We present a high-level declarative programming language for representing argumentation schemes, where schemes represented in this language can be easily validated by domain experts, including developers of argumentation schemes in informal logic and philosophy, and serve as executable specifications for automatically constructing arguments, when applied to a set of assumptions. This new rule language for representing argumentation schemes is validated by using it to represent twenty representative argumentation schemes.

According to standard philosophical and clinical understandings, pain is an essentially mental phenomenon (typically, a kind of conscious experience). In a challenge to this standard conception, a recent burst of empirical work in experimental philosophy, such as that by Justin Sytsma and Kevin Reuter, purports to show that people ordinarily conceive of pain as an essentially bodily phenomenon—specifically, a quality of bodily disturbance. In response to this bodily view, other recent experimental studies have provided evidence that the ordinary (‘folk’) concept (...) of pain is more complex than previously assumed: rather than tracking only bodily or only mental aspects of pain, the ordinary concept of pain can actually track either of these aspects. The polyeidic (or ‘many ideas’) analysis of the folk concept of pain, as proposed by Emma Borg et al., captures this complexity. Whereas previous empirical support for the polyeidic view has focused on the context-sensitivity of the folk concept of pain, here we discuss individual differences in people’s ‘pain priors’—namely, their standing tendencies to think of pain in relatively mind-centric or body-centric ways. We describe a preliminary empirical study and present a small number of findings, which will be explored further in future work. The results we discuss are part of a larger programme of work which seeks to integrate philosophical pain research into clinical practice. For example, we hypothesise that variations in how patients with chronic pain are thinking about pain could help predict their responses to treatment. (shrink)

In _Professionals’ Ethos and Education for Responsibility,_ Alfred Weinberger, Horst Biedermann, Jean-Luc Patry and Sieglinde Weyringer offer insights into different concepts and applications of professionals’ ethos focusing on teachers’ ethos.

In an era of backlash and supposed stagnation, feminist philosophers are still providing fresh and challenging perspectives--you just have to know where to look. Continental feminist theory continues to address pressing questions of equality and difference, identity and subjectivity. Modern thinkers like Judith Butler, Kelly Oliver, and Drucilla Cornell give strikingly new perspectives on sex, gender, sexual politics, and the various social reasons for gender inequality. Yet their theories are not always well received. Continental Feminism Reader responds to the marginalization (...) of these thinkers and others like them. In this volume, Ann J. Cahill and Jennifer Hansen collect the most groundbreaking recent work in Continental Feminist Theory, introducing and explaining pieces that are often mystifying to those outside the field and outside academia. With these essays, Continental Feminism Reader begins the process of reanimating feminist politics through the critical tools of its contributors. (shrink)

Parent and preschool teacher ratings of the 10 noun categories of MacArthur-Bates Communication Development Inventory were used to study expressive language in 2–4-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder across the home and preschool context. There was no significant difference in the total number of words the children said in the two contexts, but the children said significantly more words in the noun categories “Furniture and rooms” and “People” at home. Only one third of the words the children said were said (...) both at home and in the preschool, while the other two thirds were said only at home or only in preschool. This suggests that what words the children use across contexts differ substantially and that their vocabulary is larger than it seems when measured only in one context. This novel study highlights the importance of assessing the language in children with ASD in multiple contexts in order to better measure their vocabulary and to design appropriate language interventions. (shrink)

(1) Reaction time (RT) studies give only a partial picture of language processing, hence it may be risky to use the output of the computational model to inspire neurophysiological investigations instead of seeking further neurophysiological data to adjust the RT based theory. (2) There is neurophysiological evidence for differences in the cortical representation of different word categories; this could be integrated into a future version of the Levelt model. (3) EEG/MEG coherence analysis allows the monitoring of synchronous electrical activity in (...) large groups of neurons in the cortex; this is especially interesting for activation based network models. (shrink)

We present a logic which we call Hybrid Duration Calculus. HDC is obtained by adding the following hybrid logical machinery to the Restricted Duration Calculus : nominals, satisfaction operators, down-arrow binder, and the global modality. RDC is known to be decidable, and in this paper we show that decidability is retained when adding the hybrid logical machinery. Decidability of HDC is shown by reducing the satisfiability problem to satisfiability of Monadic Second-Order Theory of Order. We illustrate the increased expressive power (...) obtained in hybridizing RDC by showing that HDC, in contrast to RDC, can express all of the 13 possible relations between intervals. (shrink)

The scientific and practical fields—especially high-performance sports—increasingly request a stronger focus be placed on individual athletes in human movement science research. Machine learning methods have shown efficacy in this context by identifying the unique movement patterns of individuals and distinguishing their intra-individual changes over time. The objective of this investigation is to analyze biomechanically described movement patterns during the fatigue-related accumulation process within a single training session of a high number of repeated executions of a ballistic sports movement—specifically, the frontal (...) foot kick (mae-geri) in karate—in expert athletes. The two leading research questions presented for consideration are (1) Can characteristics of individual movement patterns be observed throughout the entire training session despite continuous changes, i.e., even as fatigue-related processes increase? and (2) How do intra-individual movement patterns change as fatigue-related processes increase throughout a training session? Sixteen expert karatekas performed 606 frontal foot kicks directed toward an imaginary target. The kicks were performed in nine sets at 80% (K-80) of the self-experienced maximal intensity. In addition, six kicks at maximal intensity (K-100) were performed after each of the nine sets. Between the sets, the participants took a 90-s break. Three-dimensional full-body kinematic data of all kicks were recorded with 10 infrared cameras. The normalized waveforms of nine upper- and lower-body joint angles were classified using a supervised machine learning method (support vector machine). The results of the classification revealed a disjunct distinction between the kinematic movement patterns of individual athletes. The identification of unique movement patterns of individual athletes was independent of the intensity and the degree of fatigue-related processes. In other words, even with the accumulation of fatigue-related processes, the unique movement patterns of an individual athlete can be clearly identified. During the training session, changes in intra-individual movement patterns could also be detected, indicating the occurrence of adaptations in individual movement patterns throughout the fatigue-related accumulation process. The results suggest that these adaptations can be modeled in terms of changes in patterns rather than increasing variance. Practical consequences are critically discussed. (shrink)

7 Klaus Hansen Feindberiihrungen mit versohnlichem Ausgang Carl Schmitt und der Liberalismus Das Ende des "Dritten Reiches" liegt iiber 40 Jahre zuruck. Noch immer hiilt sich eine ganze Gesellschaft, die es "nicht fertiggebracht hat, eine andere Geschichte hervorzubringen" (Jean Baudrillard), durch die nachgetragene Kritik und Schuldfeststellung ihrer Meisterdenker schadlos. Der "Nazi-Philosoph" Martin Heidegger beherrscht die feuilletonistische Hermeneutik der Jahreswende 1987 / 88; der "Nazi-Jurist" Carl Schmitt war von 1945 bis zu seinem Tode, 40 Jahre spiiter, immer wieder Gegenstand poli­ (...) tologischer und politi scher Verdammungsverdikte. Wer sich auf Carl Schmitt einliillt, begibt sich in einen Irrgarten, der emp­ fanglichen Gemiitern ein Faszinosum fUr sich ist. Die Beitriige von Sombart, Altmann und Thcker im vorliegenden Buch versuchen, dieser Schmitt'schen Attraktion auf die Spur zu kommen - und stellen dabei mehr Forschungsdesi­ derate als gesicherte Erkenntnisse fest. Vor allem aber geht es in dies em Buch darum, Carl Schmitt die Gerechtig­ keit einer angemessenen Auseinandersetzung widerfahren zu lassen. Freilich nicht dem "ganzen" Carl Schmitt, aber doch jenen Aspekten seines Werkes, die sich mit der Kritik des Liberalismus befassen. Carl Schmitt kritisiert den Liberalismus aus der Position eines Anti-Libera­ len, die sich in vierfacher Umschreibung skizzieren liillt. Der Anti-Liberalismus Schmitts ruhrt 1. von der anthropologischen Grundauffassung her. In der Tradition von Ma­ chiavelli und Hobbes stehend, sieht Schmitt den Menschen als "bose" und "gefahrlich" an. (shrink)

A primary intention of our original manuscript was to provide examples of both harmful and helpful influences of one cultural artifact—depression memoirs—on who female readers take their selves to be, and who they may actually end up being. Bradley Lewis beautifully articulated our strategy as “chart[ing] out … conflicting vectors” : that is, delineating select examples of how certain outer narratives conveyed in depression memoirs may kindle sexist and sanist modes of being. Our hope was that making these vectors explicit (...) could ultimately be liberating for some individuals by “opening up... (shrink)

This ambitious book presents a new interpretation of Chinese thought guided both by a philosopher's sense of mystery and by a sound philosophical theory of meaning. That dual goal, Hansen argues, requires a unified translation theory. It must provide a single coherent account of the issues that motivated both the recently untangled Chinese linguistic analysis and the familiar moral-political disputes. Hansen's unified approach uncovers a philosophical sophistication in Daoism that traditional accounts have overlooked. The Daoist theory treats the (...) imperious intuitionism that alienates critical thinkers as a feature of Confucianism alone. Freed from the view that Confucianism is the core of Chinese thought and from myopic Confucian interpretations, Chinese thinkers emerge as unmistakably philosophical. (shrink)

Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (TS) is a childhood neuropsychiatric disorder characterised by the presence of motor and vocal tics. Patients with malignant TS experience severe disease sequelae; risking morbidity and mortality due to tics, self-harm, psychiatric comorbidities and suicide. By definition, those cases termed ‘malignant’ are refractory to all conventional psychiatric and pharmacological regimens. In these instances, deep brain stimulation (DBS) may be efficacious. Current 2015 guidelines recommend a 6-month period absent of suicidal ideation before DBS is offered to (...) patients with TS. We therefore wondered whether it may be ethically justifiable to offer DBS to a minor with malignant TS. We begin with a discussion of non-maleficence and beneficence. New evidence suggests that suicide risk in young patients with TS has been underestimated. In turn, DBS may represent an invaluable opportunity for children with malignant TS to secure future safety, independence and fulfilment. Postponing treatment is associated with additional risks. Ultimately, we assert this unique risk-benefit calculus justifies offering DBS to paediatric patients with malignant TS. A multidisciplinary team of clinicians must determine whether DBS is in the best interest of their individual patients. We conclude with a suggestion for future TS-DBS guidelines regarding suicidal ideation. The importance of informed consent and assent is underscored. (shrink)

This paper provides an analysis of U.S. farmland owners, operators, and workers by race, ethnicity, and gender. We first review the intersection between racialized and gendered capitalism and farmland ownership and farming in the United States. Then we analyze data from the 2014 Tenure and Ownership Agricultural Land survey, the 2012 Census of Agriculture, and the 2013–2014 National Agricultural Worker Survey to demonstrate that significant nation-wide disparities in farming by race, ethnicity and gender persist in the U.S. In 2012–2014, White (...) people owned 98% and operated 94% of all farmland. They generated 98% of all farm-related income from land ownership and 97% of income from farm owner-operatorship. Meanwhile, People of Color farmers were more likely to be tenants rather than owners, owned less land, and generated less farm-related wealth per person than their White counterparts. Hispanic farmers were also disproportionately farm laborers. In addition to racial and ethnic disparities, there were disparities by gender. About 63% of non-operating landowners, 86% of farm operators, and 87% of tenant farmers were male, and female farmers tended to generate less income per farmer than men. This data provides evidence of ongoing racial, ethnic and gender disparities in agriculture in the United States. We conclude with a call to address the structural drivers of the disparities and with recommendations for better data collection. (shrink)

Combining all four distinct volumes in the series, this compilation explores the philosophical reasons behind the existence of humanity. The first volume investigates the concept of relations, revealing that unique, complex relationships come into being simultaneously and exponentially through the combination of multiple elements. The second volume focuses on intellect, probing the most obscure corners of comprehension and conducting a fascinating tour of the human psyche. The third volume addresses volition, analyzing the extent to which human judgment, decisions, and actions (...) impact future prospects for mankind and deflect the course of nature. The fourth and final volume delves into affections, dispassionately highlighting the merits and shortcomings of man’s most ethereal faculties. (shrink)

Many hold that theoretical reasoning aims at truth. In this paper, I ask what it is for reasoning to be thus aim-directed. Standard answers to this question explain reasoning’s aim-directedness in terms of intentions, dispositions, or rule-following. I argue that, while these views contain important insights, they are not satisfactory. As an alternative, I introduce and defend a novel account: reasoning aims at truth in virtue of being the exercise of a distinctive kind of cognitive power, one that, unlike ordinary (...) dispositions, is capable of fully explaining its own exercises. I argue that this account is able to avoid the difficulties plaguing standard accounts of the relevant sort of mental teleology. (shrink)

This book challenges the standard view that modern hermeneutics begins with Friedrich Ast and Friedrich Schleiermacher, arguing instead that it is the dialectic of reflective and teleological reason in Kant’s Critique of Judgment that provides the actual proto-hermeneutic foundation. It is revolutionary in doing so by replacing interpretive truth claims by the more appropriate claim of rendering opaque contexts intelligible. Taking Gadamer’s comprehensive analysis of hermeneutics in Truth and Method (1960) as its point of departure, the book turns to Kant’s (...) Critiques, reviewing his major concepts as a coherent system in relation to his sensus communis. At the heart of the book is the interaction between reflective, bottom-up search and teleological, top-down interpretative projection as provided in Part II of the third Critique. This text contends that Kant’s broad definition of nature invites the liberation of the reflective-teleological judgment from its biological exemplifications and so permits us to establish its generalised status as a path-breaking, methodological tool. Kant’s dialectic of reflective search and meaning bestowing, stipulated teleology is asserted to anticipate a series of motifs commonly associated with hermeneutics. Figures covered include Dilthey, Husserl, Ingarden, Heidegger, Gadamer, Apel, Habermas, Ricoeur, Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze, Vattimo, Nancy and Caputo. Their collective contributions to interpretation allow for a review of the evolution of hermeneutics from the perspective of the Kantian critique of the limitations of human cognition. The book is written for the informed, general reader, but will likewise appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as researchers in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers of mind tend to assume that the world of nature can be reduced to basic physics. Yet there are features of the mind consciousness, intentionality, normativity that do not seem to be reducible to physics or neuroscience. This explanatory gap between mind and brain has thus been a major cause of concern in recent philosophy of mind. Reductionists hold that, despite all appearances, the mind can be reduced to the brain. Eliminativists hold that it cannot, and that this (...) implies that there is something illegitimate about the mentalistic vocabulary. Dualists hold that the mental is irreducible, and that this implies either a substance or a property dualism. Mysterian non-reductive physicalists hold that the mind is uniquely irreducible, perhaps due to some limitation of our self-understanding. In this book, Steven Horst argues that this whole conversation is based on assumptions left over from an outdated philosophy of science. While reductionism was part of the philosophical orthodoxy fifty years ago, it has been decisively rejected by philosophers of science over the past thirty years, and for good reason. True reductions are in fact exceedingly rare in the sciences, and the conviction that they were there to be found was an artifact of armchair assumptions of 17th century Rationalists and 20th century Logical Empiricists. The explanatory gaps between mind and brain are far from unique. In fact, in the sciences it is gaps all the way down.And if reductions are rare in even the physical sciences, there is little reason to expect them in the case of psychology. Horst argues that this calls for a complete re-thinking of the contemporary problematic in philosophy of mind. Reductionism, dualism, eliminativism and non-reductive materialism are each severely compromised by post-reductionist philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind is in need of a new paradigm. Horst suggests that such a paradigm might be found in Cognitive Pluralism: the view that human cognitive architecture constrains us to understand the world through a plurality of partial, idealized, and pragmatically-constrained models, each employing a particular representational system optimized for its own problem domain. Such an architecture can explain the disunities of knowledge, and is plausible on evolutionary grounds. (shrink)

The traditional distinction between basic and applied science has been much criticized in recent decades. The criticism is based on a combination of historical and systematic epistemic argument. The present paper is mostly concerned with the historical aspect. I argue that the critics impose an understanding at odds with the way the distinction was understood by its supporters in debates on science education and science policy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. And I show how a distinction that refers to (...) difference on several epistemic and social dimensions makes good sense of representative historical cases. If this argument is tenable it suggests more continuity in the epistemology and politics of science than has been claimed by a new paradigm of science studies and politics during recent decades. (shrink)

When experimental participants are given the chance to reflect and revise their initial judgments in a dynamic conversational context, do their responses to philosophical scenarios differ from responses to those same scenarios presented in a traditional static survey? In three experiments comparing responses given in conversational contexts with responses to traditional static surveys, we find no consistent evidence that responses differ in these different formats. This aligns with recent findings that various manipulations of reflectiveness have no effect on participants’ judgments (...) about philosophical scenarios. Although we did not find a consistent quantitative effect of format (conversation vs. static survey), conversational experiments still provide qualitative insights into debates about how participants are understanding (or misunderstanding) the scenarios they read in experimental studies, whether they are replacing difficult questions with questions that are more easily answered, and how participants are imagining the scenarios they read in ways that differ from what is explicitly stated by experimenters. We argue that conversational experiments—"Socratic questionnaires"—help show what is going on “under the hood” of traditional survey designs in the experimental investigation of philosophical questions. (shrink)