There are two main routes to a concept of (generalized) quantifier. The first starts from first‐order logic, FO, and generalizes from the familiar ∀ and ∃ occurring there. The second route begins with real languages, and notes that many so‐called noun phrases, a kind of phrase which occurs abundantly in most languages, can be interpreted in a natural and uniform way using quantifiers.

Western consumers are increasingly demanding to know the provenance of their food. In New Zealand, Māori tribal enterprises are engaged in the food producing sectors of farming and fisheries and, like other businesses seeking to remain competitive in global markets, are responding to the demand for provenance through developing systems for communicating the origin of foods to consumers. However, Māori are doing this in their own way, in a manner that authentically reflects their own understanding of place and expresses an (...) indigenous animist perspective. It is argued that an animist approach to provenancing provides an authentic means of connecting Western consumers to nature in circumstances where they have become psychologically and physically abstracted. Animism provides a relational way of understanding the world, through which food products emerge as animated representations of reciprocal place-based relationships. It is considered that this indigenous approach can provide ‘an antidote’ to the alienating effects of modernity, where food products are experienced as inert compositions of elements that can be replicated and produced anywhere via industrial processes. Furthermore, it can provide a touchstone for differentiating between authentic provenance and the cynical use of provenance marketing that exploits the needs of alienated individuals for connection to place. A case study of indigenous provenance, Ahikā Kai, is offered to explain and illustrate the theoretical perspectives provided. (shrink)

Although there are different approaches to sustainability auditing, those considered authoritative use scientific indicators and instruments to measure and predict the impact of organizational operations on socio-ecological systems. Such approaches are biased because they can only measure phenomena whose features lend themselves to quantification, control, and observation directly with the instruments produced by technology. This technocratic bias is a product of the mechanistic worldview, which presumes that all components of socio-ecological systems are identifiable, discrete, and material. In contrast to the (...) mechanistic worldview, indigenous people use animist familial representations. In the case of New Zealand Māori a family tree is used to represent socio-ecological systems. This is a flexible conception, which views socio-ecological systems as both composites made up of interlinking causally-connected parts but also as reciprocating systems that have intangible elements such as consciousness, emotion, and agency. The technocratic approach is ontologically incapable of incorporating intangible elements to such a degree we consider that it incompatible with animist approaches. It is not, however, epistemologically-incongruous for indigenous peoples because of the flexible hybridity of their worldview. This worldview provides a broad moral framework, which avoids discrediting subjectivity and reducing socio-ecological systems to only their instrumental value. Finally, we conclude that the indigenous approach has much to offer the field of sustainability auditing, given that it provides a moral framework, and insight into building assessment systems upon abductive reasoning. (shrink)

Mares and Goldblatt, 163–187, 2006) provided an alternative frame semantics for two quantified extensions of the relevant logic R. In this paper, I show how to extend the Mares-Goldblatt frames to accommodate identity. Simpler frames are provided for two zero-order logics en route to the full logic in order to clarify what is needed for identity and substitution, as opposed to quantification. I close with a comparison of this work with the Fine-Mares models for relevant logics with identity and a (...) discussion of constant and variable domains. (shrink)

Many of the cognitive and social sciences deal with the question of how beliefs or belief-like states are produced and transmitted to others. Let us call any account or theory of belief-formation and propagation a doxology. I don’t use that term, of course, in the religious or theological sense. Rather, I borrow the Greek term ‘doxa’ for belief or opinion, and use ‘doxology’ to mean the study or theory of belief-forming processes. How is doxology related to epistemology? Epistemology is the (...) theory of knowledge, and according to standard accounts knowledge is justified true belief. Since knowledge entails belief, doxology would seem to be intimately related to epistemology. How can we say what produces knowledge unless we can say what produces belief? Of course, many epistemologists are not so interested in what produces knowledge. They are interested in specifying the conditions definitive of knowing. We need not be so restrictive, however, about epistemology’s scope. Historically, epistemology was concerned with the sources or methods of knowing: which methods of belief-formation, which routes to belief, augur well not only for belief production but for the production of knowledge? Which routes to belief offer good prospects for yielding true, justified belief? (shrink)

The multiple realizability thesis (MRT) is an important philosophical and psychological concept. It says any mental state can be constructed by multiple realizability (MR), meaning in many distinct ways from different physical parts. The goal of our study is to find if the MRT applies to the mental state of consciousness among animals. Many things have been written about MRT but the ones most applicable to animal consciousness are by Shapiro in a 2004 book called The Mind Incarnate and by (...) Polger and Shapiro in their 2016 work, The Multiple Realization Book. Standard, classical MRT has been around since 1967 and it says that a mental state can havevery manydifferent physical realizations, in a nearly unlimited manner. To the contrary, Shapiro’s book reasoned that physical, physiological, and historical constraints force mental traits to evolve in just a few, limited directions, which is seen as convergent evolution of the associated neural traits in different animal lineages. This is his mental constraint thesis (MCT). We examined the evolution of consciousness in animals and found that it arose independently in just three animal clades—vertebrates, arthropods, and cephalopod mollusks—all of which share many consciousness-associated traits: elaborate sensory organs and brains, high capacity for memory, directed mobility, etc. These three constrained, convergently evolved routes to consciousness fit Shapiro’s original MCT. More recently, Polger and Shapiro’s book presented much the same thesis but changed its name from MCT to a “modest identity thesis.” Furthermore, they argued against almost all the classically offered instances of MR in animal evolution, especially against the evidence of neural plasticity and the differently expanded cerebrums of mammals and birds. In contrast, we argue that some of these classical examples of MR are indeed valid and that Shapiro’s original MCT correction of MRT is the better account of the evolution of consciousness in animal clades. And we still agree that constraints and convergence refute the standard, nearly unconstrained, MRT. (shrink)

I present aspects of causal set theory (a research programme in quantum gravity) as being en route to achieving a reduction of Lorentzian geometry to causal sets. I take reduction in philosophers' sense; and I argue that the prospects are good for there being a reduction of the type envisaged by Nagel. (I also discuss the prospects for the stronger functionalist variant of Nagelian reduction, that was formulated by Lewis.) One main theme will be causal set theory's use of a (...) physical scale (viz. the Planck scale) to formulate how it recovers a Lorentzian manifold. This use illustrates various philosophical topics relevant to reduction, such as limiting relations between theories, and the role of analogy. I also emphasise causal set theory's probabilistic method, viz. Poisson sprinkling: which is used both for formulating the reduction and for exploring its prospects. (shrink)

Relevant logics are a family of non-classical logics characterized by the behavior of their implication connectives. Unlike some other non-classical logics, such as intuitionistic logic, there are multiple philosophical views motivating relevant logics. Further, different views seem to motivate different logics. In this article, we survey five major views motivating the adoption of relevant logics: Use Criterion, sufficiency, meaning containment, theory construction, and truthmaking. We highlight the philosophical differences as well as the different logics they support. We end with some (...) questions for future research. (shrink)

It is known that a number of inference principles can be used to trivialise the axioms of naïve comprehension - the axioms underlying the naïve theory of sets. In this paper we systematise and extend these known results, to provide a number of general classes of axioms responsible for trivialising naïve comprehension.

In the last 30 years repeated attempts have been made to develop a proof-sketch Kripke gave for essentialism about material origins into a cogent argument. I argue that there are general reasons that all such attempts have failed, and so we should likewise expect future attempts to fail.

I had the pleasure of renewing my acquaintance with Per Lindström at the meeting of the Seventh Scandinavian Logic Symposium, held in Uppsala in August 1996. There at lunch one day, Per said he had long been curious about the development of some of the ideas in my paper [1960] on the arithmetization of metamathematics. In particular, I had used the construction of a non-standard definition !* of the set of axioms of P (Peano Arithmetic) to show that P + (...) {¬ Con!} is interpretable in P, where ! is a standard definition of the axioms of P and Con! expresses the consistency of P via that presentation. Per pointed out that there is a simple “two-line” proof of this interpretability result which does not require the use of such formulas as !*, and he wondered whether I had been aware of that. In fact, his proof had never occurred to me, and if it had at the time, it is possible I would never have been led to the use of non-natural definitions. Per regarded this as a happy accident, since subsequent work by him and others on interpretability made essential use of such definitions. In our conversation, I enlarged a bit on the background to my work on arithmetization, and when I was invited to contribute to this special issue of Theoria dedicated to Lindström, it seemed a natural choice to use the occasion to fill out the story. One caveat, though: the following is drawn largely from memory, not always reliable, supplemented by consultation of the 1960 paper and the 1957 dissertation from which it was drawn. (shrink)

Scientific routes to understanding the nature of reality have led to the development of science and technology, which in turn has led to improvement in material conditions of humanity. In contrast, the rishi route to real ity enhanced our understanding of human beings from the perspective of higher levels of consciousness. The rishi route has given us insights and ideas for improvement in the spiritual conditions of humanity. There is a need for an 'integral embrace' of the two (...) class='Hi'>routes. This paper presents a discussion on these two routes to reality and suggests that their integration would lead us a step further in the direction of creating sacro-civic societies by preventing alienation of human beings from their real nature. (shrink)

I want to try to do something rather more speculative than the rest of you have done. I have been thinking recently about how one might explain some features of human reflective consciousness that seem to me to be very much in need of an explanation. I'm trying to see if these features could be understood as solutions to design problems, solutions arrived at by evolution, but also, in the individual, as a result of a process of unconscious self-design. I've (...) been trying to think of this in the context of work in AI on the attempt to design intelligent robots – not "bed-ridden" expert systems, but systems that have to act in real time in the real world. If you want to think about something like this, you have to stray fairly far from experiments and hard empirical data; you have to get fairly speculative. Nevertheless the design efforts of people in AI do seem to bring home to conviction – if not to prove – various design constraints looming large and inescapable. If we can come to see why a system – or an organ or a behavior-pattern – must have certain features or a certain structure in order to do its task, this may help us ask the right questions, or at least keep us from dwelling on some of the wrong questions when we try to explain the machinery in the brain that is responsible for intelligent action. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.3 (2002) 521-537 [Access article in PDF] Two Routes "to Concreteness" in the Work of the Bakhtin Circle Craig Brandist In 1918 the young Georg Lukács published an obituary of the last major Baden School neo-Kantian Emil Lask in which the latter's varied work was commended for being "underlain by an essential common drive [Drang]: the drive to concreteness." 1 This "drive" (...) was especially problematic, however, in the work of thinkers overtly committed to neo-Kantianism, a doctrine that was in its own time a byword for abstruseness and academic abstraction. Just how concrete could a neo-Kantian idealism become without abandoning its core insistence that the world is "produced" by indwelling categories of mind? Lask pursued this problem with a thoroughness unmatched by any other German neo-Kantian, and in doing so he became an important influence on, among others, Lukács, Max Weber, and Martin Heidegger. This article discusses the prevalence of the same "drive" in the varied work of those Russian champions of neo-Kantianism, the Bakhtin Circle, where "concreteness" is invoked so frequently that it almost begins to take on the character of a mantra. The case of the Bakhtin Circle is especially illustrative because the "drive to concreteness," which all members of the Circle shared, resulted in a significant difference of opinion about the extent to which the central theses of neo-Kantianism can be salvaged. Like Lask, Bakhtin was particularly keen to maintain the core of neo-Kantian ideas, while Voloshinov and, following behind him, Medvedev, were much less averse to breaking with the central project of German idealism itself. In each case the Brentanian notion of intentionality, the doctrine that consciousness is always consciousness of something, plays a central role. Consciousness exists in acts directed towards objects, existent or otherwise, that are given to consciousness. Brentano and his followers were invariably anti-Kantian, and they were extremely hostile to the central tenet of neo-Kantian idealism, that objects of consciousness are "produced" from categories dwelling in a transcendental [End Page 521] "consciousness in general" (Bewusstsein überhaupt). While it is far from certain that Brentanian and Kantian principles are incompatible at every level, there is no doubt that any attempt to integrate the notion of intentionality into neo-Kantianism was going to threaten the basis of neo-Kantianism as such. 2 As Gabriel Motzkin notes, Lask's attempt to carry such a project through to its logical conclusion ultimately led to "the destruction of the neo-Kantian empire from within." 3 The Bakhtinian project led in precisely this direction, and this article examines the way in which the work of the Circle shows distinct and ultimately incompatible responses to the crisis of the "empire." Revising neo-Kantianism: Ernst Cassirer and Emil Lask The abstract, or what Bakhtin terms the "theoretist," character of neo-Kantianism derived from two fundamental and interrelated features. The first was a principled opposition to all distinctions between cognition and perception, and the second was an identification of subjectivity with the system of objectifying functions that have their true being in cultural documents. According to neo-Kantian principles, nothing is "given" and everything is posited in an act of subjective spontaneity: objects are constituted from transcendental categories dwelling in "pure consciousness." Summing up the philosophical project of Hermann Cohen, the leader of the Marburg School, Ernst Cassirer noted that "any appeal to a merely given should fall aside; in place of every supposed foundation in things there should enter the pure foundations of thinking, of willing, of artistic and religious consciousness." 4Though seeking to broaden his own enquiry beyond the "trichotomy of the Kantian Critiques," Cassirer, the last major Marburg neo-Kantian, remained wedded to the neo-Kantian project of deriving the transcendental preconditions of the "formations" in which the "objective spirit... consists and exists" and dealt only with a universal subject devoid of practical limitations. 5 Cassirer drew close to phenomenology in the 1920s, when he embarked on his great project The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, presenting... (shrink)

However one conceives of the relation between a sign and its significate, referring is a communicative act in which a speaker must intentionally direct the attention of an interlocutor to some object, event, or state of affairs that the speaker has in mind. This article examines the ontogenesis and phylogenesis of acts of referring, with special concern for the possible nature of sign-significate relationships. Findings from developments psychology indicate that a group of abilities and skills underlie the ability to refer. (...) Infants follow the gaze of others to objects of attention, and enjoy joint attention with others. Interactions with caregivers in routines well known to the child enable her to achieve joint attention with the adult on a particular ingredient in the routine. In this way, the ability to refer develops from certain "language games ", interactions that combine goal-seeking and joint attention. (shrink)

The ability to imagine objects undergoing rotation (mental rotation) improves markedly with practice, but an explanation of this plasticity remains controversial. Some researchers propose that practice speeds up the rate of a general-purpose rotation algorithm. Others maintain that performance improvements arise through the adoption of a new cognitive strategy—repeated exposure leads to rapid retrieval from memory of the required response to familiar mental rotation stimuli. In two experiments we provide support for an integrated explanation of practice effects in mental rotation (...) by combining behavioral and EEG measures in a way that provides more rigorous inference than is available from either measure alone. Before practice, participants displayed two well-established signatures of mental rotation: Both response time and EEG negativity increased linearly with rotation angle. After extensive practice with a small set of stimuli, both signatures of mental rotation had all but disappeared. In contrast, after the same amount of practice with a much larger set both signatures remained, even though performance improved markedly. Taken together, these results constitute a reversed association, which cannot arise from variation in a single cause, and so they provide compelling evidence for the existence of two routes to expertise in mental rotation. We also found novel evidence that practice with the large but not the small stimulus set increased the magnitude of an early visual evoked potential, suggesting increased rotation speed is enabled by improved efficiency in extracting three-dimensional information from two-dimensional stimuli. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper, I raise and analyze two rarely discussed stories about the development of idealism in early modernity. I seek to show that Arthur Collier reaches the conclusion that the mind-independent world is strictly impossible following through the implications of Malebranche’s intellectualist considerations. One important component of divine rationality accepted by both is that God has to act in the simplest way possible, which, for Collier, shows that the existence of an imperceptible matter is extrinsically or metaphysically impossible. (...) By contrast, I will argue, George Berkeley resisted the temptation to construe the simplicity principle in an intellectualistic manner, even though it would have offered him an easy route to prove the impossibility of matter. Rather, when he argues that it is indeed God who is creating our perceptions directly on the basis that any belief in mind-independent substances is totally unjustifiable and we cannot form a coherent notion of it, he can be seen as radicalizing Locke’s voluntarism, according to which we have to appeal to the omnipotent God's arbitrary decisions with regard to various difficulties in philosophy. My proposal can also be read as an alternative to the well-known epistemological narrative about the emergence of idealism in the early modern period. (shrink)

This article analyzes the orientation of 150 women autoworkers toward feminism. Demographic variables had no significant independent effects when considered with other variables. Age, marital status, and education did have noteworthy mediated effects. Seniority level, workplace threat, and job skills were significant determinants of feminist orientations. Women's feelings of being trapped in a job, their feelings of job competence, and their self-esteem were also important factors. The interrelationships among the variables suggested that there are two routes to profeminist attitudes. (...) One route is followed by older, higher-seniority women who develop a positive stance toward feminism as a result of mostly positive work-related experiences. The other route is followed by younger, divorced, or college-educated women whose negative work-related experiences apparently sensitize them to feminist issues. (shrink)

In a famous footnote in Naming and Necessity, Kripke offered “something like a proof” of the thesis that material things have their material origins essentially (EMO). Although the sketch of a proof Kripke gave was incomplete in important respects, many philosophers have since endeavoured to develop Kripke’s style of argument so that it reaches its intended conclusion.1 In particular, a number of philosophers have attempted to complete Kripke’s argument sketch by appealing to some sort of “sufficiency principle” – a principle (...) that gives sufficient conditions for the identity of objects across possible worlds. These developments of Kripke’s argument face a number of problems, as pointed out by Mackie (1987, 2002), Robertson (1998, 2000) and others.2 Recently, however, Rohrbaugh and deRosset (2004, 2006) have offered a new route to origin essentialism that develops a Kripke-style argument without appeal to a sufficiency principle. While this argument has also not escaped criticism3, the argument suffers from a crucial flaw which has not been noticed. More interesting, though, is that the problem the argument faces is the same problem facing the arguments that appeal to sufficiency principles, and indeed Kripke’s original “proof” – all these arguments over-generalize. This strongly suggests that there is no Kripkestyle route to origin essentialism. (shrink)

In this commentary, we do two things. First, we sketch two further routes to psychological constructionism. They are complementary to Lindquist et al.'s meta-analyses and have potential to add new evidence. Second, we look at a challenging kind of case for constructionism, namely, emotional anomalies where there are correlated, and probably relevant, brain anomalies. Psychopaths are our example.

The aim of this study was to separately analyze the role of featural and configural face representations. Stimuli containing only featural information were created by cutting the faces into their parts and scrambling them. Stimuli only containing configural information were created by blurring the faces. Employing an old‐new recognition task, the aim of Experiments 1 and 2 was to investigate whether unfamiliar faces (Exp. 1) or familiar faces (Exp. 2) can be recognized if only featural or configural information is provided. (...) Both scrambled and blurred faces could be recognized above chance level. A further aim of Experiments 1 and 2 was to investigate whether our method of creating configural and featural stimuli is valid. Pre‐activation of one form of representation did not facilitate recognition of the other, neither for unfamiliar faces (Exp. 1) nor for familiar faces (Exp. 2). This indicates a high internal validity of our method for creating configural and featural face stimuli. Experiment 3 examined whether features placed in their correct categorical relational position but with distorted metrical distances facilitated recognition of unfamiliar faces. These faces were recognized no better than the scrambled faces in Experiment 1, providing further evidence that facial features are stored independently of configural information. From these results we conclude that both featural and configural information are important to recognize a face and argue for a dual‐mode hypothesis of face processing. Using the psychophysical results as motivation, we propose a computational framework that implements featural and configural processing routes using an appearance‐based representation based on local features and their spatial relations. In three computational experiments (Experiments 4–6) using the same sets of stimuli, we show how this framework is able to model the psychophysical data. (shrink)

An imbalance is identified in social psychology between controlled experimental studies (which are common) and real-world, ecologically valid studies (which are rare). The preponderance of experimental studies (which provide mere existence proofs and lack realism) helps fuel social psychology's fault-finding focus. Laboratory experiments and ecological studies should be pursued jointly to examine social life in the real world.

According to dominant views in affective computing, artificial systems e.g. robots and algorithms cannot experience emotion because they lack the phenomenological aspect associated with emotional experience. In this paper I suggest that if we wish to design artificial systems such that they are able to experience emotion states with phenomenal properties we should approach artificial phenomenology by borrowing insights from the concept of ‘attunement to the world’ introduced by early phenomenologists. This concept refers to an openness to the world, a (...) connection with the world which rejects the distinction between an internal mind and the external world. Early phenomenologists such as Heidegger, consider this ‘attunement’ necessary for the experience of affective states. I argue that, if one accepts that the phenomenological aspect is part of the emotion state and that ‘attunement to the world’ is necessary for experiencing emotion, affective computing should focus on designing artificial systems which are ‘attuned to the world’ in the phenomenological sense to enable them to experience emotion. Current accounts of the phenomenal properties of affective states, analyse them in terms of specific types of representations. As artificial systems lack a capability for such representation mainly because of an inability to determine relevance in changing contexts (‘the frame problem’), artificial phenomenology is impossible. I argue that some affective states, such as ‘attunement’ are not necessarily representational and as such a lack of capacity for representation does not imply that artificial phenomenology is impossible. At the same time ‘attunement’ helps restrict some aspects of the ‘frame problem’ and as such, goes some way of enabling representational states such as emotion. (shrink)

If psychology requires a taxonomy that categorizes mental states according to their causal powers, the common sense method of individuating mental states (a taxonomy by intentional content) is unacceptable because mental states can have different intentional content, but identical causal powers. This difference threatens both the vindication of belief/desire psychology and the viability of scientific theories whose posits include intentional states. To resolve this conflict, Fodor has proposed that for scientific purposes mental states should be classified by their narrow content. (...) Such a classification is supposed to correspond to a classification by causal powers. Yet a state's narrow content is also supposed to determine its (broad) intentional content whenever that state is 'anchored' to a context. I examine the two most plausible accounts of narrow content implicit in Fodor's work, arguing that neither account can accomplish both goals. (shrink)

In ‘Kripke on epistemic and metaphysical possibility: two routes to the necessary a posteriori’, Scott Soames identifies two arguments for the existence of necessary a posteriori truths in Naming and Necessity . He argues that Kripke's second argument relies on either of two principles, each of which leads to contradiction. He also claims that it has led to ‘two-dimensionalist’ approaches to the necessary a posteriori which are fundamentally at odds with the insights about meaning and modality expressed in NN. (...) I argue that the alleged second argument is not in NN. I identify the mistakes that lead to Soames' misinterpretation. (shrink)

Uncontroversially, the meaning of first and second person pronouns and “imposters”, i.e. expressions like yours truly, should be indexical, but how exactly this indexicality is achieved has been a matter of some debate. While not settling the debate, this paper aims to show that there is no single way to become a person indexical. Natural language allows for at least three different representations leading to person indexicality. Evidence for this comes from sentences involving imposters and pronouns coreferent with or bound (...) by them. Particularly telling are cases of variation between third and non-third person pronouns in sentences with imposters, first discussed by Collins and Postal. Constraints on this variation support the view that it is not adequate from either an empirical or an explanatory perspective to treat all person indexicals uniformly. (shrink)

Becoming productive with grammatical categories is a gradual process in children's language development. Here, we investigated this transition process by focusing on Turkish causatives. Previous research examining spontaneous and elicited production of Turkish causatives with familiar verbs attested the onset and early stages of productivity at ages 2 to 3 (Aksu-Koç & Slobin, 1985; Nakipoğlu, Uzundag, & Sarıgül, 2021). So far, however, we know very little about children's understanding of causatives with novel verbs. In the present study, we asked: (a) (...) When does the generalization of causative morphology in a novel context emerge? and (b) What role does child-directed input play in this development? To answer the first question, we conducted comprehension-judgment experiments with children aged 2;6–6;11 using pseudo-verbs (Study 1 & 2). Results showed that children preferred the Turkish causative suffix -DIr over an unrelated or no suffix to denote caused events earliest at age 4;10. To answer the second question, we analyzed child-directed speech from a longitudinal corpus of Turkish language acquisition (Study 3). Results showed that when addressing children younger than age 3, caregivers used the -DIr suffix with little variation considering the overall variability of verbs they could utter. Overall, these findings suggest that productivity with morphological causatives in a novel context emerges in a later stage of acquisition. This later development might partly be accounted for by the insufficient variation of morphological causatives in the early input. (shrink)

In the present study the impact of need for cognitive closure manipulations via time pressure and explicit closure goal activation on executive control was investigated. Although there is some evidence that NFC, measured as an individual variable, is related to better performing in attentional tasks involving executive control, these results have never been validated across different manipulations of NFC. Thus, in the present study we induced NFC via internal and external time pressure and tested the impact of these manipulations on (...) the performance in tasks that measure executive control, i.e., the Stroop and switching tasks. The results revealed that induced high NFC, indeed boosted performance in executive control tasks. Moreover, there was no difference in the effect of both NFC manipulations on task performance. The implications regarding the role of executive control and specific NFC manipulations in social cognition are discussed. (shrink)

Recent observations of ultra high energy cosmic rays and gamma rays suggest that there are small violations of Lorentz symmetry. If there were no such violations, then the GZK cut off would hold and cosmic rays with energy ∼1020 eV or higher would not be reaching the earth. However some such events seem to have been observed. This has lead to phenomenological models in which there is a small violation of the Lorentz symmetry or the velocity of light. However recent (...) approaches which no longer consider a differentiable spacetime manifold already predict such violations. Similarly there are other theoretical reasons which also point to this. We briefly discuss some of these approaches and observe that Lorentz Symmetry violations can be tested by data from NASA’s GLAST satellite due for launch. (shrink)

The search for moral objectivity has been constant throughout the history of philosophy, although interpretations of the nature and scope of objectivity have varied. One aim of the pursuit of moral objectivity has been the demonstration of what may be termed its epistemological thesis, that is, the claim that the truth of assertions of the goodness or rightness of moral acts is as legitimate, reliable, or valid as the truth of assertions involving other forms of human knowledge, such as common (...) sense, practical expertise, science, or mathematics. Another aim of the quest for moral objectivity may be termed its pragmatic formulation ; this refers to the development of a method or procedure that will mediate among conflicting moral views in order to realize a convergence or justified agreement about warranted or true moral conclusions. In the ethical theories of Aristotle, David Hume, and John Dewey, theories that represent three of the four variants of ethical naturalism that are surveyed in this essay, the epistemological thesis and the pragmatic formulation are integrated or combined. The distinction between these two elements is significant for the present essay, however, since I want to show that linguistic naturalism, the fourth variant I shall examine, has provided a demonstration of the epistemological thesis about moral knowledge, even if the pragmatic formulation has not been successfully realized. (shrink)

The search for moral objectivity has been constant throughout the history of philosophy, although interpretations of the nature and scope of objectivity have varied. One aim of the pursuit of moral objectivity has been the demonstration of what may be termed its epistemological thesis, that is, the claim that the truth of assertions of the goodness or rightness of moral acts is as legitimate, reliable, or valid as the truth of assertions involving other forms of human knowledge, such as common (...) sense, practical expertise, science, or mathematics. Another aim of the quest for moral objectivity may be termed its pragmatic formulation ; this refers to the development of a method or procedure that will mediate among conflicting moral views in order to realize a convergence or justified agreement about warranted or true moral conclusions. In the ethical theories of Aristotle, David Hume, and John Dewey, theories that represent three of the four variants of ethical naturalism that are surveyed in this essay, the epistemological thesis and the pragmatic formulation are integrated or combined. The distinction between these two elements is significant for the present essay, however, since I want to show that linguistic naturalism, the fourth variant I shall examine, has provided a demonstration of the epistemological thesis about moral knowledge, even if the pragmatic formulation has not been successfully realized. (shrink)

A variety of theoretical approaches have been taken in an attempt to understand, explain, and promote pro-environmental behavior. The present article gives an overview, including specific applications, and identifies and discusses various strategies used by researchers to deal with the availability of different approaches. The overview includes elementary rational choice theory, the theory of planned behavior, norm-activation theory, theories of habitual behavior, and theories within a social dilemma framework. Strategies identified are ‘extending existing theories by single explanatory factors’, ‘comparing theories’ (...) in a competitive manner, and ‘combining theories’ in an integrative manner. It is argued that research would benefit from more standardization in empirical applications, from more competitive theory testing as opposed to integrative theory testing, and from an evaluation of approaches on theoretical grounds as opposed to focusing solely on empirical performance. (shrink)

It is natural to assume that we would not be willing to compromise the environment if the conveniences and luxuries thereby gained did not have a substantial positive impact on our happiness. But there is room for skepticism and, in particular, for the thesis that we are compromising the environment to no avail in that our conveniences and luxuries are not having a significant impact on our happiness, making the costs incurred for them a waste. One way of defending the (...) no-avail thesis fits neatly with what I will call the exalted view , according to which the key to human happiness lies in the mental (or spiritual) realm rather than in the material realm. After considering this familiar approach to defending the no-avail thesis, I sketch out a very different approach—one that will, I hope, appeal to those who have doubts about the familiar line of defense. The alternative and novel approach builds on a strand of empirical research on (self-reports concerning) happiness that suggests that we are, in a way, quite shallow, and that our happiness depends on whether we are keeping up with the Joneses. I call this view concerning happiness the worldly view . My reasoning suggests that even if the current rift between exalted pictures of human nature and happiness, on the one hand, and worldly pictures of human nature and happiness, on the other, cannot be repaired, it need not hinder agreement on the plausibility of the no-avail thesis; rather, with the rift come two different routes to the same thesis. I conclude that we should take the no-avail thesis very seriously, and that evidence that we are shallow materialists need not be bad news for the environment(alist). (shrink)

In this paper, we present a non-trivial and expressively complete paraconsistent naïve theory of truth, as a step in the route towards semantic closure. We achieve this goal by expressing self-reference with a weak procedure, that uses equivalences between expressions of the language, as opposed to a strong procedure, that uses identities. Finally, we make some remarks regarding the sense in which the theory of truth discussed has a property closely related to functional completeness, and we present a sound and (...) complete three-sided sequent calculus for this expressively rich theory. (shrink)