A central theme in western philosophy was to find formal methods that can reliably discover empirical relationships and their explanations from data assembled from experience. As a philosophical project, that ambition was abandoned in the 20th century and generally dismissed as impossible. It was replaced in philosophy by neo-Kantian efforts at reconstruction and justification, and in professional statistics by the more limited ambition to estimate a small number of parameters in pre-specified hypotheses. The influx of “big data” from climate science, (...) neuropsychology, biology, astronomy and elsewhere implicitly called for a revival of the grander philosophical ambition. Search algorithms are meeting that call, but they pose a problem: how are their accuracies to be assessed in domains where experimentation is limited or impossible? Increasingly, the answer is through simulation of data from models of the kind of process in the domain. In some cases, these innovations require rethinking how the accuracy and informativeness of inference methods can be assessed. Focusing on causal inference, we give an example from neuroscience, but to show that the model/simulation strategy is not confined to causal inference, we also consider two classification problems from astrophysics: identifying exoplanets and identifying dark matter concentrations. (shrink)

The theory of subjective probability and utility recently proposed by professor richard jeffrey has several unique features and appears to be in some ways distinctly more satisfactory than earlier theories. There is, However, One very important class of decision problems which is not discussed by professor jeffrey--Problems concerned with decisions about strategies for using information. The principal task of this paper is to point out some questions which arise in attempting to deal with these decision problems within jeffrey's theory. To (...) do this it will be necessary to examine in some detail jeffrey's discussion of the relation between his theory and those of ramsey and savage. (shrink)

By bootstrapping the output of the PC algorithm (Spirtes et al., 2000; Meek 1995), using larger conditioning sets informed by the current graph state, it is possible to define a novel algorithm, JPC, that improves accuracy of search for i.i.d. data drawn from linear, Gaussian, sparse to moderately dense models. The motivation for constructing sepsets using information in the current graph state is to highlight the differences between d-­‐separation information in the graph and conditional independence information extracted from the sample. (...) The same idea can be pursued for any algorithm for which conditioning sets informed by the current graph state can be constructed and for which an orientation procedure capable of orienting undirected graphs can be extracted. Another plausible candidate for such retrofitting is the CPC algorithm (Ramsey et al, 2006), yielding an algorithm, JCPC, which, when the true graph is sparse is somewhat more accurate than JPC. The method is not feasible for discovery for models of categorical variables, i.e., traditional Bayes nets; with alternative tests for conditional independence it may extend to non-­‐linear or non-­‐Gaussian models, or both. (shrink)

The debate about cloning that took place 25 years ago, although directed toward a different sort of cloning, elucidates fundamental issues currently at stake in reproductive technologies and research. Paul Ramsey and Joseph Fletcher were participants in this early debate. The differences between Ramsey and Fletcher about the meaning and sufficiency of freedom, the understanding and weighing of good and evil, the connection between embodiment and personhood, the relationship of humans with nature, and the meaning of parenthood (...) suggest both a broader agenda for the debate about cloning and a cautious move forward in the development of embryo splitting. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Death of Osiris in Aeneid 12.458Joseph D. ReedAs aeneas ranges the battlefield in search of Turnus and the Aeneid storms toward its close, an odd note sounds. A Trojan named Thymbraeus slays a Rutulian named Osiris. Neither is mentioned before or again. Even when one considers the diversity in this poem of names of Italian warriors, which Virgil takes not just from Italian traditions but from all over (...) the Mediterranean world,1 Osiris is surprising. Why does the name of an Egyptian god intrude into a primeval scene of Roman origins? The reader cannot ignore this provocation, especially on recollecting the rich patterns of meaning that such a contemporary of Virgil as Tibullus works into his elegy on Messalla’s birthday through an invocation of Osiris.2 So unexpected is the name that Bergk emended Osirim to Osinim, recalling the Italian king Osinius mentioned at 10.655.3 But emendation is misguided: as this paper will argue, the suggestiveness of the name is satisfied on the levels of history, ideology, religion, and literary influence, all major domains of Virgil’s epic. And the slaying of Osiris by Thymbraeus can be shown to emblematize both the whole mission of Aeneas and the achievement of Augustus.Aeneas, cured of the wound on his thigh, arms himself and, with some final words of instruction to his son, goes into battle seeking Turnus. In a memorable simile, he is compared to a storm that brings horror to farmers and ruin to their crops. His example rouses his fellow Trojans against the Italians: ferit ense gravem Thymbraeus Osirim, Arcetium Mnestheus, Epulonem obtruncat Achates Ufentemque Gyas; cadit ipse Tolumnius augur, primus in adversos telum qui torserat hostis.(12.458–61)[End Page 399]With his sword Thymbraeus smites the gravem Osiris. The adjective is equivalent to fortis, according to Servius Auctus; Forbiger prefers a denotation of towering size, comparing gravis as epithet of the boxer Entellus at 5.437 and 447.4 “Massive” might capture the sense in English. The effect here is to highlight Thymbraeus’ prowess. Like Osiris, two of the other Italian victims, Arcetius and Epulo, are unknown except for this passage. (The important Ufens received six lines at 7.744–49, in the catalogue of Latin allies,5 and Tolumnius, as line 461 reminds us, began this phase of the battle at 12.257–67.)6 But both their names etiologize some ancestral Italic or Roman institution: Epulo suggests a prototype of the college of epulones, priests of Jupiter Epulo;7 Arcetius invites a connection with the Italian gens Arquitia.8 In this they are like their enemy Mnestheus, supposed eponym of the gens Memmia (5.117). Osiris stands alone among his compatriots in his nomenclatural irrelevance to anything Roman. But Thymbraeus shares the isolation of his victim: he is the only one of the Trojans here who is mentioned nowhere else; not only that, but Mnestheus, Achates, and Gyas are indeed famous, leaders of the Trojans throughout the poem, receiving notice during the introductory storm scene in book 1, the departure from Carthage in book 4, the games in honor of Anchises in book 5, and elsewhere. The catalogue here is introduced by a pair of unknown warriors.The two belong together and give each other meaning. If the name of Osiris applied to a follower of Turnus reduces the critic to perplexity and silence, we can approach its significance through that of the name of Thymbraeus, which has obvious relevance to the whole drift of the epic. Thymbraeus reprises a Thymbraeus killed by Diomedes in Iliad 11.320–21, also mentioned only once. Virgil has revived the obscure Trojan, as it were, to permit him the victory at last; the fact that each Thymbraeus is hapax legomenos in his epic reinforces the reference, especially for such learned readers as Virgil himself was and expected in [End Page 400] his audience.9 The name itself, “the Thymbraean man,” comes from the town Thymbra near Troy (first attested in Il. 10.430),10 and so unmistakably marks the first warrior in Virgil’s catalogue as a representative survivor of the fallen city. In fact, the mythological tradition preserves... (shrink)

Much of the recent discussion of problematic aspects of quantum-mechanical measurement centers around that feature of quantum theory which is called "the projection postulate." This is roughly the claim that a change of a certain sort occurs in the state of a physical system when a measurement is made on the system. In this paper an argument for the projection postulate due to von Neumann is considered. Attention is focused on trying to provide an understanding of the notion of "the (...) state of a physical system" which is compatible with the argument von Neumann offers. An attempt is made to formulate the argument in terms of an objectivistic interpretation of probability concepts. It is seen that such an interpretation does not provide a suitable way of understanding the argument. An attempt is made to illustrate the source of this failure in terms of a non-quantum-mechanical example. (shrink)

Recent stories of corporate insiders avoiding losses and, in some cases, generating enormous personal profits as their companies crumbled have led investors to question the integrity of American business and the fairness of the United States stock markets. The SEC tries to ensure the fairness of the stock markets by making and enforcing laws against unfair practices such as insider trading. In the United States, when insiders trade stock based on non-public information, they have broken the law and betrayed the (...) trust that has been placed in them.This study used student subjects to test the relationship between the likelihood of trading based on insider information and subjective probabilities of deterrents and motivations for insider trading. Expected gain, guilt, cynicism, and fairness of laws were the determinants that had a significant relationship with the intent to trade based on insider information. This study also found support for prospect theory with regard to insider trading. The results indicate that subjects are more likely to trade based on insider information to avoid a loss than to achieve an abnormal gain. The study also finds evidence of social desirability response bias. (shrink)

Ulrich Beck characterized the transition from modern to late modern society as a shift from an industrial to a “risk society.” Contemporary society is challenged by negative side effects of modernization, including the increasing and imminent threat of global climate change. This article will test the validity of conceivable prescriptive elements associated with this sociological theory. In doing so, it will focus on the most recent legal developments aimed at tackling climate change within the EU. This paper finds that the (...) precautionary approach is unable to sufficiently shape balanced legal intervention in this day and age. However, the approach adopted by the EU appears to be more successful in this respect. (shrink)

This paper is a review of 39 years of SIGCAS publications in Computers and Society, the newsletter of ACM SIGCAS. The publication is archived in the ACM Digital Library [12]. I set out to examine SIGCAS through its publications.

Philosophy of science may indeed perform a valuable normative function through historical analyses of characteristic errors, as Bechtel argues. But considerations of the two types of errors elected for this role, and harder looks at some of the historical examples prosecuted for these errors, disclose few helpful hints beyond the wisdom provided in Chapter I of freshman science texts coupled to a clear view of the future. To avoid churlishly spurning at first glance this offer of assistance, however, let us (...) look in turn at the two candidates with their supporting examples. (shrink)

The University of Chicago was the site of a remarkable ideological alignment after World War II. Its chancellor, Robert Maynard Hutchins, was one of mid-century America’s fiercest critics of science and of the moral stature of scientists. His administration nevertheless forged a détente with Chicago’s physical scientists in the process of establishing the Institutes for Basic Research, which consolidated the personnel and resources the Manhattan Project had brought to campus. Chicago’s left-leaning group of scientists and administrators then made common cause (...) with a series of conservative industrial interests in order to fund the new institutes, on the basis that industry had an obligation to support basic research. This intersection of otherwise divergent ideological strands exposes the institutional malleability of patronage relationships in the years after World War II.†durha. (shrink)

Introduced in _Psychoanalysis and Motivation _ and further developed in _Self and Motivational Systems_, _The Clinical Exchange _, and _A Spirit of Inquiry _, motivational systems theory aims to identify the components and organization of mental states and the process by which affects, intentions, and goals unfold. Motivation is described as a complex intersubjective process that is cocreated in the developing individual embedded in a matrix of relationships with others. Opening by placing motivational systems theory within a contemporary dynamic systems (...) theory, Lichtenberg, Lachmann, and Fosshage then respond to critics of motivational systems theory. The authors present revisions to their approach to the original five motivational systems, adding two more: an affiliative and a caregiving motivational system. The authors go on to suggest, using ideas garnered from complexity theory and fractals, that motivational systems theory can help us understand how a continuity of self can be maintained despite near-constant fluctuations in interpersonal relations. They then consider how the making of inferences, explicitly and implicitly, is shaped by motivation, before applying their theory to an actual human experience - love - to demonstrate the interplay of multiple shifting motivations within an individual. Last, they present new looks at the clinical applicability of their research. Grounded in observational research of infants but relevant to psychoanalysis at any stage of life, motivational systems theory has evolved via the combined experiences of these three analysts for more than 20 years, and remains an important contribution to our understanding of the driving forces behind human experience. (shrink)

In psychoanalysis, enlivenment is seen as residing in a sense of self, and this sense of self is drawn from and shaped by lived experience. _Enlivening the Self: The First Year, Clinical Enrichment, and the Wandering Mind _describes the vitalizing and enrichment of self-experience throughout the life cycle and shows how active experience draws on many fundamental functional capacities, and these capacities come together in support of systems of motivation; that is, organized dynamic grouping of affects, intentions, and goals. The (...) book is divided into three essays: Infancy – _Joseph Lichtenberg_ presents extensive reviews of observation and research on the first year of life. Based on these reviews, he delineates twelve foundational qualities and capacities of the self as a doer doing, initiating and responding, activating and taking in. Exploratory therapy – _James L. Fosshage _looks where therapeutic change is entwined with development. There are many sources illustrated for enhancing the sense of self, and _Frank M. Lachmann _pays particular attention to humor and to the role that the twelve qualities and capacities play in the therapeutic process. The wandering mind – _Frank M. Lachmann _covers the neuroscience and observation that "mind wandering" is related to the immediacy of the sense of self linking now with past and future. Throughout the book the authors’ arguments are illustrated with rich clinical vignettes and suggestions for clinical practice. This title will be a must for psychoanalysts, including trainees in psychoanalysis, psychiatry residents and candidates at psychoanalytic institutes and also graduate students in clinical and counselling psychology programs. (shrink)

It is argued that John Rawls’ theory of social justice as well as the contract argument for it are misleading, if not actually mistaken, in that they appear to take institutional features of societies as fundamental objects of moral evaluation. An alternative view: is expounded. Principles involving institutional features are only contingently related to principles involving the distribution of things people care about. These distributions are taken as the fundamental objects of moral evaluation. Social, political and economic institutions are means (...) to achieve more desirable distributions. It is argued that the alternative provides a more accurate reconstruction of the moral foundations of social-democratic liberalism than does Rawls’ theory. (shrink)

This article examines the interpretive dimensions of human action. Although it takes the reflexive sociology of Pierre Bourdieu as its starting point, the article attempts to develop a more robust hermeneutical account of the reflexivity of social actors and those who study them than Bourdieu himself has considered. It is argued that interpretation is best understood not as the homologous expression of inculcated structures but rather as context-sensitive and reflexively context-transforming action—or what the author wishes to characterize, respectively, as first- (...) and second-order thematizations of embeddedness. The article concludes by contrasting the author's position with the thick description of Clifford Geertz. (shrink)

The Native American Church is examined as an illustrative example in the political anthropology of consciousness. Specific attention is paid to the Supreme Court's ignoring of accepted research on this tradition and its sacrament, Peyote, in the case of Employment Division of Oregon v. Smith. An anthropological reaction to the Smith decision is constructed, focusing on ethnographic findings regarding Peyote that contradict the Supreme Court's ethnocentric assumptions. This paper argues that Peyote's Schedule I status is not supported by the ethnographic (...) findings. Peyote, as used in the Native American Church, is recognized as safe and therapeutic. It is also argued that the Supreme Court's rationale for denying Peyotist religious freedom is not supported by the ethnographic findings nor by legal precedent. Not only is the Native American's right to use Peyote a matter of freedom of religion, it also involves other rights such as the right to raise one's children in one's own culture and the right to be treated using a culturally relevant therapeutic modality. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Though Nietzsche's lifelong fascination with Wagner's Tristan and Isolde is well documented, its impact upon the developmental trajectory of his philosophy and in particular, his thinking on the nature of eroticism remains far from obvious. This article examines the previously unheralded influence of Wagner's opera on Nietzsche's various attempts, throughout the 1880s, at forging an alternative conception of erotic desire—a conception no longer subordinated to the pursuit for fusional reconciliation but rather linked to the eternal return and the unconditional (...) affirmation of distance itself. (shrink)

Solid state physics, the study of the physical properties of solid matter, was the most populous subfield of Cold War American physics. Despite prolific contributions to consumer and medical technology, such as the transistor and magnetic resonance imaging, it garnered less professional prestige and public attention than nuclear and particle physics. Solid State Insurrection argues that solid state physics was essential to securing the vast social, political, and financial capital Cold War physics enjoyed in the twentieth century. Solid state’s technological (...) bent, and its challenge to the “pure science” ideal many physicists cherished, helped physics as a whole respond more readily to Cold War social, political, and economic pressures. Its research kept physics economically and technologically relevant, sustaining its cultural standing and policy influence long after the sheen of the Manhattan Project had faded. (shrink)

A major theme in biological research is the quest for mechanism, embodied in explanatory reductionism: the interpretation of phenomena through links to the entities and laws of more fundamental sciences. For example, the form of Starling's Law of the Heart, relating contractile force to heart volume, follows from the sliding-filament hypothesis of muscle contraction, a molecular concept. Although alternative mechanisms for muscle contraction and cardiac regulation could be deduced from biochemical principles, the formulation provides clear correspondence with the phenomena and (...) a deeper understanding of cardiac function. Moreover, even if the reduction provides no better formulation of the phenomenon, of the macro-regularity, it is still prized as a nearer approach to physical reality, as a step toward realizing fundamental unities and codifying general principles, and as a door to new experimental opportunities. (shrink)

In this response to Paul Gaffney’s “The Nature and Meaning of Teamwork,” I draw on recent work in analytic social philosophy to provide a more robust vocabulary for understanding teamwork as a distinctly social fact. I argue that teamwork entails complex reflexive social cooperation aimed at achieving shared excellence within constraints of various kinds.

The Eroticization of Distance engages with the theme of eroticism in Blanchot’s writings, and uncovers the nature of Nietzsche’s influence upon Blanchot’s writings of the 1940s and early 1950s.

In this essay I offer a philosophical-political reconstruction of Theodor Adorno's engagements with jazz. Rather than consider whether or not Adorno got jazz 'right', I give an account of how and why Adorno develops the criticisms that he does. I argue that in Adorno's analysis of jazz three interpenetrating claims emerge: (1) a rejection of jazz's sense of improvisation and spontaneity; (2) a demonstration of jazz's entwinement with the modern technologiza tion of everyday life; and (3) a critique of jazz's (...) pseudo-individualiz ing tendencies. I conclude with a brief consideration of the place and critical possibilities of music in Adorno's critique of modernity. Key Words: capitalism • democracy • modernity • pseudo individualization • rescuing critique. (shrink)

This article is an analysis of Anthony Giddens' attempt to articulate a globalization-friendly alternative to traditional social democracy (the `old' Left) and neo-liberal market fundamentalism (the `new' Right). Specifically, I focus on Giddens' insistence that globalization is not merely an economic phenomenon but also, and more profoundly, a political and cultural force of `time-space distanciation'. Whereas Giddens conceives of a direct causal connection between the disembedding forces of globalization and outcomes of democratization, I argue that such a conception is deeply (...) flawed. Indeed, rather than develop a politically useful explanatory social theory of the complex relationship between globalization and democracy, Giddens' `third way' theorizing merely hypostatizes the former by invoking it as a cause of the latter. I provide a series of arguments designed to highlight the weaknesses of Giddens' position, and conclude by questioning the general thesis that underlies Giddens' account of globalization. (shrink)

When the late Heinz Kohut defined psychoanalysis as the science of empathy and introspection, he sparked a debate that has animated psychoanalytic discourse ever since. What is the relationship of empathy to psychoanalysis? Is it a constituent of analytical technique, an integral aspect of the therapeutic action of analysis, or simply a metaphor for a mode of observation better understood via ‘classical’ theory and terminology? The dialogue about empathy, which is really a dialogue about the nature of the analytic process, (...) continues in this two-volume set, originally published in 1984. In Volume I, several illuminating attempts to define empathy are followed by Kohut’s essay, ‘Introspection, Empathy, and the Semicircle of Mental Health.’ Kohut’s paper, in turn, ushers in a series of original contributions on ‘Empathy as a Perspective in Psychoanalysis.’ The volume ends with five papers which strive to demarcate an empathic approach to various areas of artistic endeavour, including the appreciation of visual art. Volume II continues the dialogue with a series of developmental studies which explore the role of empathy in early child care at the same time as they chart the emergence of the young child’s capacity to empathize. In the concluding section, ‘Empathy in Psychoanalytic Work,’ contributors and discussants return to the arena of technique. They not only theorize about empathy in relation to analytic understanding and communication, but address issues of nosology, considering how the empathic vantage point may be utilized in the treatment of patients with borderline and schizophrenic pathology. In their critical attention to the many dimensions of empathy – philosophical, developmental, therapeutic, artistic – the contributors collectively bear witness to the fact that Kohut has helped to shape new questions, but not set limits to the search for answers. The product of their efforts is an anatomical exploration of a topic whose relevance for psychoanalysis and psychotherapy is only beginning to be understood. (shrink)