Being human while trying to scientifically study human nature confronts us with our most vexing problem. Efforts to explicate the human mind are thwarted by our cultural biases and entrenched infirmities; our first-person experiences as practical agents convince us that we have capacities beyond the reach of scientific explanation. What we need to move forward in our understanding of human agency, Paul Sheldon Davies argues, is a reform in the way we study ourselves and a long overdue break with (...) traditional humanist thinking. Davies locates a model for change in the rhetorical strategies employed by Charles Darwin in _On the Origin of Species_. Darwin worked hard to anticipate and diminish the anxieties and biases that his radically historical view of life was bound to provoke. Likewise, Davies draws from the history of science and contemporary psychology and neuroscience to build a framework for the study of human agency that identifies and diminishes outdated and limiting biases. The result is a heady, philosophically wide-ranging argument in favor of recognizing that humans are, like everything else, subjects of the natural world—an acknowledgement that may free us to see the world the way it actually is. (shrink)

We examine possible causal structures of experiments with entangled quantum objects. Previously, these structures have been obscured by assuming a misleading probabilistic analysis of quantum non locality as 'Outcome Dependence or Parameter Dependence' and by directly associating these correlations with influences. Here we try to overcome these shortcomings: we proceed from a recent stronger Bell argument, which provides an appropriate probabilistic description, and apply the rigorous methods of causal graph theory. Against the standard view that there is only an influence (...) between the measurement outcomes, we show that there must be an influence from one setting to its distant outcome: EPR correlations can only come about if one of the outcomes is a common effect of both settings. Our discussion makes explicit under which assumptions similar conclusions from information theoretic considerations can be interpreted causally. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper is a case study in public health ethics. It considers whether there is a basis in ethics for political action by health professionals and their associations in response to inhumane treatment. The issue arises from Australia's treatment of asylum seekers and the charge that this treatment has been both immoral and inhumane. This judgement raises several questions of broader significance in bioethics and of significance to the emerging field of public health ethics. These questions relate to the (...) role of health professionals in response to inhumane treatment of people in their charge; to the discipline of public health in light of a growing recognition of its ethical basis; and the role of public health and bioethical associations in response to ethical issues arising in a political context. It is argued that, in serious cases of humanitarian and human rights abuses affecting health and well‐being, there is a case for political action by health professionals, academic and professional institutions, and associations of public health and ethics. (shrink)

W. V. Quine was the most important naturalistic philosopher of the twentieth century and a major impetus for the recent resurgence of the view that empirical science is our best avenue to knowledge. His views, however, have not been well understood. Critics charge that Quine’s naturalized epistemology is circular and that it cannot be normative. Yet, such criticisms stem from a cluster of fundamental traditional assumptions regarding language, theory, and the knowing subject – the very presuppositions that Quine is at (...) pains to reject. Through investigation of Quine’s views regarding language, knowledge, and reality, the author offers a new interpretation of Quine’s naturalism. The naturalism/antinaturalism debate can be advanced only by acknowledging and critiquing the substantial theoretical commitments implicit in the traditional view. Gregory argues that the responses to the circularity and non-normativity objections do just that. His analysis further reveals that Quine’s departure from the tradition penetrates the conception of the knowing subject, and he thus offers a new and engaging defence of Quine’s naturalism. (shrink)

Epistemic Analysis, as I conceive of it, is concerned with the analysis of knowledge. The precincts of my concern have, however, been determined by the ...

There are basic questions concerning truth that have been perennial throughout the history of philosophy from the Ancient Greeks onwards: Is 'true' a ...

Some patients with damaged striate cortex have blindsight-the ability to discriminate unseen stimuli in their clinically blind visual field defects when forced-choice procedures are used. Blindsight implies a sharp dissociation between visual performance and visual awareness, but signal detection theory indicates that it might be indistinguishable from the behavior of normal subjects near the lower limit of conscious vision, where the dissociations could arise trivially from using different response criteria during clinical and forced-choice tests. We tested the latter possibility with (...) a hemianopic subject during yes-no and forced-choice detection of static and moving targets. His response criterion differed significantly between yes-no and forced-choice responding, and the difference was sufficient to produce a blindsight-like dissociation with bias-sensitive measures of performance. When measured independently of bias, his sensitivity to static targets was greater in the forced-choice than in the yes-no task (unlike normal control subjects), but his sensitivity to moving targets did not differ. Differences in response criterion could therefore account for dissociations between yes-no and forced-choice detection of motion, but not of static pattern. The results explain why patients with blindsight are apparently more often ''aware'' of moving stimuli than of static stimuli. However, they also imply that blindsight is unlike normal vision near threshold, and that pattern- and motion-detection in blindsight may depend on different sets of neural mechanisms during yes-no and forced-choice tests. (shrink)

Since 1790, the term Naturwissenschaften occurs in the lecture lists of the University of Jena published in the Allgemeine Literatur‐Zeitung of Jena. Naturwissenschaften is used as a title for lectures previously listed under the headings of Philosophie or Naturgeschichte. The introduction of the concept of Naturwissenschaften is interesting for several reasons: Firstly, at that time it is not the usual label in this context, and one therefore has to ask whether it already implies the connotations that are associated with the (...) modern concept of Naturwissenschaften, i. e. science in the modern sense. Secondly, the lecture lists of the University of Jena give insight into the various changes in the established ordering scheme for academic lectures that lead to the introduction of the term Naturwissenschaften, thus contributing to a better understanding of both the history of this concept and of the development of the university faculties as we know them. A close look at the concept of Naturwissenschaften as it was used around 1800 may, thirdly, help to understand the use made of this concept in philosophy, especially in the philosophy of nature of this period. (shrink)

Phenomenal character is the what-it's-likeness of subjective experience. I develop an ontology of phenomenal feel as process. My being in some phenomenal state R is the process of my instantiating R’s neurological correlate. The ontology explains why we have asymmetric epistemic access to phenomenal characters: the ontological ground for the subjective or first-personal stance is different from the ontological ground for the objective or third-personal stance. I end by situating my account in debates about physicalism.

David Papineau (2003; 2005) has discussed the relationship between social learning and the family of postulated evolutionary processes that includes ‘organic selection’, ‘coincident selection’, ‘autonomisation’, ‘the Baldwin effect’ and ‘genetic assimilation’. In all these processes a trait which initially develops in the members of a population as a result of some interaction with the environment comes to develop without that interaction in their descendants. It is uncontroversial that the development of an identical phenotypic trait might depend on an interaction with (...) the environment in one population and not in another. For example, some species of passerine songbirds require exposure to species-typical songs in order to reproduce those songs whilst others do not. Hence we can envisage a species beginning with one type of developmental pathway and evolving the other type. If, however, the successive evolution of these two developmental pathways were a mere coincidence, selection first favoring the ability to acquire the trait and later, quite independently, favoring the ability to develop it autonomously, then this would not be a distinctive kind of evolutionary process, but merely two standard instances of natural selection. George Gaylord Simpson pointed this out in the paper that gave us the term ‘Baldwin effect’ (Simpson, 1953). The real interest of the Baldwin effect and its relatives lies in the mechanisms which might link the evolution of the two developmental pathways, so that acquiring the trait through interaction with the environment makes it more likely that later generations will evolve the ability to acquire the same trait without that interaction. (shrink)

Quite remarkably, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling uses the notion of “drive” in analysing important cognitive achievements: An important instance of this attitude can be found in his characterizing Kant as a philosopher who operates in the basis of instincts. His key argument in adopting “drives” as key to the cognitive faculties of humans derives from the conviction that cognitive endeavours need to be open and directed towards grasping reality not in individual items, but as a totality. He arrives, in employing (...) these terms, at an understanding of science, and of cognition in general, as an open, future-directed, and dynamic process. This chapter presents an overview of Schelling’s usage of “drive”-related terms, discusses his rather detailed description of the mechanics of drives within the structure of human faculties, and draws some conclusions as to Schelling’s understanding of “science” and the dynamics of science. (shrink)

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 contribution offers a sense of the scope and transdisciplinary relevance of the philosophy of British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead by providing an overview of the three main phases of his career. The contribution goes on to distinguish process thought from the substance thought which dominated modern philosophy, and to outline some of the ways in which Whitehead has influenced thought from across the full spectrum of academic disciplines.

“Radical The paper provides a survey of arguments for claims that rational agents should have transitive preferences and argues that they are not valid. The presentation is based on a chapter for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Rational and Social Choice.

Religion, reason, and the enchanted public sphere -- Minor protest(ant)s: Cohen and German-Jewish liberalism -- The dialectic of enchantment: science, religion, and secular reasoning -- Rights, religion, and race: Cohen's ethical socialism and the specter of anti-Semitism -- Enchanted reasoning: self-reflexive religion and minority -- Some minor reflections of enchantment.

In our target article, we discussed the standards of evidence that could be used to identify adaptations, and argued that building an empirical case that certain features of a trait are best explained by exaptation, spandrel, or constraint requires the consideration, testing, and rejection of adaptationist hypotheses. We are grateful to the 31 commentators for their thoughtful insights. They raised important issues, including the meaning of “exaptation”; whether Gould and Lewontin's critique of adaptationism was primarily epistemological or ontological; the necessity, (...) sufficiency, or utility of design evidence, phylogenetic analyses, homology, and molecular genetics in distinguishing exaptations from adaptations; whether adaptationists accept adaptationist hypotheses too quickly; and the real utility of adaptationism to human behavioral science. We organize our response along the major points of the target article, in some situations defending our original claims and in others modifying them. While debate on these issues will undoubtedly continue, we are cautiously optimistic that the main points of the target article (as modified by our response) will help move the debate in a positive direction. (shrink)

Young traces the evolution of the term information from its general linguistic use into the mainstream of modern science, proposing an entirely new definition of information as a mass-energy phenomenon. He demonstrates that: information is in all cases a form phenomenon; both form and information are mass-energy rather than abstract phenomena; mind can be viewed as a mass-energy rather form-manipulating process; form constitutes a mechanism immanent in the physical universe via which mass-energy systems can communicate informationally and control their own (...) energetic activities. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky and Frances Egan argue that David Marr’s computational theory of vision is not intentional, claiming that the formal scientific theory does not include description of visual content. They also argue that the theory is internalist in the sense of not describing things physically external to the perceiver. They argue that these claims hold for computational theories of vision in general. Beyond theories of vision, they argue that representational content does not figure as a topic within formal computational theories (...) in cognitive science. I demonstrate that Chomsky’s and Egan’s claims about Marr’s theory are false. Marr’s computational theory contains a mathematical theory of visual content, based on empirical psychophysical evidence. It also contains mathematical descriptions of distal physical surfaces and objects, and of their optic projection to the perceiver. Much computational research on vision contains these types of intentional and externalist components within the formal, mathematical, theories. Chomsky’s and Egan’s claims demonstrate inadequate study and understanding of Marr’s work and other research in this area. Computational theories of vision, by containing empirically based mathematical theories of visual content, to this extent present naturalizations of semantics. (shrink)

Initial Teacher Education quality is often judged through the auspices of audit-style mechanisms designed to facilitate the identification of matters pertaining to the ‘readiness’ of student teachers to enter the world of the classroom as fully qualified. In this regard, quality of programmes is often determined by the knowledge and skills student teachers demonstrate. Whilst ontological aspects are not necessarily elided, they are often ignored in favour of such epistemological matters. While such knowledge-based positions do not describe the totality of (...) ITE quality evaluation they do predominate. This paper identifies a tripartite heuristic for the identification of ITE epistemology that explicitly refers to, and is requiring of, ontological matters in the development of student teachers: identifying teaching, doing teaching, knowing teaching. Whilst it is the result of a Scottish project, Measuring the Quality of Initial Teacher Education, its emphasis is notable for other countries. (shrink)

The Aristotelian notion of a proper mixture is that of a homogeneous body potentially separable into a definite proportion of elements. Its relation to more modern chemical ideas is not without interest despite the success of modern atomic theory. But there is a fundamental conflict entailed by Aristotle’s two approaches to the characterisation of elements, one in terms of the properties they exhibit in isolation and another in terms of their role as constituents of compounds. Although one source of problems (...) for Aristotle has been put aside in modern chemistry, it seems that the underlying tension remains an issue. (shrink)