What is the real significance of covariance anyway, and why should it be regarded as so fundamental ? What we mean by a covariant expression is one whose ...

Throughout his literary career Walker Percy read and studied the philosophical thought of Charles Sanders Peirce in an attempt to re-present in language the world as Percy knew it. Beginning in 1984 and ending in 1990, the year of his death, Percy corresponded with Kenneth Laine Ketner about the "semiotic" of Peirce. Their letters - honest, instructive, and often filled with down-home humor - record an epistolary friendship of two men both passionately interested in Peirce's theory of (...) signs. This volume of letters provides a rich philosophical perspective for better understanding the fiction and nonfiction of Walker Percy. (shrink)

The “Slicing Problem” is a thought experiment that raises questions for substrate-neutral computational theories of consciousness, including those that specify a certain causal structure for the computation like Integrated Information Theory. The thought experiment uses water-based logic gates to construct a computer in a way that permits cleanly slicing each gate and connection in half, creating two identical computers each instantiating the same computation. The slicing can be reversed and repeated via an on/off switch, without changing the amount of matter (...) in the system. The question is what do different computational theories of consciousness believe is happening to the number and nature of individual conscious units as this switch is toggled. Under a token interpretation, there are now two discrete conscious entities; under a type interpretation, there may remain only one. Both interpretations lead to different implications depending on the adopted theoretical stance. Any route taken either allows mechanisms for “consciousness-multiplying exploits” or requires ambiguous boundaries between conscious entities, raising philosophical and ethical questions for theorists to consider. We discuss resolutions under different theories of consciousness for those unwilling to accept consciousness-multiplying exploits. In particular, we specify three features that may help promising physicalist theories to navigate such thought experiments. (shrink)

Cyril Scott once described Percy Grainger as a `lovable eccentric'. The Australian-American pianist, composer, ethnologist, and aspiring `all-round man' was, however, more eccentric to his own age than to ours. His views on the environment, food, the body, participatory democracy, and sex all anticipated by several decades views more typical of the mid-late twentieth century. Prolific as a composer, performer, and recording artist, Grainger was an indefatigable writer. This selection of forty-six essays about the production, promotion, and propagation of (...) music is drawn from his over 150 public writings. Written between the turn of the century and the early 1950s, these essays reveal Grainger's youthful compositional plans, his ideas about piano technique, and his enduring high regard for the music of Edvard Grieg, Frederick Delius, and `Frankfurt Group' colleagues Cyril Scott, Roger Quilter, and Henry Balfour Gardiner. Grainger on Music also pursues his evolving thoughts about Nordic music, `Free Music', instrumental usage, and his occasional suggestions for musical development in Australia and the United States. (shrink)

The stream of human consciousness appears to be interruptible, in that we can experience a sensation of ‘returning to ourselves after an absence of content’ (e.g. sleep, anaesthesia, full-absorption meditation). Prima facie, such evidence poses a challenge to simple applications of theories of consciousness based on electromagnetic or neural activity in the brain, because some of this activity persists during periods of interruption. This paper elaborates one of several possible responses to the challenge. We build on a previous theory in (...) which EM field topology delineates complex macrophenomenal experience. We first apply an analytic lens to identify different ways in which field topologies might generate sensations of ‘absence of content’. We then test the feasibility of a particular phenomenological approach for assessing those field topologies, powered by the unusual lucidity about cessation pathways induced via certain meditation practices and psychedelic dosages. We build computational simulations of these cessation pathways and test them on eight interviewees with various levels of experience in cessation states. We conclude that this approach can generate usable insight, but requires further formalisation to fulfil its potential. The findings tentatively support our claims but the theory remains speculative at this stage. We set out empirical tests with 11 specific predictions, both for further phenomenological research and for brain manipulation research. Although they align neatly, our ontological and cessation theories can also be separated. The paper describes how our theories can be consistent with other perspectives on consciousness, such as variants of predictive processing or global network theory. (shrink)

In 1971, John Rawls published A Theory of Justice, the burden of which was strongly egalitarian. But Rawls eventually came to the conclusion that the project of working out a stable, well‐ordered society as argued in A Theory of Justice had failed. In 1993, in Political Liberalism, Rawls sought to establish a sounder theoretical foundation for a stable, well‐ordered society. Rawls was widely viewed, however, as having given up egalitarianism in Political Liberalism ‐ the commitment to a fair distribution, or (...) ‘justice as fairness’, along lines originally developed in A Theory of Justice. I argue, by contrast, that Political Liberalism does not in fact repudiate the egalitarianism of A Theory of Justice. Political liberalism has many variants, including variant conceptions of justice. In the first part of what follows, the question is raised whether political liberalism can defend a conception of justice that is as egalitarian as ‘justice as fairness’. Such a conception would guarantee the fair value of political liberties and would also contain the so‐called ‘difference principal’, which states that social and economic inequalities are to be adjusted so that they are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged. Although it seems possible to defend such an egalitarian conception of justice, it does not seem necessary, all the same, that all variants of political liberalism should be as egalitarian as justice as fairness. Thus, in the second part of my argument, I seek to overturn, or at least substantially to qualify, the idea that there is no need for political liberalism to be strongly egalitarian. I conclude that the egalitarian credentials of political liberalism have to be bolstered, even more so than Rawls himself seems to think. (shrink)

Implementing an algorithm on part of our causally-interconnected physical environment requires three choices that are typically considered arbitrary, i.e. no single option is innately privileged without invoking an external observer perspective. First, how to delineate one set of local causal relationships from the environment. Second, within this delineation, which inputs and outputs to designate for attention. Third, what meaning to assign to particular states of the designated inputs and outputs. Having explained these types of arbitrariness, we assess their relevance for (...) algorithms from various computational theories of mind (CTM) seeking to account for phenomenal consciousness. Some CTM accounts can survive some of these arbitrariness challenges, but eventually each one examined faces a trilemma. Each is under pressure to dilute at least one of three important CTM desiderata: its causal relevance, its substrate neutrality, or its assignment discrimination (e.g. ability to avoid near-panpsychism). However, unlike previous research, we suggest the debate cannot be fully settled at the level of principle. Certain complex CTM algorithms may be salvageable, albeit not the algorithms specified to date. The paper specifies three areas of investigative work, as well as further theoretical avenues of research, which computationalists may wish to explore to escape the trilemma. (shrink)

Beschrijving van het leven en gedachtegoed van de Amerikaanse rechtsfilosoof John Rawls, die in zijn werk een filosofisch concept uitwerkte van een samenleving waarin vrijheid en gelijkheid beide tot hun recht zouden komen.

In a comprehensive assessment of the penetration of Rawls's ideas in the Netherlands since 1971 five debates are discerned in which different aspects are highlighted or play a role. Some of these debates are more or less ongoing ones, some overlap with each other, and some can be pinpointed more precisely in time. In the first 15 years following the publication of A Theory of Justice, attention was focused on the distributive implications of `justice as fairness'. Next, the `liberalism-communitarianism debate' (...) came to the fore. More recently, Kantian aspects of Rawls's theory have been discussed. A fourth, also more recent debate relates to problems of multiculturalism. Finally, in recent years, and more or less in conjunction with the debate on multiculturalism, the current situation of the Dutch welfare state has been discussed. Here we get back to the core of Rawlsian theory, its distributive implications. But now it is argued that this theory focuses too much on equality at the expense of responsibility and incentives. (shrink)

Though I have been a member of this Institute, I think from its foundation, I have been a steadily inactive member, and have resisted with what grace I could the blandishments of our Secretary when he has suggested that I should address my fellow-members. For I am not a philosopher, either by training or, I fear, by instinct; and, now that I have allowed myself to be inveigled into this place, I feel that I am brawling in church. I am (...) the most ill-informed of laymen, and, if you feel any interest at all in what I am about to say, it will, I fear, only be the rueful interest that the expert sometimes takes in an exhibition of ignorance. (shrink)