The purpose of this paper is to e»tahlish some connections between precedent-based reasoning as it is studied in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Law, particularly in the work of Ashley, and two other fields: deontic logic and nonmonotonic logic. First, a deontic logic is described that allows lor sensible reasoning in the presence of conflicting norms. Second, a simplified version of Ashley's account of precedent-based reasoning is reformulated within the framework of this deontic logic. Finally, some (...) ideas from the theory of nonmonotonic inheritance are employed to show how Ashley's account might be elaborated to allow for a richer representation of the process of argumentation. (shrink)

In order to deal with the possibility of deontic conflicts Lou Goble developed a group of logics (DPM) that are characterized by a restriction of the inheritance principle. While they approximate the deductive power of standard deontic logic, they do so only if the user adds certain statements to the premises. By adaptively strengthening the DPM logics, this paper presents logics that overcome this shortcoming. Furthermore, they are capable of modeling the dynamic and defeasible aspect of our (...) normative reasoning by their dynamic proof theory. This way they enable us to have a better insight in the relations between obligations and thus to localize deontic conflicts. (shrink)

Inheritance is the principle that deontic `ought' is closed under entailment. This paper is about a tension that arises in connection with Inheritance. More specifically, it is about two observations that pull in opposite directions. One of them raises questions about the validity of Inheritance, while the other appears to provide strong support for it. We argue that existing approaches to deontic modals fail to provide us with an adequate resolution of this tension. In response, (...) we develop a positive analysis, and show that this proposal provides a satisfying account of our intuitions. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Sven Danielsson argued that the ‘original paradoxes' of deontic logic, in particular Ross's paradox and Prior's paradox of derived obligation, can be solved by restricting the modal inheritance rule. I argue that this does not solve the paradoxes.

The Deontic Transfer Principle states that if it is permissible for a person A to cause another person B harm H then, other things being equal, it is permissible for A to impose a risk of harm H on B. In this article we show that the Deontic Transfer Principle is vulnerable to counterexamples, and that the same is true of a range of closely related principles. We conclude that the deontic status of a risk imposition is (...) not directly inherited from the deontic properties of deterministic acts. (shrink)

Lou Goble proposed powerful conditional deontic logics (CDPM) that are able to deal with deontic conflicts by means of restricting the inheritance principle. One of the central problems for dyadic deontic logics is to properly treat the restricted applicability of the principle “strengthening the antecedent”. In most cases it is desirable to derive from an obligation A under condition B, that A is also obliged under condition B and C. However, there are important counterexamples. Goble proposed (...) a weakened rational monotonicity principle to tackle this problem. This solution is suboptimal as it is for some examples counter-intuitive or even leads to explosion. The paper identifies also other problems of Goble’s systems. For instance, to make optimal use of the restricted inheritance principle, in many cases the user has to manually add certain statements to the premises. An adaptive logic framework based on CDPM is proposed which is able to tackle these problems. It allows for certain rules to be applied as much as possible. In this way counter-intuitive consequences as well as explosion can be prohibited and no user interference is required. Furthermore, for non-conflicting premise sets the adaptive logics are equivalent to Goble’s dyadic version of standard deontic logic. (shrink)

The two volumes in this advanced textbook present results, proof methods, and translations of motivational and philosophical considerations to formal constructions. In the associated Vol. I the author explains preferential structures and abstract size. In this Vol. II he presents chapters on theory revision and sums, defeasible inheritance theory, interpolation, neighbourhood semantics and deontic logic, abstract independence, and various aspects of nonmonotonic and other logics. In both volumes the text contains many exercises and some solutions, and the author (...) limits the discussion of motivation and general context throughout, offering this only when it aids understanding of the formal material, in particular to illustrate the path from intuition to formalisation. Together these books are a suitable compendium for graduate students and researchers in the area of computer science and mathematical logic. (shrink)

Here we focus on two questions: What is the proper semantics for deontic modal expressions in English? And what is the connection between true deontic modal statements and normative reasons? Our contribution towards thinking about the first, which makes up the bulk of our paper, considers a representative sample of recent challenges to a Kratzer-style formal semantics for modal expressions, as well as the rival views—Fabrizio Cariani’s contrastivism, John MacFarlane’s relativism, and Mark Schroeder’s ambiguity theory—those challenges are thought (...) to motivate. These include the Professor Procrastinate challenge to Inheritance (the principle that ‘If ought p and p entails q, then ought q), as well as Parfit’s miners puzzle regarding information-sensitive deontic modals. Here we argue that a Kratzer-style view is able to meet all of the challenges we’ll consider. In addition, we’ll identify challenges for each of those rival views. Our overall conclusion is that a Kratzer-style semantics remains the one to beat. With this assumption in place, we then ask how we should understand the relationship between true deontic modal statements and normative reasons. Should, for example, we hold that the truth of such a statement entails the existence of a normative reason for some agent to comply? Here we argue that, in many cases, acceptance of Kratzer’s semantics for deontic modals leaves open for substantive normative theorizing the question of whether an agent has a normative reason to comply with what she ought to do. (shrink)

One family of maximizing act consequentialist theories are actualist direct theories. Indeed, historically there are at least three different forms of actualist direct consequentialism (due to Bentham, Moore, and contemporary consequentialists). This paper is about the logical differences between these three actualist direct theories and the differences between actualist direct theories and their competitors. Three main points emerge. First, the sharpest separation between actualist direct theories and their competitors concerns the so-called inheritance principle. Second, there are a myriad of (...) other logical differences among actualist direct theories. Third, one theory (Moore's theory) stands out among actualist direct theories because it entails a variety of logical principles. This fact may count in favor of that theory. (shrink)

This is a draft of Chapter Three of the book I'm working on entitled: Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends. This chapter outlines my favored moral theory: Kantian consequentialism or Kantsequentialism, for short. This theory takes what's best from both utilitarianism and Kantianism while leaving behind the problems associated with each.

I argue that Kantianism and utilitarianism have the opposite strengths and weaknesses. Whereas Kantianism but not utilitarianism accords with our commonsense views about morality, utilitarianism but not Kantianism accords with our commonsense views about action and reasons for action.

I motivate and characterize an intensional semantics for ‘ought’ on which it does not behave as a universal quantifier over possibilities. My motivational argument centers on taking at face value some standard challenges to the quantificational semantics, especially to the idea that ‘ought’-sentences satisfy the principle of Inheritance. I argue that standard pragmatic approaches to these puzzles are either not sufficiently detailed or unconvincing.

One very popular assumption in the epistemological literature is that belief and assertion are governed by one and the same epistemic norm. This paper challenges this claim. Extant arguments in defence of the view are scrutinized and found to rest on value-theoretic inaccuracies. First, the belief-assertion parallel is shown to lack the needed normative strength. Second, I argue that the claim that assertion inherits the norm of belief in virtue of being an expression thereof rests on a failed instance of (...) deontic transmission. Third, the inheritance argument from the norm for action is proven guilty of deontic equivocation. Last but not least, it is argued that, on a functionalist normative picture, assertion and belief are governed by different epistemic norms, in virtue of serving different epistemic functions. (shrink)

One very popular assumption in the epistemological literature is that belief and assertion are governed by one and the same epistemic norm. This paper challenges this claim. Extant arguments in defence of the view are scrutinized and found to rest on value-theoretic inaccuracies. First, the belief-assertion parallel is shown to lack the needed normative strength. Second, I argue that the claim that assertion inherits the norm of belief in virtue of being an expression thereof rests on a failed instance of (...) deontic transmission. Third, the inheritance argument from the norm for action is proven guilty of deontic equivocation. Last but not least, it is argued that, on a functionalist normative picture, assertion and belief are governed by different epistemic norms, in virtue of serving different epistemic functions. (shrink)

In this paper, I deal with socio-pragmatics and pragmemes, and propose that we need to take into account societal and cultural considerations in order to develop a persuasive theory about utterance meaning and language use. In particular, I deal with pragmemes and propose that they depart considerably from speech act theory, which is more or less a kind of armchair linguistics, as they can be combined with the notion of language games Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Blackwell) and with the notion of (...) the triadic structure of language. In this view, culture plays a predominant role. As Wong says: To attain a more holistic picture of language, one would need to see beyond form and even meaning to consider the cultural context of the language under study. This is because, as numerous studies have argued persuasively, people use language to express not only meaning but, consciously or subconsciously, culture as well – values, attitudes, biases, etc. A pragmeme is, therefore, best viewed as a “culturally situated speech act” and when we study pragmemes, we should ideally study them with respect to the culture in which they are used. In this paper, I explain why culture plays a predominant role in the pragmeme and should be a component of the definition of this type of unit of language use. I provide certain examples of pragmemes which require the notion of pragmatic competence and clearly show that a certain cultural dimension is important in determining rules of use. Then I consider a special kind of pragmemes: pragmemes at the market place. Pragmemes at the market place can be seen in the light of Mey’s Pragmatics. An introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.) ideas on adaptability. Language users develop ways to adapt to reality by making use of pragmatic acts that exploit contextual considerations and, given that they are to be seen as responses to the changing circumstances of life, may establish a path of language use and norms that constitute precedents from which subsequent language users can inherit ways to adapt to the circumstances of life. Sellers at the market develop techniques for shouting, surprising their clients, attracting attention, advertising their products through imaginative and poetic ways. These clearly require techniques, social practices and rules of use that are very different from those involved in other forms of communication, in that they are to be seen as responses to specific circumstances, specific purposes, and specific needs to adapt to the new circumstances of life. I propose that the poetic function Closing statements. Linguistics and poetics. In T. Sebeok, Style in language. Cambridge: MIT) in these language games merges with other functions. Both the poetic and the phatic function are subordinated to the conative function. I consider cases of expansion, in which knowledge of the cultural background and the situational context can guide interpretation and, in particular, the calculation of syntactic relations, which is made particularly difficult because we are confronted with fragments. I then consider pragmemes and deontic modality, arguing that the cultural context ensures that the right interpretation is arrived at through cultural ethical norms. Next, I consider the pragmeme ‘selling fish at the market place’. We can see that a particular pragmeme has its own norms that are dedicated to it and determined by the situational needs of the seller. The seller specializes in selling this product and, thus, best knows how to advertise it. Why should there be these forms of specialization? Probably, the answer is that the seller knows which questions the client has for him and he is prepared to answer them in advance, having developed poetic techniques for this task. I finally provide a series of common features which pragmemes of selling things at the market place display. We may consider them the topoi of the specific pragmemes. I am aware that there is a lot more work to be done, but this is not always easy because this kind of language use is gradually being lost due to changes in the structure of society. The data collected by anthropologists do not suffice in any way because they are focused on folklore more than on language use. The attempt to focus on the core features of pragmemes or, in the case in point, the pragmemes of selling fish at the market place is thwarted by the scarcity of the data. (shrink)

The two volumes in this advanced textbook present results, proof methods, and translations of motivational and philosophical considerations to formal constructions. In this Vol. I the author explains preferential structures and abstract size. In the associated Vol. II he presents chapters on theory revision and sums, defeasible inheritance theory, interpolation, neighbourhood semantics and deontic logic, abstract independence, and various aspects of nonmonotonic and other logics. In both volumes the text contains many exercises and some solutions, and the author (...) limits the discussion of motivation and general context throughout, offering this only when it aids understanding of the formal material, in particular to illustrate the path from intuition to formalisation. Together these books are a suitable compendium for graduate students and researchers in the area of computer science and mathematical logic. (shrink)

Agents act on the basis of their beliefs and these beliefs change as they interact with other agents. In this book the authors propose and explain general logical tools for handling change. These tools include preferential reasoning, theory revision, and reasoning in inheritance systems, and the authors use these tools to examine nonmonotonic logic, deontic logic, counterfactuals, modal logic, intuitionistic logic, and temporal logic. This book will be of benefit to researchers engaged with artificial intelligence, and in particular (...) agents, multiagent systems and nonmonotonic logic. (shrink)

Explores the development of the ideas of evolutionary biology, particularly as affected by the increasing understanding of genetics and of the chemical basis of inheritance.

This paper focuses on the inheritance of human handedness and cerebral lateralization within the more general context of structural biological asymmetries. The morphogenesis of asymmetrical structures, such as the heart in vertebrates, depends upon a complex interaction between information coded in the cytoplasm and in the genes, but the polarity of asymmetry seems to depend on the cytoplasmic rather than the genetic code. Indeed it is extremely difficult to find clear-cut examples in which thedirectionof an asymmetry is under genetic (...) control. As one possible case, there is some evidence that the direction, clockwise or counterclockwise, of rotation of the abdomen in certain mutant strains ofDrosophilais controlled by a particular gene locus, although there appears to be some degree of confusion on this point. By contrast, it is much easier to find examples in which thedegreebut not the direction of asymmetry is under genetic control. For instance, there is a mutant strain of mice in which half of the animals displaysitus inversusof the viscera. The proportion has remained at one half despite many years of inbreeding, suggesting that the mutant allele effectively cancels the normalsitusand allows the asymmetry to be specified in random fashion.Although this account does not deny that the right hemisphere of humans may be the more specialized for certain functions, it does attribute a leading or dominant role to the left hemisphere (at least in most individuals). We suggest that so-called “right-hemisphere” functions are essentially acquired by default, due to the left hemisphere's prior involvement with speech and skilled motor acts; we note, for instance, that these right-hemisphere functions include rather elementary perceptual processes. But perhaps the more critical prediction from our account is that the phenomenon of equipotentiality should be unidirectional: the right (lagging) hemisphere should be more disposed to take over left-hemisphere functions following early lesions than is the left (leading) hemisphere to take over right-hemisphere functions. We note preliminary evidence that this may be so. (shrink)

Science’s theory of evolution purports to explain life and its historical dynamics in a physics/material-only fashion. But this entails a broad reliance on DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) for inheritance (and thus blueprints), which appears to be implausible for a number of unusual innate behaviors. The immediate unfolding challenge, though, is that the inheritance role is conveniently testable via searches for the DNA origins of a number of human behavioral and health tendencies, and despite enormous efforts those searches have thus (...) far largely failed (i.e., the “absolutely beyond belief” missing heritability problem). This existing case for DNA’s inadequacies will be briefly reviewed herein. The subsequent main analysis considers some big challenges facing DNA associated with some evolutionary dynamics—the acquisition of color vision in primates; instinctive behaviors including the egg-laying practices of emerald jewel wasps; kin selection; and our natural religious beliefs. Together these challenges strongly suggest that the acceptance of DNA as the (complete) language of life was premature. The haphazard and ambiguous nature of DNA/genetic specifications is very unlikely to have provided a vehicle for the exacting blueprints required for the many instinctive behaviors or capacities. Life appears to be more complex than biologists believe. Two possible alternative explanations are briefly considered in the wake of these discussions. Finally, does anyone—beginning with academics—care about this unfolding foundational failure? (shrink)

A physicalist holds, in part, that what properties are instantiated depends on what physical properties are instantiated; a physicalist thinks that mental properties, for example, are instantiated in virtue of the instantiation of physical “realizer” properties. One issue that arises in this context concerns the relationship between the “causal powers” of instances of physical properties and instances of dependent properties, properties that are instantiated in virtue of the instantiation of physical properties. After explaining the significance of this issue, I evaluate (...) two core lines of thought that have been advanced in favor of Subset Inheritance, the view that instances of dependent properties typically have some, but not all, of the powers of physical realizers, and do not have any powers that are not also powers of physical realizers. The first argument that I address turns on our intuitive reactions to certain cases; the second appeals to the phenomenon of multiple realization. I argue that neither line of thought succeeds, and thus that insofar as we grant that an instance of a dependent property inherits some of the powers of its physical realizer, defenders of subset inheritance have not provided a compelling reason to think that it will not inherit all of the powers of its physical realizer. (shrink)

This paper aims at showing how the New Rhetoric’s insights allow for an integration of argumentation studies in linguistic investigation, and more specifically in discourse analysis. Claiming that argumentativity is a constitutive feature of discourse, it endeavors to explore logos as both reason and language by analyzing patterns of reasoning in their discursive actualization. In this approach, the attempt at influencing the audience’s representations is analyzed in the complexity of a discourse explored in its formal and socio-institutional dimensions.

In the years of the post-Darwinian debate, many American naturalists invoked the name of Lamarck to signal their belief in a purposive and anti-Darwinian view of evolution. Yet Weismann’s theory of germ-plasm continuity undermined the shared tenet of the neo-Lamarckian theories as well as the idea of the interchangeability between biological and social heredity. Edward Drinker Cope, the leader of the so-called “American School,” defended his neo-Lamarckian philosophy against every attempt to redefine the relationship between behavior, development, and heredity beyond (...) the epigenetic model of inheritance. This paper explores Cope’s late-career defense of neo-Lamarckism. Particular attention is dedicated to the debate he had with James Mark Baldwin before the publication of Baldwin’s own “A New Factor in Evolution”. I argue that Cope’s criticism was partly due to the fact that Baldwin’s theory of social heredity threatened Cope’s biologistic stance, as well as his attempt to preserve design in nature. This theoretical attitude had a remarkable impact on Baldwin’s arguments for the theory of organic selection. (shrink)

The presence of various mechanisms of non-genetic inheritance is one of the main problems for current evolutionary theory according to several critics. Sufficient empirical and conceptual reasons exist to take this claim seriously, but there is little consensus on the implications of multiple inheritance systems for evolutionary processes. Here we use the Price Equation as a starting point for a discussion of the differences between four recently proposed categories of inheritance systems; genetic, epigenetic, behavioral and symbolic. Specifically, (...) we address how the components of the Price Equation encompass different non-genetic systems of inheritance in an attempt to clarify how the different systems are conceptually related. We conclude that the four classes of inheritance systems do not form distinct clusters with respect to their effect on the rate and direction of phenotypic change from one generation to the next in the absence or presence of selection. Instead, our analyses suggest that different inheritance systems can share features that are conceptually very similar, but that their implications for adaptive evolution nevertheless differ substantially as a result of differences in their ability to couple selection and inheritance. (shrink)

Summary Long-standing claims have been made for nearly the entire twentieth century that the biometrician, Karl Pearson, and his colleague, W. F. R. Weldon, rejected Mendelism as a theory of inheritance. It is shown that at the end of the nineteenth century Pearson considered various theories of inheritance (including Francis Galton's law of ancestral heredity for characters underpinned by continuous variation), and by 1904 he ?accepted the fundamental idea of Mendel? as a theory of inheritance for discontinuous (...) variation. Moreover, in 1909, he suggested a synthesis of biometry and Mendelism. Despite the many attempts made by a number of geneticists (including R. A. Fisher in 1936) to use Pearson's chi-square (X 2, P) goodness-of-fit test on Mendel's data, which produced results that were ?too good to be true?, Weldon reached the same conclusion in 1902, but his results were never acknowledged. The geneticist and arch-rival of the biometricians, Williams Bateson, was instead exceptionally critical of this work and interpreted this as Weldon's rejection of Mendelism. Whilst scholarship on Mendel, by historians of science in the last 18 years, has led to a balanced perspective of Mendel, it is suggested that a better balanced and more rounded view of the hereditarian-statistical work of Pearson, Weldon, and the biometricians is long overdue. (shrink)

The ideas upon which public education was founded in the last half of the nineteenth century were wrong. And despite their continued dominance in educational thinking for a century and a half, these ideas are no more right today. So argues one of the most original and highly regarded educational theorists of our time in 'Getting It Wrong from the Beginning'. Kieran Egan explains how we have come to take mistaken concepts about education for granted and why this dooms our (...) attempts at educational reform. (shrink)

Within-category induction is the projection of a generic property from a class to a subtype of that class. The modifier effect refers to the discovery reported by Connolly et al., that the subtype statement tends to be judged less likely to be true than the original unmodified sentence. The effect was replicated and shown to be moderated by the typicality of the modifier. Likelihood judgements were also found to correlate between modified and unmodified versions of sentences. Experiment 2 elicited justifications, (...) which suggested three types of reason for the effect-pragmatics, knowledge-based reasoning, and uncertainty about attribute inheritance. It is argued that the results provide clear evidence for the default inheritance of prototypical attributes in modified concepts, although a full account of the effect remains to be given. (shrink)

While Wallace disagreed with Darwin that domesticates provided a great deal of useful information on wild populations,71 Darwin continued to draw on his domesticated animals and plants to inform him on the workings of his theory. Unlike Wallace, his exposure to natural populations was extremely limited after his return from the Beagle voyage. By the 1850s, he had settled into a life at Down House and was becoming more and more withdrawn from London scientific circles. He turned to his network (...) of informants, visits from colleagues such as Hooker and T. H. Huxley, subscriptions to various journals, and his own experimental studies at Down.This work on domesticates was clearly related to other natural history studies conducted by Darwin and others during the same period. For example, during the 1850s when Darwin worked on domesticates, he was also engaged in questions of geographic distribution. To study the dispersal and subsequent viability of introduced seeds, he soaked various seeds in a tub filled with seawater and counted which of the seeds floated after a given period; later he planted the seeds in the yard at Down to look for potential viability. There was no attempt at controlled, replicated experiments in these studies, or in his work with domesticates, nor should there have been. To Darwin the results of one experiment represented a potential truth of nature, and he was quick to seize upon these results as supporting evidence for his theory.I have suggested in this paper that his work on domesticates was not simply meant to provide an analogy for natural selection but rather became a research program to investigate other aspects of his natural selection theory, especially inheritance and variability; these subjects were integral parts of his theory of natural selection, but by 1859 he had not found a mechanism to account for them. The experiments brought home the difficult problems of inheritance, and Darwin specifically formulated pangenesis to account for these problems. Pangenesis was not an afterthought but an integration of several decades of thinking on inheritance. It was a unified theory to explain the complicated results he witnessed in his own experiments.Much of the Darwin scholarship has focused on Darwin's path toward the discovery of natural selection. Natural selection per se was a major interest, but not the only area of interest to Darwin. Inheritance was an area of serious concern for him both before and after he had formulated natural selection. His experimentation with domesticates was an attempt to look beyond natural selection and to concentrate on the difficult subject of inheritance. He found inheritance especially troublesome, requiring a “provisional hypothesis” to account for it. To see domesticates, as they are described in the Origin, as merely an analogy for natural selection, does not account for the importance Darwin placed on them. For him they were not man's monstrous productions, but worthy experimental subjects providing him with crucial information on inheritance. (shrink)

This paper revisits Fleeming Jenkin’s anonymous review of Charles Darwin’s _Origin of Species_, published in the _North British Review_ in June 1867. This review is usually revered for its impact on Darwin’s theory of descent with modification. Its classical interpretation states that Jenkin, a Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, made a compelling case against natural selection based on the fact of “blending inheritance” and the “swamping” of advantageous variations. Those themes, however, are strikingly absent from Jenkin’s (...) text. They were later read into Jenkin’s text by scholars trying to explain how Darwinian selection was reconciled with Mendelian genes and the birth of the Modern Synthesis. While many scholars have tried to measure Jenkin’s effect on Darwin, the value of the 1867 review remains unclear. This paper re-examines its content and concludes that Jenkin’s “able review” was in fact written by an engineer whose competencies in biology were very low. Focusing on the figure of the shipwrecked white sailor isolated on an island inhabited by Black people, this paper also underlines the racial assumptions behind Jenkin’s review. “Blending inheritance” is thus a theme linked to theoretical reworkings on the question of race and skin colors, taking its root in Galton’s typology of heredity. Darwin was probably mostly unimpressed by Jenkin’s review. The problems raised by the review were not so much “blending inheritance” and “swamping” but a conundrum of problems related to the effects of intercrossing on variation and reversion. (shrink)

This paper attempts to identify general, cross-cultural cognitive factors that trigger the default commissive interpretation of assertions about one's future action. It is argued that the solution cannot be found at the level of the semantics of the English will, or any other future tense marker, but should be sought in the structure of rational intentions, as combined with the pragmatics of felicitous predictions and with parameters linked to the evolutionary advantage of cooperative behaviour. Some supporting evidence from language development (...) studies is briefly presented. (shrink)

Developmental System Theory is a theoretical reinterpretation of biological phenomena challenging the conventional gene-centered account of development and evolution. In this paper, I focus on Griffiths and Gray’s version of Developmental Systems Theory and I particularly analyze their reconceptualization of inheritance. First, I present their concept of expanded and diffused inheritance; then, I examine and criticize their refusal of the multiple inheritance system model; finally, I present and contrast Griffiths and Gray’s extension of what they call the (...) “causal parity thesis” from development to evolution. I argue that their proposal is an interesting and programmatic philosophical perspective on biological phenomena but, because of their commitment to holism, fails to provide both more heuristic tools for empirical investigation in biology and a more realistic representation of the biological world. (shrink)

There are numerous formal systems that allow inference of new conditionals based on a conditional knowledge base. Many of these systems have been analysed theoretically and some have been tested against human reasoning in psychological studies, but experiments evaluating the performance of such systems are rare. In this article, we extend the experiments in [19] in order to evaluate the inferential properties of c-representations in comparison to the well-known Systems P and Z. Since it is known that System Z and (...) c-representations mainly differ in the sorts of inheritance inferences they allow, we discuss subclass inheritance and present experimental data for this type of inference in particular. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Platonic Influences on Shakespeare's Pre‐1604 Work Othello's “Temptation Scene” as a Parody of the Elenchus.

Grounded procedures of separation are conceptualized as a learned concept. The simultaneous cultural universality of the general idea and immense diversity of its implementations might be better understood through the lens of dual inheritance theories. By drawing on examples from developmental psychology and emotion theorizing, we argue that an innate blueprint might underlie learned implementations of cleansing that vary widely.

Judeo-Christian and Anglo-Saxon forms of marriage have injected patrilineal values and companionate expectations into the Akan matrilineal family structure. As Anthony Appiah demonstrates, these infusions have generated severe strains in the matrikin social structures and, in extreme cases, resulted in the break up of families. In this essay, I investigate the ideological politics at play in this patrilinealization of Asante society.

Judeo-Christian and Anglo-Saxon forms of marriage have injected patrilineal values and companionate expectations into the Akan matrilineal family structure. As Anthony Appiah demonstrates, these infusions have generated severe strains in the matrikin social structures and, in extreme cases, resulted in the break up of families. In this essay, I investigate the ideological politics at play in this patrilinealization of Asante society.

Once referring to the debt he owed to Martin Heidegger for his research on the question of death, Emmanuel Levinas explained that, though he distinguished his work from Heidegger’s thought, he did so in spite of “whatever” the debt “every contemporary thinker” owed to Heidegger—a debt that, Levinas then quipped, one “often owes to his regrets.” Contemporary thinkers working in the field of Black Studies have acknowledged their own “debt” to the black philosopher Nahum Chandler for the concept of paraontology. (...) Fred Moten, most notably, credits Chandler for providing a conceptual opening for a renewed thinking of blackness’ modes of resisting ongoing regimes of racial predation. Typifying disturbance, therefore, paraontology offers us the possibility of considering blackness beyond (though always with and against) the violence of its constitution. To heed the ramifications of transformative events, I attempt to measure those hermeneutical passages often compressed by the force of such groundbreaking discursive moments. Thus, responding to Chandler’s wish for his concerns to remain “perennial” rather than “fashionable,” I trace the history of the concept of paraontology back to its first use by Heidegger’s student Oskar Becker, whose main concern uncannily echoes the concept’s seemingly axiomatic use in Black Studies: namely, a radical disruption in the hegemonic and purist logic of ontology. (shrink)