Action is a means of acquiring perceptual information about the environment. Turning around, for example, alters your spatial relations to surrounding objects and, hence, which of their properties you visually perceive. Moving your hand over an object’s surface enables you to feel its shape, temperature, and texture. Sniffing and walking around a room enables you to track down the source of an unpleasant smell. Active or passive movements of the body can also generate useful sources of perceptual information (Gibson (...) 1966, 1979). The pattern of optic flow in the retinal image produced by forward locomotion, for example, contains information about the direction in which you are heading, while motion parallax is a “cue” used by the visual system to estimate the relative distances of objects in your field of view. In these uncontroversial ways and others, perception is instrumentally dependent on action. According to an explanatory framework that Susan Hurley (1998) dubs the “Input-Output Picture”, the dependence of perception on action is purely instrumental: "Movement can alter sensory inputs and so result in different perceptions… changes in output are merely a means to changes in input, on which perception depends directly" (1998: 342). -/- The action-based theories of perception, reviewed in this entry, challenge the Input-Output Picture. They maintain that perception can also depend in a noninstrumental or constitutive way on action (or, more generally, on capacities for object-directed motor control). This position has taken many different forms in the history of philosophy and psychology. Most action-based theories of perception in the last 300 years, however, have looked to action in order to explain how vision, in particular, acquires either all or some of its spatial representational content. Accordingly, these are the theories on which we shall focus here. -/- We begin in Section 1 by discussing George Berkeley’s Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709), the historical locus classicus of action-based theories of perception, and one of the most influential texts on vision ever written. Berkeley argues that the basic or “proper” deliverance of vision is not an arrangement of voluminous objects in three-dimensional space, but rather a two-dimensional manifold of light and color. We then turn to a discussion of Lotze, Helmholtz, and the local sign doctrine. The “local signs” were felt cues for the mind to know what sort of spatial content to imbue visual experience with. For Lotze, these cues were “inflowing” kinaesthetic feelings that result from actually moving the eyes, while, for Helmholtz, they were “outflowing” motor commands sent to move the eyes. -/- In Section 2, we discuss sensorimotor contingency theories, which became prominent in the 20thcentury. These views maintain that an ability to predict the sensory consequences of self-initiated actions is necessary for perception. Among the motivations for this family of theories is the problem of visual direction constancy—why do objects appear to be stationary even though the locations on the retina to which they reflect light change with every eye movement?—as well as experiments on adaptation to optical rearrangement devices (ORDs) and sensory substitution. -/- Section 3 examines two other important 20th century theories. According to what we shall call the motor component theory, efference copies generated in the oculomotor system and/or proprioceptive feedback from eye-movements are used together with incoming sensory inputs to determine the spatial attributes of perceived objects. Efferent readiness theories, by contrast, look to the particular ways in which perceptual states prepare the observer to move and act in relation to the environment. The modest readiness theory, as we shall call it, claims that the way an object’s spatial attributes are represented in visual experience can be modulated by one or another form of covert action planning. The bold readiness theory argues for the stronger claim that perception just is covert readiness for action. -/- In Section 4, we move to the disposition theory, most influentially articulated by Gareth Evans (1982, 1985), but more recently defended by Rick Grush (2000, 2007). Evans’ theory is, at its core, very similar to the bold efferent readiness theory. There are some notable differences, though. Evans’ account is more finely articulated in some philosophical respects. It also does not posit a reduction of perception to behavioral dispositions, but rather posits that certain complicated relations between perceptual input and behavioral provide spatial content. Grush proposes a very specific theory that is like Evans’ in that it does not posit a reduction, but unlike Evans’ view, does not put behavioral dispositions and sensory input on an undifferentiated footing. (shrink)

One of the most important disputes in the foundations of ethics concerns the source of practical reasons. On the desire-based view, only one’s desires provide one with reasons to act. On the value-based view, reasons are instead provided by the objective evaluative facts, and never by our desires. Similarly, there are desire-based and non-desired-based theories about two other phenomena: pleasure and welfare. It has been argued, and is natural to think, that holding a desire-based (...) theory about either pleasure or welfare commits one to recognizing that desires do provide reasons for action – i.e., commits one to abandoning the value-based theory of reasons. The purpose of this paper is to show that this is not so. All of the following can be true: pleasure and welfare provide reasons; pleasure and welfare are to be understood in terms of desire; desires never provide reasons, in the relevant way. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an objection to agent-based accounts of right action. Agent-based accounts of right action attempt to derive moral judgment of actions from judgment of the inner quality of virtuous agents and virtuous agency. A moral theory ought to be something that moral agents can permissibly use in moral deliberation. I argue for a principle that captures this intuition and show that, for a broad range of other-directed virtues and motives, agent-based accounts of right (...) action fail to satisfy this principle. (shrink)

Regions-based theories of space aim—among others—to define points in a geometrically appealing way. The most famous definition of this kind is probably due to Whitehead. However, to conclude that the objects defined are points indeed, one should show that they are points of a geometrical or a topological space constructed in a specific way. This paper intends to show how the development of mathematical tools allows showing that Whitehead’s method of extensive abstraction provides a construction of objects that (...) are fundamental building blocks of specific topological spaces. (shrink)

Over the past 20 years or so, a small but growing literature has emerged with the aim of modeling agents who are unaware of certain things. In this paper we compare two different approaches to modeling unawareness: the object-based approach of Board and Chung (Object-based unawareness: theory and applications. University of Minnesota, Mimeo, 2008) and the subjective-state-space approach of Heifetz et al. (J Econ Theory 130: 78-94,2006). In particular, we show that subjectivestate-space models (henceforth HMS structures) (...) can be embedded within object-based models (henceforth OBU structures), demonstrating that the latter are at least as expressive. As long as certain restrictions are imposed on the form of the OBU structure, the embedding can also go the other way. A generalization of HMS structures (relaxing the partitional properties of knowledge) gives us a full converse. (shrink)

In contrast to the fruitful relationship between psychoanalysis/psychoanalysts and the humanities, institutionalized psychoanalysis has been largely resistant to the integration of psychoanalysis with other empirical branches of knowledge, as well as clinical ones [primarily cognitive-behavioral therapy ]. Drawing from two decades of theoretical and empirical work on psychopathology, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis, the author aims to show how a reformulation of object relations theory using psychological science may enhance a clinical-psychoanalytic understanding and treatment of suicidal depression, which constitutes one of (...) the most formidable health challenges of our time. Specifically, he rewrote the notion of Melanie Klein positions—primarily the depressive position—using extant knowledge of structure of emotions, the centrality of mental representations of the future and the toxic nature of criticism-based emotions. This reformulation enables a dialog between clinical psychoanalysis and other therapeutic schools of thought and sheds light on the understanding and treatment of suicidal depression. (shrink)

Because the visual system cannot process all of the objects, colors, and features present in a visual scene, visual attention allows some visual stimuli to be selected and processed over others. Most research on visual attention has focused on spatial or location-based attention, in which the locations occupied by stimuli are selected for further processing. Recent research, however, has demonstrated the importance of objects in organizing (or segregating) visual scenes and guiding attentional selection. Because of the long history of (...) spatial attention research, theories of spatial attention are more mature than theories of other visual processes, such as object segregation and object attention. In the present paper, I outline a biased competition account of object segregation and attention, following similar accounts that have been developed for spatial attention (Desimone and Duncan, 1995). In my biased competition account, I seek to understand how some objects can be segregated and selected over other objects in a complex visual scene. Under this account, there are two sources of visual information that allow an object to be processed over other objects: bottom-up information carried by the physical stimulus and top-down information based on an observer's goals. I use the biased competition account to combine many diverse findings from the object segregation and attention literatures into a common framework. (shrink)

Management scholars, practitioners, and policy makers alike have sought to develop a deeper understanding of recent business crises—including corporate scandals, the collapse of financial institutions, and deep recession—in order to prevent their recurrence. Among the “culprits” that have been identified is Conventional management theory based upon a moral-point-of-view founded on assumptions of materialism and individualism. There have been calls to move beyond the dominant profit maximization paradigm and think about other, potentially more compelling, corporate objectives (Hamel, 2009 ). In (...) this article, we respond to those calls, and seek to develop what we call Radical resource-based theory (RBT), which draws from and contrasts with the highly-influential Conventional RBT. Radical RBT defines the value of resources more broadly than profit maximization, rarity as an occasion for stewardship, inimitability as an opportunity for teaching, and non-substitutability as an opportunity to meet a panoply of human needs. This augmentation of RBT promises to help managers and scholars address a myriad of problems that are insoluble under Conventional assumptions. More generally, it shows the value of broadening management theory to a radical perspective by relaxing assumptions of self-interest and materialism. (shrink)

: Traditional mind-body identity theories maintain that consciousness is identical with neural activity. Consider an alternative identity theory – namely, a mind-object identity theory of consciousness. I suggest to take into consideration whether one’s consciousness might be identical with the external object. The hypothesis is that, when I perceive a yellow banana, the thing that is one and the same with my consciousness of the yellow banana is the very yellow banana one can grab and eat, rather (...) than the neural processes triggered by the banana. The bottom line is that one’s conscious experience of an object is the object one experiences. First, I outline the main hypothesis and the relation between mind, body, and object. Eventually, I address a series of traditional obstacles such as hallucinations, illusions, and commonsensical assumptions. Keywords: Identity Theory; Mind/Body Problem; Consciousness; Hallucinations; Illusions Le esperienze sono oggetti. Verso una teoria dell’identità della mente in quanto oggetto Riassunto: Le teorie dell’identità tra mente e corpo di tipo tradizionale hanno affermato una relazione di identità tra coscienza e attività neurale. Si consideri una teoria dell’identità di carattere alternativo – propriamente una teoria dell’identità che intenda la coscienza come un oggetto. Suggerisco di considerare la possibilità che la coscienza di qualcuno possa essere trattata come identica a un oggetto del mondo esterno. Sulla base di questa ipotesi, quando percepisco una banana gialla, ciò che coincide con la mia coscienza della banana gialla è proprio la banana gialla che si può prendere e mangiare, piuttosto che il processo neurale innescato dalla banana. In definitiva l’esperienza cosciente di un oggetto che ciascuno ha è l’oggetto che si esperisce. In una prima parte, procederò con il delineare l’ipotesi principale e la relazione tra mente, corpo e oggetto. Successivamente cercherò di risolvere alcuni problemi di tipo tradizionale, quali le allucinazioni, le illusioni e gli assunti di senso comune. Parole chiave: Teoria dell’identità; Problema mente/corpo; Coscienza; Allucinazioni; Illusioni. (shrink)

We used Chinese prenominal relative clauses to test the predictions of two competing accounts of sentence comprehension difficulty: the experience-based account of Levy () and the Dependency Locality Theory. Given that in Chinese RCs, a classifier and/or a passive marker BEI can be added to the sentence-initial position, we manipulated the presence/absence of classifiers and the presence/absence of BEI, such that BEI sentences were passivized subject-extracted RCs, and no-BEI sentences were standard object-extracted RCs. We conducted two self-paced reading (...) experiments, using the same critical stimuli but somewhat different filler items. Reading time patterns from both experiments showed facilitative effects of BEI within and beyond RC regions, and delayed facilitative effects of classifiers, suggesting that cues that occur before a clear signal of an upcoming RC can help Chinese comprehenders to anticipate RC structures. The data patterns are not predicted by the DLT, but they are consistent with the predictions of experience-based theories. (shrink)

It has been shown that Recurrent Artificial Neural Networks automatically acquire some grammatical knowledge in the course of performing linguistic prediction tasks. The extent to which such networks can actually learn grammar is still an object of investigation. However, being mostly data-driven, they provide a natural testbed for usage-based theories of language acquisition. This mini-review gives an overview of the state of the field, focusing on the influence of the theoretical framework in the interpretation of results.

This book tries to solve fundamental normative moral, social, political, educational, legal, etc. problems. It defends a uniquely evidence-based, objective theory. Part I mainly explains and defends the theory's foundation and general guidelines. Part II discusses specific practical applications at length.

W. R. D. Fairbairn (1889-1964) challenged the dominance of Freud's drive theory with a psychoanalytic theory based on the internalization of human relationships. Fairbairn assumed that the unconscious develops in childhood and contains dissociated memories of parental neglect, insensitivity, and outright abuse that are impossible the children to tolerate consciously. In Fairbairn's model, these dissociated memories protect developing children from recognizing how badly they are being treated and allow them to remain attached even to physically abusive parents. Attachment is (...) paramount in Fairbairn's model, as he recognized that children are absolutely and unconditionally dependent on their parents. Kidnapped children who remain attached to their abusive captors despite opportunities to escape illustrate this intense dependency, even into adolescence. At the heart of Fairbairn's model is a structural theory that organizes actual relational events into three self-and-object pairs: one conscious pair (the central ego, which relates exclusively to the ideal object in the external world) and two mostly unconscious pairs (the child's antilibidinal ego, which relates exclusively to the rejecting parts of the object, and the child's libidinal ego, which relates exclusively to the exciting parts of the object). The two dissociated self-and-object pairs remain in the unconscious but can emerge and suddenly take over the individual's central ego. When they emerge, the "other" is misperceived as either an exciting or a rejecting object, thus turning these internal structures into a source of transferences and reenactments. Fairbairn's central defense mechanism, splitting, is the fast shift from central ego dominance to either the libidinal ego or the antilibidinal ego-a near perfect model of the borderline personality disorder. In this book, David Celani reviews Fairbairn's five foundational papers and outlines their application in the clinical setting. He discusses the four unconscious structures and offers the clinician concrete suggestions on how to recognize and respond to them effectively in the heat of the clinical interview. Incorporating decades of experience into his analysis, Celani emphasizes the internalization of the therapist as a new "good" object and devotes entire sections to the treatment of histrionic, obsessive, and borderline personality disorders. (shrink)

Heterodox ideas face an uphill battle. This is not least the case for heterodox conspiracy theories. As an empirical observation, this is hardly controversial. What is controversial is whether and to what extent this should be the case. Some authors have gone so far as to argue that heterodox conspiracy theories should be generally dismissed, and that it is precisely their heterodox status that justifies such dismissal. Most particularists are likely to object strongly to such an assessment, (...) arguing that conspiracy theories – whether heterodox or orthodox – should not be dismissed before careful examination of the relevant evidence. But even particularists will probably concede that proponents of heterodox conspiracy theories have to bear a special epistemic burden. The main aim of this paper is to take a closer look at this particular epistemic burden. Drawing on the literature about peer disagreement, genealogical debunking arguments, and related philosophical debates, I focus in particular on the question of whether and under what conditions it can be rational to defend heterodox conspiracy theories, and argue that what I will call theories of error play a crucial role in this context. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that the objections that have been raised against the view that equality is intrinsically valuable also provide objections to the view that all practical reasons can be explained in terms of value. Plausible egalitarian principles entail that under certain conditions people have claims to an equal share. These claims entail reasons to distribute goods equally that cannot be explained by value if equality has no intrinsic value.

Software development is an iterative process from designing to implementation, and to testing, in which product development staff should be closely integrated with users. Satisfying user needs effectively is often the pain point for developers. In order to alleviate this, this paper manages to establish the quantitative connection between users' online reviews and APP downloads. By analyzing user online comments, companies can dig out user needs and preferences. This could benefit them by making accurate market positioning of their APP products, (...) and therefore iteratively innovating products based on user needs, which hopefully will increase the volume of APP downloads. This paper regards WeChat APP during 47 updates periods as the research object. Based on Grounded Theory, user needs are extracted after data cleaning. Next, by using semantic analysis and word frequency analysis, we are able to obtain the implicit feedbacks such as emotion tendency, satisfaction and requirements lie under online reviews. Then, we construct a quantile regression model to study the impact of users' online reviews on downloads based on the influencing factors we extracted so as to provide a decision basis for enterprises to iteratively update their products. Results show that: Generally speaking, needs of WeChat users mainly focus on performance, reliability, usability, functional deficiency, functional insufficiency, and system adaptability; For those APP versions with relatively fewer downloads, user needs are mostly about functional deficiency, followed by functional insufficiency, performance, usability, and system adaptability. At this stage, it is found out that users' emotion tendency and user satisfaction significantly affect the volume of downloads; When the volume of APP downloads is moderate, the user needs are functional deficiency, functional insufficiency, and system adaptability. While under this circumstances, users' star ratings have a significant impact on downloads; In addition, when the volume of App downloads is high, user needs are performance, usability, and system adaptability. Our methods effectively extract users' requirements from online reviews and then successfully build up the quantitative connection between the implicit feedbacks from those requirements and APP downloads. (shrink)

According to the Standard Picture of how law works, the content of the law that is created by legal texts such as statutes and constitutional provisions is determined by the meaning of these texts. Most proponents of this picture claim more specifically that the relevant notion of meaning in play is the communicative content of legal texts and that communicative content is itself determined by considerations of the intentions of legal authorities. In recent years, the Standard Picture has become the (...) subject of heated philosophical debate. Focusing on statutes as the paradigmatic type of legal texts, this thesis aims to contribute to this debate in two central ways. First, it argues that the aforementioned ‘intention-based’ versions of the Standard Picture lack convincing responses to three important objections that have been raised by critics. First, they lack an adequate account of how legislative bodies can be reasonably ascribed the intentions that they would need according to such versions. Second, they fail to explain important aspects of legal practice. Third, they provide at best a parochial theory of the content of the law that is generated by statutes. The second contribution is to provide a more sustained defence of the Standard Picture by developing a new ‘commitment-based’ version of this view. This version is based on an alternative theory of communication and claims that communicative content is not determined by considerations of intentions but rather by the commitments that are incurred by means of communicative acts. It is argued that this version can deal with the objections that have been raised by critics and therefore provides a more robust version of the Standard Picture. (shrink)

Human rights are often taken for granted, but "What is the basis of human rights?" This is no easy answer, De Xiao Weiqi, in his 2004 book of this difficult the problem. He considered the following four main theories: First, the external theory: the root cause of human rights outside the law, such as human rights divine theory; Second, the intrinsic theory: the root cause of human rights within the law - law positivism ; three, rationalist approaches: human rights (...) is based on rational intuition ; Fourth, experience-based approaches: human rights from human experience, especially experience the experience of injustice. He made ​​the first three theories are severely criticized, and to promote a fourth to experience-based approaches. This paper points out that although the experience of Germany and Xiao Weiqi theory have many advantages, but it is evidence of human rights legislation are vague and inconsistent standards of the Department, and its invention on human rights can not provide more solid foundation. In fact, these issues are perceived more or less de Xiao Weiqi, he repeatedly pointed out that the need for external to the human rights legal standards, I think the divine rights theory is to provide a basis for human rights may be one of the world. De Xiao Weiqi theory of divine criticism of human rights have a good reminder, but I think it still can not rule out the Christ-centered Christian contemporary human rights theory. Human rights are often taken for granted but in fact the origin or foundation of human rights is not an easy question. Alan Dershowitz tries to tackle this thorny issue in his 2004 book: Rights from Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights. He mainly considers four theories: 1) externalism, eg, the divine source of human rights theory; 2) Internalism, eg, legal positivism; 3) Rationalism, eg, the claim that human rights are founded upon rational intuitions; 4) Experiential approach, ie, human rights are derived from our historical experience of serious wrongs or injustice. He severely criticizes the first three theories, and defends the fourth. In this article, I will point out that despite quite a few merits of Dershowitz's theory; his criteria for the validation of human rights are vague or even inconsistent. His general stance of constructivism towards moral and human rights claims, moreover, are unable to provide solid foundations for human rights. In fact Dershowitz is to some extent aware of these problems, and he feels that human rights do need an objective external source, if only it is possible. I think the theistic worldview is indeed able to provide this objective external source. Dershowitz has raised a lot of good questions for the divine source theory but I argue that in the end they cannot exclude the possibility of a contemporary Christocentric theory of human rights. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue for an instrumental form of existence, inspired by Hilbert’s method of ideal elements. As a case study, we consider the existence of contradictory objects in models of non-classical set theories. Based on this discussion, we argue for a very liberal notion of existence in mathematics.

Mūllā Sadrā sees knowledge as a real relational attribute and, based on the principle of congruity, by recognizing the meaning of human knowledge and purifying it from its shortcomings, he ascribes the very meaning of human knowledge to God. It means that Divine Knowledge as well as human one is a relational attribute and thus, it calls for an object of knowledge; but the difference is that Divine knowledge rejects any kind of imperfection. Given this assertion and a (...) couple of rules such as "the simple in nature is all things", and “The union between the intellect and the intelligible”, he presented his view on divine knowledge by the theory of “concise knowledge along with detailed discovery”. This theory has encountered many drawbacks, including: relationality of the knowledge; lack of explanation for Divine knowledge of non-beings and impossible states of affairs and His Knowledge of details before creating creatures in detailed fashion; acceptance of the union of the knower and the known based on the presential knowledge; believing God to being all things; division of God’s essence into two stages of brief and detailed. In contrast, in “Islamic Hadiths”, the theory of “knowledge without object of knowing” has been proposed. The priority of this theory pertains to rejecting the idea that knowledge is always relational. An important consequence of this view is that knowledge will not necessarily have an object of knowing. This idea could have a vast influence on the debate on Divine knowledge. (shrink)

This paper starts out from the proposition that case-based decision theory is an appropriate tool to explain human decision behavior in situations of structural ignorance. Although the developers of CBDT suggest its reality adequacy, CBDT has not yet been tested empirically very often, especially not in repetitive decision situations. Therefore, our main objective is to analyse the decision behavior of subjects in a repeated-choice experiment by comparing the explanation power of CBDT to reinforcement learning and to classical decision criteria (...) under uncertainty namely maximin, maximax, and pessimism-optimism. Our findings substantiate a predominant significantly higher validity of CBDT compared to the classical criteria and to reinforcement learning. For this reason, the experimental results confirm the suggested reality adequacy of CBDT in repetitive decision situations of structural ignorance. (shrink)

We present an algebraic theory of structured objects based on and generalizing Aczel's theory of form systems. Notions of identity of structured objects and of transformations of systems of such objects are discussed. A generalization of Aczel's representation theorem is proven.

After about a century since the first attempts by Bohr, the interpretation of quantum theory is still a field with many open questions.1 In this article a new interpretation of quantum theory is suggested, motivated by philosophical considerations. Based on the findings that the ’weirdness’ of quantum theory can be understood to derive from a vanishing distinguishability of indiscernible particles, and the observation that a similar vanishing distinguishability is found for bundle theories in philosophical ontology, the claim is (...) made that quantum theory can be interpreted in an intelligible way by positing a bundle-theoretic view of objective idealism instead of materialism as the underlying fundamental nature of reality. (shrink)

This essay employs Charles Peirce’s triadic semiotics in order to develop a biosemiotic theory of life that is capable of illuminating the function of information in living systems. Specifically, I argue that the relationship between biological information structures , selecting environments, and the adapted bodily processes of living organisms is aptly modelled by the irreducibly triadic relationship between Peirce’s sign, object, and interpretant, respectively. In each instance of information-based semiosis, the information structure is a complex informational sign that (...) represents the informational object ; and the bodily, behavioral, mental, or intellectual processes that are organized by the informational sign to more or less accurately interpret the present environment constitute a complex informational interpretant—a living, interpreting organism. The essay begins by discussing the precise sense in which this biosemiotic theory is based upon Charles Peirce’s semiotic theory. Next, the theory is developed at length in relation to genetic information structures. Finally, I present a brief outline of how the theory applies to neural and linguistic information structures. The essay concludes with a reflection upon the anti-reductionist implications of the theory. (shrink)

From Fine and Kamp in the 70’s—through Osherson and Smith in the 80’s, Williamson, Kamp and Partee in the 90’s and Keefe in the 00’s—up to Sauerland in the present decade, the objection continues to be run that fuzzy logic based theories of vagueness are incompatible with ordinary usage of compound propositions in the presence of borderline cases. These arguments against fuzzy theories have been rebutted several times but evidently not put to rest. I attempt to do (...) so in this paper. (shrink)

By applying Arrow’s impossibility theorem for social choice to scientific theory choice, Okasha concludes that there is no acceptable theory choice rule. Okasha identifies the only way out of the impossibility in enriching the input for the theory choice rule, following Sen’s work for social choice. However, such a route seems not to be available for ‘large scale’ theory choices—i.e. choices among ‘key theories’ which imply a change of paradigm—based on Kuhn’s criteria, since these criteria cannot provide a (...) richer input. The aim of the paper is to explore two lines of response to this conclusion. The first response proposes an example suggesting that Kuhn’s criteria may, indeed, provide sufficiently rich inputs. The second one proposes to use Kuhn’s criteria to evaluate prior probability and likelihood of the theories, and then take these as elements of the ‘Bayesian theory choice rule’ that avoids the impossibility. I will then argue against an objection to the second response, derived from Stegenga’s observation that a rule that translates the information provided by Kuhn’s criteria into prior probabilities suffers from Arrovian impossibility. Finally, I will answer a separate interesting question suggested by Stegenga’s observation. (shrink)

Theories of statistical testing may be seen as attempts to provide systematic means for evaluating scientific conjectures on the basis of incomplete or inaccurate observational data. The Neyman-Pearson Theory of Testing (NPT) has purported to provide an objective means for testing statistical hypotheses corresponding to scientific claims. Despite their widespread use in science, methods of NPT have themselves been accused of failing to be objective; and the purported objectivity of scientific claims based upon NPT has been called into (...) question. The purpose of this paper is first to clarify this question by examining the conceptions of (I) the function served by NPT in science, and (II) the requirements of an objective theory of statistics upon which attacks on NPT's objectivity are based. Our grounds for rejecting these conceptions suggest altered conceptions of (I) and (II) that might avoid such attacks. Second, we propose a reformulation of NPT, denoted by NPT*, based on these altered conceptions, and argue that it provides an objective theory of statistics. The crux of our argument is that by being able to objectively control error frequencies NPT* is able to objectively evaluate what has or has not been learned from the result of a statistical test. (shrink)

The design, implementation, and outcome of game-based learning for learners with disabilities have not been sufficiently examined systematically. Particularly, learner-based and contextual factors, as well as the essential roles played by various stakeholders, have not been addressed when game-based learning applications are used in special education. Therefore, a systematic literature review using the Activity Theory was conducted to analyse studies about game-based learning for learners with disabilities. Content analysis of 96 studies reported relevant information with respect (...) to each activity component— subject, technology, object, rules, community, division of labour and outcome. Furthermore, this study identified existing gaps from the reviewed studies, including occasional lack of parental engagement, difficulty of standardising performance measures due to the heterogeneity of learner profiles and contradictions. Finally, recommendations were made under each activity component. The study concluded that both general and domain-specific guidelines should be created for each disability category proposed in this review to assist practitioners who wish to use game-based learning with learners with disabilities. (shrink)

The theory of relations presented in this article consists of the general and the special theory of relations. The formulae of the former are meaningful and its laws valid for relations of any type. The meaningfulness of expressions and the validity of laws of the latter are restricted to relations of a certain special type. The special theory of relations is distinguished from the applied theory of relations. The applied theory of relations is the general theory applied to relations of (...) a special type, the difference between the general and the applied being in the form of the variables. The special theory of relations and the applied theory, when concerned with relations of the same special type, may differ with respect to the form of constants without differing with respect to variables. (shrink)

Discussions of the object as a key to understanding central aspects of modern and contemporary art. Artists increasingly refer to "post-object-based" work while theorists engage with material artifacts in culture. A focus on "object-based" learning treats objects as vectors for dialogue across disciplines. Virtual imaging enables the object to be abstracted or circumvented, while immaterial forms of labor challenge materialist theories. This anthology surveys such reappraisals of what constitutes the "objectness" of production, with (...) art as its focus. Among the topics it examines are the relation of the object to subjectivity; distinctions between objects and things; the significance of the object's transition from inert mass to tool or artifact; and the meanings of the everyday in the found object, repetition in the replicated or multiple object, loss in the absent object, and abjection in the formless or degraded object. It also explores artistic positions that are anti-object; theories of the experimental, liminal or mental object; and the role of objects in performance. The object becomes a prism through which to reread contemporary art and better understand its recent past. Artists surveyed include Georges Adéagbo, Art in Ruins, Iain Baxter, Louise Bourgeois, Pavel Büchler, Lygia Clark, Claude Closky, Brian Collier, Jimmie Durham, Fischli & Weiss, Luca Frei, Meschac Gaba, Isa Genzken, Gruppe Geflecht, Eva Hesse, Mike Kelley, John Latham, Antje Majewski, Gustav Metzger, Cady Noland, Gabriel Orozco, Adrian Piper, Falke Pisano, Eva Rothschild, Aura Satz, Kenneth Snelson, Hito Steyerl, Josef Strau, Alina Szapocznikow, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Erwin Wurm Writers include Homi K. Bhabha, Jack Burnham, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Lynne Cooke, Gillo Dorfles, Jean Fisher, Ferreira Gullar, Charles Harrison, Paulo Herkenhoff, Julia Kristeva, Bruno Latour, Bracha Lichtenberg-Ettinger, Jean-François Lyotard, Lev Manovich, Ursula Meyer, Bruno Munari, Georges Perec, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Dieter Roelstraete, Howard Singerman, Nancy Spector, Marcus Steinweg, Anne Wagner, Gérard Wajcman, Slavoj Zizek. (shrink)

Objectivity in the sciences is a much-touted yet problematic concept. It is sometimes held up as characterising scientific knowledge, yet operational definitions are diverse and call for such paradoxical genius as the ability to see without a perspective, to predict repeatability, to elicit nature’s own self-revelation, or to discern the structure of reality with inerrancy. Here we propose a positive and general definition of objectivity based on work in the Reformational philosophy tradition. We recognise a suite of relation-frames–ways in (...) which things function and relate to each other, which can be analytically distinguished in the process of conceptual abstraction. These relation-frames also ground the diverse aspects of scientific analysis within which relationships and properties may be abstracted from entities and systems. We argue that objectivity can be understood as characteristic of representations that attempt to portray a subject in an earlier relation-frame than that in which it characteristically functions. In short, objectivity is projection. This proposal is exemplified from mathematics and the natural sciences and some possible objections to it are considered, as well as its extension to the social sciences. (shrink)

Over the past 30 years, one topic much discussed in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology has been the status of "the representational theory of mind," or "RTM." As usually conceived, the representational theory holds that the mind operates (in part) by creating, storing, and using internal representations of objects and events in the world.

John Locke's theory of identity not only provoked a strong reaction from his contemporaries and near‐contemporaries, it continues to influence philosophical discussions of identity to the present day. Locke thinks that finite intelligences have location/place, as well as temporal location. Some bodies, despite having proper parts, are easy cases, too. These are atoms and masses of atoms. Locke's attack on substance‐based theories of identity focuses mainly on theories of personal identity in which sameness of a thinking substance (...) is necessary and sufficient for personal identity. Locke's view of the identity of organisms, however, already rejects the notion that sameness of corporeal substance is either necessary or sufficient for the sameness of the organism. The most famous objection to Locke's theory of personal identity is that it not only fails to preserve transitivity, but in many cases is positively committed to a denial of transitivity. (shrink)

Objective: to develop and test the factorial structure of a new self-determination theory-based measure of behavioral regulation in children. Method: 590 (F = 51.7%) children aged 7-11 years completed the Motivation to Exercise and Diet (MED-C) questionnaire, which comprises 16 items (8 for exercise and 8 for diet) grouped into eight-factors (5 motivations and 3 needs). Psychometric testing included confirmatory factor analysis and internal consistency. Measurement invariance analyses were also performed to evaluate whether the factorial structure of the MED-C (...) was equivalent for gender (male vs. female), age ( 10yo) and the perception of having at least one parent with overweight or obesity (yes vs. no). Results: factorial analysis confirmed an acceptable factors solution for the MED-C and a good fit to the data for both the exercise and the diet subscales assessed independently. The Maximal Reliability coefficient revealed good reliability for the exercise and the diet subscales. Moreover, the MED-C factor structure was invariant across group comparisons. Discussion: findings support the construct validity and reliability of the MED-C. Therefore, it represents the first validated instrument simultaneously measuring motivational regulation and psychological need satisfaction in the context of children’s exercise and diet. Considering the goodness of these results, scale percentile ranks of the total score distribution as well as the z-score and the T-score were provided for clinical and research purposes. Conclusion: The MED-C might support the understanding of motivations and needs of children with weight problems and assist their process of behavioural change in primary and secondary prevention programs. Psychological factors represent, in fact, potential targets for interventions to increase children’s motivation to exercise and diet. (shrink)

The recent introduction of the concepts of tenderness, vulnerability, and parental care in the field of moral emotions has brought us closer to an understanding of the underlying mechanisms, but has not yet resulted in a systematic evolutionary and proximate analysis. Applying such an analysis, the present article proposes a hypothetical care mechanism that produces different motivational states or moral emotions (e.g., tenderness, sympathy, guilt, moral anger) in response to individuals perceived as vulnerable. The mechanism consists of a care system (...) automatically triggered by vulnerability cues, a system for defense and aggression, and a process of causally attributing changes in the vulnerable object’s well-being. The mechanism may also be useful in explaining moral responses in domains other than harm prevention. (shrink)

The author has recently shown that a mathematical question regarding the fundamental constituents of hardrons cannot be resolved unless the classical axioms of nonfinite mathematics are revised in such a way as to produce a new theory of particle motion in continuous space-time. Under this new theory, the instantaneous position of a moving object has a magnitude that is increasing as the object's velocity. The purpose of this paper is to show that, quite apart from the question of (...) Cantorian axiomatics, the new theory of motion is more consistent with what physicists really believe than the traditional theory of motion. (shrink)

This paper explores the prospects for safety-based theories of knowledge in the light of some recent objections.

The capability approach is one of the main contenders in the field of theorizing social justice. Each citizen is entitled to a set of basic capabilities. But which are these? Martha Nussbaum formulated a set of ten central capabilities. Amartya Sen argued they should be selected in a process of public reasoning. Critics object that the Nussbaum-approach is too perfectionist and the Sen-approach is too proceduralist. This paper presents a third alternative: a substantive but non-perfectionist capability theory of justice. (...) It presents a two-level concept of individual agency as connected to social practices. It then argues basic capabilities are those necessary to for the agency necessary to navigate freely and autonomously between different social practices. (shrink)

Constant conjunction theory of causation had been the dominant theory in philosophy for a long time and regained attention recently. This paper gives a logical framework of causation based on the theory. The basic idea is that causal statements are empirical, and are derived from our past experience by observing constant conjunction between objects. The logic is defined on linear time structures. A causal statement is evaluated at time points, such that its value depends on what has been in (...) the past. We first give a semantics that contains basic conditions that, we think, must hold for a concept of causation, on which we define the minimal causal logic. Then we discuss its possible extensions for various concepts of causation. Complete deductive systems are given. (shrink)

The philosopher Graham Harman argues that contemporary debates about the nature of reality as such, and about the nature of objects in particular, can be meaningfully applied to social theory and practice. With Immaterialism, he has recently provided a case-based demonstration of how this could happen. But social theorists have compelling reasons to oppose object-oriented social theory’s 15 principles. Fidelity to Harman’s aesthetic foundationalism, and his particular use of serial endosymbiosis theory as a mechanism of social change, constrain (...) the very practices which it is supposed to enable. However, social theory stands to benefit from object-oriented philosophy through what we call posthuman relationism – characterised as a commitment to the reality of the nonhuman, but not divorced from the human. The emphasis in object-oriented social theory on how objects withdraw from cognitive or affective capture and representation needs to be tempered by an equal focus on how objects appeal. (shrink)

Often those attempting to resolve the answering machine paradox appeal to Kaplan's claim that the objects of semantic evaluation are expression-types evaluated with respect to indices, instead of utterances, as part of their solution. This article argues that Dylan Dodd and Paula Sweeney exemplify the kind of mistakes theorists make in applying such expression-based semantic theories in that they conflate what is asserted with semantic content, and they take their approach to utterance interpretation as having semantic significance. In (...) light of these mistakes, we learn two things. First, we learn how expression-based semantic theorists can avoid making these kinds of mistakes. Second, we learn how the limits of expression-based semantics can contribute to what we should expect a semantic theory to explain regarding how semantics fits into a more general theory of linguistic communication and linguistic understanding. (shrink)

It would be a good thing to have at our disposal a general theory of location that is neutral with respect to the view that some objects have more than one exact location, the view that some objects are located without having an exact location, and the view that some objects are “spanners”—where a spanner is an object exactly located at a region that has proper parts but which has no proper part exactly located at a proper part of (...) the region. As far as I know, no theory of location that can be found in the literature has this feature. I put forward a new theory that does—or so I argue. The theory takes as its sole locational primitive the notion of being entirely located at. (shrink)

The use of circumscription for formalizing commonsense knowledge and reasoning requires that a circumscription policy be selected for each particular application: we should specify which predicates are circumscribed, which predicates and functions are allowed to vary, and what priorities between the circumscribed predicates are established. The circumscription policy is usually described either informally or using suitable metamathematical notation. In this paper we propose a simple and general formalism which permits describing circumscription policies by axioms, included in the knowledge base along (...) with the axioms describing the objects of reasoning. The new formalism is illustrated by recasting some of the familiar applications of circumscription in its terms. (shrink)

This book offers clinicians a long-awaited comprehensive paradigm for assessing object relations functioning in disturbed younger and older adolescents. It gives a clear sense of how object relations functioning is manifest in different disorders, and illuminates how scores on object relations measures are converted into a therapeutically relevant diagnostic matrix and formulation. Outlining the process of object relations assessment, Kelly presents vividly detailed cases of a range of disorders including anorexia nervosa, borderline states, depressive disorders, and (...) trauma. The cases portray the vicissitudes of object relations functioning and disruption that result in a unique structural developmental composite for a given adolescent. A major concern is demonstrating the utility and validity of two object representation measures--The Mutuality of Autonomy Scale and The Social Cognition Object Relations Scale --that are the main ones employed in the assessment of adolescents. MOA and SCORS scores facilitate a multidimensional understanding of the nuances of an adolescent's object relations functioning, and provide clinicians with organized, theory-based data leading to clear, specific treatment directions and guidelines and appropriate therapeutic programming. The book addresses the following questions: * Is individual psychotherapy indicated--will this adolescent benefit from an insight-oriented approach? * What are the likely directions that transference parameters will take in the treatment? * What types of countertransference reactions are likely to be anticipated in a given patient? * Is medication likely to be helpful in making this adolescent more accessible for treatment? Focusing only on adolescents, covering both the TAT and the Rorschach, and utilizing object relations theory as its major interpretive foundation, the book offers practitioners an alternative to general references based on a more actuarial, nomothetic, and atheoretical interpretive approach. It reflects one school of contemporary thought in projective assessment--one that advocates a more phenomenological, theory-based approach to test application and interpretation. (shrink)

This paper proposes to model legal reasoning asdialectical theory-constructiondirected by teleology. Precedents are viewed asevidence to be explained throughtheories. So, given a background of factors andvalues, the parties in a case canbuild their theories by using a set of operators,which are called theory constructors.The objective of each party is to provide theoriesthat both explain the evidence (theprecedents) and support the decision wished by thatparty. This leads to theory-basedargumentation, i.e., a dialectical exchange ofcompeting theories, which support opposedoutcomes by explaining (...) the same evidence and appealingto the same values. The winneris the party that can reply with a more coherent theoryto all theories of its adversary. (shrink)