Fifteen years later, the topic of September 11, 2001 is slowly being woven into the U.S. curricular fabric. This paper presents an analysis of the ways current U.S. state curriculum standards treat...

he design-based approach is a methodology for investigating mechanisms capable of generating mental phenomena, whether introspectively or externally observed, and whether they occur in humans, other animals or robots. The study of designs satisfying requirements for autonomous agency can provide new deep theoretical insights at the information processing level of description of mental mechanisms. Designs for working systems (whether on paper or implemented on computers) can systematically explicate old explanatory concepts and generate new concepts that allow new and richer interpretations (...) of human phenomena. To illustrate this, some aspects of human grief are analysed in terms of a particular information processing architecture being explored in our research group. We do not claim that this architecture is part of the causal structure of the human mind; rather, it represents an early stage in the iterative search for a deeper and more general architecture, capable of explaining more phenomena. However even the current early design provides an interpretative ground for some familiar phenomena, including characteristic features of certain emotional episodes, particularly the phenomenon of perturbance (a partial or total loss of control of attention). The paper attempts to expound and illustrate the design-based approach to cognitive science and philosophy, to demonstrate the potential effectiveness of the approach in generating interpretative possibilities, and to provide first steps towards an information processing account of `perturbant', emotional episodes. (shrink)

This is not a scholarly research paper, but a ‘position paper’ outlining an approach to the study of mind which has been gradually evolving since about 1969 when I first become acquainted with work in Artificial Intelligence through Max Clowes. I shall try to show why it is more fruitful to construe the mind as a control system than as a computational system.

Many contemporary philosophers endorse the Humean-Lewisian Denial of Absolutely Necessary Connections (‘DANC’). Among those philosophers, many deny all or part of the Humean-Lewisian package of views about causation and laws. I argue that they maintain an inconsistent set of views. DANC entails that (1) causal properties and relations are, with a few possible exceptions, always extrinsic to their bearers, (2) nomic properties and relations are, with a few possible exceptions, always extrinsic to their bearers, and (3) causal and nomic properties (...) and relations globally supervene on non-causal, non-nomic properties and relations. Hence, one can’t be a consistent Half-Hearted Humean. Consistency demands giving up the core Humean thesis or facing up to its consequences. The upshot is that we face a stark choice: either there are absolutely necessary connections between distinct existents or it’s "just one damn thing after another.". (shrink)

When Descartes made his scientific work public, he ushered in a worldview based almost entirely on mechanical motion, which brought along a complete rejection of “occult” forces. Thus, the foundation of astrology was equally rejected by many prominent Cartesians. However, the popularity of Descartes’ system lead to its rapid adoption by many subjects, astrology included. Here, I will take a look at the curious case of Claude Gadroys, whose primary work, Discours sur les influences des astres, defends a mechanical account (...) of astrology that accords with Descartes’ principles. Gadroys’ Discours employs a sophisticated strategy to rehabilitate astrology of the 17th century against Pico della Mirandola, among other critics. Gadroys’ theory even incorporates Descartes’ discovery, contra the scholastics, that the sublunary and celestial spheres do not differ in kind. Surprisingly, Gadroys uses Descartes’ discovery to substantiate the stars influencing the Earth, whereas earlier astrologers required such a distinction. Gadroys’ adoption of Cartesian philosophy highlights two major theses. First, the advent of mechanical philosophy in no way necessitated the downfall of astrology; instead, it merely changed the direction of astrological explanation for those that followed current science. Second, it shows the selective nature of Cartesian explanation and hypotheses. (shrink)

I would like to thank the commentators for the care and sympathy evident in their excellent responses to my book.1 They delve deeply into numerous critical issues. It is truly satisfying to labor greatly and then experience such thoughtful attention directed toward one's work. Given that some parallel issues were raised by different people, in what follows I organize my responses around key themes in order to address most of the issues raised with minimal repetition.It is worth noting at the (...) outset that throughout the book I always strive to track both what seems most plausible as a rational reconstruction of ancient "Confucian" ethics in its context (i.e., what they really meant and thought and why... (shrink)

AUGUSTINE'S MATURE, ANTI-PELAGIAN UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN AND divine willing might appear to conflict with his advocacy of human striving to "make progress in righteousness" through various practices of personal reformation. In this essay I consider exercises such as reading and listening to scripture, fasting, and Eucharistie worship; I argue that although deep tensions exist in Augustine's account, ultimately they are not contradictions. Furthermore, recent attempts to retrieve "spiritual exercises" or askesis for contemporary ethical reflection would do well to grapple with (...) Augustine's thought and practice in this area. (shrink)

The common view that the notion of a Turing machine is directly relevant to AI is criticised. It is argued that computers are the result of a convergence of two strands of development with a long history: development of machines for automating various physical processes and machines for performing abstract operations on abstract entities, e.g. doing numerical calculations. Various aspects of these developments are analysed, along with their relevance to AI, and the similarities between computers viewed in this way and (...) animal brains. This comparison depends on a number of distinctions: between energy requirements and information requirements of machines, between ballistic and online control, between internal and external operations, and between various kinds of autonomy and self-awareness. The ideas are all intuitively familiar to software engineers, though rarely made fully explicit. Most of this has nothing to do with Turing machines or most of the mathematical theory of computation. But it has everything to do with both the scientific task of understanding, modelling or replicating human or animal intelligence and the engineering applications of AI, as well as other applications of computers. (shrink)

BackgroundRecently there have been growing concerns about problematic mobile phone use by adolescent populations. This study aimed to address this concern through a study of severity and correlates of problematic mobile phone use with a sample of Hong Kong adolescents.MethodsData were collected from a sample of adolescents from three local secondary schools using a measuring scale designated for Chinese adolescents. Participants were allocated into groups of “problematic users” and “non-problematic users” based on the number of occurrence of symptoms due to (...) excessive and maladaptive use of mobile phone and possible functional impairments caused by problematic mobile phone use. A group of “at-risk users” was identified. A sample-based examination on distribution of these three groups of users was conducted via frequency counts and percentage calculation. A series of t-test were performed to make comparisons between “problematic” and “non-problematic” groups on selected personality and health related variable. Risk and protective factors were identified via correlational analysis and logistic regression analysis.ResultsUnder a more stringent cut-off criterion of four or more reported symptoms plus one or more reported functional impairments, 22.9% of the adolescents participating in this study could be classified as problematic mobile phone users. However, a more lenient criterion reported a substantially more severe prevalence rate. A new group of “at-risk” adolescents was identified with such a discrepancy of prevalence rate. Gender difference, some risk and protective factors were also identified for developing this technology-related problem.Discussion and ConclusionsAdolescents who are vulnerable to suffer from this technology-related problem deserve more attention from helping professionals. Results of this study throw some insights on how to identify problematic mobile phone user applying a criterion-referenced approach. This study echoes a recent call for adopting a developmental perspective in understanding this problem and conducting research in this area. Anchored on present findings, effective interventions to tackle this rising problem among adolescents are suggested. (shrink)

The way we refer to things in the world is shaped by the immediate physical context as well as the discourse history. But what part of the discourse history is relevant to language use in the present? In four experiments, we combine the study of task‐based conversation with measures of recognition memory to examine the role of physical contextual cues that shape what speakers perceive to be a part of the relevant discourse history. Our studies leverage the differentiation effect, a (...) phenomenon in which speakers are more likely to use a modified expression to refer to an object (e.g., dotted sock) if they had previously described a similar object (e.g., striped sock) than when they had not described a similar object. Two physical cues—the background that framed the to‐be‐described pictures and the position of the pictures in the display—were manipulated to alter perceptions about the relevant discourse context. We measured the rate with which speakers modify referring expressions to differentiate current from past referents. Recognition memory measures following the conversation probed what was and was not remembered about past discourse referents and contexts. Analysis of modification rates indicated that these contextual grouping cues shaped perceptions about the relevant discourse context. The contextual cues did not affect memory for the referents, but the memory for past referents was better for speakers than for listeners. Our findings show that perceptions about the relevant discourse history are a key determinant of how language is used in the moment but also that conversational partners form asymmetric representations of the discourse history. (shrink)

This paper presents a study of gatekeeping in the U.S. political blog “Daily Kos.” Open online collectives like Daily Kos use relational mechanisms, such as gatekeeping, to manage organizational boundaries and filter the contributions of participants. However, neither prior theories of gatekeeping nor the existing analyses of open online collectives account for the character or implications of gatekeeping in the Daily Kos community. Using qualitative evidence as well as statistical analysis of a large sample of comment threads on the site (...) from 2008, I argue that gatekeeping on Daily Kos takes centralized and decentralized forms, and that both modes depend critically on relational boundary work among site participants. Centralized gatekeeping proceeds through actions by high-status members of the community. Decentralized gatekeeping, by contrast, consists of more numerous and small-scale interactions between community members, who filter and moderate each other’s participation. Both forms of gatekeeping enhance the ability of site leaders and incumbent community members to regulate access to privileges and agenda-setting responsibilities on the site. These findings imply that the egalitarian ethos of open online collectives exists in tension with the mechanisms through which participation and status inequalities emerge among participants. How collectives engaged in mobilization and discursive production resolve this tension will shape the long-term impact of online participation and blogs on the political and public spheres. (shrink)

If one of Gentzen’s consistency proofs for pure number theory could be shown to be finitistically acceptable, an important part of Hilbert’s program would be vindicated. This paper focuses on whether the transfinite induction on ordinal notations needed for Gentzen’s second proof can be finitistically justified. In particular, the focus is on Takeuti’s purportedly finitistically acceptable proof of the well ordering of ordinal notations in Cantor normal form.The paper begins with a historically informed discussion of finitism and its limits, before (...) introducing Gentzen and Takeuti’s respective proofs. The rest of the paper is dedicated to investigating the finitistic acceptability of Takeuti’s proof, including a small but important fix to that proof. That discussion strongly suggests that there is a philosophically interesting finitist standpoint that Takeuti’s proof, and therefore Gentzen’s proof, conforms to. (shrink)

If one of Gentzen’s consistency proofs for pure number theory could be shown to be finitistically acceptable, an important part of Hilbert’s program would be vindicated. This paper focuses on whether the transfinite induction on ordinal notations needed for Gentzen’s second proof can be finitistically justified. In particular, the focus is on Takeuti’s purportedly finitistically acceptable proof of the well ordering of ordinal notations in Cantor normal form.The paper begins with a historically informed discussion of finitism and its limits, before (...) introducing Gentzen and Takeuti’s respective proofs. The rest of the paper is dedicated to investigating the finitistic acceptability of Takeuti’s proof, including a small but important fix to that proof. That discussion strongly suggests that there is a philosophically interesting finitist standpoint that Takeuti’s proof, and therefore Gentzen’s proof, conforms to. (shrink)

In both environmental ethics and bioethics, one central issue is the range of entities that are morally considerable. According to one view on this issue, we ought to extend consideration to any entity that possesses interests. But what kinds of entities possess interests? Some philosophers have argued that only sentient beings can have interests, while others have held that all living organisms possess interests in the fulfillment of their biological functions. Is it true that all living organisms have biological interests? (...) The standard arguments made against biological interests are unsatisfactory. There are two central reasons why we ought to reject the idea of biological interests: a metaphysical reason and a normative reason. First, the idea of biological interests implies a metaphysically mysterious account of the nature of how things come to have value for an entity. Second, as normative interests, the idea of biological interests implies that what is good for human beings is at least partly determined by things that are external to themselves, completely independent of their capacities for desires, conflicting with the individual ideal of self-direction, according to which it is fundamentally desirable that how we ought to live (or what is good for one) is grounded in one’s own capacities for desires. It is still an open possibility that nonsentient entities may be morally considerable in the sense of having intrinsic value. (shrink)

In The Case for Animal Rights, Tom Regan defends the view that all animals who are “subjects of a life” have an equal moral right to life. In this chapter, I consider whether it makes sense to think that animals have an equal right to life in light of the challenge that life has less value for animals than humans. This challenge raises two central questions: (1) does life have less value for animals than humans and (2) if it does, (...) does this fact justify the view that animals do not have an equal right to life. I argue, first, that life has greater value for most humans than animals because most humans are capable of experiencing higher qualities of enjoyment in life, in the form of creative, intellectual pleasures. However, this does not justify denying that animals have an equal right to life. Whether beings’ lives deserve strong respect depends on whether the value of life for those beings meets a certain threshold. I argue that the value of life for many animals meets this threshold because it is compatible with the virtue of compassion. (shrink)

Updates Open Letter to my MP: Lynne Jones Why large IT development projects are problematic The mathematics of searching for a design Richard Feynman wrote: Getting requirements right from the start is impossible Are problems unique to IT projects? Physical constraints Implications for Government policy What can be done? Some suggested prerequisites: requirements for openness A precedent for this proposal: The internet How the internet grew Implications for government policy Are some projects exceptions? Concluding Comment NOTE: Related comment.

This paper distinguishes two versions of Ryle's notion of 'logical geography'. Logical geography: The network of relationships between current uses of a collection of concepts. (Probably what Ryle meant by the term.) Logical topography Features of the portion of reality, or types of portions of reality, related to a given set of concepts, where the reality may be capable of being divided up in different ways using different networks of relationships between concepts. -/- Studying/analysing logical topography includes evaluating the alternative (...) divisions in terms of the theories or applications that are supported by the different sets of concepts, or perhaps some other uses of the concepts. -/- On re-reading Appendices III and IV of my Oxford DPhil thesis "Knowing and Understanding Relations between meaning and truth, meaning and necessary truth, meaning and synthetic necessary truth",, online here, I found to my surprise that several of the topics discussed below had been discussed in those two Appendices, and that the distinction between logical topography and logical geography was made in Appendix IV, discussing conceptual analysis, even though I did not use these words. (shrink)

Brand-name prescription drug manufacturers use various strategies to extend their market exclusivity periods by delaying generic or biosimilar competition. Recent Congressional legislation has targeted four such tactics. We analyze these proposals and assess their likely effect on competition in the U.S. drug market.

More than sixty years after its first publication in Germany in 1935 by its then emigré author, and more than thirty-five years after its republication in Germany by an author who had returned via Italy, Japan, and the United States, Löwith’s classic study has finally been translated into English. His work thus joins that of Karl Jaspers and of his teacher, Martin Heidegger, all central interpretations of Nietzsche’s work written by his compatriots during the decade that witnessed the collapse which (...) his works so insistently and uncannily prophesied, if not encouraged. It is thus not merely an important interpretation, but itself part of our fast-closing century’s intellectual history. Löwith’s view of Nietzsche as the philosopher who undertakes “the anti-Christian repetition of antiquity on the peak of modernity” or who attempts to overcome nihilism by affirming an “eternally recurring existence amidst the naturelike world of all that is”, has in fact been accessible to readers before the translation of the present book. It figures prominently in From Hegel to Nietzsche, and in Meaning in History whose final section is entitled “Nietzsche’s Revival of the Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence.” Although the main lines of Löwith’s interpretation have not changed, there is no denying the value of having his detailed interpretation finally available to English readers. The work’s lengthy third chapter, “The Unifying Fundamental Idea in Nietzsche’s Philosophy,” is its indispensable core, detailing the eternal recurrence as the fundamental idea of Nietzsche’s philosophy through an analysis of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and outlining two conflicting interpretations of this idea, the “anthropological”, with its focus on “willing the idea,” and the “cosmological”, where the idea reintegrates humanity into an ever-recurring world indifferent to its projects. The two chapters preceding it characterize Nietzsche’s philosophical discourse as a paradoxical “system in aphorisms” ; and present the familiar tripartite periodicization of Nietzsche’s philosophy, with Zarathustra as the apogee. The chapters that follow it do not have quite the unity or philosophical penetration of the first three. Chapter 4 concerns itself with the relation of Nietzsche’s rejection of Christianity to his affirmation of a Greek and specifically Heraclitean nature. Chapter 5 discusses the way in which the problems of history and fate and freedom and necessity are dealt with in some of Nietzsche’s early writings, laying the groundwork for the problem of “willing necessity” that seems present in the eternal recurrence. In the following chapter we are presented with a history of modern philosophy from Descartes to Marx as a history of the “loss of the world” by a humanity lost in the “desert of its freedom”. We are then offered, in the seventh chapter, a detailed analysis of Kierkegaard’s conception of “repetition” and Otto Weininger’s ethical conception of “recollection” as alternatives to Nietzsche’s conception of eternal recurrence. It is not at all clear that this last maintains its interest sixty years later, and the same doubt arises regarding several, though certainly not all of the books reviewed in his Appendix, “On the History of the Interpretation of Nietzsche ”. The work’s final chapter, “The Critical Yardstick for Nietzsche’s Experiments,” summarizes the significance of Nietzsche’s project as a “return to nature,” to the “physis of the world,” once the metaphysical God is gone as a support for any teaching about man. Löwith concedes that Nietzsche failed fully to separate himself from the Christianity that haunted him as a negation, but implies that his program, determined by the fact that “he decided against God and for the world”, is of enduring significance. (shrink)

This paper argues that anonymity in networked digital communications is indispensable as an enabler of other inalienable rights including informational privacy and freedom of expression. Yet, an alignment of industry norms, practices, ethics, and techno-social design asserts a persistent identity ecosystem, making online anonymity more difficult to achieve. This paper reappraises the democratic uses, affordances, and human rights dimensions of online anonymity in order to advance an ethical justification for its protection.

This paper makes the case that evolutionary-developmental biology, in explaining the deep conservation of animal body plans, relies on a Cuvierian functionalist explanatory strategy. Philosophical analysis commonly treats evo-devo as a “typological” research program, in contrast to the population thinking that undergirds population-genetic approaches to evolutionary theorizing. The central aim of this paper is to show that many of the features that have led evo-devo to be treated as typological are in fact the product of its Cuvierian functionalism. To achieve (...) this overarching goal, this paper has three subsidiary aims: to distinguish two ways in which Mayr’s notoriously unprincipled notion of typological thinking can be made precise, to show that one of these ways—Cuvierian functionalism—plays an important role in evo-devo’s developmental genetic explanations of the deep conservation of animal body plans, to show that Cuvierian functionalism is compatible with and complementary to the Darwinian functionalism and population thinking of mainstream evolutionary theory. The remainder of this introduction is concerned with making the relations between these three aims more salient. (shrink)

The Deed is Everything offers an engaging new interpretation of Nietzsche as committed to an 'expressivist' conception of agency. Aaron Ridley shows that Nietzsche develops highly distinctive accounts of freedom, morality, and selfhood, with a robust commitment to the value of human excellence in all of its forms.