The explanatory gap . Consciousness is a mystery. No one has ever given an account, even a highly speculative, hypothetical, and incomplete account of how a physical thing could have phenomenal states. Suppose that consciousness is identical to a property of the brain, say activity in the pyramidal cells of layer 5 of the cortex involving reverberatory circuits from cortical layer 6 to the thalamus and back to layers 4 and 6,as Crick and Koch have suggested for visual consciousness. .) (...) Still, that identity itself calls out for explanation! Proponents of an explanatory gap disagree about whether the gap is permanent. Some say that we are like the scientifically naive person who is told that matter = energy, but does not have the concepts required to make sense of the idea. If we can acquire these concepts, the gap is closable. Others say the gap is uncloseable because of our cognitive limitations. Still others say that the gap is a consequence of the fundamental nature of consciousness. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the method for assessing and improving our representational devices. On its ‘broad-spectrum’ version, it is expected to be appropriately applicable to any of our representation-involving cognitive activities, with major consequences for our whole cognitive life. This paper is about the theoretical foundations of conceptual engineering thus characterised. With a view to ensuring the actionability of conceptual engineering as a broad-spectrum method, it addresses the issue of how best to construe the subject matter of (...) class='Hi'>conceptual engineering and successively defends the theses that conceptual engineering should be: (i) About concepts, (ii) psychologically theorised, (iii) as multiply realised functional kinds. Thereby, I claim to theoretically secure and justify the maximum scope, flexibility, and impact for the method of conceptual engineering on our representational devices in our whole cognitive life—in other words, a broad-spectrum version of conceptual engineering. (shrink)

This paper argues for explanatory eliminativism about topics (and cognates, such as subject matters) relative to the domain of conceptual engineering. It has become usual to think that topics serve an important explanatory role in theories of conceptual engineering, namely, to determine the limits of revision. I argue, first, that such limits can be understood either as thenormative limitspertaining to the justification of conceptual engineering, as themetaphysical limitspertaining to the identity of the concepts in question, or as (...) theterminological limitspertaining to usage of the original terminology. Second, I argue that the metaphysical reading is disputable as a theory of concepts and inconsequential for conceptual engineers, and that neither of the two leading accounts of topics that have been presented in the literature—the samesaying account and functionalism—determine the limits of revision in either of the two remaining senses. In the absence of more promising competitors, I conclude that there is no theoretical role for topics to play in theories of conceptual engineering. An upshot of my argument is that conceptual engineers should stop worrying about things like topic (dis)continuity, and instead shift their attention to the issues that really matter for justifying conceptual revisions or replacements, making terminological choices, and underpinning conceptual engineering with a theory of concepts. (shrink)

How are biases encoded in our representations of social categories? Philosophical and empirical discussions of implicit bias overwhelmingly focus on salient or statistical associations between target features and representations of social categories. These are the sorts of associations probed by the Implicit Association Test and various priming tasks. In this paper, we argue that these discussions systematically overlook an alternative way in which biases are encoded, that is, in the dependency networks that are part of our representations of social categories. (...) Dependency networks encode information about how features in a conceptual representation depend on each other. This information determines the degree of centrality of a feature for a conceptual representation. Importantly, centrally encoded biases systematically disassociate from those encoded in salient-statistical associations. Furthermore, the degree of centrality of a feature determines its cross-contextual stability: in general, the more central a feature is for a concept, the more likely it is to survive into a wide array of cognitive tasks involving that concept. Accordingly, implicit biases that are encoded in the central features of concepts are predicted to be more resilient across different tasks and contexts. As a result, the distinction between centrally encoded and salient-statistical biases has important theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

This paper recommends that experimental analysts of language development abandon for the purposes of experimental inquiry both the term "language" and the concept it designates. In support of this recommendation, the paper dis cusses the multiple meanings of "language," the proposal that "language" refers to behavior, the implicit acceptance by behavior analysts of psycholinguistic thought despite their ostensible rejection of it, and the nature of language as a subject matter. In addition, the nature of common-sense psychology, the domain of behavior (...) analysis, the formal nature of Chomskyan linguistics, and the rela tion between psychology and behavior analysis are discussed. (shrink)

What is the property of being true like? To answer this question, begin with a Canberra-plan analysis of the concept of truth. That is, assemble the platitudes for the concept of truth, and then investigate which property might satisfy them. This project is aided by Friedman and Sheard’s groundbreaking analysis of twelve logical platitudes for truth. It turns out that, because of the paradoxes like the liar, the platitudes for the concept of truth are inconsistent. Moreover, there are so many (...) distinct paradoxes that only small subsets of platitudes for truth are consistent. The result is that there is no property of being true. The failure of the Canberra plan analysis of the concept of truth, points the way toward a new methodology: a conceptual engineering project for the concept of truth. Conceptual engineering is assessing the quality of our concepts, and when they are found defective, offering new and better concepts to replace them for certain purposes. Still, there are many aletheic properties, which are properties satisfied by reasonably large subsets of platitudes for the concept of truth. We can treat these aletheic properties as a guide to the multitude of new aletheic concepts, which are concepts similar to, but distinct from, the concept of truth. Any new aletheic concept or team of concepts might be called on to replace the concept of truth. In particular, the concepts of ascending truth and descending truth are recommended, but the most important point is that we need a full-scale investigation into the space of aletheic properties and new aletheic concepts—that is, we need an Aletheic Principles Project. (shrink)

Things we can say, and the ways in which we can say them, compete with one another. And this has consequences: words we decide not to pronounce have critical effects on the messages we end up conveying. For instance, in saying Chris is a good teacher, we may convey that Chris is not an amazing teacher. How this happens is an unsolvable problem, unless a theory of alternatives indicates what counts, among all the things that have not been pronounced. It (...) is sometimes assumed, explicitly or implicitly, that any word counts, as long as that word could have replaced one that was actually pronounced. We review arguments for going beyond this powerful idea. In doing so, we argue that the level of words is not the right level of analysis for alternatives. Instead, we capitalize on recent conceptual and associated methodological advances within the study of the so-called “language of thought” to reopen the problem from a new perspective. Specifically, we provide theoretical and experimental arguments that the relation between alternatives and words may be indirect, and that alternatives are not merely linguistic objects in the traditional sense. Rather, we propose that competition in language is significantly determined by general reasoning preferences, or thought preferences. We propose that such non-linguistic preferences can be measured and that these measures can be used to explain linguistic competition, non-linguistically, and more in depth. (shrink)

Mark Wilson presents a highly original account of conceptual behavior that challenges many received views about concepts in analytic philosophy. Few attempts have been made to rationally reconstruct Wilson’s framework of patches and facades within a precise semantic framework. I will show how a modified version of the structuralist framework offers a semantic reconstruction of scientific theories capable of modeling Wilson’s ideas about conceptual behavior. Specifically, I will argue that Theory-Elements and a modified version of Theory-Nets explicate respectively (...) Wilson’s patches and facades. I will also demonstrate how several wandering phenomena described by Wilson can be adequately reconstructed within my framework. (shrink)

A critique of Rorty's own provocative political philosophy, as well as an in-depth look at both the issues concerning the relationship between the public and the private, and arguments on the role of reason in liberal political discourse generally.

The structure of people’s conceptual knowledge of concrete nouns has traditionally been viewed as hierarchical (Collins & Quillian, 1969). For example, superordinate concepts (vegetable) are assumed to reside at a higher level than basic‐level concepts (carrot). A feature‐based attractor network with a single layer of semantic features developed representations of both basic‐level and superordinate concepts. No hierarchical structure was built into the network. In Experiment and Simulation 1, the graded structure of categories (typicality ratings) is accounted for by the (...) flat attractor network. Experiment and Simulation 2 show that, as with basic‐level concepts, such a network predicts feature verification latencies for superordinate concepts (vegetable ). In Experiment and Simulation 3, counterintuitive results regarding the temporal dynamics of similarity in semantic priming are explained by the model. By treating both types of concepts the same in terms of representation, learning, and computations, the model provides new insights into semantic memory. (shrink)

Conceptual congruency effects are biases induced by an irrelevant conceptual dimension of a task (e.g., location in vertical space) on the processing of another, relevant dimension (e.g., judging words’ emotional evaluation). Such effects are a central empirical pillar for recent views about how the mind/brain represents concepts. In the present paper, we show how attentional cueing (both exogenous and endogenous) to each conceptual dimension succeeds in modifying both the manifestation and the symmetry of the effect. The theoretical (...) implications of this finding are discussed. (shrink)

This edition includes a substantial new preface by the author, in which he discusses repression, determinism, transference, and practical rationality, and offers a comparison of Aristotle and Lacan on the concept of desire. MacIntyre takes the opportunity to reflect both on the reviews and criticisms of the first edition and also on his own philosophical stance.

The 2008 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) provides a landmark articulation of the universality of human rights. It affirms in strong terms that all human beings have a claim to full inclusion and equal participation in society, something denied to many because of disability. The CRPD is an ambitious document with far-reaching and fundamental implications. This interdisciplinary collection of essays takes up pressing philosophical, legal, and practical issues raised by the CRPD and the ongoing process (...) of its implementation. Combining clear legal and philosophical overviews with ground-breaking conceptual analyses, the collection aims to advance the academic debate about human rights and disability and to serve as a useful resource for policymakers, ethicists, disability activists, jurists, and all those interested in the human rights of persons with disabilities. With contributions by Jackie Leach Scully, Marcus Düwell, Jenny Goldschmidt, Sigrid Graumann, Caroline Harnacke, Jan Vorstenbosch, Esther van Weele, Joel Anderson, Jos Philips. (shrink)

Conceptual models are descriptions of our ideas about a problem, used to shape the implementation of a solution to it. Everyone who builds complex information systems uses such models - be they requirements analysts, knowledge modellers or software designers - but understanding of the pragmatics of model design tends to be informal and parochial. Lightweight uses of logic can add precision without destroying the intuitions we use to interpret our descriptions. Computing with logic allows us to make use of (...) this precision in providing automated support tools. Modern information scientists need to know what these methods are for and may need to build their own. This book gives you a place to begin. Where do you start when building models in a precise language like logic? One way is by following standard paradigms for design and adapting these to your needs. Some of these come from an analysis of existing informal notations. Others are from within logic itself. We take you through a sample of these, from more commonplace styles of formal modelling to non-standard methods such as techniques editing and argumentation. Each of these provides a window onto broader areas of applied logic and gives you a basis for adapting the method to your own needs. (shrink)

La física durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX experimentó una silenciosa pero profunda revisión de sus fundamentos. A pesar de su importancia para los desarrollos posteriores de la física, los estudios históricos y filosóficos sobre dicho periodo son escasos comparados con aquellos de principios del siglo XX. Este trabajo reconstruye algunos aspectos de la física de este periodo usando dos herramientas conceptuales: espacios controversiales de Oscar Nudler y estilo de razonamiento científico de Ian Hacking. El objetivo es mostrar los (...) elementos que produjeron el desbloqueo conceptual de la controversia sobre el determinismo durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX. (shrink)

The author aim is to explore the role Sellars has played in shaping the current discussion of Hegel.

A new logic of partitions has been developed that is dual to ordinary logic when the latter is interpreted as the logic of subsets of a fixed universe rather than the logic of propositions. For a finite universe, the logic of subsets gave rise to finite probability theory by assigning to each subset its relative size as a probability. The analogous construction for the dual logic of partitions gives rise to a notion of logical entropy that is precisely related to (...) Claude Shannon's entropy. In this manner, the new logic of partitions provides a logico-conceptual foundation for information-theoretic entropy or information content. (shrink)