Whereas Peirce’s logic drove him to postulate a primitive sentiency of physical matter, this essay argues that life exhibits behavior that is radically discontinuous from its preconditions; e.g., life manufactures chance by semiotic means. A sign being something that stands for another thing to a mind, signs are brought into existence only by acts of ‘reading.’ Peirce argued that this action is an element of physics, and thus the entire universe ‘lives.’ This essay postulates a degenerate form of Firstness (...) that is contingent upon ‘caused’ forms of apparent but not actual chance, and which consists of possibility sans sentiency. This argument limits the range of Peirce’s semiotics to biology; chance remains radical, though its roots now lie in the coextension of semiotics and life. As living things live only by incorporating extant phenomena, continuation depends on the ability to enter into successful semiotic relationships. This results in the ‘minding’ behavior that is both biological sentiency and genuine Firstness, and which expresses radically discontinuous behavior. Thus chance becomes something akin to truth: neither exists ‘metaphysically’ , both are quite distinct from being, and both happen only as a consequence of interpretation as it is generated by and re-generates sign-wielding beings as they seek what they need to go on living. While quite distinct from Peirce, this notion of chance may well result in a more productive use of his semiotics. (shrink)

Inspired by Peirce’s repeated claim in the final decade of his life that Spinoza was a pragmati(ci)st, this article examines whether or not Peirce also believed that Spinoza’s metaphysics leaves room for Firstness. He engaged this issue explicitly in his third “Lecture on Pragmatism” (1903), listing Spinoza’s among the metaphysics that include Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. Moreover, over a decade earlier, in the context of his exploration of hyperbolic geometry and the evolutionary cosmology that he regarded as corresponding (...) to it, Peirce repeatedly (if obliquely) identified Spinoza with the cosmological model that embraces all three of the categories. The article concludes by sketching the ambitious thesis that Spinoza was not only, as is usually held, a necessitarian, but also a Peircean possibilist. (shrink)

Peirce’s category of Firstness is first and fundamental. Without Firstness, we can say, nothing can (later) be – no time, no space, no things, no processes, no growth, no regularities, and no thoughts – hence, nothing of which we can ever conceive. However, despite the fundamentality of Peirce’s category of Firstness, we still do not believe that it has received the attention that it rightly deserves; not by Peirce himself, nor by his commentators. In the following we (...) will, therefore, look at the category of Firstness and try to give a modest glimpse of its fundamentality in relation to four other of Peirce’s central concepts: namely, evolution, consciousness, icon, and, finally, abduction. (shrink)

This study examined the representation of women in the world press, through the coverage of two very different events during 1995: The 50th anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II, and the 4th Conference on Women in Beijing. Using the first level of the agenda-setting approach as well as the second level we analyzed the content of more than 10,000 stories which appeared in the news around the world. The findings show that women's (...) presence is still not felt in the world's press, that is, they are not there in great frequency or quantity, regardless of the event, and even when they are present, they are associated more with the private than with the public sphere. Second level agenda-setting research would suggest that this might simply reinforce existing stereotypes. (shrink)

This essay treats the growth and development of Charles S. Peirce’s three categories, particularly studying the qualities of Peirce’s Firstness, a basic formula of “airy-nothingness” (CP: 6.455) serving as fragment to Secondness and Thirdness. The categories of feeling, willing, and knowing are not separate entities but work in interaction within the three interpretants. Interpretants are triadomaniac elements through the adopted, revised, or changed habits of belief. In works of art, the first glance of Firstness arouses the spontaneous responses (...) of musement, expressing emotions without the struggle and resistance of factual Secondness, and not yet involving logical Thirdness. The essential qualities of a loose or vague word, color, or sound give the fugitive meanings in Firstness. The flavor, brush, timbre, color, point, line, tone or touch of the First qualities of an aesthetic object is too small a base to build the logic of aesthetic judgment. The genesis art is explained by Peirce’s undegeneracy growing into group and individual interpretants and building into the passages and whole forms of double and single forms of degeneracy. The survey of the flash of Firstness is exemplified in a variety of artworks in language, music, sculpture, painting, and film. This analysis is a preliminary aid to further studies of primary Firstness in the arts. (shrink)

Whilst the role of Maturation or M‐phase Promoting Factor (MPF) as a universal M‐phase regulator is well documented, much less attention has been paid to its role in nuclear transplantation experiments and especially to its influence upon remodelling of transplanted nuclei. There is currently wide acceptance that successful nuclear transplantation using differentiated nuclei is possible only in a cytoplasmic environment that is capable of inducing rapid nuclear de‐differentiation to a pronuclear‐like form. In this review our purpose is firstly, to outline (...) the conditions under which such remodelling can be induced, and secondly, to extend the debate to include a consideration of whether complete nuclear remodelling is an absolute necessity for clonal development. (shrink)

In Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari argues that technological advances of the twenty-first century will usher in a significant shift in how humans make important life decisions. Instead of turning to the Bible or the Quran, to the heart or to our therapists, parents, and mentors, people will turn to Big Data recommendation algorithms to make these choices for them. Much as we rely on Spotify to recommend music to us, we will soon rely on algorithms to decide our careers, (...) spouses, and commitments. Harari also predicts that next, the state will take away individuals’ rights to make their own choices about their lives. If Google knows where your children would flourish best in school, why should the state allow a fallible human parent to decide? Liberalism—which, as Harari uses this term, refers to a state of society in which human freedom to choose is respected and championed—will collapse. In this paper, I argue that Harari’s conception of the future implications of recommendation algorithms is deeply flawed, for two reasons. First, users will not rely on algorithms to make decisions for them because they have no reason to trust algorithms, which are developed by companies with their own incentives, such as profit. Second, for most of our life decisions, algorithms will not be able to be developed, because the factors relevant to the decisions we face are unique to our situation. I present an alternative depiction of the future: instead of relying on algorithms to make decisions for us, humans will use algorithms to enhance our decision-making by helping us consider the most relevant choices first and notice information we might not otherwise. Finally, I will also argue that even if computers could make many of our decisions for us, liberalism as a political system would emerge unscathed. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the concept of consciousness in C. S. Peirce’s work, revealing how its ways of being are associated with the three Peircean phenomenological categories. In this article, I intend to reflect on the heuristic power of the mind, namely, its ability to bring about new ideas, which, within Peirce’s logic of inquiry, is called by the well-known term of abduction. The abductive logical step promotes a synthesis of signs that constitutes a logical structure capable of proposing a (...) new mediation or representation of a new phenomenon. I make use of a metaphorical passage from Peirce not only to give the title to this essay, but also to highlight the importance of the first category as a sort of synechistic envelopment of an unprecedented logical structure of signs that composes a new synthesis. Two continua intertwine themselves, namely, those of the first and third categories, to account for what appears as a fact of the world in the theater of secondness. The essay also seeks to bring to light the core realism of Peirce’s philosophy, the genetic aspect of this bottomless lake, through its cosmology, where the generalization of forms and the acquisition of habits of reality are the proper ground of his Objective Idealism. One of the heuristic aspect of the lake metaphor is a sort of invitation to extend the concept of synthesis from the realm of logical structures to that one of arts, which in this essay will remain as a suggestion for a further reflection. (shrink)

This essay introduces this special issue on virtue ethics in relation to military AI. It describes the current situation of military AI ethics as following that of AI ethics in general, caught between consequentialism and deontology. Virtue ethics serves as an alternative that can address some of the weaknesses of these dominant forms of ethics. The essay describes how the articles in the issue exemplify the value of virtue-related approaches for these questions, before ending with thoughts for further research.

Environmental scientists and engineers have been exploring research and monitoring applications of robotics, as well as exploring ways of integrating robotics into ecosystems to aid in responses to accelerating environmental, climatic, and biodiversity changes. These emerging applications of robots and other autonomous technologies present novel ethical and practical challenges. Yet, the critical applications of robots for environmental research, engineering, protection and remediation have received next to no attention in the ethics of robotics literature to date. This paper seeks to fill (...) that void, and promote the study of environmental robotics. It provides key resources for further critical examination of the issues environmental robots present by explaining and differentiating the sorts of environmental robotics that exist to date and identifying unique conceptual, ethical, and practical issues they present. (shrink)

In the conclusion to this multi-part article I first review the discussions carried out around the six essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis – the position taken by Allen Frances on each question, the commentaries on the respective question along with Frances’ responses to the commentaries, and my own view of the multiple discussions. In this review I emphasize that the core question is the first – what is the nature of psychiatric illness – and that in some manner all further (...) questions follow from the first. Following this review I attempt to move the discussion forward, addressing the first question from the perspectives of natural kind analysis and complexity analysis. This reflection leads toward a view of psychiatric disorders – and future nosologies – as far more complex and uncertain than we have imagined. (shrink)

The authors discuss some of the conceptual issues that must be considered in using and understanding psychiatric classification. DSM-IV is a practical and common sense nosology of psychiatric disorders that is intended to improve communication in clinical practice and in research studies. DSM-IV has no philosophic pretensions but does raise many philosphical questions. This paper describes the development of DSM-IV and the way in which it addresses a number of philosophic issues: nominalism vs. realism, epistemology in science, the mind/body dichotomy, (...) the definition of mental disorders, and dimensional vs. categorical classification. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM – whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part 1 of this article took up the first two questions. Part 2 took up the second two questions. Part 3 now deals with Questions 5 & 6. Question 5 confronts the issue of utility, whether the manual design of DSM-III and IV favors clinicians or researchers, and what that means for DSM-5. Our final question, Question 6, takes up a concluding issue, whether the acknowledged problems with the earlier DSMs warrants a significant overhaul of DSM-5 and future manuals. As in Parts 1 & 2 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article will take up the first two questions. With the first question, invited commentators express a range of opinion regarding the nature of psychiatric disorders, loosely divided into a realist position that the diagnostic categories represent real diseases that we can accurately name and know with our perceptual abilities, a middle, nominalist position that psychiatric disorders do exist in the real world but that our diagnostic categories are constructs that may or may not accurately represent the disorders out there, and finally a purely constructivist position that the diagnostic categories are simply constructs with no evidence of psychiatric disorders in the real world. The second question again offers a range of opinion as to how we should define a mental or psychiatric disorder, including the possibility that we should not try to formulate a definition. The general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article took up the first two questions. Part II will take up the second two questions. Question 3 deals with the question as to whether DSM-V should assume a conservative or assertive posture in making changes from DSM-IV. That question in turn breaks down into discussion of diagnoses that depend on, and aim toward, empirical, scientific validation, and diagnoses that are more value-laden and less amenable to scientific validation. Question 4 takes up the role of pragmatic consideration in a psychiatric nosology, whether the purely empirical considerations need to be tempered by considerations of practical consequence. As in Part 1 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

I argue for the view that some we-thoughts are immune to error through misidentification (IEM) relative to the first-person plural pronoun. To prepare the ground for this argument I defend an account of the semantics of ‘we’ and note the variety of different uses of that term. I go on to defend the IEM of a certain range of we-thoughts against a number of objections.

I argue that Metaphysicsλ‎ is a unified work, and one which is not a continuation of the central books ΖΗΘ‎. It outlines an extensive project in First Philosophy, which has close connections with ΑΒΓΕ‎, but which proceeds on a different trajectory from ΖΗ‎. The principal problem in understanding λ‎ as a whole is how to reconcile Aristotle's explicit presentation of the book as a highly unified study with the disparate character of its two halves – the first a general‐metaphysical enquiry (...) into the features which changeable substances have as being substances of that kind, the second a detailed investigation of the specific character and activity of immaterial substances. My paper aims to show how this reconciliation is possible, and what we can learn about Aristotle's conception of first philosophy as a result. (shrink)

"In his introduction to this most welcome republication (and second edition) of his logic text, Heil clarifies his aim in writing and revising this book: 'I believe that anyone unfamiliar with the subject who set out to learn formal logic could do so relying solely on [this] book. That, in any case, is what I set out to create in writing An Introduction to First-Order Logic.' Heil has certainly accomplished this with perhaps the most explanatorily thorough and pedagogically rich text (...) I've personally come across. "Heil's text stands out as being remarkably careful in its presentation and illuminating in its explanations--especially given its relatively short length when compared to the average logic textbook. It hits all of the necessary material that must be covered in an introductory deductive logic course, and then some. It also takes occasional excursions into side topics, successfully whetting the reader's appetite for more advanced studies in logic. "The book is clearly written by an expert who has put in the effort for his readers, bothering at every step to see the point and then explain it clearly to his readers. Heil has found some very clever, original ways to introduce, motivate, and otherwise teach this material. The author's own special expertise and perspective--especially when it comes to tying philosophy of mind, linguistics, and philosophy of language into the lessons of logic--make for a creative and fresh take on basic logic. With its unique presentation and illuminating explanations, this book comes about as close as a text can come to imitating the learning environment of an actual classroom. Indeed, working through its presentations carefully, the reader feels as though he or she has just attended an illuminating lecture on the relevant topics!" --Jonah Schupbach, University of Utah. (shrink)

Kolmogorov introduced an informal calculus of problems in an attempt to provide a classical semantics for intuitionistic logic. This was later formalised by Medvedev and Muchnik as what has come to be called the Medvedev and Muchnik lattices. However, they only formalised this for propositional logic, while Kolmogorov also discussed the universal quantifier. We extend the work of Medvedev to first-order logic, using the notion of a first-order hyperdoctrine from categorical logic, to a structure which we will call the hyperdoctrine (...) of mass problems. We study the intermediate logic that the hyperdoctrine of mass problems gives us, and we study the theories of subintervals of the hyperdoctrine of mass problems in an attempt to obtain an analogue of Skvortsova’s result that there is a factor of the Medvedev lattice characterising intuitionistic propositional logic. Finally, we consider Heyting arithmetic in the hyperdoctrine of mass problems and prove an analogue of Tennenbaum’s theorem on computable models of arithmetic. (shrink)

We extend first-order logic to include variadic function symbols, and prove a substitution lemma. Two applications are given: one to bounded quantifier elimination and one to the definability of certain Borel sets.

Firstness is the most neglected of Peirce’s categories, and is frequently held to be either elusive or inherently inconsistent. Yet, one’s implicit understanding of Firstness guides the kind of interpretation given to a wide range of his philosophy. From the starting point of his account of qualia in perceptual awareness, Firstness can be seen to be a consistent category which indicates that reality is qualitatively rich, but that its qualitative richness indicates not a realm of sense universals (...) or any sort of determinate repeatables but rather a realm of diverse and somewhat indefinite qualitative stimuli. There emerges from Peirce’s epistemic/phenomenal characterization of Firstness in perception a metaphysical category of Firstness which is neither a remnant of traditional conceptions of determinate repeatable qualities, nor a remnant of traditional conceptions of eternal Platonic possibilities. Rather, what emerges is a Firstness which attributes to reality precisely those characteristics most antithetical to such traditional conceptions. Firstness in this sense not only underlies Peirce’s radical rejection of foundationalist-antifoundationalist alternatives in epistemology, but also anticipates his rejection of the ontological alternatives offered by a tradition of substance metaphysics. (shrink)

What we call first‐order logic over fixed domain was initiated, in a certain guise, by Peirce around 1885 and championed, albeit in idiosyncratic form, by Zermelo in papers from the 1930s. We characterise such logics model‐ and proof‐theoretically and argue that they constitute exploration of a clearly circumscribed conception of domain‐dependent generality. Whereas a logic, or family of such, can be of interest for any of a variety of reasons, we suggest that one of those reasons might be that said (...) logic fosters some clarification regarding just what qualifies as a logical concept, a logical operation, or a logical law. (shrink)

The Law Commission for England and Wales has published for consultation a proposal for an offence of first degree murder. A person found guilty of this offence whether as a principal or an accomplice will receive a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. It is argued that the conditions for liability as an accomplice put forward by the Commission do not fulfil the Commission's aspiration for a "parity of culpability" between principals and accomplices. The discussion has general implications for the reform (...) of complicity laws. (shrink)

Report on the first Sententiae community meeting which took place on April 29, 2023.

One of the main problems of the orthoframe approach to quantum logic was that orthomodularity could not be captured by any first-order condition. This paper studies an elementary and natural class of orthomodular frames that can work around this limitation. Set-theoretically, the frames we propose form a natural subclass of the orthoframes, where is an irreflexive and symmetric relation on X. More specifically, they are partially-ordered orthoframes with a designated subset. Our frame class contains the canonical orthomodular frame of the (...) logic and therefore characterises orthomodular quantum logic. To prove soundness, a further restriction is placed on admissible valuations which requires that they be point-generated in addition to the requirement that they return stable sets. (shrink)

In this paper first order theories for nonmonotone inductive definitions are introduced, and a proof-theoretic analysis for such theories based on combined operator forms a la Richter with recursively inaccessible and Mahlo closure ordinals is given.

What determines the reference of first-person thoughts—thoughts that one would express using the first-person pronoun? I defend a model on which our ways of gaining knowledge of ourselves do, in much the way that our ways of gaining knowledge of objects in the world determine the reference of perceptual demonstrative thoughts. This model—the Demonstrative Model of First-Person Thought—can be motivated by reference to independently plausible general principles about how reference is determined. But it faces a serious objection. There seems to (...) be an explanatory rival to it with a great deal of plausiblility. The rival is The Simple Rule Model, which says that first-person thoughts are governed by the simple rule that any token of one will be about the person whose token it is. I pinpoint a crucial unclarity in The Simple Rule Model, hinging on how we understand the notion of a rule, and argue that no version of the Simple Rule Model is both plausible and a genuine explanatory rival to the Demonstrative Model. I also provide an argument that the Demonstrative Model is extensionally adequate. (shrink)

What should knowledge first theorists say about the value of knowledge? In this paper I approach this issue by arguing for a single ‘modest knowledge first claim’ about the value of knowledge. This is that the special value of knowledge isn’t merely instrumental value relative to true belief. I show that MKF is inconsistent with the version of the Platonic stability theory that Williamson defends in Knowledge and its Limits. I then argue in favour of MKF by arguing that Williamson’s (...) stability theory fails for reasons that plausibly generalise to any theory of the value of knowledge that is inconsistent with MKF. Crucial to this argument is a putative adequacy condition on philosophical theories of the value of knowledge: that, in order to fully explain the special value of knowledge, a theory must identify respects in which knowledge is more valuable than true belief that give enquirers adequate reason for preferring knowledge to true belief. I conclude by suggesting that this adequacy condition is the source of a more general dilemma for proponents of philosophical theories of the value of knowledge. (shrink)

I develop a challenge for a widely suggested knowledge-first account of belief that turns, primarily, on unknowable propositions. I consider and reject several responses to my challenge and sketch a new knowledge-first account of belief that avoids it.