Over the past thirty-five years, there has been an explosive increase in scientists' ability to explain the structure and functioning of the human brain. While psychology has advanced our understanding of human behavior, various other sciences, such as anatomy, physiology, and biology, have determined the critical importance of synapses and, through the use of advanced technology, made it possible actually to see brain cells at work within the skull's walls. Here Jean-Pierre Changeux elucidates our current knowledge of the human brain, (...) taking an interdisciplinary approach and explaining in layman's terms the complex theories and scientific breakthroughs that have significantly improved our understanding in the twentieth century. (shrink)

In this fascinating and bold discussion, a renowned neurobiologist serves as guide to the most complex physical object in the living world: the human brain. Taking into account the newest brain research—morphological, physiological, chemical, genetic—and placing these findings in the context of psychology, philosophy, art, and literature, Changeux ventures into the unexplored territories where these diverse disciplines intersect. Changeux's book draws on Plato's notion that the Good, the True, and the Beautiful are celestial essences or ideas, independent but so intertwined (...) as to be inseparable. Placing these essences within the characteristic features of the human brain's neuronal organization, the author addresses unsolved questions in neuroscience today. With imagination and deep insight, Changeux illuminates the evolution of the brain and deciphers what new developments in neuroscience may portend for the future of humanity. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky's Poverty of the Stimulus Argument is one of the most famous and controversial arguments in the study of language and the mind. Though widely endorsed by linguists, the argument has met with much resistance in philosophy. Unfortunately, philosophical critics have often failed to fully appreciate the power of the argument. In this paper, we provide a systematic presentation of the Poverty of the Stimulus Argument, clarifying its structure, content, and evidential base. We defend the argument against a variety (...) of philosophical criticisms, new and old, and argue that the Poverty of the Stimulus Argument continues to deserve its guiding role in the study of language and the mind. (shrink)

Conceptual analysis is undergoing a revival in philosophy, and much of the credit goes to Frank Jackson. Jackson argues that conceptual analysis is needed as an integral component of so-called serious metaphysics and that it also does explanatory work in accounting for such phenomena as categorization, meaning change, communication, and linguistic understanding. He even goes so far as to argue that opponents of conceptual analysis are implicitly committed to it in practice. We show that he is wrong on all of (...) these points and that his case for conceptual analysis doesn't succeed. At the same time, we argue that the sorts of intuitions that figure in conceptual analysis may still have a significant role to play in philosophy. So naturalists needn't disregard intuitions altogether. (shrink)

Radical concept nativism is the thesis that virtually all lexical concepts are innate. Notoriously endorsed by Jerry Fodor (1975, 1981), radical concept nativism has had few supporters. However, it has proven difficult to say exactly what’s wrong with Fodor’s argument. We show that previous responses are inadequate on a number of grounds. Chief among these is that they typically do not achieve sufficient distance from Fodor’s dialectic, and, as a result, they do not illuminate the central question of how new (...) primitive concepts are acquired. To achieve a fully satisfactory response to Fodor’s argument, one has to juxtapose questions about conceptual content with questions about cognitive development. To this end, we formulate a general schema for thinking about how concepts are acquired and then present a detailed illustration. (shrink)

One of the most important abilities we have as humans is the ability to think about number. In this chapter, we examine the question of whether there is an essential connection between language and number. We provide a careful examination of two prominent theories according to which concepts of the positive integers are dependent on language. The first of these claims that language creates the positive integers on the basis of an innate capacity to represent real numbers. The second claims (...) that language’s function is to integrate contents from modules that humans share with other animals. We argue that neither model is successful. (shrink)

It is fairly standard in accounts of the epistemology of perceptual knowledge to distinguish three main alternative positions: representationalism, phenomenalism, and a third view that is called either naïve realism or direct realism. I have always found the last of these views puzzling and elusive. My aim in this paper is to try to figure out what direct realism amounts to, mainly with an eye to seeing whether it offers a genuine epistemological alternative to the other two views and to (...) representationalism in particular. My main thesis will be that it does not—that what is right in direct realist views turns out to have little bearing on the central epistemological issue concerning perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

This volume reprints in a scholar's edition the first English-language texts on bioethics, John Gregory's (1724-1773) Observations on the Duties and Offices of a Physician and on the Method of Prosecuting Enquiries in Philosophy (London, 1770) and Lectures on the Duties and Qualifications of a Physician (London, 1772). Five previously unpublished manuscripts of Gregory's lectures are also included. An introduction places Gregory's medical ethics and philosophy of medicine in their eighteenth-century contexts of Scottish Enlightenment history and culture, Baconian science and (...) philosophy of medicine, medical practice, the feminine and feminist philosophy of the Bluestocking Circle, and moral sense philosophy, particularly David Hume's concept of sympathy, and provides a bibliography of primary and secondary sources as an aid to teaching and future scholarship. The book's index provides access to Gregory's texts, by using both historical terms and current terminology of bioethics. A volume in the subseries Classics of Medical Ethics. (shrink)

My purpose in this paper is to discuss and defend an objection to physicalist or materialist accounts of the mind.

The Language of Thought Hypothesis is often taken to have the fatal flaw that it generates an explanatory regress. The language of thought is invoked to explain certain features of natural language (e.g., that it is learned, understood, and is meaningful), but, according to the regress argument, the language of thought itself has these same features and hence no explanatory progress has been made. We argue that such arguments rely on the tacit assumption that the entire motivation for the language (...) of thought consists in explaining the explanandum that allegedly generates the regress. But this tacit assumption is simply false. The Language of Thought Hypothesis is a cogent view and one with considerable explanatory advantages. (shrink)

À la fois omniprésent et incernable, le temps est une dimension omniprésente de nos existences, indissociable de notre rapport au cosmos, à la vie biologique, à la conscience mais aussi à l’histoire, à la culture et à la société. Parce qu’elle est au confluent de plusieurs champs d’expérience et de réflexion, la question du temps offre une passerelle privilégiée pour croiser des approches rarement invitées à se rencontrer : celles des sciences d’un côté (physique, biologie, médecine, cosmologie), celles des arts (...) de l’autre (littérature, cinéma, arts plastiques, musique, théâtre). Au-delà des questions qui touchent à la réorganisation des partages cognitifs et disciplinaires (entre sciences et arts), l’objectif de cet ouvrage est de montrer la fécondité des transferts épistémologiques entre ces deux domaines. D’un côté, les sciences constituent un réservoir inépuisable pour les arts, auxquels elles proposent une multiplicité de modèles du temps opérant à différentes échelles : temporalités non linéaires, réversibles, cycliques ou emboîtées, qui peuvent être dynamisées par des bifurcations, des catastrophes ou des phénomènes d’émergence imprévisibles. De l’autre, les arts sont un lieu privilégié de modélisation, d’exposition et de mise à l’épreuve de modèles temporels, qui tantôt croisent la rationalité dominante (sciences, historiographie), tantôt en réactivent des dimensions occultées (mythe, rite, etc.). Frayant à la fois dans l’imaginaire et le rationnel, ces représentations du temps permettent d’exhiber la complexité d’un phénomène qui ne peut être appréhendé que dans l’entre-deux des savoirs et des arts. (shrink)

Face à sa finitude, l'homme est désemparé. Il aborde l'existence par la question du " pourquoi ". " Pourquoi m'a-t-on donné la vie si c'est pour la reprendre? " Il est envahi par la colère, la révolte... puis, il cherche un sens à sa mort et pose un au-delà salvateur, un lieu où tout peut continuer autrement... ou encore il envisage une réincarnation; bref, quelque chose qui n'est plus " la fin de la fin ". Mais quand l'homme se fait (...) philosophe, comment appréhende-t-il cette idée qui sera aussi sa réalité ultime? (shrink)

The essays in this volume explore in detail many of the ways power structures our daily personal, political and intellectual lives, and evaluate the workings of power using a variety of theoretical paradigms, from Hobbesian liberalism to Foucauldian feminist postmodernism. Taken as a whole, the book aims towards an end to unjust and destructive uses of power and the flowering of an encouraging, educated empowerment for all human beings in a pluralistic world. Section I offers a progressive chain of arguments (...) that moves from the acceptance of domination, through the rejection of domination and, finally, to a new vision of power based on equality and mutual respect. Section II explores the questions, how is the philosophical self, that is, our very understanding of who we are, implicated in the web of power and domination? Section III responds to political realism as it explores morally ideal solutions to the global problems of poverty, war and hunger. Section IV discusses ways in which our thought and practice in both public and private life are bound up in hierarchies of domination. (shrink)

Moral concerns about the authority, power, and trustworthiness of physicians have become important topics in clinical ethics during the past three decades. These concerns have come to greater prominence with the increasing involvement of large-scale private institutions in the organization and delivery of medical services, especially managed care organizations, and with the increasing involvement of government in the payment for and organization and delivery of medical services. When physicians act as the agents of large institutions or governments, the power of (...) physicians over their patients increases. The purposes of this article are (1) to reflect briefly on the historical origins of the moral problem of physicians' power in medicine, and (2) to introduce the articles in the 1999 annual number of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy on topics in clinical ethics. (shrink)

Taking the critical turn is one of the main tools of the humanities and inculcates an intellectual discipline that prevents ossification of thinking about issues and of organizational policies in clinical ethics. The articles in this "Clinical Ethics" number of the Journal take the critical turn with respect to cherished ways of thinking in Western clinical ethics, life extension, the clinical determination of death, physicians' duty to treat even at personal risk, clinical ethics at the interface of research ethics, and (...) the pertinence of the Hippocratic Oath to clinical ethics. These articles challenge clinical ethicists to inculcate the intellectual discipline of the critical turn into everyday practice and continuous quality enhancement of clinical ethics. (shrink)

Many philosophers reject the Language of Thought Hypothesis (LOT) on the grounds that is leads to an explanatory regress problem. According to this line of argument, LOT is invoked to explain certain features of natural language, but the language of thought has the very same features and consequently no explanatory progress has been made. In an earlier paper (“Regress Arguments against the Language of Thought”, Analysis 57.1), we argued that this regress argument doesn’t work and that even proponents of LOT (...) have given the regress argument too much credit. In this paper, we extend our critique of the regress argument against LOT by responding to J. Knowles’s commentary of our earlier paper (in “The Language of Thought and Natural Language Understanding”, Analysis 58.4). (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn Physics VIII, 5, 256b8-13, Aristotle maintains that it is impossible that there is no motion, because he proved earlier on that it is necessary that there is always motion. In Physics VIII, 1, 251b23-28, Aristotle said that it is necessary that if time is eternal, then motion is also eternal. In Physics VIII, 5, 256b8-13, Aristotle speaks on the contrary about the necessity of eternal motion. In this paper, we show that the argument expounded in Physics VIII, 1, 251b23-28 (...) entails that eternal motion is also necessary de sensu diviso. (shrink)

AI-driven journalism refers to various methods and tools for gathering, verifying, producing, and distributing news information. Their potential is to extend human capabilities and create new forms of augmented journalism. Although scholars agreed on the necessity to embed journalistic values in these systems to make AI systems accountable, less attention was paid to data quality, while the results’ accuracy and efficiency depend on high-quality data in any machine learning task. Assessing data quality in the context of AI-driven journalism requires a (...) broader and interdisciplinary approach, relying on the challenges of data quality in machine learning and the ethical challenges of using machine learning in journalism. To better identify these, we propose a data quality assessment framework to support the collection and pre-processing stages in machine learning. It relies on three of the core principles of ethical journalism—accuracy, fairness, and transparency—and participates in the shift from model-centric to data-centric AI, by focusing on data quality to reduce reliance on large datasets with errors, making data labelling consistent, and better integrating journalistic knowledge. (shrink)

A funny, touching look at the life of a social media influencer who starts to question the #goals life she has created for herself. Every day, Élie motivates her hundreds of thousands of followers to become the best versions of themselves by posting videos of exercise routines and high-protein breakfast recipes. Far from the shy teenager that she was, she is now in a very public relationship with singer Samuel Vanasse, and together they have become one of the most popular (...) influencer couples in the country. She has succeeded. She shines. And yet, Élie worries that her life is not as flawless as she makes it seem on YouTube and Instagram. Between her obsession with the "ideal weight," her growing attraction to another man, her family's disdain for her career as a content creator and a collaboration with another influencer who Élie can't stand, a thought haunts her. What if, by trying to become everything she wanted to be, she's lost herself along the way? Suck it In and Smile is an intimate exploration of our obsession with appearances and the hypocrisies that appear when you must craft the perfect online life. (shrink)

In this paper, I will discuss three arguments which have been advanced by three of the most important recent analytic philosophers: Willard Van Orman Quine, Hilary Putnam, and Michael Dummett. Each argument is central to the views of the philosopher in question, and each leads to sweeping and, to my mind, highly implausible conclusions concerning the content of our thoughts about the world. The philosophers in question claim, of course, that these implications should be accepted, but few others have been (...) willing to follow them in this. At the same time, however, there has been no very widespread agreement on where and how the arguments go wrong. My view is that they are best viewed as reductions to absurdity of their premises and of one underlying premise in particular. [1] But just which premise is at fault is not, perhaps, immediately obvious. I will have more to say about that after we have had an initial look at the arguments. (shrink)

An examination of the early history of Nobel Committee deliberations, coupled with a survey of discoveries for which prizes have been awarded to date – and, equally revealing, discoveries for which prizes have not been awarded – reveals a pattern. This pattern suggests that Committee members may have internalized the received, biomedical model and conferred awards in accord with the physicalistic premises that ground this model. I consider the prospect of a paradigm change in medical science and the possible repercussions (...) of such a change on the distribution of Nobel prizes within the domain of physiology or medicine. For expository purposes, I contrast a model based on a science of pathophysiology with one based on a science of pathopsychophysiology. I propose a means whereby members might minimize the potentially blinding effects of model-dependence and come to evaluate medical discoveries from an inter-model rather than an exclusively intra-model perspective. By bringing to light questions rarely asked and proposing answers, I seek to open a dialogue and furnish a vehicle by which the putative delimiting effects of model-dependence might be overcome. (shrink)

The author contends that none of the rationales for not allowing ignorance of the law as an excuse in criminal law cases is persuasive. The paper begins by analyzing the condition under which "reasonable" ignorance of the law ought to be allowed as an excuse. Second, the author indicates in greater detail the sense in which 'justice' requires that we recognize these conditions. Third, the author critically examines the arguments used by legal theorists for disregarding the claims of justice to (...) the individual defendant in cases where reasonable ignorance of law is alleged. Finally, the author wants to show that philosophy matters. A philosophical reading of ignorantia juris non excusat (ignorance of the law does not excuse) can expose conceptual errors that are not seen in legal readings. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of Norman Malcolm's claim that things that do not have the human form (e.g. trees, tables, computers) cannot' understand' or 'think' because they cannot point at, reach for, go to, look at, fetch or get something.

Das allgemeine Prinzip der „Relativität der Begriffe” — vom Verfasser a. a. O. dargelegt — behauptet, dass ein und dieselbe Situation der Wirklichkeit auf verschiedene Weisen beschrieben werden kann, die sprachlich und begrifflich zwar verschieden sein mögen, doch grundsätzlich die gleichen bleiben. Die verbalen oder begrifflichen Unterschiede führen uns zu der falschen Annahme, dass den Elementen, welchen im Denken oder im sprachlichen Ausdruck weniger Bedeutung zugemessen wird, auch weniger Bedeuten in Wirklichkeit zukommen, oder dass sie weniger real sind.Die bedeutendste Anwendung (...) dieser Lehre auf die Biologie betrifft die Interpretation des „Individuellen”. Soll man das Individuum als eine Einheit verstehen, oder kommt der Begriff der Einheit einerseits den Teilen zu, wie z. B. Zellen, Molekülen und Atomen, oder andererseits höheren und synthetischen Einheiten wie z.B. Klassen, Arten, dem „élan vital”, u.s.w. ? Alle diese drei Ansichten haben etwas für sich, doch stehen auch jeder entscheidende Gegengründe gegenüber, so dass die einzig-mögliche Schlussfolgerung die Annahme der Begriffsrelativität ist. Jeder der drei Standpunkte ist nur in so weit wahr, als er etwas Positives beibringt, falsch jedoch solange er nur die beiden andern leugnet.Le principe de la relativité des concepts, ayant une application générale dans toutes: parties de la philosophie et de la science, est développé ailleurs par l'auteur. Ce principe propose qu'une situation quelconque peut être discutée dans plusieurs manières, se différant entre elles dans le choix des mots ou des concepts, tout en étant au fond indentiques. Les differences linguistiques ou conceptuelles nous mènent à l'assomption fausse que les éléments moins importants dans la pensée ou dans le langage sont moins importants dans la nature, ou même que ces éléments sont moins réels.En biologie, ce principe a une importance notable en ce qui concerne l'interprétation de l'individu. Doit-on entendre par l'individu les cellules, les molécules, les atomes, et les autres éléments qui le composent; ou bien l'individu même; ou encore doit-on oublier et l'individu et les éléments qui le composent, et baser sa philosophie sur les entités synthétiques telles que les espèces, les genres, et l'élan vital ? Chacune de ces trois opinions a des considérations en sa faveur; mais chacune d'elles se bute à des objections plus considérables encore qui l'empêchent d'être acceptée. La seule conclusion qui semble être possible est l'adoption du principe de la relativité des concepts, et l'assomption que chaque manière d'envisager l'individu est valide tant qu'elle a quelque chose de positif à dire; chaque manière est fausse quand elle nie Ja validité des autres points de vue. (shrink)

There are no new fallacies under the sun, any more than there are any new methods of reasoning. Therefore, the Fluxive Fallacy is nothing new. Yet, pointing out the Fluxive Fallacy and giving it a name has a distinct advantage in that it directs one's attention to errors which, without the advantage of a definite name and description, might pass unobserved.

The human mind is capable of entertaining an astounding range of thoughts. These thoughts are composed of concepts or ideas, which are the building blocks of thoughts. This book is about where all of these concepts come from and the psychological structures that ultimately account for their acquisition. We argue that the debate over the origins of concepts, known as the rationalism-empiricism debate, has been widely misunderstood—not just by its critics but also by researchers who have been active participants in (...) the debate. Part I fundamentally rethinks the foundations of the debate. Part II defends a rationalist view of the origins of concepts according to which many concepts across many conceptual domains are either innate or acquired via rationalist learning mechanisms. Our case is built around seven distinct arguments, which together form a large-scale inference to the best explanation argument for our account. Part III then defends this account against the most important empiricist objections and alternatives. Finally, Part IV argues against an extreme but highly influential rationalist view—Jerry Fodor’s infamous view that it is impossible to learn new concepts and his related radical concept nativism, which holds that essentially all lexical concepts are innate. Throughout the book, our discussion blends philosophical and theoretical reflection with consideration of a broad range of empirical work drawn from many different disciplines studying the mind, providing a thorough update to the rationalism-empiricism debate in philosophy and cognitive science and a major new rationalist account of the origins of concepts. [An open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence]. (shrink)

Although the work of clinical ethics is intensely practical, it employs and presumes philosophical concepts from the central branches of philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy. This essay introduces this issue in the Journal on clinical ethics by considering how the papers and book reviews included in it illuminate four such concepts: trust, moral responsibility, the self and well-ordered societies.