Introduction: How hard is the "hard core" of a scientific program? / Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini -- pt. 1. The debate: 1. Opening the debate: The psychogenesis of knowledge and its epistemological significance / Jean Piaget -- On cognitive structures and their development: a reply to Piaget / Noam Chomsky -- 2. About the fixed nucleus and its innateness: Introductory remarks / Jean Piaget -- Cognitive strategies in problem solving / Guy Cellerier -- Some clarifications on innatism and constructivism / Guy (...) Cellerier -- 3. Artificial intelligence and general development mechanisms: The role of artificial intelligence in psychology / Seymour Papert -- 4. Initial states and steady states: The linguistic approach / Noam Chomsky -- 5. Cognitive schemes and their possible relations to language acquisition: Language and knowledge in a constructivist framework / Bäé́ Thom -- Appendix C: Localist hypothesis and theory of catastrophes: note on the debate / Jean Petitot. (shrink)

The relationship between ethics and science has been discussed within the framework of continuity versus discontinuity theories, each of which can take several forms. Continuity theorists claim that ethics is a science or at least that it has deep similarities with the modus operandi of science. Discontinuity theorists reject such equivalency, while at the same time many of them claim that ethics does deal with objective truths and universalizable statements, just not in the same sense as science does. I propose (...) here a third view of quasi-continuity (or, equivalently, quasi-discontinuity) that integrates ethics and science as equal partners toward the uncovering of new knowledge. In this third way, a program envisioned by William James but made practicable only by contemporary scientific advancement, science can and must inform ethics at a deep level, and ethical theory— while going beyond science—cannot do without it. In particular, I identify four areas of ethics-science collaboration: neurobiological research into the basis of moral judgment, comparative anthropol- ogy, comparative evolutionary biology of primates, and game-theo- retical modeling. I provide examples within each of these fields to show how they link to ethical theories (including prescriptive work) and questions. The essay concludes with a brief discussion of the light that a scientifically informed ethics can shed on some classical problems in moral theory, such as the relationships between rational- ity and selfishness, egoism and altruism, as well as the concept of social contract. A joint research program involving both philosophers and scientists is called for if we wish to move ethical theory into the twenty-first century. (shrink)

What sets the practice of rigorously tested, sound science apart from pseudoscience? In this volume, the contributors seek to answer this question, known to philosophers of science as “the demarcation problem.” This issue has a long history in philosophy, stretching as far back as the early twentieth century and the work of Karl Popper. But by the late 1980s, scholars in the field began to treat the demarcation problem as impossible to solve and futile to ponder. However, the essays that (...) Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry have assembled in this volume make a rousing case for the unequivocal importance of reflecting on the separation between pseudoscience and sound science. (shrink)

Whenever we worry about what to eat, how to love, or simply how to be happy, we are worrying about how to lead a good life. No goal is more elusive. In How to Be a Stoic, philosopher Massimo Pigliucci offers Stoicism, the ancient philosophy that inspired the great emperor Marcus Aurelius, as the best way to attain it. Stoicism is a pragmatic philosophy that teaches us to act depending on what is within our control and separate things worth (...) getting upset about from those that are not. By understanding Stoicism, we can learn to answer crucial questions: Should we get married or divorced? How should we bank in a world nearly destroyed by a financial crisis? How can we survive great personal tragedy? Whoever you are, Stoicism has something for you—and How to Be a Stoic is your essential guide. (shrink)

Ever since the publication of Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, a book for the lay reader that popularized the ideas of influential evolutionary biologists like William Hamilton and George Williams, there has been much discussion of so-called "universal Darwinism". Dawkins' dual aim was to reduce evolutionary phenomena to the level of the gene, while at the same time abstracting the Darwinian process of natural selection of "replicators" and making it into something that would apply beyond the domain of biology.

How micro- and macroevolutionary evolutionary processes produce phenotypic change is without question one of the most intriguing and perplexing issues facing evolutionary biologists. We believe that roadblocks to progress lie A) in the underestimation of the role of the environment, and in particular, that of the interaction of genotypes with environmental factors, and B) in the continuing lack of incorporation of development into the evolutionary synthesis. We propose the integration of genetic, environmental and developmental perspectives on the evolution of the (...) phenotype in the form of the concept of the developmental reaction norm (DRN) The DRN represents the set of multivariate ontogenies that can be produced by a single genotype when it is exposed to environmental variation. It encompasses: 1) the processes that alter the phenotype throughout the ontogenetic trajectory, 2) the recognition that different aspects of the phenotype are (and must be) correlated and 3) the ability of a genotype to produce phenotypes in different environments. This perspective necessitates the explicit study of character expression during development, the evaluation of associations between pairs or groups of characters (e.g., multivariate allometries), and the exploration of reaction norms and phenotypic plasticity. We explicitly extend the concept of the DRN to encompass adjustments made in response to changes in the internal environment as well. Thus, ‘typical’ developmental sequences (e.g., cell fate determination) and plastic responses are simply manifestations of different scales of ‘environmental’ effects along a continuum. We present: (1) a brief conceptual review of three fundamental aspects of the generation and evolution of phenotypes: the changes in the trajectories describing growth and differentiation (ontogeny), the multivariate relationships among characters (allometry), and the effect of the environment (plasticity); (2) a discussion of how these components are merged in the concept of the developmental reaction norm; and (3) a reaction norm perspective of major determinants of phenotypes: epigenesis, selection and constraint. (shrink)

The concept of reaction norms plays a crucial role in connecting molecular and evolutionary biology.

We establish a simple condition, based on the willingness to bet on events, under which two biseparable preferences have cardinally equivalent utilities.

La letteratura cerca di dare un ordine al disordine della vita e della storia. Per questo succede che un personaggio immaginario come Robin Hood risulti troppo amante della libertà e del disordine per essere solamente letterario, e così generazioni di studiosi ne hanno cercato tracce nelle vicende reali della storia inglese. La tradizione delle ballate popolari ha invaso il teatro e la letteratura donando all'immaginario collettivo di tutta Europa l'illusione di poter progettare il disordine. _ Literature tries to give order (...) to the disorder of life and history. This is why it happens that a fictional character like Robin Hood is too lover of freedom and disorder to be merely literary, and so generations of scholars have sought traces of him in the real events of English history. The tradition of folk ballads has invaded theatre and literature, giving the collective imagination throughout Europe the illusion that disorder can be planned. _. (shrink)

The creation-evolution “controversy” has been with us for more than a century. Here I argue that merely teaching more science will probably not improve the situation; we need to understand the controversy as part of a broader problem with public acceptance of pseudoscience, and respond by teaching how science works as a method. Critical thinking is difficult to teach, but educators can rely on increasing evidence from neurobiology about how the brain learns, or fails to.

: Jerry Fodor and Zenon Pylyshyn have proposed a purely referential-causal semantics, a semantics without meanings. Adopting Pylyshyn’s previous treatment of the fact that we can perceive and track something before we have any idea of what that is, these authors claim that such causal relations to external entities allow us to word-label them and thereby build an entire lexicon with specific referents. I disagree and explain why I do so. The kind of semantics that I prefer is radically opposite: (...) the one proposed by Noam Chomsky and Paul Pietroski. This is an internalist semantics that only has meanings, reference being indirect, often indefinite, sometimes problematic. Chomsky insists that the only posit that is tenable is the internal structure of the speaker-hearer, a complex, abstractly characterizable, computational-derivational apparatus, optimal if left alone, that interfaces with other cognitive apparatuses: the articulatory-perceptual one and the conceptual-intentional one, satisfying the constraints that they impose. I show that the semantics proposed by Fodor and Pylyshyn is especially problematic when inexistent entities, possible entities, fictional characters and objects in the remote past are examined. It is, however, problematic even when dealing with more ordinary concepts. On the contrary, an internalist semantics avoids all these problems. Keywords: Internalist Semantics; Theory of Meaning and Reference; Jerry A. Fodor; Noam Chomsky; Paul Pietroski Menti con significati Riassunto: Jerry Fodor e Zenon Pylyshyn hanno proposto una semantica interamente causale-referenziale, una semantica priva di qualsiasi nozione di significato. Adottando la precedente trattazione di Pylyshyn di come è possibile percepire e inseguire oggetti prima di avere alcuna idea di cosa essi siano, questi autori pretendono che queste interazioni causali con enti esterni bastano a etichettarli con dei termini lessicali, costruendo un intero lessico con referenti specifici, senza la componente del significato. Io dissento e spiego perché. Il tipo di semantica che adotto è diametralmente opposto, una semantica che ha solo significati, per la quale i referenti esterni sono indiretti, spesso non definiti, talvolta problematici. Noam Chomsky e Paul Pietroski hanno perfezionato questa semantica puramente internalista, insistendo che l’unico attributo sostenibile è la struttura mentale interna al locutore, una struttura complessa, caratterizzabile solo a un livello di astrazione adeguato, atta a soddisfare i vincoli imposti dai sistemi cognitivi con i quali interagisce: quello articolatorio-percettivo e quello concettuale-intenzionale. Mostro che la semantica proposta da Fodor e Pylyshyn si scontra con problemi insolubili quando tratta enti inesistenti, enti possibili, invenzioni letterarie e oggetti appartenenti a un passato remoto. In effetti, si scontra con problemi insolubili anche quando tratta oggetti e proprietà ordinari. Una semantica interamente internalista non incontra nessuno di questi problemi. Parole chiave: Semantica internalista; Teoria del significato e del riferimento; Jerry A. Fodor; Noam Chomsky; Paul Pietroski. (shrink)

The interview reconstructs Jeffrey Schnapp's brilliant career from his origins as a scholar of Dante and the Middle Ages to his current multiple interdisciplinary interests. Among other things, Schnapp deals with knowledge design, media history and theory, history of the book, the future of archives, museums, and libraries. The main themes of the interview concern the relationships between technology and pedagogy, the future of reading, and artificial intelligence.

It is an unfortunate fact of academic life that there is a sharp divide between science and philosophy, with scientists often being openly dismissive of philosophy, and philosophers being equally contemptuous of the naivete ́ of scientists when it comes to the philosophical underpinnings of their own discipline. In this paper I explore the possibility of reducing the distance between the two sides by introducing science students to some interesting philosophical aspects of research in evolutionary biology, using biological theories of (...) the origin of religion as an example. I show that philosophy is both a discipline in its own right as well as one that has interesting implications for the understanding and practice of science. While the goal is certainly not to turn science students into philoso- phers, the idea is that both disciplines cannot but benefit from a mutual dialogue that starts as soon as possible, in the classroom. (shrink)

We prove ExpTime-membership of the satisfiability problem for loosely ∀-guarded first-order formulas with a bounded number of variables and an unbounded number of constants. Guarded fragments with constants are interesting by themselves and because of their connection to hybrid logic.

The term pseudoscience refers to a highly heterogeneous set of practices, beliefs, and claims sharing the property of appearing to be scientific when in fact they contradict either scientific findings or the methods by which science proceeds. Classic examples of pseudoscience include astrology, parapsychology, and ufology; more recent entries are the denial of a causal link between the HIV virus and AIDS or the claim that vaccines cause autism. To distinguish between science and pseudoscience is part of what the philosopher (...) Karl Popper referred to as the demarcation problem, a project that has been dismissed by another philosopher, Larry Laudan, but that keeps gathering much interest in philosophers, scientists, educators, and policymakers. This entry provides the basics of the debate about demarcation, as well as a brief discussion of why it is of vital importance not just intellectually but for society at large. (shrink)