A major, but too-little-considered problem for Software Engineering is a lack of consensus concerning Computer Science and how this relates to developing unpredictable computing technology. We consider some implications for SE of computer systems differing scientific basis, exemplified with the International Standard Organisations Open Systems Interconnection layered architectural model. An architectural view allows comparison of computing technology components facilitating a view of computing as a continuum. For example, at one layer of computer architecture, components written in Turing-complete machine language can (...) be seen as deterministic and consistent with a theoretical paradigm of CS. At another layer, components closer to the human sphere have been seen as non-deterministic and inconsistent with theoretical CS. We compare unpredictable development of computing technology against the cyclic legacy of technological advance and scientific discovery, and suggest that SE indicates an enabling cycle, discernible in previous scientific revolution, is stalled or possibly hidden. The CS consequence of divorcing technological advance from scientific consensus is particularly concerning. For example human/computing events could be seen as unpredictable virtual phenomena that somehow extend the ontology of CS. Our approach challenges practical and philosophical boundaries by investigating if applying scientific method resolves any SE/Science dichotomy. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant claims that transcendental idealism yields a form of realism at the empirical level. Polite silence might best describe the reception this assertion has garnered among even sympathetic interpreters. This book challenges that prejudice, offering a controversial presentation and rehabilitation of Kant's empirical realism that places his realist credentials at the centre of the account of representation he offers in the Critique of Pure Reason. This interpretation ranges over the major themes contained in the Analytic of Principles and relevant (...) portions of the Dialectic. Kant's analysis of the conditions necessary for determinate representation is shown to involve a realist understanding of the relation of mind and world. The realist character of Kant's account of empirical truth, and his commitment to the unity of nature, are defended against competing empiricist, pragmatist, and methodological readings. This title links Kant studies to contemporary philosophical debates, and will appeal to scholars and students of Kant, as well as epistemologists, metaphysicians, and philosophers of science interested in a powerful, experience-sensitive, form of realism. (shrink)

The first major advances in the understanding of the neurological bases for language abilities were the results of the study of the brains and behaviors of patients with language impairments due to focal brain damage. The two most prominent pioneers in this field are remembered because their names have become associated with distinctive aphasia (language loss) syndromes and the brain regions associated with them. In 1861 Paul Broca described the damage site in the brain of a patient who had (...) lost the ability to produce articulate speech as a result of a stroke. Broca's aphasia, as it is now commonly called, is produced by damage that involves the inferior left frontal lobe of the brain. It tends to produce both a loss of articulatory skill (sometimes but not always with paralysis) and (as discovered much later) problems with grammar and syntax, including grammatical comprehension under certain conditions. Despite speech production impairments, Broca's aphasics do not have basic word‐ and sentence‐comprehension difficulties, when comprehension is not dependent on syntactic analysis. In 1874 Carl Wernicke demonstrated that damage to the left superior temporal lobe produced a different syndrome of language impairments. Wernicke's aphasia generally spares fluent, syntactic speech but impairs the use and comprehension of content words. Wernicke's aphasics'speech includes inappropriate word substitutions, neologisms, and semantic confusions, and their comprehension is similarly disturbed. These early studies also demonstrated that these aphasic disturbances were almost exclusively associated with damage to the structures of the left cerebral hemisphere, even though anatomically corresponding structures are present on both sides of the brain. However, this is not true of all language functions. Some left‐handed individuals can suffer aphasia from right hemisphere damage, and recent studies of patients with right hemisphere damage without aphasia have demonstrated impairment of their comprehension above the sentence level (e.g., interpretation of jokes and stories) and in the production and interpretation of prosodic features of speech (rhythmic and tonal patterning that conveys emphasis and emotion). (shrink)

In their highly topical paper, Grahamet alargued that Trusted Research Environments (TREs) are not actually about trust because they reduce or remove ‘…the need for trust in the use and sharing of patient health data’. We believe this is fundamentally mistaken. TREs mitigate or remove some risks, but they do not address all public concerns. In this regard, TREs provide evidence for people to decide whether the bodies holding and using their data can be trusted. TREs may make it easier (...) for people to trust but there is still a need for that trust. (shrink)

This chapter examines the stages of processing meta‐theory (SPM) that has guided construction of theories in psychology during the past 350 years, from philosopher René Descartes in seventeenth‐century France to neuropsychologists Carl Wernicke and Paul Broca in nineteenth‐century Europe to psychologists Dominic Massaro and Alan Baddeley in late twentieth‐century America and Britain. The most basic SPM assumptions are that processing and storage of information take place within a finite number of autonomous modules or stages, and that some stages are (...) sequentially ordered with respect to others. Flowcharts typically summarize these assumptions. The traditional stages of processing for verbal information are comprehension, storage, retrieval, and production. SPM flowcharts can add new stages and can alter old labels to represent new types of information processing, but whatever the labels, the stages must be finite in number, distinct, independent, and sequentially ordered between input and output. (shrink)

De Marco and colleagues claim that the standard account of invasiveness as commonly encountered ‘…does not capture all uses of the term in relation to medical interventions1 ’. This is open to challenge. Their first example is ‘non-invasive prenatal testing’. Because it involves puncturing the skin to obtain blood, De Marco et al take this as an example of how an incision or insertion is not sufficient to make an intervention invasive; here is a procedure that involves an incision, but (...) it is regarded as non-invasive. However, this ignores the context, and the term should really be understood in reference to the fetus. It is hard to believe healthcare professionals regard taking blood to measure, for example, ferritin levels as invasive but taking blood to look for fragments of fetal DNA as not. If anyone uses the term thinking it is not invasive to the mother, the solution would be to call it invasive, not redefine what is invasive. De Marco and colleagues’ second example is describing electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) as invasive. However, this is not borne out by their referenced papers. The first cited source is about non-invasive brain stimulation2 and only contains a single sentence about ECT. This sentence may suggest that their view is that ECT …. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Section 1: Rational Judgment and Understanding Section 2: The Structure of Systematicity Section 3: Systematicity as Methodological Maxim? Section 4: Nature and Rational Structure.

The significance of Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary philosophy has been generally recognized for over a century, as the familiarity of his phrase “survival of the fittest” indicates, yet accounts of the origins of his system still tend to follow too closely his own description, written many decades later. This essay argues that Spencer’s own interpretation of his intellectual development gives an inadequate impression of the debt he owed to provincial scientific culture and its institutions. Most important, it shows that his evolutionism (...) was originally stimulated by his association with the Derby philosophical community, for it was through this group—of which his father, who also appears to have espoused a deistic evolutionary theory, was a member—that he was first exposed to progressive Enlightenment social and educational philosophies and to the evolutionary worldview of Erasmus Darwin, the first president of the Derby Philosophical Society. Darwin’s scheme was the first to incorporate biological evolution, associationist psychology, evolutionary geology, and cosmological developmentalism. Spencer’s own implicit denials of the link with Darwin are shown to be implausible in the face of Darwin’s continuing influence on the Derby savants, the product of insecurity in his later years when he feared for his reputation as Lamarckism became increasingly untenable. (shrink)

General introduction -- The concept of science in the context of Western Civilization and the debate between science and faith -- Relationship between science and religion -- The unity of reason -- General conclusion.

The ‘universal cell reaction’ (UCR), a coordinated biphasic response to external (noxious and other) stimuli observed in all living cells, was described by Nasonov and his colleagues in the mid‐20th century. This work has received no attention from cell biologists in the West, but the UCR merits serious consideration. Although it is non‐specific, it is likely to be underpinned by precise mechanisms and, if these mechanisms were characterized and their relationship to the UCR elucidated, then our understanding of the integration (...) of cellular function could be improved. As a step towards identifying such mechanisms, I review some recent advances in understanding cell mechanics and the stress response and I suggest potentially testable hypotheses. There is a particular need for time‐course studies of cellular responses to different stimulus doses or intensities. I also suggest a correspondence with hormesis; re‐investigation of the UCR using modern biophysical and molecular‐biological techniques might throw light on this much‐discussed phenomenon. BioEssays 29:324–333, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This paper is part of a symposium on Paul Moser, _Philosophy After Objectivity (Oxford University Press, 1993). The paper replies to contributions by Philip Quinn and Robert Audi.

In this paper, I show that Nietzsche is a Kantian, and what being Kantian means. He accepts the idea that our perception is configured by concepts which unify and inform the world around us, and which result from a biological evolution of the human species. His Kantianism is thus biological and mainly influenced by Friedrich Albert Lange’s reading of Kant. But this Nietzschean conceptualism must be inscribed in his thought of the will to power, where the perceptive fixation of the (...) world is the result of a degeneration caused by the biological, psychological and historical recovery of the will to power. Thus, I show that Nietzsche’s Kantianism is as biological as it is axiological. (shrink)

Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA präsentieren seit ihrer Gründung durch Paul Wilpert im Jahre 1962 Arbeiten des Thomas-Instituts der Universität zu Köln. Das Kernstück der Publikationsreihe bilden die Akten der im zweijährigen Rhythmus stattfindenden Kölner Mediaevistentagungen, die vor über 50 Jahren von Josef Koch, dem Gründungsdirektor des Instituts, ins Leben gerufen wurden. Der interdisziplinäre Charakter dieser Kongresse prägt auch die Tagungsakten: Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA versammeln Beiträge aus allen mediävistischen Disziplinen - die mittelalterliche Geschichte, die Philosophie, die Theologie sowie die Kunst- und (...) Literaturwissenschaften sind Teile einer Gesamtbetrachtung des Mittelalters. (shrink)

This paper questions the idea that Wittgenstein’s account of meaning as use requires an intrinsically normative understanding of this notion, and suggests instead that Wittgenstein is better understood as promoting a naturalistic view of meaning that undertakes an explanation based on non–semantic and non–normative facts of word–usage. It discusses the relevant positions of Kripke, Brandom and McDowell, all of whom are found to be united by the attempt to attribute to Wittgenstein a normative understanding of language that is not convincing. (...) While language does exhibit normative properties that cannot be naturalized, the understanding speakers have of their own words is “a prima facie plausible candidate for naturalistic analysis.”. (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)

In 1894 the anthropologist Otis Tufton Mason called for research in an area he dubbed ‘technogeography’, and he lauded the potential benefits of the knowledge to be acquired under this heading: The...

Après avoir subi au début des années cinquante une sorte de procès public en raison de ses idées et traversé en conséquence une crise existentielle d'une rare intensité, Albert Camus, se retrouvant face à lui-même, a estimé que le problème majeur auquel l'humanité est désormais confrontée consiste dans ce besoin impérieux qu'ont les hommes de s'accuser mutuellement et de faire ainsi de leur existence un procès permanent, transformant tour à tour les mêmes personnes en prévenus, en procureurs, en avocats, en (...) témoins et en juges. Le problème, qui n'est autre que celui du jugement que les hommes portent les uns sur les autres, tient donc au fait que ceux-ci, alors même qu'ils ne croient plus au jugement de Dieu, continuent de croire qu'être juste c'est être juge. Pour expliquer que la dissociation de la justice et du jugement devrait révéler un horizon de sens nouveau à une humanité privée de boussole, Paul Audi s'applique d'abord dans cet essai à mesurer la profondeur de la crise qui a conduit l'auteur de La Chute à coucher sur le papier, quelques mois seulement avant sa mort, ce terrible ultimatum : "Je me fais la guerre et je me détruirai ou je renaîtrai, c'est tout". (shrink)

Les mots parlent souvent d’eux-mêmes et au-delà de nos intentions les plus naturelles. Parler de décliner son identité, c’est un peu comme prétendre qu’elle est susceptible de descriptions diversement colorées. On ne se dit effectivement pas sur le même ton à l’officier de police et au groupe de travail nouvellement intégré et où l’on est..

Wittgenstein was apparently looking for someone else. It was because he had not been successful that he had knocked at the Leavises’ door, to bide his time there before he looked again. On entering the house, he immediately peered through the window into the street. Yet after a moment he turned and said abruptly: “You’ve got a gramophone, I see—I don’t suppose you’ve anything worth playing.” And “Then,” so Leavis continues the description,with a marked change of tone, he exclaimed “Ah!”: (...) from the repository just at hand he pulled out the album of Schubert’s Great C Major Symphony and put the first record on the machine. A moment after the music began to sound he lifted the tone-arm, altered the speed, and lowered... (shrink)

In _Rawlsian Political Analysis: Rethinking the Microfoundations of Social Science, _Paul Clements develops a new, morally grounded model of political and social analysis as a critique of and improvement on both neoclassical economics and rational choice theory. What if practical reason is based not only on interests and ideas of the good, as these theories have it, but also on principles and sentiments of right? The answer, Clements argues, requires a radical reorientation of social science from the idea of interests (...) to the idea of social justice. According to Clements, systematic weaknesses in neoclassical economics and rational choice theory are due to their limited model of choice. According to such theories in the utilitarian tradition, all our practical decisions aim to maximize the satisfaction of our interests. These neo-utilitarian approaches focus on how we promote our interests, but Clements argues, our ideas of right, cognitively represented in principles, contribute independently and no less fundamentally to our practical decisions. The most significant challenge to utilitarianism in the last half century is found in John Rawls’s _Theory of Justice _and _Political Liberalism_, in which Rawls builds on Kant's concept of practical reason. Clements extends Rawls's moral theory and his critique of utilitarianism by arguing for social analysis based on the Kantian and Rawlsian model of choice. To illustrate the explanatory power of his model, he presents three detailed case studies: a program analysis of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, a political economy analysis of the causes of poverty in the Indian state of Bihar, and a problem-based analysis of the ethics and politics of climate change. He concludes by exploring the broad implications of social analysis grounded in a concept of social justice. “Paul Clements’s _Rawlsian Political Analysis _mounts an important intervention into the philosophy of the social sciences, challenging the tired fact/value, empirical/normative binaries that continue to impoverish social analysis. His insistence that social analysis must engage both facts and norms, the empirical and the normative, the good and the right, interest and principle—and that empirical social scientists must engage constructively on questions of autonomy and social justice—is noble and ultimately essential if social science is to justify its place in the years to come.” —_Fonna Forman-Barzilai, University of California, San Diego_. (shrink)

Philosophy and Kafka is a collection of original essays interrogating the relationship of literature and philosophy. The essays either discuss specific philosophical commentaries on Kafka’s work, consider the possible relevance of certain philosophical outlooks for examining Kafka’s writings, or examine Kafka’s writings in terms of a specific philosophical theme, such as communication and subjectivity, language and meaning, knowledge and truth, the human/animal divide, justice, and freedom.