Lockheed Martin Corp. has funded research to generate a framework and methodology for developing semantic reasoning applications to support the discipline oflntelligence Analysis. This chapter outlines that framework, discusses how it may be used to advance the information sharing and integrated analytic needs of the Intelligence Community, and suggests a system I software architecture for such applications.

Research and engineering in the quantum domain involve long chains of activity involving theory development, hypothesis formation, experimentation, device prototyping, device testing, and many more. At each stage multiple paths become possible, and of the paths pursued, the majority will lead nowhere. Our quantum metascience approach provides a strategy which enables all stakeholders to gain an overview of those developments along these tracks, that are relevant to their specific concerns. It provides a controlled vocabulary, built out of terms that are (...) designed to be maximally comprehensible to all groups of stakeholders and across all the sub-fields of the quantum domain. (shrink)

Understanding Computers and Cognition presents an important and controversial new approach to understanding what computers do and how their functioning is related to human language, thought, and action. While it is a book about computers, Understanding Computers and Cognition goes beyond the specific issues of what computers can or can't do. It is a broad-ranging discussion exploring the background of understanding in which the discourse about computers and technology takes place. Understanding Computers and Cognition is written for a wide audience, (...) not just those professionals involved in computer design or artificial intelligence. It represents an important contribution to the ongoing discussion about what it means to be a machine, and what it means to be human. Book jacket. (shrink)

It has often been thought that our knowledge of ourselves is _different_ from, perhaps in some sense _better_ than, our knowledge of things other than ourselves. Indeed, there is a thriving research area in epistemology dedicated to seeking an account of self-knowledge that would articulate and explain its difference from, and superiority over, other knowledge. Such an account would thus illuminate the descriptive and normative difference between self-knowledge and other knowledge.¹ At the same time, self- knowledge has also encountered its (...) share of skeptics – philosophers who refuse to accord it any descriptive, let alone normative, distinction. In this paper, we argue that there is at least one _species_ of self-knowledge that is different from, and better than, other knowledge. It is a specific kind of knowledge of one’s concurrent phenomenal experiences. Call knowledge of one’s own phenomenal experiences _phenomenal knowledge_. Our claim is that some (though not all) phenomenal knowledge is different from, and better than, non-phenomenal knowledge. In other. (shrink)

This volume is the first systematic presentation of the work of Albert Einstein, comprising fourteen essays by leading historians and philosophers of science that introduce readers to his work. Following an introduction that places Einstein's work in the context of his life and times, the book opens with essays on the papers of Einstein's 'miracle year', 1905, covering Brownian motion, light quanta, and special relativity, as well as his contributions to early quantum theory and the opposition to his light quantum (...) hypothesis. Further essays relate Einstein's path to the general theory of relativity and the beginnings of two fields it spawned, relativistic cosmology and gravitational waves. Essays on Einstein's later years examine his unified field theory program and his critique of quantum mechanics. The closing essays explore the relation between Einstein's work and twentieth-century philosophy, as well as his political writings. (shrink)

Twenty-first century critics frequently misread Quinean ontological commitment as a toothless doctrine of anti-metaphysical pragmatism. Janssen-Lauret's historical investigations reveal that they misinterpret the influence of Quine's naturalism. His naturalistic view of philosophy as continuous with science informs a much more interesting conception of ontological commitments as generated by indispensable explanatory roles. But Janssen-Lauret uncovers a previously undetected weakness in Quine's meta-ontology. Careful examination of his debate with another naturalistic nominalist, Ruth Barcan Marcus, reveals that his holism leaves him (...) blind to her acquaintance-based ontological commitment via proper names. Janssen-Lauret examines some crucial misunderstandings between Barcan Marcus and Quine, centring on their wildly different interpretations of proper names, quantification and identity, and argues that these are motivated by their diametrically opposed positions on epistemology. (shrink)

Focal points seem to be important in helping players coordinate their strategies in coordination problems. Game theory lacks, however, a formal theory of focal points. This paper proposes a theory of focal points that is based on individual rationality considerations. The two principles upon which the theory rest are the Principle of Insufficient Reason (IR) and a Principle of Individual Team Member Rationality. The way IR is modelled combines the classic notion of description symmetry and a new notion of pay-off (...) symmetry, which yields different predictions in a variety of games. The theory can explain why people do better than pure randomization in matching games. (shrink)

In 1909, Einstein derived a formula for the mean square energy fluctuation in blackbody radiation. This formula is the sum of a wave term and a particle term. In a key contribution to the 1926 Dreim¨.

Susan Stebbing’s work on incomplete symbols and analysis was instrumental in clarifying, sharpening, and improving the project of logical constructions which was pivotal to early analytic philosophy. She dispelled use-mention confusions by restricting the term ‘incomplete symbol’ to expressions eliminable through analysis, rather than those expressions’ purported referents, and distinguished linguistic analysis from analysis of facts. In this paper I explore Stebbing’s role in analytic philosophy’s development from anti-holism, presupposing that analysis terminates in simples, to the more holist or foundherentist (...) analytic philosophy of the later 20th century. I read Stebbing as a transitional figure who made room for more holist analytic movements, e.g., applications of incomplete symbol theory to Quinean ontological commitment. Stebbing, I argue, is part of a historical narrative which starts with the holism of Bradley, an early influence on her, to which Moore and Russell’s logical analysis was a response. They countered Bradley’s holist reservations about facts with the view that the world is built up out of individually knowable simples. Stebbing, a more subtle and sympathetic reader of the British idealists, defends analysis, but with important refinements and caveats which prepared the way for a return to foundherentism and holism within analytic philosophy. (shrink)

In "Milk, Honey, and the Good Life on Moral Twin Earth", David Copp explores some ways in which a defender of synthetic moral naturalism might attempt to get around our Moral Twin Earth argument. Copp nicely brings out the force of our argument, not only through his exposition of it, but through his attempt to defeat it, since his efforts, we think, only help to make manifest the deep difficulties the Moral Twin Earth argument poses for the synthetic moral naturalist.

Political decision-makers in the European Union are currently discussing the introduction of a mandatory uniform labelling scheme for meat and milk that provides information on husbandry systems similar to the already existent labelling scheme in the EU egg market. The objective of this paper was to assess whether such information is relevant to consumers when buying meat and milk. The paper was based on a systematic synthesis of 53 scientific journal articles on empirical consumer studies. The review revealed that consumers (...) perceived the aspects of outdoor access, stocking density and floor type as important factors influencing animal welfare. On average, consumers not only had a positive attitude towards more animal welfare-friendly husbandry systems with outdoor access and space allowance but were also willing to pay a price premium for products from such systems. All studies on consumer segmentation identified at least one consumer segment that placed great importance on animal welfare-friendly husbandry systems. Interestingly, many studies identified one or more other segments who still had a significant preference for animal welfare-friendly products even though other product attributes were more important to them. Based on the findings, the paper presents conclusions regarding the labelling of husbandry systems for meat and milk. (shrink)

When we use a directly referential expression to denote an object, do we incur an ontological commitment to that object, as Russell and Barcan Marcus held? Not according to Quine, whose regimented language has only variables as denoting expressions, but no constants to model direct reference. I make a case for a more liberal conception of ontological commitment—more wide-ranging than Quine’s—which allows for commitment to individuals, with an improved logical language of regimentation. The reason for Quine’s prohibition on commitment to (...) individuals, I argue, is that his choice of regimented language is heavily informed by his holist epistemology, in which objects are introduced via a description of their explanatory role. But non-holists can coherently attempt to commit to individuals using directly referential expressions, modelled in a formal language as constants. While holding on to the insight that a logical language is a helpful medium for ontology, I propose instead a more permissive language of regimentation, one expanded to permit the use of constants to record attempts to commit to individuals, which allows us to make sense of non-holist theories with alternative name-based or name-and-variable-based criteria of ontological commitment as well as Quinean theories. (shrink)

C. I. Lewis’s version of pragmatism, which he called “conceptualistic pragmatism,” has been little studied and is nowadays overlooked, eclipsed by the more famous pragmatisms of Dewey and James. However, it was Lewis’s version that came to dominate the formation of post-1945 pragmatism in the United States. It provided the framework in which Quine (his former student), Sellars, Davidson, Rorty and Brandom operated. Roughly, that structure involved a passive, sensory ineffable given and an ordering and classification of the given by (...) a priori categories. Comprehending those categories was a matter of apprehending a priori truths, but those categories were also changeable. Rational change involved giving some up and substituting others to meet certain basic human interests. We thus have the picture of mind and world that culminates in a certain sense in Brandom’s philosophy: External causal inputs linked to an internal normative inferential network which then results in causal outputs of linguistic shape. This is very different from the classical German idealist conception of mind and world, which takes the distinguishability-but-inseparability of concept and sensory intuition as its core. (shrink)

The notion of “responsible luxury” may appear as a contradiction in terms. This article investigates the influence of two defining characteristics of luxury products—scarcity and ephemerality—on consumers’ perception of the fit between luxury and corporate social responsibility (CSR), as well as how this perceived fit affects consumers’ attitudes toward luxury products. A field experiment reveals that ephemerality moderates the positive impact of scarcity on consumers’ perception of fit between luxury and CSR. When luxury products are enduring (e.g., jewelry), a scarce (...) product is perceived as more socially responsible than a more widely available one and provokes positive attitudes. However, this effect does not appear for ephemeral luxury products (e.g., clothing). The perceived fit between luxury and CSR mediates the combined effects of scarcity and ephemerality on consumers’ attitudes toward luxury products. This study provides valuable insights that luxury brand managers can use to design their CSR and marketing strategies. (shrink)

Consumer surveys repeatedly suggest that corporate social responsibility and products’ social, environmental, or ethical attributes enhance consumers’ purchase intentions. The realization that CSR still has only a minor impact on consumers’ actual purchase decisions thus represents a puzzling paradox. Whereas prior literature on consumer decision making provides valuable insights into the factors that impede or facilitate consumers’ socially responsible consumption decisions, such elements may be only the tip of the iceberg. To gain a fuller understanding of the CSR–consumer paradox, this (...) study proposes investigating the phenomenon through additional theoretical lenses, namely, a clinical psychology, an evolutionary psychology/biology, a social psychology, and an economic and economic psychology lens. From these four unique theoretical lenses, the authors derive an integrative framework and draw several propositions for further research. (shrink)

In this critical notice we argue against William Craig’s recent attempt to reconcile presentism (roughly, the view that only the present is real) with relativity theory. Craig’s defense of his position boils down to endorsing a ‘neo-Lorentzian interpretation’ of special relativity. We contend that his reconstruction of Lorentz’s theory and its historical development is fatally flawed and that his arguments for reviving this theory fail on many counts.

Moral phenomenology is (roughly) the study of those features of occurrent mental states with moral significance which are accessible through direct introspection, whether or not such states possess phenomenal character – a what-it-is-likeness. In this paper, as the title indicates, we introduce and make prefatory remarks about moral phenomenology and its significance for ethics. After providing a brief taxonomy of types of moral experience, we proceed to consider questions about the commonality within and distinctiveness of such experiences, with an eye (...) on some of the main philosophical issues in ethics and how moral phenomenology might be brought to bear on them. In discussing such matters, we consider some of the doubts about moral phenomenology and its value to ethics that are brought up by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Michael Gill in their contributions to this issue. (shrink)

Tesón's “humanitarian rationales” for the war in Iraq strain the traditional understanding of humanitarian intervention: The first, that the war was fought to overthrow a tyrant. The second, that it was a defense strategy establishing democratic regimes peacefully, but by force if necessary.

In early 1927, Pascual Jordan published his version of what came to be known as the Dirac-Jordan statistical transformation theory. Later that year and partly in response to Jordan, John von Neumann published the modern Hilbert space formalism of quantum mechanics. Central to both formalisms are expressions for conditional probabilities of finding some value for one quantity given the value of another. Beyond that Jordan and von Neumann had very different views about the appropriate formulation of problems in the new (...) theory. For Jordan, unable to let go of the analogy to classical mechanics, the solution of such problems required the identification of sets of canonically conjugate variables, i.e., p’s and q’s. Jordan ran into serious difficulties when he tried to extend his approach from quantities with fully continuous spectra to those with wholly or partly discrete spectra. For von Neumann, not constrained by the analogy to classical physics and aware of the daunting mathematical difficulties facing the approach of Jordan ), the solution of a problem in the new quantum mechanics required only the identification of a maximal set of commuting operators with simultaneous eigenstates. He had no need for p’s and q’s. Related to their disagreement about the appropriate general formalism for the new theory, Jordan and von Neumann stated the characteristic new rules for probabilities in quantum mechanics somewhat differently. Jordan was the first to state those rules in full generality, von Neumann rephrased them and then sought to derive them from more basic considerations. In this paper we reconstruct the central arguments of these 1927 papers by Jordan and von Neumann and of a paper on Jordan’s approach by Hilbert, von Neumann, and Nordheim. We highlight those elements in these papers that bring out the gradual loosening of the ties between the new quantum formalism and classical mechanics. (shrink)

This is the chapter on general relativity for the Cambridge Companion to Einstein which I am co-editing with Christoph Lehner.

Reinforcement learning approaches to cognitive modeling represent task acquisition as learning to choose the sequence of steps that accomplishes the task while maximizing a reward. However, an apparently unrecognized problem for modelers is choosing when, what, and how much to reward; that is, when (the moment: end of trial, subtask, or some other interval of task performance), what (the objective function: e.g., performance time or performance accuracy), and how much (the magnitude: with binary, categorical, or continuous values). In this article, (...) we explore the problem space of these three parameters in the context of a task whose completion entails some combination of 36 state–action pairs, where all intermediate states (i.e., after the initial state and prior to the end state) represent progressive but partial completion of the task. Different choices produce profoundly different learning paths and outcomes, with the strongest effect for moment. Unfortunately, there is little discussion in the literature of the effect of such choices. This absence is disappointing, as the choice of when, what, and how much needs to be made by a modeler for every learning model. (shrink)

JANSSEN: DAS ERLEBENDE ICH UND SEIN DASEIN.

This article summarizes the multitude of empirical studies that test ethical decision making in business and suggests additional research necessary to further theory in this area. The studies are categorized and related to current theoretical ethical decision making models. The studies are related to awareness, individual and organizational factors, intent, and the role of moral intensity in ethical decision making. Summary tables provide a quick reference for the sample, findings, and publication outlet. This review provides insights for understanding organizational ethical (...) decision constructs, where ethical decision making theory currently stands, and provides insights for future empirical work on organizational ethical decision making. (shrink)

Since the establishment of the National Council for Vocational Qualfications (NCVQ) in 1986, the influence of the competence-based approach, which underpins National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs), has spread beyond its original remit and now extends into schools and higher education. Competence strategies are criticised for their conceptual imprecision and their behaviourist, foundation. More significantly, it is argued that the competence approach displays confusion and incoherence in its interpretation and use of the ideas of ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’, and so should be challenged (...) and resisted by educators committed to these values. (shrink)

On many occasions, individuals are able to coordinate their actions. The first empirical evidence to this effect has been described by Schelling (1960) in an informal experiment. His results were corroborated many years later by Mehta et al. (1994a,b) and Bacharach and Bernasconi (1997). From the point of view of mainstream game theory, the success of individuals in coordinating their actions is something of a mystery. If there are two or more strict Nash equilibria, mainstream game theory has no means (...) of explaining why people tend to choose their part of one and the same equilibrium. Textbooks (see, e.g., Rasmusen, 1989 and Kreps, 1990) refer to the fact that players may use focal points (see Schelling (1960)) or social conventions (see Lewis (1969)). Both notions cannot easily be incorporated into mainstream game theory, however. The notion of social conventions has recently been extensively studied in the context of evolutionary game theory where a population of agents interacts with each other. The central focus of this paper, however, is on situations where a few players play a game only once and I study how they may coordinate their actions. (shrink)

In Kant's "fact of reason," there is an apparent paradox of our being subject to laws of which we must regard ourselves as the author, while at the same time being normatively bound by the same laws that we cannot see ourselves as authoring. Working out the implications of this apparent paradox generated much of the response to Kant in post-Kantian idealism. Wilfrid Sellars notes the same paradox when he speaks of the "paradox of man's encounter with himself" in "Philosophy (...) and the Scientific Image of Man." Like some of the idealists, Sellars thus opted for "two track" system of philosophy that combines the two tracks in a metaphor of "stereoscopic vision." This paper argues that understanding Sellars 's own thought in terms of the issues that formed the dynamic of post-Kantian philosophy in Germany puts us in a better position to understand why Sellars 's own conception of experience and of the unreality of the manifest image is not completely consistent with the argumentative direction of his thought. Understanding Sellars in this way helps us understand the limits of post-Kantian idealism just as understanding the dynamic of post-Kantian idealism gives us a more nuanced version of Sellars 's conception of experience. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEarly modern Europe was marked by fundamental changes in its intellectual landscape. In the field of historiography, this led to the development of a new antiquarian current in historiography which marked a fundamental shift in the view on historical writings. While traditionally historiography had been considered a literary genre, the new scholars approached it as a ‘scientific’ discipline. On the basis of a comparative study of a number of northern European national histories, this paper analyses major transformations in two aspects (...) of historical writing. Firstly, antiquarian historians extended the subject range of historiography to include a variety of cultural-historical topics. This innovation also had implications for the structure of their works. Secondly, the new current introduced a novel approach to the question of historical evidence to counter sceptic criticism and meet the new requirements occasioned by the rise of empirical models of research. Antiquarian scholars therefore introduced several new types of source materials: material evidence of the past, comparative studies of languages and customs, and documentary texts were added as sources of historical information. They furthermore subjected all historical sources to rigorous critical assessment. (shrink)

This review of peter hodgson's new english translation of hegel's "lectures on the philosophy of religion", Part iii, And of two other books on hegel, Includes a report on plans for retranslating the entire "lectures". A new edition is made feasible by the hegel archiv's ability to construct a superior critical text of each of the four lecture series (1821, 1824, 1827, 1831) from lasson plus additional recently-Discovered auditors' transcripts. Stephen dunning's book on hegel and hamann, And james yerkes' on (...) hegel's christology, Disagree emphatically on the suitability of hegel's conceptual framework for doing justice to the nature of christianity. (shrink)