A pioneeting Arab thinker -- Early life -- The house of wisdom -- Religion, philosophy, and intellect -- On the subjects of intellect and sorrow -- The scientist -- Musician, calligrapher, and code breaker -- Legacy.

This paper examines a series of Schelling-like models of residential segregation, in which agents prefer to be in the minority. We demon- strate that as long as agents care about the characteristics of their wider community, they tend to end up in a segregated state. We then investigate the process that causes this, and conclude that the result hinges on the similarity of informational states amongst agents of the same type. This is quite di erent from Schelling-like behavior, and sug- (...) gests (in his terms) that segregation is an instance of macro behavior which can arise from a wide variety of micro motives. (shrink)

Gratitude, the proper or fitting response to benevolence, has often been conceptualized as a virtue—a temporally stable disposition to perceive, think, feel, and act in certain characteristic ways in certain situations. Many accounts of gratitude as a virtue, however, have not analyzed this disposition accurately, and as a result, they have not revealed the rich variety of ways in which someone can fail to be a grateful person. In this paper, I articulate an account of the virtue of gratitude, and (...) I use this account to explore various vices that can manifest in its absence. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce and defend the recurrent model for understanding bodily spatial phenomenology. While Longo, Azañón and Haggard (2010) propose a bottom-up model, Bermúdez (2017) emphasizes the top-down aspect of the information processing loop. We argue that both are only half of the story. Section 1 intro- duces what the issues are. Section 2 starts by explaining why the top- down, descending direction is necessary with the illustration from the ‘body-based tactile rescaling’ paradigm (de Vignemont, Ehrsson and Haggard, (...) 2005). It then argues that the bottom-up, ascending direction is also necessary, and substantiates this view with recent research on skin space and tactile field (Haggard et al., 2017). Section 3 discusses the model’s application to body ownership and bodily self-representation. Implications also extend to topics such as sense modality individuation (Macpherson, 2011), the constancy- based view of perception (Burge, 2010), and the perception/cognition divide (Firestone and Scholl, 2016). (shrink)

ABSTRACT Issues concerning the putative perception/cognition divide are not only age-old, but also resurface in contemporary discussions in various forms. In this paper, I connect a relatively new debate concerning perceptual confidence to the perception/cognition divide. The term ‘perceptual confidence’ is quite common in the empirical literature, but there is an unsettled question about it, namely: are confidence assignments perceptual or post-perceptual? John Morrison in two recent papers puts forward the claim that confidence arises already at the level of perception. (...) In this paper, I first argue that Morrison’s case is unconvincing, and then develop one picture on perceptual precision with the notion of ‘matching profile’ and ‘supervaluation’ : 481–495.), highlighting the fact that this is a vagueness account, which is similar to but importantly different from indeterminacy accounts : 156–184.). With this model in hand, there can be rich resources with which to draw a theoretical line between perception and cognition. (shrink)

There have recently been various empirical attempts to answer Molyneux’s question, for example, the experiments undertaken by the Held group. These studies, though intricate, have encountered some objections, for instance, from Schwenkler, who proposes two ways of improving the experiments. One is “to re-run [the] experiment with the stimulus objects made to move, and/or the subjects moved or permitted to move with respect to them” (p. 94), which would promote three dimensional or otherwise viewpoint-invariant representations. The other is “to use (...) geometrically simpler shapes, such as the cube and sphere in Molyneux’s original proposal, or planar figures instead of three-dimensional solids” (p. 188). Connolly argues against the first modification but agrees with the second. In this article, I argue that the second modification is also problematic (though still surmountable), and that both Schwenkler and Connolly are too optimistic about the prospect of addressing Molyneux’s question empirically. (shrink)

This book brings together perspectives on predictive processing and expected experience. It features contributions from an interdisciplinary group of authors specializing in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience. Predictive processing, or predictive coding, is the theory that the brain constantly minimizes the error of its predictions based on the sensory input it receives from the world. This process of prediction error minimization has numerous implications for different forms of conscious and perceptual experience. The chapters in this volume explore these implications (...) and various phenomenon related to them. The contributors tackle issues related to precision estimation, sensory prediction, probabilistic perception, and attention, as well as the role predictive processing plays in emotion, action, psychotic experience, anosognosia, and gut complex. Expected Experiences will be of interest to scholars and advanced students in philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science working on issues related to predictive processing and coding. (shrink)

Space exploration and off-world commercial activity engage both skeptics and its enthusiasts. What does seem clear, however, is that such activity has increased and is set to expand further during the present century. This book explores some of the emerging ethical issues of the space frontier and evaluates the prospects for the medium-range future.

This note explains an error in Restall’s ‘Simplified Semantics for Relevant Logics (and some of their rivals)’ (Restall, J Philos Logic 22(5):481–511, 1993 ) concerning the modelling conditions for the axioms of assertion A → (( A → B ) → B ) (there called c 6) and permutation ( A → ( B → C )) → ( B → ( A → C )) (there called c 7). We show that the modelling conditions for assertion and permutation proposed (...) in ‘Simplified Semantics’ overgenerate. In fact, they overgenerate so badly that the proposed semantics for the relevant logic R validate the rule of disjunctive syllogism. The semantics provides for no models of R in which the “base point” is inconsistent. This problem is not restricted to ‘Simplified Semantics.’ The techniques of that paper are used in Graham Priest’s textbook An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic (Priest, 2001 ), which is in wide circulation: it is important to find a solution. In this article, we explain this result, diagnose the mistake in ‘Simplified Semantics’ and propose two different corrections. (shrink)

Knowledge was a major issue in science and philosophy in the twentieth century. Its first irruption was in the heated controversy concerning the foundations of mathematics. To justify his rejection of the use of the actual infinite in mathematical reasoning, Brouwer has made the construction of mathematical objects dependent on the knowing subject. This approach was rejected by the mainstream of analytical philosophers who feared a fall into pyschologism. Several years later, the question of the progress of scientific knowledge was (...) put forward in the thirties by the post-positivist philosophers to fill the vacuum in the philosophy of science following the demise of the logical positivism programme. The answers given to these questions have deepened the already existing gap between philosophy and the history and practice of science. While the positivists argued for a spontaneous, steady and continuous growth of scientific knowledge the post-positivists make a strong case for a fundamental discontinuity in the development of science which can only be explained by extrascientific factors. The political, social and cultural environment, the argument goes on, determine both the questions and the terms in which they should be answered. Accordingly, the sociological and historical interpretation involves in fact two kinds of discontinuity which are closely related: the discontinuity of science as such and the discontinuity of the more inclusive political and social context of its development. More precisely it explains the discontinuity of the former by the discontinuity of the latter subordinating in effect the history of science to the wider political and social history. The underlying idea is that each historical and social context generates scientific and philosophical questions of its own. From this point of view the question surrounding the nature of knowledge and its development are entirely new topics typical of the twentieth century social context reflecting both the level and the scale of the development of science. To the surprise of modern historians of science and philosophy, the same kind of questions, which would allegedly be new topics specific to the twentieth century concerning the nature of knowledge and its progress, were already raised more than eleven centuries earlier in the context of the Arabic tradition which, as we discuss further on, developed a trans-cultural and trans-national concept of the unity of science (see the contributions of Deborah Black and Jon McGinnis which tackle the issue of the nature of knowledge). The neglect of the Arabic tradition in philosophy of science is a major a gap not only in the development of science but a fundamental flaw in the writing of its history and philosophy caused by the total reduction of epistemology to political and social history of science. How has this period of the history of science and philosophy come to be ignored? In what circumstances were the questions akin to the nature of knowledge raised in the first place? What is the relation between on the one hand the questions of knowledge and its growth and on the other hand the unity of science in the Arabic tradition? The answers to some of these questions are the aim of the present volume, the first of the series Logic, Epistemology and the Unity of Science to be devoted to a so-called non-western tradition. Let us first highlight in a kind of overview some landmarks concerning the timing of the emergence of the Arabic tradition and its significance for the history of science. (shrink)

The call for family and medical leave reform in the United States was largely the result of sweeping demographic shifts that occurred in the workforce after the 1950s, coupled with an ever-increasing life expectancy and changing social norms concerning the role of women as caretakers. By the early 1990s, the number of women in the workforce had nearly tripled from 1950. During that same period, life expectancy increased by six years for males and seven for females. Meanwhile, the first wave (...) of the Depression-era generation began to reach the age of retirement. In short, the parents of American workers were living longer and retiring in greater numbers while more women, who were more likely to be informal caregivers, decided to join the workforce. As a result, many families with ill or elder parents began to turn to institutional long-term care. (shrink)

BackgroundThe Health Research Council of New Zealand is the first major government funding agency to use a lottery to allocate research funding for their Explorer Grant scheme. This is a somewhat controversial approach because, despite the documented problems of peer review, many researchers believe that funding should be allocated solely using peer review, and peer review is used almost ubiquitously by funding agencies around the world. Given the rarity of alternative funding schemes, there is interest in hearing from the first (...) cohort of researchers to ever experience a lottery. Additionally, the Health Research Council of New Zealand wanted to hear from applicants about the acceptability of the randomisation process and anonymity of applicants.MethodsThis paper presents the results of a survey of Health Research Council applicants from 2013 to 2019. The survey asked about the acceptability of using a lottery and if the lottery meant researchers took a different approach to their application.ResultsThe overall response rate was 39%, with 30% from applicants in the years 2013 to 2018, and 68% for those in the year 2019 who were not aware of the funding result. There was agreement that randomisation is an acceptable method for allocating Explorer Grant funds with 63% in favour and 25% against. There was less support for allocating funds randomly for other grant types with only 40% in favour and 37% against. Support for a lottery was higher amongst those that had won funding. Multiple respondents stated that they supported a lottery when ineligible applications had been excluded and outstanding applications funded, so that the remaining applications were truly equal. Most applicants reported that the lottery did not change the time they spent preparing their application.ConclusionsThe Health Research Council’s experience through the Explorer Grant scheme supports further uptake of a modified lottery. (shrink)

Chapman and colleagues make a compelling case for reforming the Common Rule to better protect group interests in genomics and data-centric research (Chapman et al. 2025). Drawing on insights from p...

It is common to hear that deep ecology “has reached its logical conclusion and exhausted itself” in a vacuous anthropomorphism and absurd nonanthropocentrism. These conclusions should be rejected. Properly understood, neither objection poses a serious problem for deep ecology so much as for the ethic of “ecological holism” which some philosophers—wrongly—have taken to arise from deep ecology. Deep ecology is not such an ethic, but is best understood as an aesthetically articulated conception of what, following Robinson Jeffers, may be called (...) “Wild Mind,” and such a Wild Mind is characterized—not criticized and condemned—by just that anthropomorphism and nonanthropocentrism critics focus on when they attack the ethic of ecological holism. (shrink)

The paper presents an interpretation of Aristotle's views on natural justice in the Nicomachean Ethics. It focuses, in particular, on Aristotle's understanding of the relationship which exists between natural justice and political justice, or between natural law and positive law. It is suggested that Aristotle's views on this subject are often misunderstood. It is also suggested that, contrary to what some commentators might think, Aristotle's comments on natural justice are actually central for our understanding of his political thought as a (...) whole. It is argued that Aristotle is, therefore, definitely a natural law theorist of some description. However, Aristotle's natural law theory is unconventional in certain respects. In particular, Aristotle does not consider natural law to be a critical standard by means of which positive law might be evaluated. This places Aristotle outside the mainstream of natural law theory as it has been traditionally understood. Aristotle is not, in this sense at least, the forerunner of the Stoic natural law tradition and of the individualistic, liberal natural law theory of the modern era. He is, rather, the founding father of what might best be described as the conservative natural law tradition, the most well known adherents of which in modern times are Montesquieu, Burke and Hegel. (shrink)

Many find it plausible that for a given beneficiary, Y, benefactor, R, and action, ϕ, Y’s being grateful to R for ϕ-ing implies Y’s being grateful that R ϕ-ed. According to some philosophers who hold this view, all instances of gratitude to, or “prepositional gratitude,” are also instances of gratitude that, or “propositional gratitude.” These philosophers believe there is a single unified concept of gratitude, a phenomenon that is essentially gratitude that, and whose manifestations sometimes have additional features that make (...) them instances of gratitude to as well. In this article, I show that view to be mistaken. I base my argument on two hypothetical cases, in each of which a beneficiary, Y, is grateful to a benefactor, R, for ϕ-ing, but not grateful that R ϕ-ed. Generalizing from those cases and other cases of gratitude, I argue that prepositional gratitude is the proper response to benevolence-motivated action and propositional gratitude consists in a beneficiary’s judging a state of affairs to be valuable for himself and welcoming that state of affairs. Because not every instance of a benefactor’s acting benevolently toward a beneficiary is something that beneficiary finds valuable for himself and welcomes, it is possible to be grateful to a benefactor for ϕ-ing but not grateful that she ϕ-ed. Prepositional gratitude and propositional gratitude can each occur without the other and are thus two distinct phenomena. I conclude by explaining the importance of accurately understanding the relationship between prepositional gratitude and propositional gratitude. (shrink)

Aristotle and Natural Law lays out a new theoretical approach which distinguishes between the notions of 'interpretation,' 'appropriation,' 'negotiation' and 'reconstruction' of the meaning of texts and their component concepts. These categories are then deployed in an examination of the role which the concept of natural law is used by Aristotle in a number of key texts. The book argues that Aristotle appropriated the concept of natural law, first formulated by the defenders of naturalism in the 'nature versus convention debate' (...) in classical Athens. Thereby he contributed to the emergence and historical evolution of the meaning of one of the most important concept in the lexicon of Western political thought. Aristotle and Natural Law argues that Aristotle's ethics is best seen as a certain type of natural law theory which does not allow for the possibility that individuals might appeal to natural law in order to criticize existing laws and institutions. Rather its function is to provide them with a philosophical justification from the standpoint of Aristotle's metaphysics. (shrink)

In 1925, David Katz published an influential monograph on touch, Der Aufbau der Tastwelt, which was translated into English in 1989. Although it is called “the world of touch,” it also discusses the thermal and the nociceptive senses, albeit briefly. In this chapter, we will follow this approach, but we will speak about “somatosensory senses” in general in order to remind ourselves that perceptions of temperatures and pains should also be considered together in this context.

Freeman Dyson has questioned whether any conceivable experiment in the real universe can detect a single graviton. If not, is it meaningful to talk about gravitons as physical entities? We attempt to answer Dyson’s question and find it is possible concoct an idealized thought experiment capable of detecting one graviton; however, when anything remotely resembling realistic physics is taken into account, detection becomes impossible, indicating that Dyson’s conjecture is very likely true. We also point out several mistakes in the literature (...) dealing with graviton detection and production. (shrink)

This book introduces the Control/Connect continuum as a model designed to foster inclusive practices for the contemporary classroom.

Animal Ethics has long been a highly contested area with debates driven by unease about various forms of animal harm, from the use of animals in scientific research to the farming of animals for consumption. Animal Ethics: The Basics is an essential introduction to the key considerations surrounding the ethical treatment of animals. Taking a thematic approach, it outlines the current arguments from animal agency to the emergence of the ‘political turn’. This book explores such questions as: Can animals think (...) and do they suffer? What do we mean by speciesism? Are humans special? Can animals be political or moral agents? Is animal rights protest ethical? Including outlines of the key arguments, suggestions for further reading and a glossary of key terms, this book is an essential read for philosophy students and readers approaching the contested field of Animal Ethics for the first time. (shrink)

If X loves Y does it follow that X has reasons to love a physiologically exact replacement for Y? Can love's reasons be duplicated? One response to the problem is to suggest that X lacks reasons for loving such a duplicate because the reason-conferring properties of Y cannot be fully duplicated. But a concern, played upon by Derek Parfit, is that this response may result from a failure to take account of the psychological pressures of an actual duplication scenario. In (...) the face of the actual loss of a loved one and the subsequent appearance of a duplicate, how could we resist the inclination to love? Drawing upon duplication scenarios from Parfit and from Stanislaw Lem's Solaris, this paper will argue that there could be reasons for X to come to love a duplicate of Y but that these would not be identical with the reasons that X had (and may still have) to love Y. Nor (in the case of an agent with a normal causal history) could they be reasons for a love that violates the requirement that love is a response to a relationship and therefore takes time to emerge. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch's philosophical texts depart significantly from familiar analytic discursive norms. (Such as the norms concerning argument structure and the minimization of rhetoric.) This may lead us to adopt one of two strategies. On the one hand an assimilation strategy that involves translation of Murdoch's claims into the more familiar terms of property-realism (the terminology of ethical naturalism and non-naturalism). On the other hand, there is the option of adopting a crossover strategy and reading Murdoch as (in some sense) a (...) philosopher who belongs more properly to the continental tradition. The following article argues that if familiar Quinean claims about ontological commitment and Murdoch's account of metaphor are both broadly correct then the assimilation strategy must fail to produce a faithful translation. Nonetheless, Murdoch's connection to the analytic tradition is more than genealogical, it is more than a matter of her writing (initially) in response to analytic contemporaries before branching off in a more continental direction. While she departs from familiar analytic discursive norms, she continues to accept most of the epistemic values (such as clarity and simplicity) that the norms embody. (shrink)

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book illustrates the extent to which Kant's work has permeated wide areas of learning, across many disciplines, despite a general ignorance, especially in...

This chapter contains section titled: The Doctrine of Necessity The Doctrine of Liberty Hume's Compatibilism Notes References Further reading.

A computational modeling approach was used to test one possible explanation for the limited capacity of the subitizing phenomenon. Most existing models of this phenomenon associate the subitizing span with an assumed structural limitation of the human information processing system. In contrast, we show how this limit might emerge as the combinatorics of the space of enumeration problems interacts with the human cognitive architecture in the context of an enumeration task. Subitizing‐like behavior was generated in two different models of enumeration, (...) one based on the ACT‐R cognitive architecture and the other based on the principles of parallel distributed processing (PDP). Our results provide good qualitative fits to results obtained in a variety of empirical studies. (shrink)

This paper investigates the complicated relations between various versions of naturalism, behaviorism, and mentalism within the framework of W. V. O. Quine's thinking. It begins with Roger Gibson's reconstruction of Quine's behaviorisms and argues that it lacks a crucial ontological element and misconstrues the relation between philosophy and science. After getting clear of Quine's naturalism, the paper distinguishes between evidential, methodological, and ontological behaviorisms. The evidential and methodological versions are often conflated, but they need to be clearly distinguished in order (...) to see whether Quine's argument against mentalism is cogent. The paper argues that Quine's naturalism supports only the weakest version of behaviorism, that is, the evidential one, but this version is compatible with mentalistic semantics. Quine's opposition to mentalism is an overreaction from the behaviorist camp. By contrast, Jerry Fodor's objection to Jose Luis Bermudez is an overreaction from the opposite direction. (shrink)

This paper discusses the significance of the concept of a social formation for historical materialism. It argues that the concept is wrongly thought to be associated uniquely with the writings of Louis Althusser and with structuralist Marxism. It can be found in the writings of Marx himself, as well as those of Lenin, and is central to an adequate understanding of classical Marxism. To illustrate its importance the paper shows how the concept may be used to shed new light on (...) the debate around the transition from feudalism to capitalism. (shrink)

Employees’ felt neglect by their employer signals to them that their employer violates ethics of care, and thus, it diminishes employee perceptions of work meaning. Drawing upon work meaning theory, we adopt a relationship-based perspective of felt neglect and its downstream outcome— reduction in organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) amid the COVID-19 pandemic. We propose and test a core relational mechanism— relatedness need frustration (RNF)—that transmits the effect of felt neglect onto work meaning. A four-wave survey study of 111 working employees (...) in the USA demonstrated that employees’ felt neglect had negative implications for their work meaning and subsequent OCB due to their RNF. Our findings contribute to research on ethics of care and work meaning theory and stress the importance of work meaning amid crises. In addition, our findings suggest steps that employers can take to mitigate employees’ felt neglect (a violation of ethics of care) and its negative ramifications. (shrink)