This book demonstrates how children's imagination makes a continuing contribution to their cognitive and emotional development.

I explore some of the ways that assumptions about the nature of substance shape metaphysical debates about the structure of Reality. Assumptions about the priority of substance play a role in an argument for monism, are embedded in certain pluralist metaphysical treatments of laws of nature, and are central to discussions of substantivalism and relationalism. I will then argue that we should reject such assumptions and collapse the categorical distinction between substance and property.

A general conceptual framework for large-scale neocortical dynamics based on data from many laboratories is applied to a variety of experimental designs, spatial scales, and brain states. Partly distinct, but interacting local processes (e.g., neural networks) arise from functional segregation. Global processes arise from functional integration and can facilitate (top down) synchronous activity in remote cell groups that function simultaneously at several different spatial scales. Simultaneous local processes may help drive (bottom up) macroscopic global dynamics observed with electroencephalography (EEG) or (...) magnetoencephalography (MEG). A local/global dynamic theory that is consistent with EEG data and the proposed conceptual framework is outlined. This theory is neutral about properties of neural networks embedded in macroscopic fields, but its global component makes several qualitative and semiquantitative predictions about EEG measures of traveling and standing wave phenomena. A more general “metatheory” suggests what large-scale quantitative theories of neocortical dynamics may be like when more accurate treatment of local and nonlinear effects is achieved. The theory describes the dynamics of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic action fields. EEG and MEG provide large-scale estimates of modulation of these synaptic fields around background levels. Brain states are determined by neuromodulatory control parameters. Purely local states are dominated by local feedback gains and rise and decay times of postsynaptic potentials. Dominant local frequencies vary with brain region. Other states are purely global, with moderate to high coherence over large distances. Multiple global mode frequencies arise from a combination of delays in corticocortical axons and neocortical boundary conditions. Global frequencies are identical in all cortical regions, but most states involve dynamic interactions between local networks and the global system. EEG frequencies may involve a “matching” of local resonant frequencies with one or more of the many, closely spaced global frequencies. Key Words: binding problem; cell assemblies; coherence; EEG; limit cycles; neocortical dynamics; pacemakers; phase locking; spatial scale; standing waves; synchronization. Footnotes1 The relationship between the synaptic action fields proposed in the target article and cell assemblies is clarified with Figure R1 (p. 416) of the Response. (This figure was not available to Commentators. (shrink)

Recent work in the history of philosophy of science details the Kantianism of philosophers often thought opposed to one another, e.g., Hans Reichenbach, C.I. Lewis, Rudolf Carnap, and Thomas Kuhn. Historians of philosophy of science in the last two decades have been particularly interested in the Kantianism of Reichenbach, Carnap, and Kuhn, and more recently, of Lewis. While recent historical work focuses on recovering the threatened-to-be-forgotten Kantian themes of early twentieth-century philosophy of science, we should not elide the differences between (...) the Kantian strands running throughout this work. In this paper, I disentangle a few of these strands in the work of Reichenbach and Lewis focusing especially on their theories of relativized, constitutive a priori principles in empirical knowledge. In particular, I highlight three related differences between Reichenbach and Lewis concerning their motivations in analyzing scientific knowledge and scientific practice, their differing conceptions of constitutivity, and their relativization of constitutive a priori principles. In light of these differences, I argue Lewis’s Kantianism is more similar to Kuhn’s Kantianism than Reichenbach’s, and so might be of more contemporary relevance to social and practice-based approaches to the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Taking a cue from remarks Thomas Kuhn makes in 1990 about the historical turn in philosophy of science, I examine the history of history and philosophy of science within parts of the British philosophical context in the 1950s and early 1960s. During this time, ordinary language philosophy's influence was at its peak. I argue that the ordinary language philosophers' methodological recommendation to analyze actual linguistic practice influences several prominent criticisms of the deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation and that these criticisms (...) relate to the historical turn in philosophy of science. To show these connections, I primarily examine the work of Stephen Toulmin, who taught at Oxford from 1949 to 1954, and Michael Scriven, who completed a dissertation on explanation under Gilbert Ryle and R.B. Braithwaite in 1956. I also consider Mary Hesse's appeal to an ordinary language-influenced account of meaning in her account of the role of models and analogies in scientific reasoning, and W.H. Watson's Wittgensteinian philosophy of science, an early influence on Toulmin. I think there are two upshots to my historical sketch. First, it fills out details of the move away from logical positivism to more historical- and practice-focused philosophies of science. Second, questions about linguistic meaning and the proper targets and aims of philosophical analysis are part and parcel of the historical turn, as well as its reception. Looking at the philosophical background during which so-called linguistic philosophers also had a hand in bringing these questions to prominence helps us understand why. (shrink)

Quentin Smith has argued that the new tenseless theory of time is faced with insurmountable problems and should be abandoned in favour of the tensed theory of time. Smith;s main argument attacks the fundamental premise of the tenseless theory: that tenseless truth conditions for tokens of tensed sentences adequately capture the meaning of tensed sentences. His position is that tenseless truth conditions cannot explain the logical relations between tensed sentences, thus the tensed theory must be accepted. Against Smith, this paper (...) adopts an alternative approach to the explanation of the entailment relations between sentences which contain indexicals. The approach drops the reliance upon tokens and instead relies on the evaluation of sentence types with respect to a context rather than upon actual or possible utterances of tokens of the types. This (new) version of the tenseless theory of time can adequately explain the relevant entailment relations between tensed sentences. (shrink)

Ground-coupled heating-cooling systems (GCHCSs) exchange heat between the built environment and the subsurface using pipework buried in trenches or boreholes. If heat pumps in GCHCSs are powered by “green electricity,” they offer genuine carbon-free heating-cooling; for this reason, there has been a surge in the technology in recent years. Interference between adjoining installations is being reported, raising issues of sustainability in terms of performance, equitable sharing of natural resources, and localized ecological impacts. Using an analytical model for heat transport in (...) porous media, sensitivity analyses have been obtained for open-loop systems in typical hydro-geological settings for urban GSHCSs in the United Kingdom, revealing that breakthrough of injected water will likely lead to significant declines in system performance in less than 25 years for well spacings less than 300 m, unless injection rates are kept below 250 m3/d. Only by cooperatively planning will adjoining landowners in urban areas achieve large-scale sustainable system designs. (shrink)

In response to counterexamples involving late preemption, David Lewis (1986) revised his original (1973) counterfactual analysis of causation to include the notion of quasi-dependence. Jonardon Ganeri, Paul Noordhof and Murali Ramachandran (1998) argue that their ‘PCA*-analysis’ of causation solves the problem of late preemption and is superior to Lewis’s analysis. I show that neither quasi-dependence nor the PCA*-analysis solves the problem of late preemption.

Causation is at once familiar and mysterious. Neither common sense nor extensive philosophical debate has led us to anything like agreement on the correct analysis of the concept of causation, or an account of the metaphysical nature of the causal relation. Causation: A User's Guide cuts a clear path through this confusing but vital landscape. L. A. Paul and Ned Hall guide the reader through the most important philosophical treatments of causation, negotiating the terrain by taking a set of (...) examples as landmarks. They clarify the central themes of the debate about causation, and cover questions about causation involving omissions or absences, preemption and other species of redundant causation, and the possibility that causation is not transitive. Along the way, Paul and Hall examine several contemporary proposals for analyzing the nature of causation and assess their merits and overall methodological cogency.The book is designed to be of value both to trained specialists and those coming to the problem of causation for the first time. It provides the reader with a broad and sophisticated view of the metaphysics of the causal relation. (shrink)

In claiming the independence of theology from science, Ernan McMullin nevertheless saw the danger of separating these disciplines on questions of mutual significance, as his accompanying article “Biology and the Theology of the Human” in this edition of Zygon shows. This paper analyzes McMullin's adoption of emergence as a qualified endorsement of a view that avoids the excesses of both dualism and materialism. I argue that McMullin's distinctive contribution is the conceptual clarification of emergence in the light of a precise (...) understanding of matter, in light of Aristotelian metaphysics and Darwinian theory. As applied to human nature, McMullin retains an Augustinian outlook that sees spirit as emergent in the human body and which posits a credible biblical hermeneutic. I indicate briefly how McMullin's perspective could be fortified by a fuller natural theology. (shrink)

If an object has a property essentially, it has that property in every possible world according to which it exists.2 If an object has a property accidentally, it does not have that property in every possible world according to which it exists. Claims about an object’s essential or accidental properties are de re modal claims, and essential and accidental properties are de re modal properties. Take an object’s modal profile to specify its essential properties and the range of its accidental (...) properties. Note that “world” as I am using it is a term of art: a modal realist believes that there are many concrete worlds, while the actualist believes in only one concrete world, the actual world. The ersatzist is an actualist who takes nonactual possible worlds and their contents to be abstracta. Essentialism is the view that objects have properties essentially, but one should distinguish deep essentialism from shallow essentialism. Deep essentialists take the (nontrivial) essential properties of an object to determine its nature— such properties give sense to the idea that an object has a unique and distinctive character, and make it the case that an object has to be a certain way in order for it to be at all.3 As Stephen Yablo (1987, 297) describes it, the essence of a thing is “an assortment of properties in virtue of which it is the entity in question,” as well as “a measure of what is required for it to be that thing.” Intuitively, on the deep essentialist picture, an ordinary object has essential properties, and it must have its essential properties in order for it to exist. On this view, objects’ essential properties are absolute, i.e., are not determined by contexts of describing (or thinking, etc.) about the object, and truths about such properties are absolute truths.4 Shallow essentialists oppose deep essentialists: they reject the view that objects can be said to have essential properties independently of contexts of description or evaluation, and so substitute context-dependent truths for the deep essentialist’s context-independent ones.. (shrink)

As you face a life-defining change, you might ask yourself: Who will I become? This can be understood as a question about the nature and character of your future life, asked from your first person, or subjective, perspective. The nature and character of your conscious, first person, lived experience is a defining constituent of what it is like to be you. Framed this way, knowing the nature of your future lived experience is a way of knowing your future self. In (...) this paper, I explore this way of understanding one’s self and its implications for understanding life-defining changes in high-stakes contexts. My exploration of this way of understanding one’s self highlights the role of experience in grasping perceptual truths, and the importance of imagination, empathy, and testimony in self-understanding and prediction. (shrink)

Summary of Transformative Experience by L.A. Paul and replies to symposiasts. Discussion of undefined values, preference change, authenticity, experiential value, collective minds, mind control.

Commentary on Montero, B. (2020) What experience doesn’t teach: Pain-amnesia and a new paradigm for memory research, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 27 (11–12).

A leaf falls to the ground, wafting lazily on the afternoon breeze. Clouds move across the sky, and birds sing. Are these events governed by universal laws of nature, laws that apply everywhere without exception, subsuming events such as the falling of the leaf, the movement of the clouds and the singing of the birds? Are such laws part of a small set of fundamental laws, or descended from such a set, which govern everything there is in the world?

This article motivates a shift in certain strands of the debate over legitimate roles for nonepistemic values in scientific practice from investigating what is involved in taking cognitive attitudes like acceptance toward an empirical hypothesis to looking at a social understanding of assertion, the act of communicating that hypothesis. I argue that speech act theory’s account of assertion as a type of doing makes salient legitimate roles nonepistemic values can play in scientific practice. The article also shows how speech act (...) theory might provide a framework for fruitfully extending aspects of the social and pragmatic turns in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Children's utterances from late infancy to 3 years of age were examined to infer their conception of knowledge. In Study 1, the utterances of two English-speaking children were analysed and in Study 2, the utterances of a Mandarin-speaking child were analysed – in both studies, for their use of the verb know. Both studies confirmed that know and not know were used to affirm, query or deny knowledge, especially concerning an ongoing topic of conversation. References to a third party were (...) rare. By implication, 2-year-olds have a conception of knowledge that underpins their exchange of information in conversation. Implications for the child's developing theory of mind are discussed. (shrink)

Multiscale dynamics, linear approximations, global boundary conditions, experimental verification, and global influences on local cell assemblies are considered in the context of Wright & Liley's work. W&L provide a nice introduction to these issues and a reasonable simulation of intermediate scale dynamics, but the model does not adequately simulate combined local and global processes.

Abstract: William James argued that we ordinarily think of the objects that we can observe—things that belong to 'the world of sense'—as having an unquestioned reality. However, young children also assert the existence of entities that they cannot ordinarily observe. For example, they assert the existence of germs and souls. The belief in the existence of such unobservable entities is likely to be based on children's broader trust in other people's testimony about objects and situations that they cannot directly observe (...) for themselves. (shrink)

EEG and synaptic action fields provide experimental and theoretical entry points into brain complexity. Such entry is distinguished from the core system of cell assemblies assumed to underlie cognitive processing. The global theory of synaptic action predicts several new properties of EEG, providing limited penetration into brain complexity.

The first major treatment of skepticism in Islam, this book explores the critical role of skeptical thinking in the development of theology in Islam. It examines the way key thinkers in classical Islam faced perplexing questions about the nature of God and his relation to the world, all the while walking a fine line between belief in God's message as revealed in the Qur'an, and the power of the mind to discover truths on its own. Skepticism in Classical Islam reveals (...) how doubt was actually an integral part of scholarly life at this time. Skepticism is by no means synonymous with atheism. It is, rather, the admission that one cannot convincingly demonstrate a truth claim with certainty, and Islam's scholars, like their counterparts elsewhere, acknowledged such impasses, only to be inspired to find new ways to resolve the conundrums they faced. Whilst their conundrums were unique, their admission of the limits of knowledge shares much with other scholarly traditions. Seeking to put Islam on the map of the broader study of the history of scepticism, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of Religion, History and Philosophy. (shrink)

I summarize the main argument of Transformative Experience (OUP 2014). The book develops familiar examples from classical philosophical debates, as well as original examples, to argue that an agent’s decision to undergo a transformative experience—an experience constituted by radical personal and epistemic change for the agent—must either be authentic or irrational, but not both. The Precis of Transformative Experience walks the reader through the main ideas involved in epistemically and personally transformative experiences, the problems they pose for rational decision-making, and (...) discusses a number of key original examples of transformative experiences. (shrink)

Contemporary social-scientific research seeks to identify specific causal mechanisms for outcomes of theoretical interest. Experiments that randomize populations to treatment and control conditions are the “gold standard” for causal inference. We identify, describe, and analyze the problem posed by transformative treatments. Such treatments radically change treated individuals in a way that creates a mismatch in populations, but this mismatch is not empirically detectable at the level of counterfactual dependence. In such cases, the identification of causal pathways is underdetermined in a (...) previously unrecognized way. Moreover, if the treatment is indeed transformative it breaks the inferential structure of the experimental design. Transformative treatments are not curiosities or “corner cases,” but are plausible mechanisms in a large class of events of theoretical interest, particularly ones where deliberate randomization is impractical and quasi-experimental designs are sought instead. They cast long-running debates about treatment and selection effects in a new light, and raise new methodological challenges. (shrink)

The debate over the temporal arrow is a debate over what fundamental ontology is needed for the temporal asymmetry of the universe, which determines the fact that time seems to be oriented or directed from earlier to later. This temporal asymmetry underlies (or, as some might argue, is the same as) the asymmetrical fact that the past is fixed while the future is open, as well as the global asymmetries of counterfactual, causal and agential direction. I explore the metaphysics of (...) the temporal direction within the context of empirical work in psychology and cognitive science. I argue that, in our debate over the metaphysics of the temporal arrow, we need to explore some of the deep connections between our cognitive response to the world and our metaphysical theory of the temporal direction. (shrink)

This article offers an overview of the various formulations of "jihad" during the first six Islamic centuries (7th-13th CE), showing them to be embedded in particular socio-historical contexts. If the essential significance of "jihad" as righteous cause (i.e., action for the sake of a moral order) is shown to have been variously altered according to the needs and conditions of the Muslim community, significant possibilities arise for a contemporary understanding of "jihad" that is relevant to the needs and circumstances of (...) the Muslim community today. Some features of the "jihad" tradition, although specific to a particular period and with little relevance today, continue to inform the current discussion on "jihad." Discussion of the "jihad" tradition, then, should take care to distinguish the historically incidental features of the tradition from those with an enduring relevancy. By doing so, the "jihad" tradition will be able to contribute to discussions on the relation of religion to the public order and political organization, even those not limited to Islam. (shrink)

I defend a one category ontology: an ontology that denies that we need more than one fundamental category to support the ontological structure of the world. Categorical fundamentality is understood in terms of the metaphysically prior, as that in which everything else in the world consists. One category ontologies are deeply appealing, because their ontological simplicity gives them an unmatched elegance and spareness. I’m a fan of a one category ontology that collapses the distinction between particular and property, replacing it (...) with a single fundamental category of intrinsic characters or qualities. We may describe the qualities as qualitative charactersor as modes, perhaps on the model of Aristotelian qualitative (nonsubstantial) kinds, and I will use the term “properties” interchangeably with “qualities”. The qualities are repeatable and reasonably sparse, although, as I discuss in section 2.6, there are empirical reasons that may suggest, depending on one’s preferred fundamental physical theory, that they include irreducibly intensive qualities. There are no uninstantiated qualities. I also assume that the fundamental qualitative natures are intrinsic, although physics may ultimately suggest that some of them are extrinsic. On my view, matter, concrete objects, abstract objects, and perhaps even spacetime are constructed from mereological fusions of qualities, so the world is simply a vast mixture of qualities, including polyadic properties (i.e., relations). This means that everything there is, including concrete objects like persons or stars, is a quality, a qualitative fusion, or a portion of the extended qualitative fusion that is the worldwhole. I call my view mereological bundle theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the spatiotemporalist approach way of modeling the fundamental constituents, structure, and composition of the world has taken a wrong turn. Spatiotemporalist approaches to fundamental structure take the fundamental nature of the world to be spatiotemporal: they take the category of spatiotemporal to be fundamental. I argue that the debates over the nature of the fundamental space in the physics show us that (i) the fact that it is conceivable that the manifest world could be (...) exactly as it appears to us, even though spatiotemporal entities are not fundamental, means that a central premise of spatiotemporalism, that we may assume, given ordinary experience, that the world is fundamentally spatiotemporal, is false. (ii) Spatiotemporalism must be seen as a contingent, a posteriori physical truth. Finally, (iii) I argue that a metaphysically deeper conclusion follows from the debate over the nature of the fundamental space. The debate in physics over which sort of space is the fundamental space suggests that physicists have discovered that, even if a spacetime is an actual constituent of the world-space category, there is a world-space category that is more fundamental than the category of spacetime. (shrink)

Ecological communities around the world are under threat while a consensus theory of community structure remains elusive. In the last decade ecologists have struggled with two seemingly opposing theories: niche-based theory that explains diversity with species’ differences and the neutral theory of biodiversity that claims that much of the diversity we observe can be explained without explicitly invoking species’ differences. Although ecologists are increasingly attempting to reconcile these two theories, there is still much resistance against the neutral theory of biodiversity. (...) Here we argue that the dispute between the two theories is a classic example of the dichotomy between philosophical perspectives, realism and instrumentalism. Realism is associated with specific, small-scale and detailed explanations, whereas instrumentalism is linked to general, large-scale, but less precise accounts. Recognizing this will help ecologists get both niche-based and neutral theories in perspective as useful tools for understanding biodiversity patterns. (shrink)

A theory of the causal relate as aspects or property instances is developed. A supposed problem for transitivity is assessed and then resolved with aspects as the causal relata.

The revival of religion is almost a matter of rhetoric. The work is difficult, perhaps impossible, but it at least reminds us that Our Lord asked us in His work to be not only as gentle as doves, but as wise as serpents.In this essay I argue that René Girard's project invites the difficult, perhaps impossible, work of inventing a revived Christian discourse.1 To suggest that Girard has left a rhetorical task may seem strange. Rhetoric, according to conventional wisdom, is (...) the art of making the unpalatable palatable. In the absence of true knowledge, rhetoric may do, but it is always the lesser option, an art for a fallen world. These common... (shrink)

Developmental psychologists have often portrayed young children as stubborn autodidacts who ignore the testimony of others. Yet the basic design of the human cognitive system indicates an early ability to co-ordinate information derived from first-hand observation with information derived from testimony. There is no obvious tendency to favour the former over the latter. Indeed, young children are relatively poor at monitoring whether they learned something from observation or from testimony. Moreover, the processes by which children and adults understand and remember (...) a sequence of events appear to be similar, whether they witness that sequence or are told about it. Children’s early receptivity to testimony raises the question of whether and how children discern what testimony is reliable. Arguably, before the emergence of reflective judgement, children are equipped with a tacit filtering device. To be understood, any new piece of testimony typically needs to be consistent with, and integrated into, what is already known about the topic in question. Children’s impoverished knowledge base will make that integrative process relatively slow. Thus, children’s early ignorance may often save them from misplaced credulity.Author Keywords: Trust; Testimony; Sources ; Cognitive development; Situation model. (shrink)

Several philosophers have recently developed accounts of relative truth. Given that logical consequence is often characterized in terms of truth preservation, notions of truth are often associated with corresponding notions of logical consequence. Accordingly, in his Assessment Sensitivity: Relative Truth and Its Applications, John MacFarlane provides two different definitions of logical consequence that incorapte assessment context-sensitive truth. One motivation for adopting an assessment context-sensitive account of truth for judgements about taste is to explain how conflicting taste claims can be true (...) relative to different contexts of assessment. However, in the midst of dialogues in which conflicting taste claims are made, it is also possible for the participants in the dialogue to make conflicting claims about what inferences are and are not logically valid. This paper accomplishes two objectives. First, I argue that MacFarlane’s notions of logical consequence do not adequately account for important features of some dialogues in which conflicting logical claims are made. In particular, I argue that MacFarlane’s accounts of logical consequence do not explain how logical claims made about inferences in taste-discourse could be assessment context-sensitive. Second, I propose a consequence relation that can be incorporated into an assessment context-sensitive account of logical claims made about inferences in taste discourse. (shrink)

It seems natural to choose whether to have a child by reflecting on what it would be like to actually have a child. I argue that this natural approach fails. If you choose to become a parent, and your choice is based on projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. If you choose to remain childless, and your choice is based upon projections about what you think it (...) would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. This suggests we should reject our ordinary conception of how to make this life-changing decision, and raises general questions about how to rationally approach important life choices. (shrink)

I address two related questions: first, what is the best theory of how objects have de re modal properties? Second, what is the best defence of essentialism given the variability of our modal intuitions? I critically discuss several theories of how objects have their de re modal properties and address the most threatening antiessentialist objection to essentialism: the variability of our modal intuitions. Drawing on linguistic treatments of vagueness and ambiguity, I show how essentialists can accommodate the variability of modal (...) intuitions while holding that objects have their modal properties independently of contexts. (shrink)

The question I want to explore is whether experience supports an antireductionist ontology of time, that is, whether we should take it to support an ontology that includes a primitive, monadic property of nowness responsible for the special feel of events in the present, and a relation of passage that events instantiate in virtue of literally passing from the future, to the present, and then into the past.

In recent discussions concerning the definition of argument, it has been maintained that the word ‘argument’ exhibits the process-product ambiguity, or an act/object ambigu-ity. Drawing on literature on lexical ambiguity we argue that ‘argument’ is not ambiguous. The term ‘argu-ment’ refers to an object, not to a speech act. We also examine some of the important implications of our argument by considering the question: what sort of abstract objects are arguments?