This paper explores the conditions under which scientists are warranted in adding the one-dimensional heat equation to their theories and then using the equation to describe particular physical situations. Summarizing these derivation and application conditions motivates an account of idealized scientific representation that relates the use of mathematics in science to interpretative questions about scientific theories.

Context: The evolution of perceptual systems and hence of observers remains largely disconnected from the question of the emergence of classical objects and spacetime. This disconnection between the biosciences and physics impedes progress toward understanding the role of the “observer” in physical theory. Problem: In this article we consider the problem of how to understand objects and spacetime in observer-relative evolutionary terms. Method: We rely on a comparative analysis using multiple formal frameworks. Results: The eigenform construct of von Foerster is (...) compared to other formal representations of observer-environment interactions. Eigenforms are shown to be encoded on observer-environment interfaces and to encode fitness consequences of actions. Space and time are components of observational outcomes in this framework; it is suggested that spacetime constitutes an error-correcting code for fitness consequences. Implications: Our results contribute to an understanding of the world in which neither objects nor spacetime are observer-independent. Constructivist content: The eigenform concept of von Foerster is linked to the concepts of decoherence and holographic encoding from physics and the concept of fitness from evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 52, Issue 1, Page 10-16, Spring 2021.

Chris Letheby, Jaipreet Mattu, and Eric Hochstein try to put an end to the “mysticism wars,” by which they mean the battle between psychedelic researchers who hold that mystical concepts ought to be employed in attempts to describe and understand psychedelic experiences and those who do not hold this. Letheby, Mattu, and Hochstein side with the former and do so on the grounds that (as they put it), “there are no good reasons to abandon mystical concepts in psychedelic science, (...) and plenty of good reasons to keep them.” At bottom, they contend that critiques of the pro-mystical-concepts view can be solved via clarifying concepts and recognizing basic (though significant) distinctions. And though they grant that mystical concepts may one day be superseded in the science of psychedelics, they maintain that this should not occur on the basis of a misplaced conceptual critique, as is (they maintain) the present-day critique of the pro-mystical-concepts view. (shrink)

This paper presents two different kinds a priori entitlements and argues that both are necessary to account for scientific knowledge. On the one hand, there are formal a priori entitlements whose existence is grounded in conditions on concept possession. On the other hand, there are material a priori entitlements that an agent accrues in virtue of practical reasoning. The discussion aims to reconcile the strengths of Christopher Peacocke’s and Michael Friedman’s recent work on the a priori, while overcoming the weaknesses (...) of their respective proposals. (shrink)

In 1951 C.I.Lewis published a logic of general terms that he called the calculus of predicates. Although this system is of less significance than Lewis’s earlier work on proposition...

Over the past three decades, more and more students are expressing a desire to attend college, yet for many members of disenfranchised groups, this goal is often not attained. While many factors contribute to these disparities, research has shown that students begin adjusting their expectations (what they think they can achieve) for the future in relation to their idealised aspirations (what they would like to achieve). The current study explores this gap among 207 eighth grade students from two urban middle (...) schools. Using the School Attitude Assessment Survey-Revised, three factors were found to predict expectations which matched student aspirations. These factors were academic motivation and self-regulating behaviours, academic self-perception and attitudes towards teachers. Implications for educational interventions and school reform are discussed. (shrink)

It has been suggested that Marr took the three levels he famously identifies to be independent. In this paper, we argue that Marr's view is more nuanced. Specifically, we show that the view explicitly articulated in his work attempts to integrate the levels, and in doing so results in Marr attacking both reductionism and vagueness. The result is a perspective in which both high-level information-processing constraints and low-level implementational constraints play mutually reinforcing and constraining roles. We discuss our recent work (...) on Spaun—currently the world's largest functional brain model—that demonstrates the positive impact of this kind of unifying integration of Marr's levels. We argue that this kind of integration avoids his concerns with both reductionism and vagueness. In short, we suggest that the methods behind Spaun can be used to satisfy Marr's explicit interest in combining high-level functional and detailed mechanistic explanations. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to clarify the role of self-interest in Moist thought and by doing so to refute the Self-Interest Thesis. Toward these ends, I will examine passages from the Mozi bearing on the role of self-interest in Moist ethics and psychology and show that, in each case, an alternative interpretation explains them better than the Self-Interest Thesis does. I will argue that the Moists recognize the obvious truth that self-interest figures among people’s basic motives, but they (...) believe people also have other important sources of motivation. (shrink)

Those with Anton’s syndrome believe they can see things around them even though they are completely blind. Patients with this and other syndromes confabulate in predictable circumstances: they believe and assert obvious falsehoods. I argue in this article that absent competing obligations, provoking such confabulations for non-medical purposes is problematic. I further argue that these confabulations share all relevant properties with a particular kind of everyday confabulation. Flashbulb memories—memories of surprising, monumental, emotionally laden events—are also believed, obvious falsehoods that occur (...) in predictable circumstances. Hence, provoking such confabulations is also problematic, absent competing obligations. This leads to a counterintuitive conclusion: absent competing obligations, those who understand flashbulb memories ought to avoid asking people about their memories of experiences of flashbulb events such as the Challenger explosion or September 11, 2001. (shrink)

The spacetime algebra (STA) is the natural, representation-free language for Dirac's theory of the electron. Conventional Pauli, Dirac, Weyl, and Majorana spinors are replaced by spacetime multivectors, and the quantum σ- and γ-matrices are replaced by two-sided multivector operations. The STA is defined over the reals, and the role of the scalar unit imaginary of quantum mechanics is played by a fixed spacetime bivector. The extension to multiparticle systems involves a separate copy of the STA for each particle, and it (...) is shown that the standard unit imaginary induces correlations between these particle spaces. In the STA, spinors and operators can be manipulated without introducing any matrix representation or coordinate system. Furthermore, the formalism provides simple expressions for the spinor bilinear covariants which dispense with the need for the Fierz identities. A reduction to2+1 dimensions is given, and applications beyond the Dirac theory are discussed. (shrink)

Political liberals aim to treat citizens as free and equal participants in a society governed by principles endorsable from a wide range of reasonable conceptions of the good. This popular account of political morality struggles to accommodate child citizens yet to develop the capacities for freedom and equality enjoyed by citizens under political liberalism. It appears political liberals must either accept political liberalism should not apply to all citizens or intrusively constrain parental rights to shape the values of their children (...) in line with anti-perfectionism. I defend a third possibility that justifies perfectionism in parenting and anti-perfectionism in education. (shrink)

The number of people suffering from dementia will rise considerably in the years to come. This will have important implications for society. People suffering from dementia have to rely on relatives and professional caregivers when their disorder progresses. Some people want to determine for themselves their moment of death, if they should become demented. They think that the decline in personality caused by severe dementia is shocking and unacceptable. In this context, some people consider euthanasia as a way to avoid (...) total deterioration. In this article, we discuss some practical and ethical dilemmas regarding euthanasia in persons with severe dementia based on an advance euthanasia directive. We are using a personalist approach in dealing with these ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

In this paper, a survey is made of some of the contributionsto the interpretation of Hartle and Hawking's theory of thewave function of the universe and its beginning. It is arguedthat there are considerable difficulties with the interpretationof the theory, but that there is at least one interpretationhitherto not found in the literature which survives existingphilosophical objections.

Philosophy to the rescue -- What is the soul? -- Life begins at conception. So what? -- Abnormal human development -- Responsibility -- The potentiality argument -- The golden rule argument against abortion -- Rights of the pregnant woman -- Consequences -- Virtue ethics and conclusion.

When the international community recognizes political entities as states, it confers upon them the rights and powers of statehood. These include the right to territorial integrity, the right to noninterference in their internal affairs, the power to make treaties, and the right to enforce legal rules on those within their territory. According to the justice-based account of recognition, political entities ought to be recognized as states if and only if they satisfy minimal requirements of internal and external justice. According to (...) the pragmatic account, they ought to be recognized as states if and only if cooperating with them and giving them international support would be the best means of achieving peace and justice among and within them—that is, global peace and justice—whether or not they themselves currently satisfy minimal requirements of internal and external justice. (shrink)

This paper explores the managerial context surrounding fairness promotion using a multi-method examination that employs interviews and a survey of practicing managers. The results of these examinations describe how managers tend to focus their efforts to promote fairness on fairly allocating rewards and responsibilities, accurately and consistently applying organizational policies and providing representation and understanding to their subordinates around key organizational issues. Analyses of the interview and survey data show how managers’ efforts to promote employee development, enact managerial propriety, and (...) demonstrate moral leadership mediate relationships between their fundamental desires to develop positive working relationships with their subordinates and the efforts they make to promote fairness. This paper concludes with a discussion about how this work refines and extends research on how and why managers promote fairness. (shrink)

Applying Grice's account of conventional and conversational implicature, and Frankfurt's account of bullshit, shows that Donald J. Trump's language falls into a category beyond Frankfurt's own.

By reflecting upon ordinary morality, Aurel Kolnai observed that the constituents of human life are already valued pre-morally. Asking himself how morality could be understood against this background, Kolnai implicitly reflected about the question what makes us moral. By developing a neo-Kolnaian conception of ordinary morality and by making use of the phenomenological method, I argue that man’s moral consciousness is built on the foundation of primordial positive values but that it takes on its proper negative and emphatic character only (...) in the face of aggressive threat to those values. Ethical phenomenology, then, reveals that morality concerns the preservation, protection and improvement of this valuable mode of life. We emphatically experience the valuable when it is in need of protection. This also explains the primarily imperative or negative character of morality. Likewise, moral rules and principles primarily express the concern not to break or transgress them and this precisely because they say to uphold and thereby protect the existing good. Additionally, vice and virtue suitably fall within this view. As morality is about what we do and refrain from doing, thus about our actions and conduct, it is also about our moral character. Repeated compliance with the existing good results in the ascription of virtue, repeated noncompliance in vice. Thus, I argue, in the spirit of Kolnai, that ordinary morality should be, and earns to be, taken much more seriously and less sceptically. In particular, a phenomenology that tries to describe and learn from morality as it is, has much more to offer than is claimed by contemporary moral philosophy, all too often disregarding phenomenology and the search for relevant descriptions of ethical phenomena. (shrink)

The Ship of Theseus example raises problems about the sense that things such as tables and chairs exist and how they are able to change. It challenges traditional metaphysical notions about parthood and identity over time. When analyzed, it turns out that the issues raised by this example are fatal to traditional ontologies. I propose a process approach that does not discard the concept of matter entirely that both conforms to our commonsense intuitions about how the world is and is (...) able to adequately address the Ship of Theseus example. Under my theory, the Ship of Theseus actually includes the process that we would normally call a ship and the system of maintenance that is replacing the parts of the ship. I end by arguing that this is a com­monsensical view and respond to objections. (shrink)

Background: Ideas always have and always will change the world; with ideas-engagement enabling individuals to become more knowledgeable, better able to make good decisions and better positioned to re-align their values in response to new progressive norms and beliefs. Given these potential benefits, of primary interest is how citizens can be most effectively encouraged to engage with new ideas. Methods: With this study we test the efficacy of two approaches designed to enhance citizen’s perceptions regarding the value of ideas-engagement. Specifically, (...) we recontextualise a previously undertaken small-scale randomised control trial designed to stimulate states of either curiosity or pragmatic prospection amongst two randomly allocated groups of respondents. Our target variables involve the importance respondents attribute to staying up to date, as well as to four related attitudinal variables. Our target audience is the voting age population of England. Results: 515 participants took part in the experiment, with 269 receiving the curiosity stimulating intervention and 246, the prospection intervention. Our findings suggest that, by the end of four weeks, only the intervention designed to promote pragmatic prospection had significantly impacted on the importance respondents attribute to staying up to date. It also positively impacted the value- scores for one of the secondary attitudinal variables (relating to the importance of supporting physical and mental-health). Conclusions: While this study provides useful insight regarding ideas-engagement, further work is needed. In particular, future studies will require a larger sample, so as to ascertain the impact of these approaches on ‘ideas refusers’. Also required is the inclusion of a control group to provide a definitive counter factual. Furthermore, since positive changes in attitudes towards ideas- engagement also ideally leads to changes in behaviours, questions are also needed to examine the sources of ideas respondents subsequently engage with (or not) as a result of these interventions. (shrink)

The modern literature on responding to global poverty is over fifty years old and has attracted the attention of some of the most prominent analytical political theorists of the age, including Brian Barry, Charles Beitz, Simon Caney, Thomas Pogge, John Rawls, and Peter Singer. Yet in spite of this extraordinary concentration of brainpower, the problem of global poverty has quite clearly not been solved or, indeed, adequately defined. We are therefore entitled to ask two questions of any new contribution to (...) this literature: first, what does it have to offer that past work does not; and second, what reason is there to think that, this time, it will truly make a difference. These questions will be posed below, but before undertaking this task it may be useful to offer an overview of the field, with particular attention to why the problem of global poverty seems so intractable. (shrink)