The paper reviews a number of approaches for handling restricted quantification in relevant logic, and proposes a novel one. This proceeds by introducing a novel kind of enthymematic conditional.

“ All verbal forms of statement,” says Whitehead, “that have been long before the world disclose ambiguities, and sometimes the ambiguities strike at the very heart of the meaning. The effective sense in which a doctrine has been held in the past cannot be determined by a logical analysis of statements made in ignorance of the logical trap.... Religion collapses unless its main positions command immediacy of assent.”.

REMARKS ON EVOLUTION AND TIME-SCALES, Graham Cairns-Smith; HODGSON'S BLACK BOX, Thomas Clark; DO HODGSON'S PROPOSITIONS UNIQUELY CHARACTERIZE FREE WILL?, Ravi Gomatam; WHAT SHOULD WE RETAIN FROM A PLAIN PERSON'S CONCEPT OF FREE WILL?, Gilberto Gomes; ISOLATING DISPARATE CHALLENGES TO HODGSON'S ACCOUNT OF FREE WILL, Liberty Jaswal; FREE AGENCY AND LAWS OF NATURE, Robert Kane; SCIENCE VERSUS REALIZATION OF VALUE, NOT DETERMINISM VERSUS CHOICE, Nicholas Maxwell; COMMENTS ON HODGSON, J.J.C. Smart; THE VIEW FROM WITHIN, Sean Spence; COMMENTARY ON HODGSON, Henry (...) Stapp. (shrink)

Epistemic defeat is standardly understood in either evidentialist or responsibilist terms. The seminal treatment of defeat is an evidentialist one, due to John Pollock, who famously distinguishes between undercutting and rebutting defeaters. More recently, an orthogonal distinction due to Jennifer Lackey has become widely endorsed, between so-called doxastic (or psychological) and normative defeaters. We think that neither doxastic nor normative defeaters, as Lackey understands them, exist. Both of Lackey’s categories of defeat derive from implausible assumptions about epistemic responsibility. Although Pollock’s (...) evidentialist view is superior, the evidentialism per se can be purged from it, leaving a general structure of defeat that can be incorporated in a reliabilist theory that is neither evidentialist nor responsibilist in any way. (shrink)

Many of the features that distinguish the vertebrates from other chordates are derived from the neural crest, and it has long been argued that the emergence of this multipotent embryonic population was a key innovation underpinning vertebrate evolution. More recently, however, a number of studies have suggested that the evolution of the neural crest was less sudden than previously believed. This has exposed the fact that neural crest, as evidenced by its repertoire of derivative cell types, has evolved through vertebrate (...) evolution. In this light, attempts to derive a typological definition of neural crest, in terms of molecular signatures or networks, are unfounded. We propose a less restrictive, embryological definition of this cell type that facilitates, rather than precludes, investigating the evolution of neural crest. While the evolutionary origin of neural crest has attracted much attention, its subsequent evolution has received almost no attention and yet it is more readily open to experimental investigation and has greater relevance to understanding vertebrate evolution. Finally, we provide a brief outline of how the evolutionary emergence of neural crest potentiality may have proceeded, and how it may be investigated. BioEssays 30:530–541, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Although virtually all comparative research about risk perception focuses on which hazards are of concern to people in different culture groups, much can be gained by focusing on predictors of levels of risk perception in various countries and places. In this case, we examine standard and novel predictors of risk perception in seven sites among communities affected by a flood in Mexico (one site) and volcanic eruptions in Mexico (one site) and Ecuador (five sites). We conducted more than 450 interviews (...) with questions about how people feel at the time (after the disaster) regarding what happened in the past, their current concerns, and their expectations for the future. We explore how aspects of the context in which people live have an effect on how strongly people perceive natural hazards in relationship with demographic, well-being, and social network factors. Generally, our research indicates that levels of risk perception for past, present, and future aspects of a specific hazard are similar across these two countries and seven sites. However, these contexts produced different predictors of risk perception—in other words, there was little overlap between sites in the variables that predicted the past, present, or future aspects of risk perception in each site. Generally, current stress was related to perception of past danger of an event in the Mexican sites, but not in Ecuador; network variables were mainly important for perception of past danger (rather than future or present danger), although specific network correlates varied from site to site across the countries. (shrink)

C.A.J. Coady, in his book Testimony: A Philosophical Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), offers conditions on an assertion that p to count as testimony. He claims that the assertion that p must be by a competent speaker directed to an audience in need of evidence and it must be evidence that p. I offer examples to show that Coady’s conditions are too strong. Testimony need not be evidence; the speaker need not be competent; and, the statement need not be relevant (...) or directed to someone in need of evidence. I give alternative conditions. Coady was led into the stronger conditions by investigating testimony as it occurs in legal contexts, where special steps are taken to ensure that testimony provides the jury or the judge with evidence by a competent speaker that is relevant to the disputed question of the guilt or innocence of the defendant. (shrink)

Our folk epistemology says that if someone knows that P and tells you that P, then, given the absence of defeaters, if you believe what they tell you, you will come to know that P as well. A speaker's knowledge that P is then, for the most part, enough for a hearer to come to know that P. But there are counterexamples to this principle: testimonial knowledge does not always transfer from the speaker to the hearer. Why should that be (...) so? Because testimonial knowledge arises through the flow of information--from conclusive grounds--from the speaker through the speaker's assertion to the hearer's state of comprehension as of the speaker's assertion. A speaker's belief can be based on conclusive grounds, but the speaker's assertion may fail to provide conclusive grounds to the hearer. Then the hearer won't acquire knowledge, even from a knowledgeable speaker. Knowledge from testimony then works more like knowledge through perception. But wait, you say, that can't be so because testimony involves free will but perception does not. The essay ends with a broadly Hume inspired reply to this objection. (shrink)

Does epistemic justification aim at truth? The vast majority of epistemologists instinctively answer 'Yes'; it's the textbook response. Joseph Cruz and John Pollock surprisingly say no. In 'The Chimerical Appeal of Epistemic Externalism' they argue that justification bears no interesting connection to truth; justification does not even aim at truth. 'Truth is not a very interesting part of our best understanding' of justification (C&P 2004, 137); it has no 'connection to the truth.' A 'truth-aimed ... epistemology is not entitled to (...) carry the day' (C&P 2004, 138, emphasis added).Pollock and Cruz's argument for this surprising conclusion is of general interest for it is 'out of step with a very common view on the .. (shrink)

Are we entitled or justified in taking the word of others at face value? An affirmative answer to this question is associated with the views of Thomas Reid. Recently, C. A. J. Coady has defended a Reidian view in his impressive and influential book. Testimony: A Philosophical Study. His central and most Oliginal argument for his positions involves reflection upon the practice of giving and accepting reports, of making assertions and relying on the word of others. His argument purports to (...) show that testimony is, by its very nature, a “reliable form of evidence about the way the world is.” The argument moves from what we do to why we are justified in doing it. Although I am sympathetic with both the Reidian view and Coady’s attempt to connect why we rely on others with why we are entitled to rely on others, I find Coady’s argument ineffective. (shrink)

The question—what is a political constitution?—might seem, at first blush, fairly innocuous. At one level, the idea of a political constitution seems fairly well settled, at least insofar as most political constitutionalists subscribe to a similar set of commitments, arguments and assumptions. At a second, more reflective level, however, there remains some doubt whether a political constitution purports to be a descriptive or normative account of a real world constitution, such as Britain’s. By exploring the idea of a political constitution (...) as differently articulated by J.A.G. Griffith, Adam Tomkins and Richard Bellamy, this essay explores why the normativity of a political constitution may be indistinct and ill-defined, and how compelling reasons for this indistinctness and ill-definition are to be found in the very idea of a political constitution itself. A political constitution is here conceived as a ‘model’ which supplies an explanatory framework within which to make sense of our constitutional self-understandings. The discipline of thinking in terms of a model opens up a critical space wherein there need not be some stark, all-encompassing choice between constitutional models, which, in turn, allows for more subtle understandings of Britain’s constitution as neither exclusively ‘political’ nor ‘legal’. (shrink)

Contemporary understanding of the mechanisms of disease increasingly points to examples of “genetic diseases” with an infectious component and of “infectious diseases” with a genetic component. Such blurred boundaries generate ethical, legal, and social issues and highlight historical contexts that must be examined when incorporating host genomic information into the prevention, outbreak control, and treatment of infectious diseases.

Our understanding of biological processes in humans is often based on examination of analogous processes in other organisms. The nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans has been a particularly valuable model, leading to Nobel prize winning discoveries in development and genetics. Until recently, however, the worm has not been widely used as a model to study transcription due to the lack of a comprehensive catalogue of its RNA transcripts. A recent study by Chen et al. uses next‐generation sequencing to address this issue, (...) mapping the transcription initiation sites in C. elegans and finding many unexpected similarities between the transcription of enhancers and promoters in the worm and mammalian genomes. As well as providing a valuable resource for researchers in the C. elegans community, these findings raise the possibility of using the worm as a model to investigate some key, current questions about transcriptional regulation that remain technically challenging in more complex organisms. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

Part I: The Life of Cognitive Science:. William Bechtel, Adele Abrahamsen, and George Graham. Part II: Areas of Study in Cognitive Science:. 1. Analogy: Dedre Gentner. 2. Animal Cognition: Herbert L. Roitblat. 3. Attention: A.H.C. Van Der Heijden. 4. Brain Mapping: Jennifer Mundale. 5. Cognitive Anthropology: Charles W. Nuckolls. 6. Cognitive and Linguistic Development: Adele Abrahamsen. 7. Conceptual Change: Nancy J. Nersessian. 8. Conceptual Organization: Douglas Medin and Sandra R. Waxman. 9. Consciousness: Owen Flanagan. 10. Decision Making: J. Frank (...) Yates and Paul A. Estin. 11. Emotions: Paul E. Griffiths. 12. Imagery and Spatial Representation: Rita E. Anderson. 13. Language Evolution and Neuromechanisms: Terrence W. Deacon. 14. Language Processing: Kathryn Bock and Susan M. Garnsey. 15. Linguistics Theory: D. Terence Langendoen. 16. Machine Learning: Paul Thagard. 17. Memory: Henry L. Roediger III and Lyn M. Goff. 18. Perception: Cees Van Leeuwen. 19. Perception: Color: Austen Clark. 20. Problem Solving: Kevin Dunbar. 21. Reasoning: Lance J. Rips. 22. Social Cognition: Alan J. Lambert and Alison L. Chasteen. 23. Unconscious Intelligence: Rhianon Allen and Arthur S. Reber. 24. Understanding Texts: Art Graesser and Pam Tipping. 25. Word Meaning: Barbara C. Malt. Part III: Methodologies of Cognitive Science:. 26. Artificial Intelligence: Ron Sun. 27. Behavioral Experimentation: Alexander Pollatsek and Keith Rayner. 28. Cognitive Ethology: Marc Bekoff. 29. Deficits and Pathologies: Christopher D. Frith. 30. Ethnomethodology: Barry Saferstein. 31. Functional Analysis: Brian Macwhinney. 32. Neuroimaging: Randy L. Buckner and Steven E. Petersen. 33. Protocal Analysis: K. Anders Ericsson. 34. Single Neuron Electrophysiology: B. E. Stein, M.T. Wallace, and T.R. Stanford. 35. Structural Analysis: Robert Frank. Part IV: Stances in Cognitive Science:. 36. Case-based Reasoning: David B. Leake. 37. Cognitive Linguistics: Michael Tomasello. 38. Connectionism, Artificial Life, and Dynamical Systems: Jeffrey L. Elman. 39. Embodied, Situated, and Distributed Cognition: Andy Clark. 40. Mediated Action: James V. Wertsch. 41. Neurobiological Modeling: P. Read Montague and Peter Dayan. 42. Production Systems: Christian D. Schunn and David Klahr. Part V: Controversies in Cognitive Science:. 43. The Binding Problem: Valerie Gray Hardcastle. 44. Heuristics and Satisficing: Robert C. Richardson. 45. Innate Knowledge: Barbara Landau. 46. Innateness and Emergentism: Elizabeth Bates, Jeffrey L. Elman, Mark H. Johnson, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett. 47. Intentionality: Gilbert Harman. 48. Levels of Explanation and Cognition Architectures: Robert N. McCauley. 49. Modularity: Irene Appelbaum. 50. Representation and Computation: Robert S. Stufflebeam. 51. Representations: Dorrit Billman. 52. Rules: Terence Horgan and John Tienson. 53. Stage Theories Refuted: Donald G. Mackay. Part VI: Cognitive Science in the Real World:. 54. Education: John T. Bruer. 55. Ethics: Mark L. Johnson. 56. Everyday Life Environments: Alex Kirlik. 57. Institutions and Economics: Douglass C. North. 58. Legal Reasoning: Edwina L. Rissland. 59. Mental Retardation: Norman W. Bray, Kevin D. Reilly, Lisa F. Huffman, Lisa A. Grupe, Mark F. Villa, Kathryn L. Fletcher, and Vivek Anumolu. 60. Science: William F. Brewer and Punyashloke Mishra. Selective Biographies of Major Contributors to Cognitive Science: William Bechtel and Tadeusz Zawidzki. (shrink)

The Paradox of Prime Matter DANIEL W. GRAHAM TRADITIONAL INTERPRETATIONS OF Aristotle hold that he posited the existence of prime matter–a purely indeterminate substratum underlying all material composition and providing the ultimate potentiality for all material existence. A number of revisionary interpretations have appeared in the last thirty years which deny that Aristotle had a concept of prime matter, provoking an even larger number of vigorous defenses claiming that he did have the concept? The traditionalists are clearly in the (...) majority, but some obstacles stand in the way of a general acceptance of prime matter as an Aristotelian concept. In a recent contribution to the debate, William Charlton, an opponent of prime matter, has pointed out that the opposing parties have reached a stalemate in large measure because most of the relevant texts are ambiguous; consequently, "the question whether or not Aristotle believed in prime matter really comes down to the question how far, if at all, it is demanded by his philosophy as a whole. "{\textasciitilde} It seems to me that Charlton is right to shift the focus of the debate from questions of textual exegesis to questions of systematic relevance. However, within the context of Aristotle’s general theory of change, the challenge implicit in his statement can be met, for the concept of prime matter and its associated doctrine is the product of a series of ontological and scientific i Friedrich Solmsen, "Aristotle and Prime Matter," Journal of the History of Ideas 19 (a958): 243-52 and A. R. Lacey,"The Eleatics and Aristotle on Some Problems of Change," ibid. 26 (1965): 451-68; reply to H. R. King’s argument against prime matter, "Aristotle Without Prime Matter," ibid. 17 (1956): 37o-89; H. M. Robinson, "Prime Matter in Aristotle," Phronesis 19 (1974): 168-88 and C. J. F. Williams, Aristotle De Generatione et Corrpuptione, Oxford (1982), Appendix reply to an appendix rejecting prime matter in W. Charlton’s Aristotle’s Physics Books I-H (Oxford, 197o). See also Alan Code, "The Persistence of Aristotelian Matter," Philosophical Studies 29 0976): 357-67, who defends the traditional interpretation of matter against Barrington Jones, "Aristotle’s Introduction of Matter," Philosophical Review 83 (1974): 474-5{\textasciitilde} See also Russell M. Dancy, "Aristotle’s Second Thoughts on Substance," Philosophical Review 87 (1978): 372-413 9 William Charlton, "Prime Matter: A Rejoinder," Phronesis 28 (1983): a97-2a a, 197. 475 476 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY {\textasciitilde}5:4 OCT 1987 commitments made by Aristotle. At the same time, opponents of prime matter have a legitimate basis for criticizing the tradition, for there is something fundamentally wrong with the doctrine. Given Aristotle’s assumptions and commitments, the doctrine of prime matter is not only dialectically inevitable but also systematically incoherent. In this paper I shall not defend the existence of a doctrine of prime matter in Aristotle’s philosophy, although my argument will provide an incidental justification for it by exhibiting its function within Aristotle’s system. My aim here is to explain what is wrong with the doctrine of prime matter. (1) I shall examine a problem concerning prime matter–a problem of which Aristotle was aware and which he thought he had solved. (2) I shall argue that he did not solve the problem, for the doctrine of prime matter entails a paradox for his system. (3) I shall reply to some objections, and (4) I shall offer a tentative diagnosis of how Aristotle could have come to embrace a paradoxical position. 1. According to Aristotle’s theory of change, there is a substratum which underlies every change (Ph. 1.7.19oa33ff). When a thing changes its features, we call that accidental change and identify the substratum as substance. When a thing comes into being or ceases to be, we call that substantial change3 and identify the substratum as matter.4 The most simple bodies of the Aristotelian cosmos are the four traditional "elements": earth, air, fire, and water.5The elements are characterized by the contrary powers hot, cold, wet, and dry. Each element has one member of the contrary pair hot-cold, and one of the contrary pair wet-dry (Gen. Corr. 2.2-3). For Aristotle, it is... (shrink)

"Qu'est-ce qu'une chose? " Question déjà ancienne. Elle n'est toujours neuve que parce qu'il faut sans cesse la poser à nouveau ", observait Heidegger. C'est le traitement de cette question fondamentale de la métaphysique qu'entreprend, à nouveaux frais, Graham Harman en proposant une théorie originale de l'objet compris comme une unité autonome et concrète. Un objet, en effet, n'est jamais épuisé par l'usage ou la connaissance que j'en prends. Sa réalité ne se réduit pas non plus aux interactions qu'il (...) peut avoir avec les autres objets qui l'entourent. II outrepasse toute perspective et toute synthèse qui prétendraient le soumettre, possédant un " en soi " qui, enfoui dans les profondeurs mêmes de l'être, en assure l'altérité radicale. La question Qu'est-ce qu'une chose? en cache donc une autre, plus inquiétante : Comment penser ce qui, du réel, ne se montre en aucun cas? Rouvrant un dossier qui semblait clos depuis la mise au ban de la " chose en soi " kantienne, l'auteur trouve dans la phénoménologie les concepts de base de cette remarquable aventure ontologique : dans la pensée husserlienne de l'objet intentionnel et, plus encore, dans l'analyse heideggérienne de l'outil dont Graham Harman suggère la continuité avec le thème mystérieux du " Quadriparti ". C'est alors que l'objet pourra se laisser penser dans toute sa profondeur, réalité multipolaire et conflictuelle, à la fois manifeste et retirée, dont le présent ouvrage dessine la carte inédite". Olivier Dubouclez. (shrink)

This paper is a discussion of an ontological argument defended by E. J. Lowe in the *Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion* (edited by C. Meister and P. Copan, at pp.332-40). The volume to which this paper belongs contains an article by Lowe which defends a different ontological argument from the one that I discuss.

This paper is a reply to a prior work by C. J. F. Williams in which he criticised David Kaplan's account of the contingent analytic. In this paper, I take myself to be defending Kaplan's views against Williams' attack.

This article is part of a For-Discussion-Section of Methods of Information in Medicine about the paper "Biomedical Informatics: We Are What We Publish", written by Peter L. Elkin, Steven H. Brown, and Graham Wright. It is introduced by an editorial. This article contains the combined commentaries invited to independently comment on the Elkin et al. paper. In subsequent issues the discussion can continue through letters to the editor.

Sceptical theists--e.g., William Alston and Michael Bergmann--have claimed that considerations concerning human cognitive limitations are alone sufficient to undermine evidential arguments from evil. We argue that, if the considerations deployed by sceptical theists are sufficient to undermine evidential arguments from evil, then those considerations are also sufficient to undermine inferences that play a crucial role in ordinary moral reasoning. If cogent, our argument suffices to discredit sceptical theist responses to evidential arguments from evil.