P D Walsh; Value Education in a Pluralist Society, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 10, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 24–33, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1.

Our sense of self includes awareness of our thoughts and movements, and our control over them. This feeling can be altered or lost in neuropsychiatric disorders as well as in phenomena such as “automatic writing” whereby writing is attributed to an external source. Here, we employed suggestion in highly hypnotically suggestible participants to model various experiences of automatic writing during a sentence completion task. Results showed that the induction of hypnosis, without additional suggestion, was associated with a small but significant (...) reduction of control, ownership, and awareness for writing. Targeted suggestions produced a double dissociation between thought and movement components of writing, for both feelings of control and ownership, and additionally, reduced awareness of writing. Overall, suggestion produced selective alterations in the control, ownership, and awareness of thought and motor components of writing, thus enabling key aspects of automatic writing, observed across different clinical and cultural settings, to be modelled. (shrink)

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

This book explores Dostoevsky as a political thinker from his religious and philosophical foundation to nineteenth-century European politics and how themes that he had examined are still relevant for us today.

The Alagadd?pama Sutta is the 22nd discourse of the Majjhima-nik?ya of the Pali canon. In the sutta itself it is mentioned that the Buddha’s delivery of this discourse was necessitated by the need to refute a wrong view held by one of his disciples named Ari??ha. Parallel versions of the sutta are found preserved in the Chinese?gamas. The two main similes used in the sutta, those of the snake and of the raft, are referred to in the scriptures of a (...) number of non-Therav?da Buddhist traditions as well, showing that the Buddhist doctrine represented in it is early and authentic and the message contained in the sutta was considered to be extremely significant by many early Buddhist traditions. The Alagadd?pama Sutta shows the Buddha’s role as one of the earliest thinkers in the history of philosophy who engaged in a critique of the craving for metaphysics and dogma frequently exhibited in those who propound worldviews. The Buddha did not value a belief or a worldview on grounds of the logical skill with which it was constructed but on grounds of the transformative effect it could have on the character of an individual and the sense of wellbeing it could promote. There are several discourses of the Pali canon which give prominence to this aspect of the Buddha’s teaching. Among them the Brahmaj?la Sutta of the D?gha-nik?ya and the A??hakavagga of the Suttanip?ta need special mention. The Buddha is seen to have consistently avoided engagement in speculative metaphysics, pointing out that the goal of his teaching goes beyond all such engagement. The Buddha himself distinguished his own worldview as a Teaching in the Middle avoiding the common tendency of humankind to be trapped by either of the two extremes, Eternalism or Annihilationism. These distinctive standpoints of the Buddha are all seen to be amply represented in the Alagadd?pama Sutta. (shrink)

The Argument from Inductive Risk (AIR) is taken to show that values are inevitably involved in making judgements or forming beliefs. After reviewing this conclusion, I pose cases which are prima facie counterexamples: the unreflective application of conventions, use of black-boxed instruments, reliance on opaque algorithms, and unskilled observation reports. These cases are counterexamples to the AIR posed in ethical terms as a matter of personal values. Nevertheless, it need not be understood in those terms. The values which load a (...) theory choice may be those of institutions or past actors. This means that the challenge of responsibly handling inductive risk is not merely an ethical issue, but is also social, political, and historical. (shrink)

A brief overview of _A Philosophy of Cover Songs_, highlighting some of the main themes in the book. The first part addresses the nature of covers and makes some important initial distinctions. The second part addresses the appreciation and evaluation of covers. The third part addresses covers as a clue to the ontology of songs. Written to introduce a session at the American Society for Aesthetics Rocky Mountain Division meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico (July 13, 2024).

William James’ argument against William Clifford in The Will to Believe is often understood in terms of doxastic efficacy, the power of belief to influence an outcome. Although that is one strand of James’ argument, there is another which is driven by ampliative risk. The second strand of James’ argument, when applied to scientific cases, is tantamount to what is now called the Argument from Inductive Risk. Either strand of James’ argument is sufficient to rebut Clifford's strong evidentialism and show (...) that it is sometimes permissible to believe in the absence of compelling evidence. However, the two considerations have different scope and force. Doxastic efficacy applies in only some cases but allows any values to play a role in determining belief; risk applies in all cases but only allows particular conditional values to play a role. (shrink)

Nanotechnologies and nanoscience have generated an unprecedented global research and development race involving dozens of countries. The understanding of associated environmental, ethical, and societal implications lags far behind the science and technology. Consequently, it is critical to consider both what is known and what is unknown to offer a kernel that future work can be added to. The challenges presented by nanotechnologies are discussed. Some initial solutions such as self-regulation and borrowing techniques and tools from other fields are accompanied by (...) a call for further research. (shrink)

According to the standard narrative, natural kind is a technical notion that was introduced by John Stuart Mill in the 1840s and the recent craze for natural kinds, launched by Putnam and Kripke, is a continuation of that tradition. I argue that the standard narrative is mistaken. The Millian tradition of kinds was not particularly influential in the 20th-century, and the Putnam-Kripke revolution did not clearly engage with even the remnants that were left of it. The presently active tradition of (...) natural kinds is less than half a century old. Recognizing this might help us better appreciate both Mill and natural kinds. (shrink)

We consider a question of Pereira as to whether the characteristic function of an internally approachable model can lead to free subsets for functions of the model. Pereira isolated the pertinent Approachable Free Subsets Property (AFSP) in his work on the $${\text {pcf}}$$ pcf -conjecture. A recent related property is the Approachable Bounded Subset Property (ABSP) of Ben-Neria and Adolf, and we here directly show it requires modest large cardinals to establish:TheoremIf ABSP holds for an ascending sequence $$ \langle \aleph (...) _{n_{m}} \rangle _{m}$$ ⟨ ℵ n m ⟩ m $$( n_{m} \in \omega )$$ ( n m ∈ ω ) then there is an inner model with measurables $$\kappa < \aleph _{\omega }$$ κ < ℵ ω of arbitrarily large Mitchell order below $$\aleph _{\omega }$$ ℵ ω, that is: $$\sup \left\{ \alpha \mid {\exists }\kappa < \aleph _{\omega } o ( \kappa ) \ge \alpha \right\} = \aleph _{\omega }$$ sup α ∣ ∃ κ < ℵ ω o ( κ ) ≥ α = ℵ ω. A result of Adolf and Ben Neria then shows that this conclusion is in fact the exact consistency strength of ABSP for such an ascending sequence. Their result went via the consistency of the non-existence of continuous tree-like scales; the result of this paper is direct and avoids the use of PCF scales. (shrink)

We characterise explicitly the decidable predicates on integers of Infinite Time Turing machines, in terms of admissibility theory and the constructible hierarchy. We do this by pinning down ζ, the least ordinal not the length of any eventual output of an Infinite Time Turing machine (halting or otherwise); using this the Infinite Time Turing Degrees are considered, and it is shown how the jump operator coincides with the production of mastercodes for the constructible hierarchy; further that the natural ordinals associated (...) with the jump operator satisfy a Spector criterion, and correspond to the L ζ -stables. It also implies that the machines devised are "Σ 2 Complete" amongst all such other possible machines. It is shown that least upper bounds of an "eventual jump" hierarchy exist on an initial segment. (shrink)

We show that the set of ultimately true sentences in Hartry Field's Revenge-immune solution model to the semantic paradoxes is recursively isomorphic to the set of stably true sentences obtained in Hans Herzberger's revision sequence starting from the null hypothesis. We further remark that this shows that a substantial subsystem of second-order number theory is needed to establish the semantic values of sentences in Field's relative consistency proof of his theory over the ground model of the standard natural numbers: -CA0 (...) (second-order number theory with a -comprehension axiom scheme) is insufficient. We briefly consider his claim to have produced a solution to the semantic paradoxes by introducing this conditional. We remark that the notion of a operator can be introduced in other settings. (shrink)

It is now commonly held that values play a role in scientific judgment, but many arguments for that conclusion are limited. First, many arguments do not show that values are, strictly speaking, indispensable. The role of values could in principle be filled by a random or arbitrary decision. Second, many arguments concern scientific theories and concepts which have obvious practical consequences, thus suggesting or at least leaving open the possibility that abstruse sciences without such a connection could be value-free. Third, (...) many arguments concern the role values play in inferring from evidence, thus taking evidence as given. This paper argues that these limitations do not hold in general. There are values involved in every scientific judgment. They cannot even conceivably be replaced by a coin toss, they arise as much for exotic as for practical sciences, and they are at issue as much for observation as for explicit inference. (shrink)

Many enhancement technologies are distributed by healthcare professionals—by physicians—who are held to the Hippocratic Oath and the goals of medicine. While the ethics of enhancement has been widely discussed with regard to the social justice, humanism, morals and normative values of these interventions, their place in medicine has not attracted a great deal of attention. This paper investigates the potential for enhancement technologies to fulfil the goals of medicine, arguing that they play a role in promoting the health of individuals, (...) and thus, an unavoidable place in medicine. It also warns of potential dangers, suggesting a set of guidelines to initiate conversations regarding the role and responsibilities of physicians practising in an era of enhancement. (shrink)

We show that Leitgeb’s dependence operator of Leitgeb is a \-operator and that this is best possible.

The problem of the logic of understanding history is discussed. We propose a model of understanding history as a conversation, which the person thinking about history has with interlocutors (sources) of previous epochs. The epoch is interpreted as a special way of problematizing human's understanding of him (her) self and the world around. At the same time, three gifts — attention, recognition and name — underlie the connection of the historian in conversation with interlocutors (sources) from other eras. They are (...) not given in advance but are results of a struggle for the recognition. In choosing his (her) interlocutor (source), the historian chooses him (her) self. By giving this interlocutor (the source) the opportunity to be heard, the historian, at the same time, receives a gift from the source — the opportunity to express what would otherwise remain unspoken in the historian's own mind. The logic of conversation, designated as transduction, is not the connection through the identification of the beginning and the end of the discourse, which is appropriate and necessary within the speech of each of the conversationalists, but the connection of the beginnings of these discordant discourses among themselves. (shrink)

Suppose a computer prints out the following little "poem": The shooting of the hunters she heardBut to pity it moved her not. What can we say about the meaning of this "poem"? We can say that it is ambiguous. It could mean: She heard the hunters shooting at animals, people, etc., but she had no pity for the victims. . . . She heard the hunters being shot but did not pity them. . . . She heard the hunters shooting (...) at someone or something and she heard the hunters being shot but did not pity either. An author could use the above word sequence to convey either , , or . But since we cannot treat the text produced by the computer as anyone's use of the words in question, it would not make sense to decide among its linguistically possible readings, just as it would not make sense to choose among the linguistically possible readings of an ambiguous sentence if it is considered in abstraction from its use by a speaker on a particular occasion. For example, it would not make sense to say of the sentence "He saw the man carrying the suitcase" that it just means "He saw the man who is carrying the suitcase" if we know that and in which what ways the sentence is ambiguous. If someone did say this, we would be inclined to think either that he does not know that the sentence is ambiguous or that he is talking not about the sentence but about an utterance of that sentence by a speaker on some occasion. Hence all we can do in interpreting the computer "poem" is to specify the set of its linguistically possible readings, namely, {, , }. But it would not make sense to select , for example, and say, "That is what the computer poem means, not , nor ." P. D. Juhl is an assistant professor of German at Princeton University. The present essay, in a different form, will appear in his forthcoming book, The Nature of Literary Interpretation. See also: "Against Theory" by Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels in Vol. 8, No. 4. (shrink)

A small large cardinal upper bound in V for proving when certain subsets of ω 1 (including the universally Baire subsets) are precisely those constructible from a real is given. In the core model we find an exact equivalence in terms of the length of the mouse order; we show that $\forall B \subseteq \omega_1 \lbrack B$ is universally Baire $\Leftrightarrow B \in L\lbrack r \rbrack$ for some real r] is preserved under set-sized forcing extensions if and only if there (...) are arbitrarily large "admissibly measurable" cardinals. (shrink)

We analyse the extent of possible computations following Hogarth ([2004]) conducted in Malament–Hogarth (MH) spacetimes, and Etesi and Németi ([2002]) in the special subclass containing rotating Kerr black holes. Hogarth ([1994]) had shown that any arithmetic statement could be resolved in a suitable MH spacetime. Etesi and Németi ([2002]) had shown that some relations on natural numbers that are neither universal nor co-universal, can be decided in Kerr spacetimes, and had asked specifically as to the extent of computational limits there. (...) The purpose of this note is to address this question, and further show that MH spacetimes can compute far beyond the arithmetic: effectively Borel statements (so hyperarithmetic in second-order number theory, or the structure of analysis) can likewise be resolved: Theorem A. If H is any hyperarithmetic predicate on integers, then there is an MH spacetime in which any query ? n H ? can be computed. In one sense this is best possible, as there is an upper bound to computational ability in any spacetime, which is thus a universal constant of that spacetime. Theorem C. Assuming the (modest and standard) requirement that spacetime manifolds be paracompact and Hausdorff, for any spacetime there will be a countable ordinal upper bound, , on the complexity of questions in the Borel hierarchy computable in it. Introduction 1.1 History and preliminaries Hyperarithmetic Computations in MH Spacetimes 2.1 Generalising SADn regions 2.2 The complexity of questions decidable in Kerr spacetimes An Upper Bound on Computational Complexity for Each Spacetime CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Notions of purity, perfection, or immaculateness have powered our imagination over the ages. Various images of perfection have held sway in their hallowed times, providing secure streams for channelling human energy. Unfortunately, with the unfolding of the human drama on the world stage, all the images of perfection have suffered damage, epoch on epoch. Different responses have emerged to attempt a restoration. Revival of some of the old images is one such response. Production of new images to serve as worthwhile (...) anchors of value and meaning is another common response. For reasons possibly known only to philosophers and historians, the enterprise called modern science has got thickly embroiled in this civilisational process--first, as the culprit behind the decline of some of the established images, then as the producer of new images, and now, perhaps, as a constant reminder of the perpetual lack of purity and immaculateness in all things human. (shrink)

There is a history of thinking that photographs provide a special kind of access to the objects depicted in them, beyond the access that would be provided by a painting or drawing. What is included in the photograph does not depend on the photographer’s beliefs about what is in front of the camera. This feature leads Kendall Walton to argue that photographs literally allow us to see the objects which appear in them. Current generative algorithms produce images in response to (...) users’ text prompts. Depending on the parameters, the output can resemble specific people or things which are named in the prompt. This resemblance does not depend on the user’s beliefs, so generated images are in this sense like photographs. Given this parallel, how should we think about AI-generated images? (shrink)