This paper presents a novel learning model Clarion , which is a hybrid model based on the two-level approach proposed in Sun (1995). The model integrates neural, reinforcement, and symbolic learning methods to perform on-line, bottom-up learning (i.e., learning that goes from neural to symbolic representations). The model utilizes both procedural and declarative knowledge (in neural and symbolic representations respectively), tapping into the synergy of the two types of processes. It was applied to deal with sequential decision tasks. Experiments and (...) analyses in various ways are reported that shed light on the advantages of the model. (shrink)

As a flashpoint for specific instances of conflict, Muslim sartorial practices have at times been seen as being antagonistic to “western” ideas of gender equality, secularity, and communicative practices. In light of this, I seek to highlight the ways in which such moments of antagonism actually might be understood on “cosmopolitical” terms, that is, through a framework informed by a critical and political approach to cosmopolitanism itself. Thus, through an “agonistic cosmopolitics” I here argue for a more robust political understanding (...) of what a cosmopolitan orientation to cultural difference can offer education. The paper moves from a focus on harmony to agonism and from cosmopolitanism to the cosmopolitical, and within each I discuss the questions of democracy and universality, respectively. Drawing on, the work of Chantal Mouffe, Judith Butler and Bonnie Honig, I discuss the basis upon which our agonistic interactions can inform education in promoting better ways of living together. This requires, in my view, nothing less than a clear understanding of the very difficulties of pluralism and a questioning of some of the ways we often reflect on the political dimension of these difficulties. I offer some reflections on what an agonistic cosmopolitics has to offer the debates surrounding the wearing of various forms of Muslim dress in schools in the conclusion. My overall claim is that cosmopolitanism as a set of ideas that seek more peaceful forms of living together on a global scale is in need of a theoretical framework that faces directly the difficulties of living in a dissonant world. (shrink)

In this paper, I articulate an argument for incompatibilism about moral responsibility and determinism. My argument comes in the form of an extended story, modeled loosely on Peter van Inwagen’s “rollback argument” scenario. I thus call it “the replication argument.” As I aim to bring out, though the argument is inspired by so-called “manipulation” and “original design” arguments, the argument is not a version of either such argument—and plausibly has advantages over both. The result, I believe, is a more convincing (...) incompatibilist argument than those we have considered previously. (shrink)

The problem of `conscious inessentialism' is examined in the literature, and an argument is presented that the presence of consciousness is indeed marked by a behavioural difference, but that this should be looked for at the cultural level of speech communities.

Despite the growing body of literature on training in the responsible conduct of research, few studies have examined the effectiveness of delivery formats used in ethics courses. The present effort sought to address this gap in the literature through a meta-analytic review of 66 empirical studies, representing 106 ethics courses and 10,069 participants. The frequency and effectiveness of 67 instructional and process-based content areas were also assessed for each delivery format. Process-based contents were best delivered face-to-face, whereas contents delivered online (...) were most effective when restricted to compliance-based instructional contents. Overall, hybrid courses were found to be most effective, suggesting that ethics courses are best delivered using a blend of formats and content areas. Implications and recommendations for future development of ethics education courses in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

The work is an attempt to answer the transcendental question, "How is progress in philosophy possible?" The character of philosophical beliefs and doubts is examined, and it is argued that in the exigent context of philosophical practice in the agonistic analytic tradition, a certain limited doxastic voluntarism is possible. The role of both ordinary and ideal language intuitions is criticized; it is concluded that these cannot serve as uncontroversial pretheoretical givens of inquiry. As an extended example of the covert adoption (...) of strategies of prescriptive idealization, several theories of meaning are reviewed. A model of philosophical inquiry based upon the notion of transcendental arguments is profferred. This is derived from both Kantian and Peircean antecedents, via the synthesizing efforts of Karl-Otto Apel. Finally, three senses of "progress" are distinguished and several alternative models of philosophical inquiry are assessed in the light of these distinctions. It is concluded that the sort of progress appropriate to philosophy, seen collectively, is non-terminating and non-decidable, relying upon negative consensus generating mechanisms, thus assuring perpetual pluralism. (shrink)

Polls suggest up to twenty percent of Americans describe their beliefs as 'libertarian', but libertarians are often derided as heartless Social Darwinists or naïve idealists. This illuminating handbook brings together scholars from a range of fields and political perspectives to consider how classical liberal principles can help us understand and potentially address a variety of pressing social problems including immigration, climate change, the growth of the prison population, and a host of others. Anyone interested in political theory or practical law (...) and politics will find this book an essential resource for understanding this major strand of American politics. (shrink)

In his classic paper, The Serpent Beguiled Me And I Did Eat, Gerald Dworkin makes the case that, without probable cause, the useof Proactive Law Enforcement Techniques (PALETs) is morally impermissible. Call this prohibition Dworkin’s Rule (DR). Here we argue that there are two reasonable exceptions to DR—the use of PALETs, without probable cause, is justifi ed when employed against High Level Government Officials (HLGOs) and High Level Business Officials (HLBOs). Moreover, these exceptions are consistent with Dworkin’s notion of Ideal (...) Criminal Sanctioning. Finally, if society were to endorse the use of PALETs on HLBOs, we might be able to dispose of the current bane of American business, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and let business get back to the business of business. (shrink)

Llewellyn's proposal that rapid eye movement dreaming reflects elaborative encoding mediated by the hippocampus offers an interesting perspective for understanding hallucinations accompanying sleep paralysis. SP arises from anomalous intrusion of REM processes into waking consciousness, including threat-detection systems mediated by the amygdala. Unique aspects of SP hallucinations offer additional prospects for investigation of Llewellyn's theory of elaborative encoding.

A dynamical analysis of standard procedures for subensemble selection is used to show that the state restriction violation proposal in Part I of the paper cannot be realized by employing familiar correlation schemes. However, it is shown that measurement of an observable not commuting with the superselection operator is possible, a violation of the observable restrictions. This is interpreted as supporting the position that each of these restrictions is sufficient but not necessary for the superselection rule. The results do constitute (...) a proposal for superselection rule violation in theories requiring both restrictions, e.g., the axiomatic treatment by Bogolubov, Logunov, and Todorov. It is also concluded that superselection rules place restrictions on procedures for selective state preparations using correlations. More generally, it is conjectured that a mathematically conceivable decomposition of a given density operator does not necessarily represent a possibility for partitioning of the corresponding ensemble into subensembles by any physically realizable means. (shrink)

It is argued that preparation of a quantum state characterized by density operator ρ not commuting with a superselection operatorQ does not by itself constitute an instance of superselection rule violation. It would, however, be an instance of state restriction violation. It is held that superselection rule violation is only possible with simultaneous observable and state restriction violations. It is shown that it is a priori conceivable to subdivide an ensemble whose ρ satisfies[ρ, Q] = 0 into subensembles whose density (...) operators violate the state restrictions. The dynamics of the subdivision process is not considered. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers have turned their attention to the question, not when a given agent is blameworthy for what she does, but when a further agent has the moral standing to blame her for what she does. Philosophers have proposed at least four conditions on having “moral standing”: -/- 1. One’s blame would not be “hypocritical”. 2. One is not oneself “involved in” the target agent’s wrongdoing. 3. One must be warranted in believing that the target is indeed blameworthy for the (...) wrongdoing. 4. The target’s wrongdoing must some of “one’s business”. -/- These conditions are often proposed as both conditions on one and the same thing, and as marking fundamentally different ways of “losing standing.” Here I call these claims into question. First, I claim that conditions (3) and (4) are simply conditions on different things than are conditions (1) and (2). Second, I argue that condition (2) reduces to condition (1): when “involvement” removes someone’s standing to blame, it does so only by indicating something further about that agent, viz., that he or she lacks commitment to the values that condemn the wrongdoer’s action. The result: after we clarify the nature of the non-hypocrisy condition, we will have a unified account of moral standing to blame. Issues also discussed: whether standing can ever be regained, the relationship between standing and our "moral fragility", the difference between mere inconsistency and hypocrisy, and whether a condition of standing might be derived from deeper facts about the "equality of persons". (shrink)

This article seeks to provide a fuller account of the philosophy of religion of the Marburg Neo-Kantian, Paul Natorp (1854–1924), than has hitherto been available. It does so by describing important changes in Natorp’s thinking about religion between the publication of his early book, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der Humanität (1894), and later writings in which he espouses a version of logos-mysticism strikingly at odds with the concept of a “religion of reason” put forward by his long-time Marburg colleague, Hermann (...) Cohen (1842–1918). These differences are analyzed in relation to these two thinkers’ divergent views on philosophical systematics, and their respective experiences of the First World War. (shrink)

This book launches a sustained defense of a radical interpretation of the doctrine of the open future. Patrick Todd argues that all claims about undetermined aspects of the future are simply false.

Current struggles over laws prohibiting and criminalizing the public disclosure of violence in the spaces of animal use in the US have underscored the centrality of exposés to animal activism. This article complicates the activist belief in the power of exposure—“If slaughterhouses had glass walls...”—by drawing on the insights of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir concerning the prevalence of bad faith in systems of oppression and exploitation. I describe four forms of bad faith common to these systems, and offer (...) suggestions for exposés of the animal enterprise modeled on Sartre’s and de Beauvoir’s “engaged exposés.”. (shrink)

Todd and Rabern (2021) mount an argument that – contra both Thomason’s (1970) supervaluationism and MacFarlane’s (2014) relativism – an “open future” view is incompatible with the principle they call “Retro-closure”, according to which today’s rain implies that yesterday it was true that it would rain a day later. In a recent piece, MacFarlane replies. This paper has two aims. First, I argue that MacFarlane’s response to Todd and Rabern is unsuccessful on its own terms. Second, I attempt (...) to clarify Todd and Rabern’s overall argument, and explain how MacFarlane’s replies should be construed within the overall dialectic. The intended result: if you want an "open future", then one's best option is a modified Peirceanism (Todd 2021); if one wants Retro-closure, one's best option is one on which there is a determinate "Thin Red Line" (a view sometimes called "Ockhamism"). However, one cannot have what supervaluationism and relativism both promise, viz., a view that preserves both. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that there is what has been called a non-hypocrisy norm on the appropriateness of moral blame; roughly, one has standing to blame only if one is not guilty of the very offence one seeks to criticize. Our acceptance of this norm is embodied in the common retort to criticism, “Who are you to blame me?”. But there is a paradox lurking behind this commonplace norm. If it is always inappropriate for x to blame y for a (...) wrong that x has committed, then all cases in which x blames x (i.e. cases of self-blame) are rendered inappropriate. But it seems to be ethical common-sense that we are often, sadly, in position (indeed, excellent, privileged position) to blame ourselves for our own moral failings. And thus we have a paradox: a conflict between the inappropriateness of hypocritical blame, and the appropriateness of self-blame. We consider several ways of resolving the paradox, and contend none is as defensible as a position that simply accepts it: we should never blame ourselves. In defending this startling position, we defend a crucial distinction between self-blame and guilt. (shrink)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1799 edition. Excerpt:... chapter viii. discipline' of the heart. One of the first steps to be taken, if you would have a character that will stand by you in prosperity and in adversity, in life and death, is to fortify your mind, with fixed principles. There is no period of (...) life in which the heart is so much inclined to scepticism and infidelity as in youth. Not that young men are infidels, but the mind is tossed from doubt to doubt, like a light boat leaping from wave to wave. There is no positive settling down into deism or infidelity, but the heart is full of doubting, so that the mind has no position, in morals or religion, fortified. If the restraints of education are so far thrown off as to allow you to indulge in sin, Which is in any way disgraceful if known, you will then easily become an infidel. "The nurse of infidelity is sensuality. The young are sensual. The Bible stands in their way. It prohibits the indulgence of ' the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life.' But the young mind loves these things, and therefore it hates the Bible, which prohibits them. It is prepared to say, ' If any man will bring me arguments against the Bible, I will thank him; if not, I will invent them.' As to infidel arguments, there is no weight in them. They are jejune and refuted. Infidela are not themselves convinced by them. What sort of men are infidels? They are loose, fierce, overbearing men. There is nothing in them like sober and serious inquiry. They are the wildest fanatics on earth. Nor have they agreed among themselves on any scheme of truth and felicity. Look at the needs and necessities of man. 'Every pang of grief tells a man he needs a helper; but infidelity provides none. And what can its schemes do for you in death?' Examine your... (shrink)

There is a longstanding argument that purports to show that divine foreknowledge is inconsistent with human freedom to do otherwise. Proponents of this argument, however, have for some time been met with the following reply: the argument posits what would have to be a mysterious non-causal constraint on freedom. In this paper, I argue that this objection is misguided – not because after all there can indeed be non-causal constraints on freedom (as in Pike, Fischer, and Hunt), but because the (...) success of the incompatibilist's argument does not require the real possibility of non-causal constraints on freedom. I contend that the incompatibilist's argument is best seen as showing that, given divine foreknowledge, something makes one unfree – and that this something is most plausibly identified, not with the foreknowledge itself, but with the causally deterministic factors that would have to be in place in order for there to be infallible foreknowledge in the first place. (shrink)

In response to criticism, we often say – in these or similar words – “Let’s see you do better!” Prima facie, it looks like this response is a challenge of a certain kind – a challenge to prove that one has what has recently been called standing. More generally, the data here seems to point a certain kind of norm of criticism: be better. Slightly more carefully: One must: criticize x with respect to standard s only if one is better (...) than x with respect to standard s. In this paper, I defend precisely this norm of criticism – an underexplored norm that is nevertheless ubiquitous in our lives, once we begin looking for it. The be better norm is, I hope to show, continuously invoked in a wide range of ordinary settings, can undergird and explain the widely endorsed non-hypocrisy condition on the standing to blame, and apparent counterexamples to the norm are no such counterexamples at all. I further contend that, given some plausible principles, my previous “moral commitment” account of the moral standing to blame will be extensionally equivalent to the be better norm. (shrink)

At least since Aristotle's famous discussion of the sea-battle tomorrow in On Interpretation 9, philosophers have been fascinated by a rich set of interconnecte.

Trinity College, Hartford, CT 06511, USA.