the border of perception and belief, and has been extensively studied in developmental psychology. Core cognition's borderline states do not fit neatly into the traditional epistemic picture. What is the epistemic role of these states? (...) Focusing on the core object system, the author argues that core object representations have epistemic statuses like beliefs do, despite their many prototypically perceptual features. First, the author argues that it is a sufficient condition on a mental state's having an epistemic status as justified or unjustified that the state is based on reasons. Then the author argues that core object representations are based on reasons, through an examination of both experimental results and key markers of the basing relation. The scope of mental states that are subject to epistemic evaluation as justified or unjustified is not restricted to beliefs. (shrink)

The concept of ecofascism describes the distortion of ecology for the purpose of gaining greater and wider audience, popularising ideologies and fulfilling xenophobic and nationalistic goals by regimes such as the far-right agenda and the radical ecological groups. This study investigates the issue of ecofascism in Europe, using the example of Greece, by examining the views of the citizens of Greece on the links between the political parties and ecology and environment. A survey of 600 people was conducted in Greece, (...) using questionnaires on ecofascism, politics and ecological issues. The survey showed that the sample has, in general, humanistic, democratic and quite left-wing ideals. However, some of the respondents indicated nationalistic, even fascist, trends. Because the current socio-economic and political conditions in Europe can fuel an outbreak of fascism, we should be very cautious about these findings, due to the growing impact of far-right ideas on society. Some aspects of the ecofascist rhetoric still continue to mislead, revealing the sly and worrying penetration of fascism in Greek society on the pretext of the protection of the Greek environment. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences are not immediately responsive to reasons. You see a stick submerged in a glass of water as bent no matter how much you know about light refraction. Due to this isolation from reasons, perception is traditionally considered outside the scope of epistemic evaluability as justified or unjustified. Is perception really as independent from reasons as visual illusions make it out to be? I argue no, drawing on psychological evidence from perceptual learning. The flexibility of perceptual learning is a (...) way of responding to new epistemic reasons. The resulting perceptual experiences are epistemically evaluable as justified or unjustified. (shrink)

A novel problem or task may seem difficult at first, but with enough practice, it can become easy and routine. Practice and the process of learning is often accompanied by some mild cognitive uneas...

Our perceptual systems are not stagnant but can learn from experience. Why is this so? That is, what is the function of perceptual learning? I consider two answers to this question: The Offloading View, which says that the function of perceptual learning is to offload tasks from cognition onto perception, thereby freeing up cognitive resources (Connolly, 2019) and the Perceptual View, which says that the function of perceptual learning is to improve the functioning of perception. I argue that the Perceptual (...) View better explains data from infants and animals, and better accounts for learned tasks that only perception could perform. (shrink)

Chapitre 1. Sport et domination capitaliste (Patrick Vassort) -- Chapitre 2. Sport, anthropofacture et conformisme généralisé (Clément Hamel) -- Chapitre 3. Le sport contre les femmes (Ronan David) -- Chapitre 4. Le sport ou la fin de l'espace vécu (Simon Maillard) -- Chapitre 5. Propagande sportive et colonisation du quotidien (Fabien Lebrun) -- Chapitre 6. Le sport: une entreprise d'uniformisation et de déculturation. L'exemple des JO de Pékin (Bernard Allain) -- Chapitre 7. Le sport contre la culture et l'éducation (...) (Camille Dal et Nicolas Oblin). (shrink)

A unique concept: 40 extraordinary people give answers to 10 searching questions about their beliefs. In our current age of uncertainty and turmoil, this is a book to give insight for life's journey and to encourage readers to confront the same questions themselves. "My suggestion or advice is very simple; that is, to have a sincere heart." - The Dalai Lama What Has Life Taught You? features the answers given by 40 outstanding people to 10 profound questions about life, the (...) mind and the spirit. Author Zoë Sallis has a passion for stirring up debate on philosophical and ethical questions and journeyed all over the globe to ask well-known figures of widely varying beliefs the same 10 questions. Interviewees include: Nelson Mandela His Holiness the Dalai Lama Neale Donald Walsch Anjelica Huston Jack Nicholson Sophia Loren Teale Swan Richard Dawkins David Lynch Gore Vidal And more... The questions range from "What is your concept of God?" and "Do you think this life is all there is, or do you believe in an afterlife?" to "What has life taught you so far?" and "How do you find peace within yourself?" Socrates thought the unexamined life was not worth living, and perhaps that is why he roamed the streets of Athens accosting people and asking them their thoughts and beliefs. By sharing the wisdom of these truly inspiring people, the book hopes to provoke debate and encourage readers to examine what they have learned on their life journey so far and share their own insights with others. (shrink)

At first glance singularity would seem to be necessarily opposed to the physical sciences, indeed to any kind of science. As the hallowed saying goes: “Science deals only in universals.” According to this view, the aim of any true scientific endeavor must be the discovery of universals or, in other words, the value of such an endeavor is based on its ability to explain phenomena in terms of universals. The status of singularity in science is a direct result of this (...) approach. Singularity is associated with the presence, either in a person or an object, of an unusual or exceptional quality, or of an individual trait. Singularity so conceived must therefore be seen as inherently compromising the aims of any scientific endeavor, since the purpose of that endeavor is universality as defined above. In this sense, the basis of scientific explication is the ability to determine a feature common to a collection of objects, thus allowing them to be explained by deductive reasoning. This common feature can therefore not be individual, if individual is understood as unusual or exceptional. (shrink)

What kinds of mental states can be based on epistemic reasons? The standard answer is only beliefs. I argue that perceptual states can also be based on reasons, as the result of crossmodal interactions. A perceptual state from one modality can provide a reason on which an experience in another modality is based. My argument identifies key markers of the basing relation and locates them in the crossmodal Marimba Illusion (Schutz & Kubovy 2009). The subject’s auditory experience of musical tone (...) duration is based on the reason provided by her visual representation of the length of the musician’s gesture and other stored perceptual principles. (shrink)

Do epistemic and aesthetic values ever conflict? The answer might appear to be no, given that background knowledge generally enhances aesthetic experience, and aesthetic experience in turn generates new knowledge. As Keats writes, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’ (Keats, 1996). Contra this line of thought, I argue that epistemic and aesthetic values can conflict when we over-rely on aesthetically enhancing background beliefs. The true and the beautiful can pull in different directions, forcing us to choose between flavours of normativity.

Language provides rich social information about its speakers. For instance, adults and children make inferences about a speaker's social identity, geographic origins, and group membership based on her language and accent. Although infants prefer speakers of familiar languages, little is known about the developmental origins of humans’ sensitivity to language as marker of social identity. We investigated whether 9-month-olds use the language a person speaks as an indicator of that person's likely social relationships. Infants were familiarized with videos of two (...) people who spoke the same or different languages, and then viewed test videos of those two individuals affiliating or disengaging. Results suggest that infants expected two people who spoke the same language to be more likely to affiliate than two people who spoke different languages. Thus, infants view language as a meaningful social marker and use language to make inferences about third-party social relationships. (shrink)

Is there a parallel between climate change and our body’s temperature or non-compliance and failure to act on global warming? This paper proposes a model which describes the human body as part of N...

Daniel Dennett's distinction between personal and subpersonal explanations was fundamental in establishing the philosophical foundations of cognitive science. Since it was first introduced in 1969, the personal/subpersonal distinction has been adapted to fit different approaches to the mind. In one example of this, the ‘Pittsburgh school’ of philosophers attempted to map Dennett's distinction onto their own distinction between the ‘space of reasons’ and the ‘space of causes’. A second example can be found in much contemporary philosophy of psychology, where Dennett's (...) distinction has been presumed to be equivalent to Stephen Stich's distinction between doxastic and subdoxastic states. Both these interpretations of the personal/subpersonal distinction, and also Dennett's own philosophical views of the mind, go beyond the personal/subpersonal distinction itself. They each involve supplementing the distinction between personal and subpersonal explanations with metaphysical claims about the relationship between the two kinds of explanation and the entities they posit. (shrink)

Recognizing and aligning individuals’ unique adaptive beliefs or “priors” through cooperative communication is critical to establishing a therapeutic relationship and alliance. Using active inference, we present an empirical integrative account of the biobehavioral mechanisms that underwrite therapeutic relationships. A significant mode of establishing cooperative alliances—and potential synchrony relationships—is through ostensive cues generated by repetitive coupling during dynamic touch. Established models speak to the unique role of affectionate touch in developing communication, interpersonal interactions, and a wide variety of therapeutic benefits for (...) patients of all ages; both neurophysiologically and behaviorally. The purpose of this article is to argue for the importance of therapeutic touch in establishing a therapeutic alliance and, ultimately, synchrony between practitioner and patient. We briefly overview the importance and role of therapeutic alliance in prosocial and clinical interactions. We then discuss how cooperative communication and mental state alignment—in intentional communication—are accomplished using active inference. We argue that alignment through active inference facilitates synchrony and communication. The ensuing account is extended to include the role of tactile afferents in realizing the beneficial effect of therapeutic synchrony. We conclude by proposing a method for synchronizing the effects of touch using the concept of active inference. (shrink)

We provide a novel articulation of the epistemic peril of p-hacking using three resources from philosophy: predictivism, Bayesian confirmation theory, and model selection theory. We defend a nuanced position on p-hacking: p-hacking is sometimes, but not always, epistemically pernicious. Our argument requires a novel understanding of Bayesianism, since a standard criticism of Bayesian confirmation theory is that it cannot represent the influence of biased methods. We then turn to pre-analysis plans, a methodological device used to mitigate p-hacking. Some say that (...) pre-analysis plans are epistemically meritorious while others deny this, and in practice pre-analysis plans are often violated. We resolve this debate with a modest defence of pre-analysis plans. Further, we argue that pre-analysis plans can be epistemically relevant even if the plan is not strictly followed—and suggest that allowing for flexible pre-analysis plans may be the best available policy option. (shrink)

The “received wisdom” in contemporary analytic philosophy is that intuition talk is a fairly recent phenomenon, dating back to the 1960s. In this paper, we set out to test two interpretations of this “received wisdom.” The first is that intuition talk is just talk, without any methodological significance. The second is that intuition talk is methodologically significant; it shows that analytic philosophers appeal to intuition. We present empirical and contextual evidence, systematically mined from the JSTOR corpus and HathiTrust’s Digital Library, (...) which provide some empirical support for the second rather than the first hypothesis. Our data also suggest that appealing to intuition is a much older philosophical methodology than the “received wisdom” alleges. We then discuss the implications of our findings for the contemporary debate over philosophical methodology. (shrink)

Introduction to Special Issue of Review of Philosophy and Psychology. Overview of the central issues in cognitive architecture, epistemology, and ethics surrounding cognitive penetrability. Special issue includes papers by philosophers and psychologists: Gary Lupyan, Fiona Macpherson, Reginald Adams, Anya Farennikova, Jona Vance, Francisco Marchi, Robert Cowan.

As many studies around the theme of ‘too much medicine’ attest, investigations are being ordered with increasing frequency; similarly the threshold for providing treatment has lowered. Our contention is that trust is a significant factor in influencing this, and that understanding the relationship between trust and investigations and treatments will help clinicians and policymakers ensure ethical decisions are more consistently made. Drawing on the philosophical literature, we investigate the nature of trust in the patient–doctor relationship, arguing that at its core (...) it involves a transfer of discretion. We show that there is substantial empirical support for the idea that more trust will reduce the problem of too much medicine. We then investigate ways in which trust can be built, concentrating on issues of questioning, of acknowledging uncertainty and of shouldering responsibility for it. We argue that offering investigations or treatments as a way of generating trust may itself be an untrustworthy way of proceeding, and that healthcare systems should provide the institutional support for facilitating continuity, questioning and the entrusting of uncertainty. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relationship between economic theory and theories of justice in the design of public policy. In particular, it focuses on the role of mechanism design in policy contexts beset with issues of social, racial and distributive justice. Economists’ involvement in redesigning Boston’s algorithm for allocating K-12 students to public schools serves as an instructive case study. The paper draws on the distinction betweenideal theoryandnon-ideal theoryin political philosophy and the concept ofperformativityin economic sociology to argue that mechanism design (...) can enact elaborate ideal theories of justice. Anormative gapthus emerges between the goals of the policymakers and the objectives of economic designs. As a result, mechanism design may obstruct stakeholders’ avenues for normative criticism of public policies, and serve as a technology of depoliticization. (shrink)

Christopher Hill's book Perceptual experience argues for a representational theory of mind that is grounded in empirical psychology. I focus here on three aspects of Hill's picture: The objects of visual awareness, the perception/cognition border, and the epistemic role of perceptual experience. I introduce challenges to Hill's account and consider ways these challenges may be overcome.

To practise ‘fairly and justly’ a clinician must balance the needs of both the many and the few: the individual patient in front of them, and the many unseen patients in the waiting room, and in the county. They must consider the immediate clinical needs of those in the present, and how their actions will impact on future patients. The good medical practice guidance ‘Make the care of your patient your first concern’ provides no guidance on how doctors should act (...) when they care for multiple patients with conflicting needs. Moreover, conflicting needs extend far past simply those between different patients. At an organisational level, financial obligations must be balanced with clinical ones; the system must support those who work within it in a variety of roles; and, finally, in order for a healthcare service to be sustainable, the demands of current and future generations must be balanced.The central problem, we propose, is that there is no shared philosophical framework on which the provision of care or the development of health policy is based, nor is there a practical, fair and transparent process to ensure that the service is equipped to deal justly with new challenges as they emerge. Many philosophers have grappled with constructing a set of principles which would lead to a ‘good’ society which is just to different users; prominent among them is Rawls.Four important principles can be derived using a Rawlsian approach: equity of access, distributive justice, sustainability and openness. However, Rawls’ approach is sometimes considered too abstract to be applied readily to policymaking; it does not provide clear guidance for how individuals working within existing institutions can enact the principles of justice. We therefore combine the principles derived from Rawls with Scanlonian contractualism: by demanding that decisions are made in a way which cannot be ‘reasonably rejected’ by different stakeholders, we ensure that conflicting needs are considered robustly.We demonstrate how embedding this framework would ensure just policies and fair practice. We illustrate this by using examples of how it would help prevent injustice among different socioeconomic groups, prevent intergenerational injustice and prevent injustice in a crisis, for example, as we respond to new challenges such as COVID-19.Attempts to help individual doctors practise fairly and justly throughout their professional lives are best focused at an institutional or systemic level. We propose a practical framework: combining Scanlonian contractualism with a Rawlsian approach. Adopting this framework would equip the workforce and population to contribute to fair policymaking, and would ultimately result in a healthcare system whose practice and policies—at their core—were just. (shrink)

Chapter 8 argues against the view that the moral rightness of an act is not a reason to perform it, and our reasons are instead the features that make the act right. Philosophers typically defend this view by noting that it seems redundant to take rightness to be an additional reason, once it has been acknowledged that the right-making features are already reasons. The author shows that this argument dramatically overgeneralizes, ruling out all cases in which two or more reasons (...) are arranged in relationships of metaphysical constitution. She then proposes an alternative way of thinking about these metaphysical hierarchies: Rather than assuming that at most one of the facts in each hierarchy is the “real” reason, bearing all the normative weight, it should be accepted that these facts can all be genuine reasons, whose normative weight is shared in virtue of the metaphysical relationships between them. Some tests are offered that can be used to determine which facts occur in metaphysical hierarchies with shared weight, and it is argued that the fact that an act is morally right passes the tests. The author then explains what she takes to be some kernels of truth underlying the redundancy argument, arguing that these phenomena are pragmatic, not metaphysical. (shrink)

This paper goes beyond critiques of western philosophical notions of space as passive, feminine, and unintelligent by reconfiguring containment as an active process. The author draws on work in the history of technology, on a cybernetic epistemology that emphasizes the interdependence of organism and environment, and on intersubjectivist psychoanalytic theories of the maternal provision. A more unexpected ally is found in Heidegger, whose writings on holding and supply are read in ways that contribute to the development of an urgently required (...) philosophy of container technologies. (shrink)

This commentary considers Audi’s treatment of four fundamental topics in the epistemology of perception: inference, the basing relation, the metaphysics of reasons and grounds, and the relationship between knowledge and justification.

Modular approaches to the architecture of the mind claim that some mental mechanisms, such as sensory input processes, operate in special-purpose subsystems that are functionally independent from the rest of the mind. This assumption of modularity seems to be in tension with recent claims that the mind has a predictive architecture. Predictive approaches propose that both sensory processing and higher-level processing are part of the same Bayesian information-processing hierarchy, with no clear boundary between perception and cognition. Furthermore, it is not (...) clear how any part of the predictive architecture could be functionally independent, given that each level of the hierarchy is influenced by the level above. Both the assumption of continuity across the predictive architecture and the seeming non-isolability of parts of the predictive architecture seem to be at odds with the modular approach. I explore and ultimately reject the predictive approach’s apparent commitments to continuity and non-isolation. I argue that predictive architectures can be modular architectures, and that we should in fact expect predictive architectures to exhibit some form of modularity. (shrink)

Safe-by-design aims at addressing safety issues already during the R&D and design phases of new technologies. SbD has increasingly become popular in the last few years for addressing the risks of emerging technologies like nanotechnology and synthetic biology. We ask to what extent SbD approaches can deal with uncertainty, in particular with indeterminacy, i.e., the fact that the actual safety of a technology depends on the behavior of actors in the value chain like users and operators. We argue that while (...) indeterminacy may be approached by designing out users as much as possible in attaining safety, this is often not a good strategy. It will not only make it more difficult to deal with unexpected risks; it also misses out on the resources that users can bring for achieving safety, and it is undemocratic. We argue that rather than directly designing for safety, it is better to design for the responsibility for safety, i.e., designers should think where the responsibility for safety is best situated and design technologies accordingly. We propose some heuristics that can be used in deciding how to share and distribute responsibility for safety through design. (shrink)

The use of genetically modified organisms in agriculture makes great promises of better seeds, but also raises many controversies about ownership of seeds and about potential hazards. I suggest that owners of these seeds bear the responsibility to do no harm in using these seeds. After defining the nature of this responsibility, this paper asks, if ownership entails moral responsibility, and ownership can be transferred, then how is moral responsibility transferred? Building on the literature on use plans, I suggest five (...) conditions for a good transfer of moral responsibility for genetically modified seeds. I also look at the Monsanto Technology Use Guide and Technology/Stewardship Agreement, as an examplar of a use plan, to explore the extent to which these conditions are present. I conclude that use plans can play a role in the distribution and transfer of moral responsibility for technologies with high benefits and potential harmful uncertainties. (shrink)

Predictive approaches to the mind claim that perception, cognition, and action can be understood in terms of a single framework: a hierarchy of Bayesian models employing the computational strategy of predictive coding. Proponents of this view disagree, however, over the extent to which perception is direct on the predictive approach. I argue that we can resolve these disagreements by identifying three distinct notions of perceptual directness: psychological, metaphysical, and epistemological. I propose that perception is plausibly construed as psychologically indirect on (...) the predictive approach, in the sense of being constructivist or inferential. It would be wrong to conclude from this, however, that perception is therefore indirect in a metaphysical or epistemological sense on the predictive approach. In the metaphysical case, claims about the inferential properties of constructivist perceptual mechanisms are consistent with both direct and indirect solutions to the metaphysical problem of perception (e.g. naïve realism, representationalism, sense datum theory). In the epistemological case, claims about the inferential properties of constructivist perceptual mechanisms are consistent with both direct and indirect approaches to the justification of perceptual belief. In this paper, I demonstrate how proponents of the predictive approach have conflated these distinct notions of perceptual directness and indirectness, and I propose alternative strategies for developing the philosophical consequences of the approach. (shrink)

was to test the role of both early and higher visual areas in the integration of local features into global shapes. To this end, we conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. Although fMRI lacks the high spatial resolution of intracortical recordings, it allows simultaneous collection of responses to the same stimulus set from multiple visual areas that is not possible with standard recording techniques. We performed these studies in monkeys, where much is known about the properties of neurons in different (...) visual areas, and in humans, where recent fMRI.. (shrink)

This paper studies unbounded pseudo-algebraically closed fields and shows an amalgamation result for types over algebraically closed sets. It discusses various applications, for instance that omega-free PAC fields have the property NSOP3. It also contains a description of imaginaries in PAC fields.

Many models of cognitive ability and disability rely on the idea of cognition as abstract reasoning processes implemented in the brain. Research in cognitive science, however, emphasizes the way that our cognitive skills are embodied in our more basic capacities for sensing and moving, and the way that tools in the external environment can extend the cognitive abilities of our brains. This chapter addresses the implications of research in embodied cognition and extended cognition for how we think about cognitive impairment (...) and rehabilitation, how cognitive reserve mitigates neural impairment, and the distinction between medical and social models of disability. (shrink)

There are two distinct approaches to Bayesian modelling in cognitive science. Black-box approaches use Bayesian theory to model the relationship between the inputs and outputs of a cognitive system without reference to the mediating causal processes; while mechanistic approaches make claims about the neural mechanisms which generate the outputs from the inputs. This paper concerns the relationship between these two approaches. We argue that the dominant trend in the philosophical literature, which characterizes the relationship between black-box and mechanistic approaches to (...) Bayesian cognitive science in terms of the dichotomy between instrumentalism and realism, is misguided. We propose that the two distinctions are orthogonal: black-box and mechanistic approaches to Bayesian modelling can each be given either an instrumentalist or a realist interpretation. We argue that the current tendency to conflate black-box approaches with instrumentalism and mechanistic approaches with realism stems from unwarranted assumptions about the nature of scientific explanation, the ontological commitments of scientific theories, and the role of abstraction and idealization in scientific models. We challenge each of these assumptions to reframe the debates over Bayesian modelling in cognitive science. (shrink)

We explore whether a Rawlsian approach might provide a guiding philosophy for the development of a healthcare system, in particular with regard to resolving tensions between different groups within it. We argue that an approach developed from some of Rawls’ principles – using his ‘veil of ignorance’ and both the ‘difference’ and ‘just savings’ principles which it generates – provides a compelling basis for policy making around certain areas of conflict. We ask what policies might be made if those making (...) them did not know if one was patient, doctor, nurse or manager – in this generation or the next. We first offer a brief summary of Rawls’ approach and how we intend to extrapolate from it. We examine how this adapted Rawlsian framework could be applied to specific examples of conflict within healthcare; we demonstrate how this framework can be used to develop a healthcare service which is both sustainable (in its training and treatment of staff, and in encouraging research and innovation) and open (to protect the powers and opportunities of those using the health service). We conclude that while Rawls’ approach has previously been rejected as a means to address specific healthcare decisions, an adapted veil of ignorance can be a useful tool for the consideration of how a just health service should be constructed and sustained. Turning the theoretical into the practical (and combining Rawls’ thought experiment with Scanlonian contractarianism), managers, doctors, patients, carers and nurses could come together and debate conflicting issues behind a hypothetical veil. (shrink)

How does the philosophical debate between naive realism and intentionalism relate to the psychological debate between ecological theories and constructivist theories? The participants in each debate take themselves to be doing something distinctive, but I show that characterizing the distinction is difficult: the theories in both debates use inference to the best explanation to draw contingent conclusions about the constitutive nature of perception. I argue that both debates concern the metaphysics of perception, and that philosophers of perception are wrong to (...) think that constructivist and ecological theories are engaged in a distinct and non-metaphysical task. (shrink)

: This paper goes beyond critiques of western philosophical notions of space as passive, feminine, and unintelligent by reconfiguring containment as an (inter-)active process. The author draws on work in the history of technology, on a cybernetic epistemology that emphasizes the interdependence of organism and environment, and on intersubjectivist psychoanalytic theories of the maternal provision. A more unexpected ally is found in Heidegger, whose writings on holding and supply are read in ways that contribute to the development of an urgently (...) required philosophy of container technologies. (shrink)