Psychiatric diagnostic covariation suggests that the underlying structure of psychopathology is not one of circumscribed disorders. Quantitative modeling of individual differences in diagnostic patterns has uncovered several broad domains of mental disorder liability, of which the Internalizing and Externalizing spectra have garnered the greatest support. These dimensions have generally been estimated from lifetime or past-year comorbidity patters, which are distal from the covariation of symptoms and maladaptive behavior that ebb and flow in daily life. In this study, structural models are (...) applied to daily diary data ( Median = 94 days) of maladaptive behaviors collected from a sample ( N = 101) of individuals diagnosed with personality disorders (PDs). Using multilevel and unified structural equation modeling, between-person, within-person, and person-specific structures were estimated from 16 behaviors that are encompassed by the Internalizing and Externalizing spectra. At the between-person level (i.e., individual differences in average endorsement across days) we found support for a two-factor Internalizing–Externalizing model, which exhibits significant associations with corresponding diagnostic spectra. At the within-person level (i.e., dynamic covariation among daily behavior pooled across individuals) we found support for a more differentiated, four-factor, Negative Affect-Detachment-Hostility-Disinhibition structure. Finally, we demonstrate that the person-specific structures of associations between these four domains are highly idiosyncratic. (shrink)

Which artificial intelligence (AI) systems are agents? To answer this question, I propose a multidimensional account of agency. According to this account, a system's agency profile is jointly determined by its level of goal-directedness and autonomy as well as is abilities for directly impacting the surrounding world, long-term planning and acting for reasons. Rooted in extant theories of agency, this account enables fine-grained, nuanced comparative characterizations of artificial agency. I show that this account has multiple important virtues and is more (...) informative than alternatives. More speculatively, it may help to illuminate two important emerging questions in AI ethics: 1. Can agency contribute to the moral status of non-human beings, and how? 2. When and why might AI systems exhibit power-seeking behaviour and does this pose an existential risk to humanity? (shrink)

Abstract“Force dynamics” refers to a previously neglected semantic category—how entities interact with respect to force. This category includes such concepts as: the exertion of force, resistance to such exertion and the overcoming of such resistance, blockage of a force and the removal of such blockage, and so forth. Force dynamics is a generalization over the traditional linguistic notion of “causative”: it analyzes “causing” into finer primitives and sets it naturally within a framework that also includes “letting,”“hindering,”“helping,” and still further notions. (...) Force dynamics, moreover, appears to be the semantic category that uniquely characterizes the grammatical category of modals, in both their basic and epistemic usages. In addition, on the basis of force dynamic parameters, numerous lexical items fall into systematic semantic patterns, and there exhibit parallelisms between physical and psychosocial reference. Further, from research on the relation of semantic structure to general cognitive structure, it appears that the concepts of force interaction that are encoded within language closely parallel concepts that appear both in early science and in naive physics and psychology. Overall, force dynamics thus emerges as a fundamental notional system that structures conceptual material pertaining to force interaction in a common way across a linguistic range: the physical, psychological, social, inferential, discourse, and mental-model domains of reference and conception. (shrink)

According to an orthodox view, the capacity for conscious experience (sentience) is relevant to the distribution of moral status and value. However, physicalism about consciousness might threaten the normative relevance of sentience. According to the indeterminacy argument, sentience is metaphysically indeterminate while indeterminacy of sentience is incompatible with its normative relevance. According to the introspective argument (by François Kammerer), the unreliability of our conscious introspection undercuts the justification for belief in the normative relevance of consciousness. I defend the normative relevance (...) of sentience against these objections. First, I demonstrate that physicalists only have to concede a limited amount of indeterminacy of sentience. This moderate indeterminacy is in harmony with the role of sentience in determining moral status. Second, I argue that physicalism gives us no reason to expect that introspection is unreliable with respect to the normative relevance of consciousness. (shrink)

Drawing on a career-long exploration of 1960s French philosophy, Leonard Lawlor seeks a solution to 'the problem of the worst violence'. The worst violence is the reaction of total apocalypse without remainder; it is the reaction of complete negation and death; it is nihilism. Lawlor argues that it is not just transcendental violence that must be minimised: all violence must itself be reduced to its lowest level. He offers new ways of speaking to best achieve the least violence, which (...) he creatively appropriates from Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze and Guattari as 'speaking-freely', 'speaking-distantly' and 'speaking-in-tongues'. (shrink)

Implementationalism maintains that conventional, silicon-based artificial systems are not conscious because they fail to satisfy certain substantive constraints on computational implementation. In this article, we argue that several recently proposed substantive constraints are implausible, or at least are not well-supported, insofar as they conflate intuitions about computational implementation generally and consciousness specifically. We argue instead that the mechanistic account of computation can explain several of the intuitions driving implementationalism and noncomputationalism in a manner which is consistent with artificial consciousness. Our (...) argument provides indirect support for computationalism about consciousness and the view that conventional artificial systems can be conscious. (shrink)

Abstract:In this paper, I offer my reading of John Dewey's Art as Experience and propose implications for music education based on Dewey's ideas. Three principal questions guide my task: What are some key ideas in Dewey's theory of art? How does Dewey's theory of art fit within his larger theory of experience? What are the implications of Dewey's ideas for music education? As I shall show, art for Dewey is rooted in nature, civilizes humans, serves as social glue, and has (...) an important role in society throughout most of human history. Modern life, however, separates art and life; there is a need to restore the continuity between art and the ordinary processes of living, a task that Dewey undertakes by positing the notion of art as experience. Dewey's ideas support an expanded curriculum in music education, one in which popular music may be included alongside Western classical music and music from diverse cultures. However, artistic and educational discernment are needed, which necessitates the need for music educators to be sufficiently steeped in varied musical traditions and styles. (shrink)

I argue that racism is a form of necro-being entrapped in necro-tragedy. Necro-being, as I present it, is a condition that kills and prevents persons from being born. I defend a conception of tragedy: absolute necrotragedy; absolute irredeemable suffering in a non-moral universe. Explanations of racism are commonly subject to anomalies, for example, volitional accounts offer special desiderata to account for institutional racism; conversely for institutional accounts. I offer a way to see racism, given the existence of a vast array (...) of kinds of racism: a descriptive actuarial approach. The account is intended to avoid the quandaries and anomalies of ‘explanation.’ I use rational-intentional explanations (including accounts by Jorge Garcia and Charles Mills) and social kind racial realism as inadequate explanations and examples of explanations with anomalies. These accounts also help demonstrate that logical systems of racism are inadequate. All such accounts explain racism as a coherent system and offer correlative reasons for its wrongness. I consider death, mortality, morbidity, and irredeemable misery as primary indicators of racism across an array of types of racism globally: racial necro-being. (shrink)

Identifies the roots of Nazism in the philosophical ideas of the worship of unreason, demand for self-sacrifice, and elevation of society over the individual, and argues that these ideas are present in America today.

Translated from German. Includes bibliographical references. Includes index.

The Indian-America philosopher Sri Chinmoy Ghose has distinguished between outer silence, inner silence, and innermost silence. In this paper I explore these distinctions and their educational relevance. My main conclusions are that (a) a deep inner silence, undistracted by questions or other thoughts, is at the root of one paradigm kind of good listening in education, and (b) what Chinmoy refers to as “innermost silence” is the moral virtue of receptivity to others that sustains inner silence, even under challenging conditions, (...) a virtue of importance in teaching and in learning from others. (shrink)

This paper compares the views of Hegel and Schelling regarding the problem of individuation, i.e. the question of what makes an individual (a) numerically distinct from others and (b) the very individual it is. My focus is on how Hegel approaches this problem in his metaphysics and how that relates to Schelling’s views as articulated in his ‘negative philosophy’. While Hegelians like Robert Stern and Karen Ng are optimistic that Hegel can solve the problem of individuation, I argue that Schelling (...) puts forward an objection that both challenges Hegel’s account and provides a rationale for taking seriously Schelling’s own insistence on a pre-logical dimension of being. (shrink)

A screening test for more than 50 cancers at earlier stages would strike many as a godsend. Such a test would promise, prima facie, to save 160,000 lives annually from a premature death from cancer, reduce the intensity of medical treatment, and reduce social costs. In brief, this is what is promised by the Galleri test. We will delineate those claims in greater detail and critically assess them from medical, economic, and ethical perspectives. We conclude, with many others, that this (...) test lacks clinical validity and clinical utility. In addition, annual public funding of $100 billion for this test would be socially unaffordable; the opportunity costs would be unacceptable for both ethical and economic reasons. Further, the least well off with respect to cancer care would be made worse off if this test were publicly funded for everyone over the age of fifty. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Alexandra Kertz-Welzel’s “Two Souls, Alas, Reside within My Breast”: Reflections on German and American Music Education Regarding the Internationalization of Music EducationPhilosophy of Music Education Review, 21, no.1 (Spring 2013): 52–65Leonard TanAs a Singaporean who, like Kertz-Welzel, spent four years residing in the United States, I read the article with great interest. Born to traditional Chinese parents, I was raised steeped in Confucian values, savored Chinese operas, (...) and spoke Mandarin as a child. When I went to school in postcolonial Singapore, however, the medium of instruction was primarily English. I read Enid Blyton in primary school, Shakespeare in secondary school, and Chaucer in Junior College. My university studies in music were Western-centric. All seemed fine until my doctoral studies in the United States when I was inspired by my music education professor to revisit my cultural roots and to read Chinese philosophy. It was [End Page 113] no easy task reading the original texts—they were written on bamboo slips more than two thousand years ago in classical Chinese, and I needed tuition from my mother. Nevertheless, as I worked my way slowly but surely through each character, one thing became unmistakably clear: although I had read more Western than Asian philosophy, many ideas in the ancient Chinese texts resonate with the innermost recesses of my being and are unmistakably a part of who I am as a Chinese Singaporean, albeit one schooled in Western ways.Two souls, alas, have been residing within my breast! Like Kertz-Welzel, I had to find a way to reconcile my two scholarly identities. How may one negotiate the seeming chasm between the Chinese and Western philosophical worlds? In this paper, I sketch some insights gleaned from my journey into the world of comparative philosophy, specifically, classical Chinese philosophy and American pragmatism. In particular, I address two obstacles to the internationalization of music education identified by Kertz-Welzel, namely, the tendency for researchers to know only one scholarly tradition well, and the use of English as an international language. I then proffer Dewey’s metaphor of “friendship” as a way of charting a new “silk road”—one that blends Eastern and Western ideas—for the philosophy of music education.As noted by Kertz-Welzel, many researchers only know one scholarly tradition well. Dangers lurk when scholars have limited knowledge of foreign philosophical enterprises. To begin with, one may fall into the trap of stereotypical preconceptions. For example, I have been asked if it were methodologically sound to juxtapose Chinese philosophical aphorisms with the closely argued texts of the American pragmatists. The basis of this critique is understandable: think Confucius and aphoristic phrases that teach humans how to lead moral lives immediately spring to mind; think Dewey and one is reminded of the depth and breadth of his philosophical arguments. Chinese philosophical texts, however, are by no means mere aphorisms. While the Analects of Confucius may, prima facie, appear as if it were a random collection of brief sayings, many passages relate to one another and cohere as a philosophy. The rich commentarial tradition that spans over two thousand years further augment the range of insights embedded in the Analects. Post Confucius, Xunzi, the philosopher best known for his argument that human nature is evil and ought to be cultivated through ritual (li 禮) and music (yue 乐), articulated his philosophy through thirty-two books that rival Dewey in richness and complexity.1 For two souls to reside within one breast, one has to remain vigilant against potential stereotypes.The tendency to know only one scholarly tradition well may also inadvertently cause one to judge a foreign philosophical tradition using the standards of the familiar one. When encountering Confucius for the first time, scholars schooled in European philosophy may, as Hegel did, criticize him for being a [End Page 114] shallow moralizer obsessed with rituals (li 禮) rather than a speculative philosopher concerned with theoretical matters.2 Such a judgment is misguided as it ignores the fact that the Chinese philosophical tradition was founded on a set of metaphysical assumptions that differed from its Greek counterpart. Seeing the cosmos in discrete, quantitative, and unchanging terms, the ancient... (shrink)

Die kritische Auseinandersetzung mit zeitgenössischen Strömungen der Philosophie nahm in Nelsons Lehrtätigkeit und Veröffentlichungen breiten Raum ein. Neben konkurrierenden Ausprägungen des Neukantianismus grenzte er sich gegen Pragmatismus, Positivismus und die phänomenologische Schule ab, vor allem aber auch gegen Autoren wie Bergson und Spengler, die einem Paradigma von Philosophie verpflichtet waren, das Nelson in seinen Vorlesungen mit dem Ausdruck "intuitive Philosophie" bezeichnete. Nelsons Kritik beschränkt sich nicht darauf, dieser Art Philosophie Begründungsmängel vorzuwerfen. Vielmehr sieht er die "intuitive Philosophie" in dem klassischen (...) Denkfehler befangen, gehaltvolle Aussagen aus bloßen Begriffen herzuleiten und die Gültigkeit ihrer Thesen durch die fälschliche Berufung auf begriffliche Tatsachen zu erschleichen. Wie für Wittgenstein sind auch Nelsons leitende Ideale in der Philosophie Klarheit und kompromisslose Konsequenz. Wenn irgendwo, dann erweist sich Nelson mit diesem Text als analytischer Philosoph im besten Sinne - als ein Philosoph, für den die "Kunst, zu philosophieren" zuallererst in der Kunst des richtigen Argumentierens besteht und für den diese Kunst insbesondere durch die Analyse der Argumentationen und Fehlargumentationen anderer Philosophen erworben wird. (shrink)

Diese Schriften kennzeichnen den Weg, auf dem Nelson - Kant folgend - sein Ziel einer "kritischen Philosophie" angestrebt hat. Es geht ihm darum, durch Kritik der Vernunft unmittelbare Erkenntnisse aus reiner Vernunft aufzusuchen, ihnen die Maßstäbe für wissenschaftliches Philosophieren zu entnehmen und so, im Selbstvertrauen der Vernunft, Ausblicke auf pädagogische Aufgaben und Weltanschauungsfragen zu gewinnen.

People with a repressive coping style are highly motivated to defend themselves against self-concept threats. But what kinds of unfavourable personal characteristics are they most focused on avoiding? Weinberger (Citation1990) suggested that repressors are primarily concerned with seeing themselves (and having others see them) as calm, unemotional people who are not prone to experiencing negative affect. A content analysis of the actual (self-ascribed) and undesired attributes of 349 male and female college students, however, provided no support for that hypothesis. Instead, (...) relative to other participants, repressors’ undesired selves consisted more of traits exemplifying disagreeableness (as defined by the five-factor model). Repressors might not engage in affective self-regulation for its own sake, but because it allows them to control expression of traits with which they are more directly concerned. (shrink)

In the study of human thought there could hardly be a more fundamental con cern than language and reasoning. In the tradition of Western philosophy, humans are distinguished by their ability to speak and to think rationally. And language is often considered a prerequisite for rational thought. If psycholoQists, then, are ever to discover what is truly human about their species, they will have to discover how language is produced and understood, and how it plays a role in reasoning and (...) other forms of rational thought. Within psychology there has been an imperative to study language and rea soning together. Since Wundt, psychologists have succeeded in building a the oretical foundation for both language and reasoning. What has become clear from these beginnings is that the two are inextricably bound to each other. Like the two players ina chess game, take away one of them and the game no longer exists. On the one hand, producing and understanding speech re quires an intricate process of reasoning. Speakers must rationally choose sentences that will affect their listeners in ways they intend, and listen ers must infer what speakers could conceivably have meant in selecting the sentences they did. Reasoning, inference, and rational thought lie at the very center of speaking and listening. On the other hand, logical reasoning begins with, and is influenced by, the language in which a problem is stated. (shrink)

Human cultural groups appear well designed, but is this apparent design due to altruism or due to self-serving behaviours? Sober and Wilson argue that human cultures are founded on group-selected altruism. This argument assumes that individually selected self-serving traits are not being misidentified as altruistic. A simple definition of individual selection suggests that Sober and Wilson fail to separate one such trait, called benevolence, from altruism. Benevolent individuals act selfishly but provide an incidental benefit to their neighbours. The female-biased Hamiltonian (...) sex ratios are used to illustrate benevolence, and a financial analogy is used to emphasize why such traits are individually advantageous. Benevolence can only evolve in a spatially structured population, illustrating the importance of separating individual selection in structured and unstructured populations. Unlike benevolence, altruism can only evolve by group selection and, as a result, is vulnerable to selfish ‘cheats’ that exploit the self-sacrifice of altruists. (shrink)

Un modelo de la macrofilosofía es un intento de pensar la unidad de la filosofía, su actualidad para la cultura universal. Filosofía, como cualquier forma creativa de cultura, es un conocimiento en evolución, que puede ser apreciado según su capacidad de reflejar el espíritu humano. Un tal modelo macrofilosófico mediría, también, la evolución de la forma de la filosofía y tendría la relevancia de una metafilosofía. La macrofilosofía de G. Mayos supone la razón dialéctica; por consiguiente, la determinación de lo (...) dialéctico prepara la reflexión sobre la cualidad dialéctica del concepto en macrofilosofía. G. Mayos ve en la dialéctica hegeliana un paradigma para la macrofilosofía, porque es una dialéctica del concepto, adecuada para un pensamiento filosófico macrocategorial. Por otra parte, dos problemas básicos determinan la actitud filosófica de Adorno frente a la filosofía de Hegel: el concepto dialéctico y la relación espíritu-individuo. El pensamiento filosófico es modelo, pero el objeto de este modelo es inmanente, porque, para Adorno, todo es socialidad. Sin embargo, el sentido de la crítica que Adorno hace a Hegel es macrofilosófico. A partir de todas estas consideraciones, propondremos un modelo disciplinario de la macrofilosofía y, en consecuencia, un debate para una teoría actual de la razón dialéctica. (shrink)

En este trabajo, plantearé el tema de los paradigmas moderno y postmoderno de la razón y sujeto, y su surgimiento en el siglo XX, en el marco de la política contemporánea. Hay filósofos, como Descartes y Kant, que llevan a la filosofía el modelo científico de racionalidad con el meta de adaptarlo a los problemas metafísicos. Hay, sin embargo, filósofos, como Hegel, que buscan a conservar la naturaleza de la racionalidad filosófica, que la conciben por la racionalidad dialéctica, y a (...) renovar la dialéctica misma. El sujeto, que piensa desde esas perspectivas filosóficas, sería un sujeto trascendental (kantiano), respectivamente, un sujeto dialéctico (hegeliano), que se corresponden a los dos paradigmas modernos de la razón: la razón geométrica y la razón dialéctica. Con Nietzsche y Heidegger, entra en la escena filosófica la razón hermenéutica y su sentido será de anti-paradigma de la razón moderna, que buscará a destacar un nuevo sujeto humano para los nuevos retos de la vida del siglo XX. Vattimo nos propone el paradigma de la razón hermenéutica del “sujeto débil”, al llevar a sus últimas consecuencias el “sujeto olvidado” de Nietzsche-Heidegger. A lo largo de la historia cultural de Europa, el sujeto humano se ha proyectado de diferentes maneras, por el tiempo y por el espacio, así que tendríamos paradigmas temporales del sujeto y paradigmas espaciales del sujeto. Actualmente, en el “espacio político” el sujeto humano actúa por su modelo de subjetivación y reconocimiento de la realidad política. (shrink)