Elements of Mind provides a unique introduction to the main problems and debates in contemporary philosophy of mind. Author Tim Crane opposes those currently popular conceptions of the mind that divide mental phenomena into two very different kinds (the intentional and the qualitative) and proposes instead a challenging and unified theory of all the phenomena of mind. In light of this theory, Crane engages students with the central problems of the philosophy of mind--the mind-body problem, the problem of intentionality (or (...) mental representation), the problem of consciousness, and the problem of perception--and attempts to find solutions to these problems. A fresh and engaging exploration of the main issues in the philosophy of mind, Elements of Mind is easily accessible to students with no background in the subject. (shrink)

Workplace AI is transforming labor but decisions on which AI applications are developed or implemented are made with little to no input from workers themselves. In this piece for AI & Society, I argue for nationalization as a strategy for democratizing AI.

Necessitists about set theory think that the pure sets exists, and are the way they are, as a matter of necessity. They cannot explain why the sets (de rebus) are all the sets. This constitutes the Ur-Objection against necessitism; it is the primary motivation cited by potentialists about set theory. -/- At least three families of potentialism draw motivation from the Ur-Objection. Contingentists think that any things could form a set even if they actually did not. Prioritists think that sets (...) hyperintensionally depend upon their members. Structural-potentialists think that any possible set-hierarchy could be extended. However, once we have disentangled these three versions of potentialism, we see that the Ur-Objection should not motivate anyone. (shrink)

Is it generally rational to defer to official stories? On the affirmative view exemplified by Neil Levy, grounds for scepticism cannot outweigh the epistemic authority of the experts presumed to generate them. Yet sociological studies of how expertise is mediated into official communications reveal the epistemic potential of citizens’ collaboratives. These may include, or advocate hearing, dissident experts. Such groups’ epistemic position is arguably analogous to that of the ‘other institutions of civil society’ that Levy sees as underwriting the authority (...) of official stories. An added advantage is that they are able to adhere to deliberative methods of inquiry. By contrast, an official story presupposes that deliberations have concluded, and what remains is to promote the agreed story. This is achieved by strategic communication, which can involve extensive coordination by organisations committed primarily to persuasion rather than truth-seeking. Sometimes it includes blocking dissidents’ deliberative challenges. A case study highlights how even an organisation of indisputable epistemic authority can be politically influenced to block the testimony of its own scientific experts, while uncritical support for its official story is maintained by other institutions of civil society. Hence, an appropriate attitude towards official stories is critical receptiveness rather than automatic deference. (shrink)

Fear is a preventer, sometimes robustly so. When fear robustly prevents, it changes or diminishes what an agent is able to do. Various popular conceptions of fear focus on its negative role: fear sometimes prevents us from acting as we should, as in certain cases of akrasia. But by the same token, fear sometimes prevents us from acting as we shouldn’t, as in certain other cases of inverse akrasia. We end with a plea on behalf of fear, both in light (...) of its preventing role and its broader connection to other ways we express concern, in particular, to hope. (shrink)

Two familiar worldviews dominate Western philosophy: materialist atheism and the benevolent God of the Abrahamic faiths. Tim Mulgan explores a third way. Ananthropocentric Purposivism claims that there is a cosmic purpose, but human beings are irrelevant to it. Purpose in the Universe develops a philosophical case for Ananthropocentric Purposivism that it is at least as strong as the case for either theism or atheism. He draws on a range of secular and religious ethical traditions to conclude that a non-human-centred cosmic (...) purpose can ground a distinctive human morality. Our moral practices, our view of the moral universe, and our moral theory are all transformed if we shift from the familiar choice between a universe without meaning and a universe where humans matter to the less self-aggrandising thought that, while it is about something, the universe is not about us. (shrink)

Trust is both ethically important and essential for business but difficult to measure. This paper contributes toward clarifying the nature of trust in a way that is both conceptually helpful for ethical inquiries concerning business and pertinent to the measurement of trust as an element in organizations. Several papers hypothesize that increasing the role of trust in a corporation reduces the need for external monitoring and contracts. Assessing this important hypothesis requires a way to gauge whether a firm has a (...) trusting corporate culture. We develop an objective measure of trust in a firm’s corporate culture by counting the number of times 21 trust-related words appear in an important kind of document: the Management Discussion and Analysis section of the annual report. We report two significant findings: that, contrary to what one might think, firms with a trusting culture frequently use audit and control-type words and that trust is positively linked with subsequent share price volatility. We propose explanations of these findings with the hope of facilitating the objective measurement of trust and enhancement of a trusting atmosphere in corporate culture. (shrink)

Many think that the aim of Hume’s Dialogues is simply to discredit the design argument for the existence of an intelligent designer. We think instead that the Dialogues provides a model of true religion. We argue that, for Hume, the truly religious person: believes that an intelligent designer created and imposed order on the universe; grounds this belief in an irregular argument rooted in a certain kind of experience, for example, in the experience of anatomizing complex natural systems such as (...) the eye; and retains this belief, on the basis of these reasons, even after careful scrutiny. We argue that two of the Dialogues’s characters, Philo and Cleanthes, exhibit true religion. A third character, Demea, exhibits false religion and a persistent impiety. Taken as a whole, we see the Dialogues as an educational performance for the benefit of Pamphilus, Cleanthes’s ward, as well as for the benefit of readers of the Dialogues. Specifically, we think, given that its lessons concern theology and the principles of religion, the dynamics of the Dialogues’s discussion and the interplay between its characters can be seen as a demonstration of a method for becoming truly religious. (shrink)

John Corcoran was a very well-known logician who worked on several areas of logic. He produced decisive works giving a better understanding of two major figures in the history of logic, Aristotle and Boole. Corcoran had a close association with Alfred Tarski, a prominent 20th-century logician. This collaboration manifested in Corcoran's substantial introduction to Tarski's seminal book, Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics (1956). Additionally, Corcoran's posthumous editorial involvement in 'What are logical notions?' (1986) breathed new life into this seminal paper authored by (...) Tarski. His scholarly pursuits extended to the intricate explication of fundamental concepts in modern logic, including variables, propositions, truth, consequences, and categoricity. Corcoran's academic curiosity extended further to the intersection of ethics and logic, reflecting his contemplation of their interrelation. Beyond these theoretical contributions, Corcoran was deeply engaged in the pedagogical dimensions of logic instruction. (shrink)

The majority of contemporary political philosophy is based on three assumptions, that (1) interests of present people can be reconciled under “favourable conditions” (Rawls), (2) things will go better for the next generation and (3) favourable conditions will continue indefinitely. But what if they don’t? The paper is exploring the hypothesis of a “broken world” where there is no hope to establish liberal institutions that can both meet basic needs and protect basic liberties. It argues that Mill’s liberal utilitarianism is (...) suited to a broken world because of its flexibility and of its reliance on an objective list of essential components of a flourishing human life that can be shared by present and future generations. (shrink)

Introduction: Archaeology and Post-Structuralism Ian Bapty and Tim Yates i If it recedes one day, leaving behind its works and signs on the shores of our ...

been to define various notions of distribution in terms of represented by one and the same distributed pattern (Mur- structures of correspondence between the represented items dock 1979). For example, it is standard in feedforward and the representational resources (e.g., van Gelder 1992). connectionist networks for one and the same set of synap- This approach may be misguided; the essence of this alter- tic weights to represent many associations between input native category of representation might be some other prop- and (...) output. erty entirely. For example, Haugeland (1991) has suggested • Equipotentiality In some cases, an item is represented by. (shrink)

Philosophical commentaries on the difficult task of forming a deep, respectful relationship with the land.

There is a widespread perception that even when lawyers are acting squarely within their roles, being good lawyers, they display the vices of dishonesty and deviousness. At the heart of the perception is the so called standard conception of the lawyer's role according to which lawyers owe special duties to their clients which render permissible, or even mandatory, acts that would otherwise count as morally impermissible. Many have concluded that the standard conception should be set aside. This book suggests that (...) the moral implications of the standard conception are often mischaracterised. Critics suggest that the conception requires lawyers to secure any advantage the law can be made to give. But Dare offers a moral argument for the conception, according to which it justifies a more limited and moderate sphere of professional conduct than is normally supposed, allowing lawyers to preserve their integrity while giving proper weight to the role-differentiated permissions and obligations of their roles. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Culture lacks instruments to deal with nature’s becoming a concept defined by political and social interventions in the era of Technoscience. The following article builds a bridge between Ernst Cassirer’s Philosophy of Culture and approaches capable of criticizing the era of Technoscience and the concept of nature therein, such as that developed by Donna Haraway. The Philosophy of Culture, as a situated knowledge, then becomes a form of critique.

Theories that propose a modular basis for developing a “theory of mind” have no problem accommodating social interaction or social environment factors into either the learning process, or into the genotypes underlying the growth of the neurocognitive modules. Instead, they can offer models which constrain and hence explain the mechanisms through which variations in social interaction affect development. Cognitive models of both competence and performance are critical to evaluating the basis of correlations between variations in social interaction and performance on (...) mental state reasoning tasks. (shrink)

Let T be the theory of dense cyclically ordered sets with at least two elements. We determine the classifying space of $\mathsf {Mod}(T)$ to be homotopically equivalent to $\mathbb {CP}^\infty $. In particular, $\pi _2(\lvert \mathsf {Mod}(T)\rvert )=\mathbb {Z}$, which answers a question in our previous work. The computation is based on Connes’ cycle category $\Lambda $.

The context for these interviews was a seminar [Peter Gratton] conducted on speculative realism in the Spring 2010. There has been great interest in speculative realism and one reason Gratton surmise[s] is not just the arguments offered, though [Gratton doesn't] want to take away from them; each of these scholars are vivid writers and great pedagogues, many of whom are in constant contact with their readers via their weblogs. Thus these interviews provided an opportunity to forward student questions about their (...) respective works. Though each were conducted on different occasions, the interviews stand as a collected work, tying together the most classical questions about “realism” to ancillary movements about the non-human in politics, ecology, aesthetics, and video gaming—all to point to future movements in this philosophical area. (shrink)

One of the unconventional features of Wittgenstein’s _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ is its use of an elaborated and detailed numbering system. Recently, Bazzocchi, Hacker und Kuusela have argued that the numbering system means that the _Tractatus_ must be read and interpreted not as a sequentially ordered book, but as a text with a two-dimensional, tree-like structure. Apart from being able to explain how the _Tractatus_ was composed, the tree reading allegedly solves exegetical issues both on the local and the global level. This (...) paper defends the sequential reading against the tree reading. After presenting the challenges generated by the numbering system and the two accounts as attempts to solve them, it is argued that Wittgenstein’s own explanation of the numbering system, anaphoric references within the _Tractatus_ and the exegetical issues mentioned above do not favour the tree reading, but a version of the sequential reading. This reading maintains that the remarks of the _Tractatus_ form a sequential chain: The role of the numbers is to indicate how remarks on different levels are interconnected to form a concise, surveyable and unified whole. (shrink)

In 1935/1936 Kurt Gödel wrote three notebooks on the foundations of quantum mechanics, which have now been entirely transcribed for the first time. Whereas a lot of the material is rather technical in character, many of Gödel's remarks have a philosophical background and concentrate on Leibnizian monadology as well as on vitalism. Obviously influenced by the vitalistic writings of Hans Driesch and his ‘proofs’ for the existence of an entelechy in every living organism, Gödel briefly develops the idea of a (...) computing machine which closely resembles Turing's groundbreaking conception. After introducing the notebooks on quantum mechanics, this article describes Gödel's vitalistic Weltbild and the ideas leading to the development of his computing machine. It investigates a notion of lawlike sequence which closely resembles Turing's concept of a computable number and which Gödel himself calls ‘problematic’, and compares it to the opposed concept of randomness, drawing upon the notion of program-size complexity. Finally, Gödel's machine is implemented in a dialect of the Lisp programing language. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Beyond Individual-Centred 4E Cognition: Systems Biology and Sympoiesis” by Mads Julian Dengsø & Michael David Kirchhoff. Abstract: Dengsø and Kirchhoff’s inspiring proposal to drop the individual-centeredness of autopoiesis in favor of a view based on sympoiesis and developmental systems theory (DST) has two problems: (a) It is not clear that the points they raise as arguments against individual-centered 4E cognition are incompatible with those views and many of them are already included in Ezequiel Di (...) Paolo’s account of enaction. (b) They give no clear account of how 4E cognition will account for agency as purposive behavior once it discards its current, individual-centered, accounts of it. (shrink)

Simmels Buch gehört zu den Werken, die durch die Simmel-Gesamtausgabe, in deren Rahmen die Philosophie des Geldes 1989 erschien, erst wieder nachdrücklich in der Diskussion einer Theorie der Kultur um 1900 und darüber hinaus Berücksichtigung gefunden haben. Vormals v. a. als Soziologe bzw. unter Sozialwissenschaftlern bekannt, hat Simmel seitdem einen Ruf als Philosoph erhalten, der in Wiederaufnahme eines für ihn zeitgenössischen Streites in stellvertretend geführten Debatten erneut gegen das Pejorativum eines bloßen bzw. vulgären, jedenfalls potentiell gefährlichen Relativismus verteidigt wird.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Bike as a Vehicle for Meaningful Suffering Suffering as the Hub of the Tour de France Share the Road! (And the Pain) Phil and Paul, and the Extension of Meaningful Suffering Of Suffering and Bicycles Notes.

Only six letters and the beginning of a seventh letter survive from ten original letters that Schiller composed to his patron Prince Friedrich Christian von Schleswig-Holstein-Augustenburg in 1793. These “Augustenburg Letters” represent the first draft of a project that was to become the Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. As a letter to Körner attests, Schiller intended these letters to be published at a later date, perhaps in combination with other writings on the same topic. Their original purpose was (...) twofold: first, to convey gratitude for the unexpected beneficence of an annual pension at a time when Schiller was plagued by ill-health and limited means; second, to “road-test” his own reading of the Kantian philosophy—a philosophy whose ground-breaking significance for aesthetics and morality had struck Schiller from his first acquaintance with Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790). (shrink)

本书是叶锦添艺术随笔集,囊括他在服装,舞台,电影美术,视觉艺术,当代艺术创作等多元领域的美学观点与实践层面的探索,承袭了讲求意境的中国审美传统,游走于东方美学中两种不同的美感之间,以充满创意与可能性, 流美华丽的表达方式,向世人展示了一个富有东方诗意的艺术世界,诠释了独树一帜的艺术主张,以及从传统与文化中生发创意的方法.

Neither the pathogenesis nor the aetiology of Down's syndrome (DS) are clearly understood. Numerous studies have examined whether clinical features of DS are a consequence of specific chromosome 21 segments being triplicated. There is no evidence, however, that individual loci are responsible, or that the oxidative damage in DS could be solely explained by a gene dosage effect. Using astrocytes and neuronal cultures from DS fetuses, a recent paper shows that altered metabolism of the amyloid precursor protein and oxidative stress (...) result from mitochondrial dysfunction.1 These findings are consistent with considerable data implicating the role of the mitochondrial genome in DS pathogenesis and aetiology. BioEssays 24:681–684, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 4, Page 642-651, May 2022. Academic freedom in China is unquestionably under threat from various quarters. Yet the assumption that only the logics of authoritarian Communist Party power shape the terrain in which scholars operate provides us with a limited perspective on these threats. The Chinese academy has become deeply entangled with transnational forces, and is increasingly driven by similar business logics to those in play in universities around the world. We argue that (...) these forces too contribute to the context for the exercise of academic freedom and its restriction. As is the case elsewhere, discourses around developing the national ‘knowledge economy’ and related logics of securitisation around knowledge production create conditions in which some forms of academic research are prioritised over others. Echoing the ‘culture wars’ plaguing the academy in many other countries, the research agendas most under threat in China are ones that connect to transnational movements and struggles, especially those focussed on labour and class, gender and feminism, race and ethnicity and human rights. In this article, we outline what we see as the key forces shaping the landscape for academic freedom in China, with a concentration on areas of research and teaching in the social sciences and humanities that are most at risk in the current conjuncture. (shrink)