This article discusses whether and how globalization has had a significant effect on Australia, by referencing normative concepts of good or bad, of presence or absence and whether normative truth questions can be asked. These questions are answered by employing Bhaskar’s most recent iteration of the RRREI(C) schema for explanatory analysis. Viewed generally, the essential or necessary component of globalization is the ideology of neo-liberalism from which has emerged the more radical neo-conservatism. Overall these ideologies, which underpin globalization, are having (...) a detrimental effect economically and socially: economically because of widening wealth inequalities both in Australia and globally; and socially because of growing push for protectionism in wealthier countries like Australia. These emerging social and economic ontologically real phenomena are causing consternation and fuelling divisiveness worldwide. Nevertheless, by conducting this explanatory analysis, we were able to identify feasible interventions that would, if implemented, possibly absent the negative aspects of globalization. (shrink)

Alasdair Richmond introduces some famous paradoxes about time travel.

Modern epistemology has run into several paradoxes in its efforts to explain how knowledge acquisition can be both socially based and still able to determine objective facts about the world. In this important book, Richmond Campbell attempts to dispel some of these paradoxes, to show how they are ultimately just "illusions of paradox," by developing ideas central to two of the most promising currents in epistemology: feminist epistemology and naturalized epistemology. Campbell's aim is to construct a coherent theory of (...) knowing that is feminist and "naturalized." Illusions of Paradox will be valuable for students and scholars of epistemology and women's studies. (shrink)

Following on from Nick Bostrom's discussion of the Doomsday argument, Alasdair Richmond considers how anthropic reasoning can lead from Doomsday to some odd conclusions about computation and our place in reality.

For as long as there have been theories about common knowledge, they have been exposed to a certain amount of skepticism. Recent more sophisticated arguments question whether agents can acquire common attitudes and whether they are needed in social reasoning. I argue that this skepticism arises from assumptions about practical reasoning that, considered in themselves, are at worst implausible and at best controversial. A proper approach to the acquisition of attitudes and their deployment in decision making leaves room for common (...) attitudes. Postulating them is no worse off than similar idealizations that are usefully made in logic and economics. (shrink)

My chief aim has been to convey the thought that the application of model theoretic techniques to natural languages needn't force a distortion of intentional phenomena. I hope that at least I have succeeded in accomplishing this.

How do we alleviate the cultural obstacles to dialogue? The answer, we argue, is by using Socratic dialogue as the architecture for the design of social systems, societies can overcome the cultural obstacles to inter-cultural dialogue of imposed insider-outsider social divisions, of imposed social hierarchies, and of imposed social walls around cultures. We elaborate on how Socratic Dialogue removes those cultural obstacles to intercultural dialogue when used as social architecture or as a blueprint for institutions that open the social gates (...) to all “outsiders” through the social levelling of hierarchies, and through the creation of social bridges among all “parallel” cultures. (shrink)

This is part of a larger project that is motivated in part by linguistic considerations and by the philosophical literature in action theory and the logic of ability, but that is also meant to suggest ways in which planning formalisms could be modified to provide an account of the role of ability in planning and practical reasoning.

Might time be multi‐dimensional? In exploring this question, this paper uses a thought‐experiment about dimensionality, H. G. Wells' ‘The Plattner Story’. Plattner has his left and right sides transposed after a trip through a fourth spatial dimension, a change with independent empirical consequences. This example is then generalised to reversals of the directions of time and entropy. Finally, this thought‐experiment is related to relativistic theories of time and the possibility of preserving causality in a temporally multi‐dimensional framework.

Joseph Agassi develops a humanist world view in his last single-authored book through confronting the challenges facing the humanist world view. The three challenges that Agassi confronts are: 1. how do we rationally choose ways of life, including the life of rationality? 2. is humanity worthwhile? 3. how can we improve liberal democracy in our fractured societies where extremists seek to gain control?

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Everlasting Check: Hume on Miracles by Alexander GeorgeAlasdair RichmondAlexander George. The Everlasting Check: Hume on Miracles. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. Pp. xiii + 98. Hardback ISBN 978-0-674-289246. $41.00.According to its inside front flap, Alexander George’s The Everlasting Check “provides fresh insights” into Hume’s “Of Miracles” and demonstrates “that Hume misconstrues the nature of religious belief and its relationship to evidence and confirmation.” Although often commendable, (...) this book may not achieve all those aims. The book is divided into six chapters: “1. Hume’s Miracles,” “2. Hume’s Theorem,” “3. Hume and Self-Undermining,” “4. Hume and Testimony,” “5. Objections to Hume” and “6. Too Big for A Blunder?” All the chapters make interesting reading but some reprise well-rehearsed debates and introduce odd asides. Also, while no book can possibly be comprehensive about a hardy perennial like “Of Miracles,” some omissions are surprising. In particular, more on Bayesian and other probabilistic approaches, the “independent witnesses” problem, etc., might have been helpful.1 (A bibliography might have been helpful too.)George’s Chapter 1 discusses how Hume defines a miracle. Critics often seek easy victories over Hume via idiosyncratic miracle definitions.2 Commendably, George (8) rejects suggestions that Hume stacked the deck by dismissing miracles a priori. However, Hume’s allowance that miracles (even testimonially compelling ones) could occur is well-known.3 Attempts to dismiss this allowance as insincere or merely tactical must reckon with Hume’s “eight days of darkness” example4 and indeed, all of Part II of “Of Miracles.”As George notes, Hume mainly defines miracles as violations of natural laws, but at one point invokes supernatural agency (5). (See EHU 10.12, 10.12n23.) [End Page 371] Humean natural laws, in turn, are highly well-confirmed, hitherto unbroken, observed uniformities. The law-breaking definition looms larger in “Of Miracles,” but some of George’s remarks seem better suited to the “agent” definition, i.e. the one that assumes that genuine miracles require extra-mundane agential causes. The law-breaking definition perhaps prevails in “Of Miracles,” not least because it lets us determine empirically whether or not an event breaks an established regularity (and is thus miraculous), without any (supernatural or other) cause being invoked. Invoking putative causes, especially supernatural ones, is inevitably more conjectural, especially if the alleged cause is necessarily imperceptible. The “eight days of darkness” are Hume-miraculous, because they fail to reflect a hitherto-unbroken, and very widely supported, regularity, namely that the Sun is always seen to rise in (what clocks say is) the morning. Hume explicitly allows that such failures can occur and can be “of such a kind as to admit of proof from human testimony” (EHU 10.36).Hume allowed that miracles can theoretically be identified, and even compellingly supported, independently of any question of what may have caused them. Presumably when Hume said there is an unbroken uniformity against the occurrence of miracles, he meant “unbroken up to now” or “unbroken apart from the specific instant testified to,” i.e., not the question-begging “unbroken for all time.” Stipulating hitherto-unbroken or otherwise-unbroken uniformities seems reasonable. Presumably those occasions when the Sun stood still at Joshua’s command or Lazarus rose from the dead were at least highly unusual, if not unprecedented, occurrences. If Sun-stoppages or resurrections occurred regularly, claims that any particular stoppage or resurrection was miraculous would be harder to sustain.Commendably, George (7) insists that when talking of a “proof” against miracles, “by ‘proof ’ Hume does not mean a demonstrative argument,” and that a Hume-proof “consists of empirical evidence of a very high order” (8).5 Unfortunately, George also glosses miracles as “events that violate a lawlike claim that our observations leave beyond doubt” (8). This last needs qualifications like “for all practical purposes.” Humean doubt is always possible but prior to experience, may not have any purchase. Likewise unfortunate is George’s: “What is analytic, if you will, is that a miracle claim confronts experiences that ‘leave no room’ to accept its truth” (8). Contrast Howson:Hume is speaking in descriptive mode, in which a law of nature... (shrink)

This chapter begins with a discussion of Indian theories of inference. It identifies the unique features of Indian logic not found in Western logic. Indian theories of inference are primarily theories of adequate evidence, but they may also be viewed as systems of nonmonotonic reasoning, which is being used in modern computer simulation of actual human reasoning processes. The chapter then discusses Nyāya logic, Buddhist logic, Jaina logic, and Navya–Nyāya logic.

Cognitive science gives computational explanations of the brain. Philosophers have treated these explanations as if they simply claim that the brain computes. We have therefore assumed that to understand how and why computational explanation works, we must understand what it is to compute. In contrast, I argue that we can understand computational explanation by describing the resources it brings to bear on the study of the brain. Specifically, I argue that it introduces concepts and formalisms that complement cognitive science's modeling (...) goals. This allows us to understand computational explanation without having to debate what it is to compute. (shrink)

The London‐based Oily Cart theatre company aims to produce shows that are suitable forallyoung people. This paper closely examines one of their productions,Splish Splash, which was developed for children with profound and multiple learning difficulties. The paper's central purpose is to understand the value of this type of theatrical experience for these children. It argues that Winnicott's conception of play, and his account of the conditions that enable the capacity for play to unfold, provide a persuasive theoretical framework that makes (...) sense of Oily Cart's achievement. Winnicott's framework can integrate the views expressed (in interviews) by adults who were involved with or observed the show; arguably it is also corroborated by more recent infant research. (shrink)

In Kitcher’s ‘pragmatic naturalism’ moral evolution consists in pragmatically motivated moral changes in response to practical difficulties in social life. No moral truths or facts exist that could serve as an ‘external’ measure for moral progress. We propose a psychologically realistic conception of moral objectivity consistent with this pragmatic naturalism yet alive to the familiar sense that moral progress has an objective basis that transcends convention and consensus in moral opinion, even when these are products of serious, extended and collaborative (...) reflection. (shrink)

In 820 the corrections of Buecheler and Scaliger are accepted. In 822 the MSS. have quom penes me potestas; quom for quos from v. 823, lacuna supplied by Klotz, met , by Leo, mei . I conceive an intermediate stage: quom penes mei potestas, which would account for the lacuna by haplography, as well as for the change of mei to me.

Originally published 1978.This volume examines the purpose and the functioning of the present education system inthe UK and when it was originally published it was the first overall review of developments in British education since the 1944 Education Act. It discusses some of the most significant reforms which have stemmed from developments in the primary schools, in particular from the adoption of child-centred and progressive methods of teaching.

This article provides an overview of the subfield of Artificial Intelligence known as “Knowledge Representation and Reasoning.” This field uses the techniques of philosophical logic, but aims at providing a theoretical basis for the management of declarative information in automated reasoning systems. Three topics are singled out here for attention: planning and reasoning about actions, description logics, and nonmonotonic logics.

The premises that a four foot man is short and that a man one tenth of an inch taller than a short man is also short entail by universal instantiation and "modus ponens" that a seven foot man is short. The negation of the second premise seems to entail there are virtually no borderline cases of short men, While to deny the second premise and its negation conflicts with the principle of bivalence, If not excluded middle. But the paradox can (...) be dissolved without resort to degrees of truth or any non-Classical system of logic. If some true predications can be semantically uncertain in a sense suitable for defining borderline cases, The second premise can be denied without denying the vagueness of "short" or reintroducing a sorites paradox along with higher order borderline cases. (shrink)

It is more than a half-century since Nelson Goodman [1955] applied what we call the Reflective Equilibrium model of justification to the problem of justifying induction, and more than three decades since Rawls [1971] and Daniels [1979] applied celebrated extensions of this model to the problem of justifying principles of social justice. The resulting Wide Reflective Equilibrium model (WRE) is generally thought to capture an acceptable way to reconcile inconsistency between an intuitively plausible general principle and an intuitively plausible judgment (...) about a particular case. Recently a different model for reconciling moral inconsistency has emerged: Moral Consistency Reasoning [Campbell and Kumar 2012, 2013a; Kumar and Campbell 2012; Campbell 2009: 86?7; Campbell and Woodrow 2003; Wong 2002]. MCR applies when two moral judgments give opposing assessments of (what appear to be) relevantly similar particular cases. Though WRE and MCR are strikingly different, each arguably captures a rationally acceptable method for reconciling moral inconsistency. Moreover, as will be shown, they function in complementary ways. Are they parts of a more comprehensive model of moral reasoning in the face of inconsistency that would explain the attractions of each? This essay first spells out the relevant differences between the models and then formulates a more general model of moral reasoning in the face of inconsistency. ?1 reviews the emergence of Goodman's model that he offers in the spirit of epistemology naturalized, almost a decade before Quine coined the term [1969a]. ?2 analyses six salient features of WRE to be compared with six contrasting features of MCR in ?3. ?4 presents the general model. (shrink)

1 Background for the Uninitiated RICHMOND CAMPBELL Paradoxes are intrinsically fascinating. They are also distinctively ...

This paper asks how representational notions figure into cognitive science, especially neuroscience. Philosophers have a way of skipping over that question and going straight to another: _what is neural representation?_ What is the property or relation that representational notions pick out? I argue that this is a mistake. Our ultimate questions, as philosophers of cognitive science, are about the function and epistemology of cognitive scientific explanations—in this case, explanations that use representational notions. To answer those questions we must understand what (...) representational notions contribute to science: what they enable scientists to do or explain, and how. But I show that we can do this without raising traditional and vexing questions about the definition of neural representation, or the nature of a property or relation that notion picks out. Taking this approach, I defend a realist account of representational explanation that underwrites important connections between philosophy and neuroscience. (shrink)