As human–machine teams are being considered for a variety of mixed-initiative tasks, detecting and being responsive to human cognitive states, in particular systematic cognitive states, is among the most critical capabilities for artificial systems to ensure smooth interactions with humans and high overall team performance. Various human physiological parameters, such as heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, and skin conductance, as well as brain activity inferred from functional near-infrared spectroscopy or electroencephalogram, have been linked to different systemic cognitive states, such (...) as workload, distraction, or mind–wandering among others. Whether these multimodal signals are indeed sufficient to isolate such cognitive states across individuals performing tasks or whether additional contextual information (e.g., about the task state or the task environment) is required for making appropriate inferences remains an important open problem.In this paper, we introduce an experimental and machine learning framework for investigating these questions and focus specifically on using physiological and neurophysiological measurements to learn classifiers associated with systemic cognitive states like cognitive load, distraction, sense of urgency, mind wandering, and interference. Specifically, we describe a multitasking interactive experimental setting used to obtain a comprehensive multimodal data set which provided the foundation for a first evaluation of various standard state-of-the-art machine learning techniques with respect to their effectiveness in inferring systemic cognitive states. While the classification success of these standard methods based on just the physiological and neurophysiological signals across subjects was modest, which is to be expected given the complexity of the classification problem and the possibility that higher accuracy rates might not in general be achievable, the results nevertheless can serve as a baseline for evaluating future efforts to improve classification, especially methods that take contextual aspects such as task and environmental states into account. (shrink)

Real causal systems are complicated. Despite this, causal learning research has traditionally emphasized how causal relations can be induced on the basis of idealized events, i.e. those that have been mapped to binary variables and abstracted from time. For example, participants may be asked to assess the efficacy of a headache-relief pill on the basis of multiple patients who take the pill (or not) and find their headache relieved (or not). In contrast, the current study examines learning via interactions with (...) continuous dynamic systems, systems that include continuous variables that interact over time (and that can be continuously observed in real time by the learner). To explore such systems, we develop a new framework that represents a causal system as a network of stationary Gauss--Markov (``\OU'') processes and show how such \textit{OU networks} can express complex dynamic phenomena such as feedback loops and oscillations. To assess adult's abilities to learn such systems, we conducted an experiment in which participants were asked to identify the causal relationships of a number of OU networks, potentially carrying out multiple, temporally-extended interventions. We compared their judgments to a normative model for learning OU networks as well as a range of alternative and heuristic learning models from the literature. We found that, although participants exhibited substantial learning of such systems, they committed certain systematic errors. These successes and failures were best accounted for by a model that describes people as focusing on pairs of variables, rather than evaluating the evidence with respect to the full space of possible structural models. We argue that our approach provides both a principled framework for exploring the space of dynamic learning environments as well as new algorithmic insights into how people interact successfully with a continuous causal world. (shrink)

Brought to you by: Crop X editors: Jonathan Alexander Perez, Harmony Smith, Corinne Tendorf, David Turturo, and Derek Rahn Williams. Faculty Advisor: David Turturo; Crop X team included: Chaimae Alehyane, Zachary S. Casey, Suzanna Brinez, Jacob Brown, Elizabeth George, Francisco Javier Muniz Ituarte, Brodey Myers. -/- Credits: Huckabee College of Architecture; Graphic Designers: Studio BLDG (Blossom Liu + Danny Gray); English Editor: Luke Studebaker; Spanish Translator: Jessie Forbes; Printer: Die Keure. Cover Photo: Derek Williams. -/- Generously supported by the (...) Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Huckabee College of Architecture, Texas Tech University. (shrink)

Causal models of agents have been used to analyse the safety aspects of machine learning systems. But identifying agents is non-trivial -- often the causal model is just assumed by the modeler without much justification -- and modelling failures can lead to mistakes in the safety analysis. This paper proposes the first formal causal definition of agents -- roughly that agents are systems that would adapt their policy if their actions influenced the world in a different way. From this we (...) derive the first causal discovery algorithm for discovering agents from empirical data, and give algorithms for translating between causal models and game-theoretic influence diagrams. We demonstrate our approach by resolving some previous confusions caused by incorrect causal modelling of agents. (shrink)

Although we are fairly well informed about the general organization and important events of the dramatic competitions in Athens, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge on many points of detail. In no place is this more true than with regard to the epinikian celebration honouring members of the victorious performance, about which scarcely any unambiguous testimony has come down to us. This study aims to provide new insights into the problem by demonstrating a connection between the iconography preserved in (...) several sculpted reliefs of the Roman period commonly referred to as Dionysos¿ visit to Ikarios and the representation of a celebration for poetic victory in Plato¿s Symposium. Central to the combined testimony of these sources is the ideal of Dionysos¿ epiphany to the poet in order to acknowledge and honour his victory in person. So identified as an element of victory celebration, related articulations of this imagined moment can then be detected in several additional representations on vases and in Aristophanic comedy, in both of which other independent elements likewise suggest the activation of an epinikian syntax. Practical matters about the celebration still elude us; what we gain, however, is a clearer sense of the religious ideals that were conveyed through these celebrations in connection with the worship of Dionysos, which formed a nucleus for the dramatic festivals. (shrink)

We link cleansing effects to contemporary cognitive theories via an account of event representation that provides an explicit, neurally plausible mechanism for encoding objects and their associations across time. It explains separation as resulting from weakening associations between the self in the present and the self in the past.

One of the more powerful recurring motifs in theIliadis that of the grief-stricken woman lamenting the death of a hero. As with much else in the Homeric epics, these scenes have a formulaic character; when Briseis laments Patroclus, and Hecuba, Andromache and Helen lament Hector, each is depicted delivering a specialized form of speech, specific to the context of a woman's lament. The narrative depiction of grieving women, as well, is formalized, with specific gestures and recurring images that typify these (...) scenes. One element of this depiction that has largely escaped serious consideration is the comparison of a woman in her initial moment of recognition of the corpse to Aphrodite. In this article, I will argue that the allusion is not merely to her beauty but to the myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, specifically the moment of the goddess’ discovery of the death of her mortal lover. As the earliest surviving explicit reference to Adonis in Greek literature appearsc.600b.c.e., this would require a raising of theterminus ante quemfor the transmission of the Adonis myth from the Near East to the mid eighth century. (shrink)

Articulating an Augustinian treatment of the nature, limits, meaning, and end of work, this volume will push Augustinian studies toward a more-detailed engagement with issues of political economy. Settle argues that we inhabit a culture that insists that our life's meaning is bound up in our work; we experience constant pressures at work to be more efficient and productive; and we know the ways in which our work-structures contribute to a seemingly ever-growing, corrosive system of poverty and oppression. These cultural (...) assumptions regarding work, along with a cluster of other labor-related problems (i.e. automation, wage depression, wage theft, the rise of a flexible labor force, a lack of worker representation, over-work, and productivism) have rightfully raised a number of questions about the nature, meaning, and limits of our working lives and working structures. This book sets out the ways in which St. Augustine offers us-in piecemeal fashion-elements with which we can assemble an alternative vision. For example, by examining his understanding of the role of work in the context of the monastery, we see his understanding of both the ways we should undertake our work and the ends toward which we should direct that work during our lives in a sinful world. Settle draws on these piecemeal treatments of work scattered throughout St. Augustine's varied writings in order to develop and articulate a unified theology of work. (shrink)

In this article we frame a set of important issues in the emerging field of Mind, Brain, and Education in terms of three broad headings: methods, models, and morality. Under the heading of methods we suggest that the need for synthesis across scientific and practical disciplines entails the pursuit of usable knowledge via a catalytic symbiosis between theory, research, and practice. Under the heading of models the goal of producing usable knowledge should shape the construction of theories that provide comprehensive (...) accounts of human learning and development spanning multiple levels of analysis. Under the heading of morality usable knowledge must be put to good use: Its application and dissemination ought to be infused with moral considerations gleaned from dialogue among all those potentially affected. Generally, the field should be shaped not only by its constituent scientific disciplines but also by its applications to education and learning. Thus we argue for the adoption of a kind of pragmatism that would be best actualized by building research-school collaborations between researchers and practitioners. (shrink)

Many of us have encountered a version of what Zachary Horton calls the "cosmic zoom"--a visual journey through the many scales of the universe, from the microscopic to the cosmic. Most of our daily perception operates at a level of scale somewhere between that of quarks and galaxies, and it is this comfort with the immediately visible everyday world that the cosmic zoom unsettles. In Mediating Scale, Horton uses the history of the cosmic zoom to explore how that scale (...) itself has been constructed over the past seventy years. How has cosmic zoom media influenced scientific and popular understanding of the unseen world and how it may be known, accessed, and exploited? Horton insists that scale is the key to understanding and addressing major contemporary issues including climate change and big data, but people working on issues of scale in various disciplines often talk past each other. Horton starts by sketching four common ways of thinking about scale derived from cartography, physics, engineering/biology, and mathematics. He then shows how these concepts operate in various disciplines, explains why they don't fit together, and puts forth a new, transdisciplinary theory and vocabulary of scale, one that links the natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences. In this ambitious work, scale becomes a foundation for rethinking the relationships between knowledge, mediation, and environment. (shrink)

In the heart of southeast Texas, an industrial powerhouse often referred to as the 'Golden Triangle', the oil refineries and petrochemical plants stand as stalwart testaments to the region's economic evolution. Interestingly, before the discovery of oil at Spindletop, the lumber and cattle industries powered this region's economy. A profound shift occurred when the Lucas Gusher, a fountain of oil spurting thousands of feet into the air, struck the lands of Spindletop Hill on January 10, 1901. This remarkable discovery of (...) the Spindletop oilfield on a slat dome formation south of Beaumont, Texas, marked the birth of the modern petroleum industry and fundamentally transformed the region's geopolitical, economic, and cultural landscapes. People from all over the country relocated to Gladys City and Beaumont in search of work and new opportunities, creating a boomtown as the town's population swelled from 10,000 to 50,000. The newfound urbanization brought by the oil industry transformed the town and the surrounding areas, creating a ripple effect across the region that would be felt for generations to come. The surge in oil-driven economic activity transmuted the region into a vibrant nexus of commerce, with the oil industry emerging as a critical architect of growth and advancement. This newfound affluence incited by the petroleum sector ushered in an era of economic diversification, laying the groundwork for industrialization’s further evolution. The Spindletop Oil Fields not only underscored the United States’ ascent as the foremost petroleum-producing nation but also signaled the nation’s initiation into the Petroleum Age. It was Spindletop that solidified its position as America’s first significant oil field, becoming an enduring symbol of its industrial might. By 1985, over 153,000,000 barrels of oil had been produced and extracted from the Spindletop oil fields, underscoring the magnitude of this extraordinary resource. (shrink)

In this paper, the aim is to study how the work organization in one specific company for one specific trade has changed over time and with these changes, the presence and absence of alienation of employees in this trade. Blauner’s U-shaped alienation development trend has been a reference in discussions on alienation. It displays a connection between the degree of alienation and technological development. The findings from this study verify the trend and the connection in the case company. However, although (...) the development trend may look similar to that of Blauner’s model, it is differently founded. Where previous studies highlight the production system, including technology, as crucial to the presence of alienation, this study documents that external conditions outside or partly outside the company’s control—such as digital information availability, product complexity, and quality requirements—will determine the presence of alienation. Thus, researchers should adjust the content of the concept of alienation accordingly. (shrink)

The allocation of resources among different stakeholders is an ethical dilemma for chief executive officers (CEOs). In this study, we investigate the association between CEO power and workplace injuries and illnesses. We use an establishment-level dataset comprising 31,924 establishment-year observations between 2002 and 2011. Our main result shows that employees at firms with structurally powerful CEOs experience fewer workplace injuries and illnesses and days away from work. We reason that CEOs derive a private benefit from low injury and illness rates (...) and that powerful CEOs are better at influencing employees to take workplace safety and health seriously. Additional analyses reveal fewer injuries and illnesses in firms led by CEOs with expertise power. However, increased injuries and illnesses were linked to firms controlled by CEOs with ownership power. Moreover, we find that structurally powerful CEOs mitigate injury and illness differences in relation to geographical proximity to corporate headquarters. We contribute with both research and practical implications on the topics of CEO power and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in general and workplace safety and health in particular. (shrink)

Countenancing unbounded utility in ethics gives rise to deep puzzles in formal decision theory. Here, these puzzles are taken as an invitation to assess the most fundamental principles relating probability and value, with the aim of demonstrating that unbounded utility in ethics is compatible with a desirable decision theory. The resulting theory frames further discussion of Expected Utility Theory and of principles concerning symmetries of utility.

By recovering the dependent, often enslaved, laborers who helped to make European medicines commercially available in the New England colonies, this article offers a new history of early American pharmaceutical knowledge and production. It does so by considering the life and labor of an unnamed, enslaved assistant who was said to make tinctures, elixirs, and other common remedies in a 1758 letter between two business partners, Silvester Gardiner, a successful surgeon and apothecary in Boston, Massachusetts, and William Jepson, his former (...) apprentice, in Hartford, Connecticut. Using strategies from slavery and critical archive studies, as well as from social history and the history of medicine, this article emphasizes the materiality and embodiment of pharmaceutical production and follows fragmentary evidence beyond the business archive to reverse the systemic erasure of enslaved and indentured laborers from the records of eighteenth-century manufacturers of medicines. The medicine trades of men like Gardiner and Jepson appear more reliant upon dependent laborers – named and unnamed – who not only performed rote tasks but brought their experience and judgment to their labors as well. Their contributions could be obviously medical (preparing remedies) or more ambiguous (stoking fires, shipping goods), but these actions together constituted early modern pharmacy, enabled the expansion of the transatlantic medicine trade, and laid the foundations for the more self-sufficient and industrialized pharmacy that developed in the nineteenth century. Centering the skill and knowledge among subordinated laborers in one facet of an emergent transatlantic care economy affirms the entanglement of slavery and science and underscores the necessity of asking new questions of old sources. (shrink)

Attribution theorists assume that character information informs judgments of blame. But there is disagreement over why. One camp holds that character information is a fundamental determinant of blame. Another camp holds that character information merely provides evidence about the mental states and processes that determine responsibility. We argue for a two-channel view, where character simultaneously has fundamental and evidential effects on blame. In two large factorial studies (n = 495), participants rate whether someone is blameworthy when he makes a mistake (...) (burns a cake or misses a bus stop). Although mental state inferences predict blame judgments, character information does not. Using mediation analyses, we find that character information influences responsibility via two channels (Studies 3–4; n = 447), which are sensitive to different kinds of information (Study 5; n = 149). On the one hand, forgetfulness increases judgments of responsibility, because mental lapses manifest an objectionable character flaw. On the other hand, forgetfulness decreases judgments of state control, which in turn decreases responsibility judgments. These two channels cancel out, which is why we find no aggregate effect of forgetfulness on responsibility. Our results challenge several fundamental assumptions about the role of character information in moral judgment, including that good character typically mitigates blame. (shrink)

Recent work by Keyser in applied epistemology of experiment has focused on the iterative ‘production’ of knowledge: knowledge stabilizes within a given physical context and it is iteratively tested within that context to meet standards of reliability. This implies that in a given physical context (e.g., laboratory), the inferences, methods/techniques, and physical products form coherence relations with one another. We apply this epistemological stabilization account to the martial arts in order to argue that the context of stabilization dictates the training (...) methods, techniques, and even the philosophical concepts of a given martial arts system. We describe key elements of stabilization pertaining to rules, training methodology, warrior philosophy, and spectator/media tropes. The account of stabilization requires a case study that shows how a dynamic system is stabilized. We describe the stabilization of modern mixed martial arts by tracking it on a time scale, but also in different contexts (e.g., Pancrase, Pride, UFC). (shrink)

SIRI would like to acknowledge with regret that my sentence, of which Ms Stevens quotes half, is convoluted. A book review1 is necessarily condensed and perhaps if it creates a problem it is best to read the book. But, in the complex legal, moral and ethical dilemmas arising in subjects such as confidentiality, it is highly dangerous to take half a sentence out of context and use it to discuss a separate agenda, ie secrecy within the National Health Service .I (...) would …. (shrink)

The Isis bibliography of the history of science has been published continuously since the first issue of the journal in 1913. This essay examines how information practices used to produce the bibliography have shaped, and were shaped by, the evolving discipline of the history of science. We first focus on the intellectual endeavors of George Sarton, who used the bibliography to help define and create a new academic field: the history of science. Next, we outline the administrative struggles of the (...) History of Science Society (HSS) as it tried to continue the project after Sarton’s retirement. Finally, we examine the technological aspects of producing a bibliography by focusing on the transition from analog to digital technologies over the last fifty years. In this overview, we show the central place the Isis bibliography played in the HSS community and argue that information practices surrounding the bibliography are an underutilized resource for studying the history of the discipline. (shrink)

This paper considers the maturation of the American Catholic tradition of social and economic thought in the seminal period between 1920 and 1940, particularly as encapsulated in the work of John A. Ryan. While different social ethical models emerged in the American Church during this time, the dominant school of thought was the liberal tradition associated with Ryan. This tradition, which Ryan described as "true economic liberalism," forged American political liberalism and papal critiques of secular modernity into a new social (...) ethical theory which became the capstone of prewar Catholic progressivism. True economic liberalism first manifested itself in critiques of the Supreme Court's description of "freedom" in Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1923). It took positive form during the 1920s in the widespread Catholic embrace of industrial democracy as a moral alternative to laissez-faire capitalism It was during the 1930s, however, when the Church confronted the economic crisis of the Great Depression, that true economic liberalism became a more totalizing system of social thought. It was also during the 1930s that this theory revealed the difficulties Catholic liberals have had in defining their relationship to a market economy and the state. On one hand, true economic liberalism provoked the creative maturation of Catholic thought and established the Church as a leading progressive critic of capitalism. At the same time, true economic liberalism circumscribed the possible depths of the Catholic moral critique. American Catholics liberals were so committed to constructing a social ethic that upheld "the priceless goods of liberty, opportunity, and democracy," that they accepted a reformed capitalism, guarded and chastened by religion, as the most desirable outcome for a modern economy. As John P. Carroll revealingly wrote, "The remedy, then, for the social evils. . . does not lie in the destruction of the present social system. The way to clean a house is not to dynamite it." By accommodating the Church's social ethic to the ideals of American democracy, liberal Catholics rejected radical reforms in favor of moderate legislative schemes which one writer described in Commonweal as "sniping at capitalism." It was for this reason that so many Catholics fawningly embraced the New Deal and, indeed, found in Franklin Roosevelt the supreme advocate for the principles set forth in Pius XI’s 1931 Quadragesimo Anno. (shrink)

Global development initiatives frequently promote agricultural commodity chain projects to improve livelihoods. In Morocco, development projects, including the Plan Maroc Vert, have promoted apple production in rural regions of the country. In order to access domestic markets, these new apple producers often use pesticides to meet market standards. Through situated ethnographic inquiry and commodity chain analysis, using a combination of surveys and interviews with apple wholesalers, government officials, along with farmers, this paper works to critique the PMV’s development approach that (...) implicitly values commodification. By exploring interconnected processes of commodification, I link subsidized apple saplings and cold storage infrastructure to the dependence on pesticide usage, which has become a part of daily village life. This has important implications for community health and riparian ecosystems. Alternatively, I propose how we can imagine different development trajectories that decommodify livelihoods by focusing on local knowledge creation and diversification strategies. (shrink)

The medical biography of Ludwig van Beethoven remains enigmatic. Some of his health problems, such as his early and eventually profound deafness, are well documented and extensively discussed, although not necessarily well explained . Other medical problems, and his ultimate cause of death, remain unclear. Perhaps unsurprisingly for such an important musical figure, there has been no dearth of speculation about the illnesses that may have befallen Beethoven. Medical historians and physicians have suggested a myriad of illnesses, including but hardly (...) limited to .. (shrink)

In chapter 6 of An Essay on Free Will Peter van Inwagen presents an influential argument that we are justified in believing we are free. He does so by claiming that the determinist’s objection to the argument for the belief in freedom fails in the exact same way that the skeptic’s argument fails to prove that none of our empirical beliefs are justified. I show that this strategy to defend the belief in freedom fails due to a disanalogy. The failure (...) of his attempted defense raises the question whether there are any other arguments available to him for his target conclusion. I answer this question affirmatively by presenting an interesting argument for belief in freedom that van Inwagen gestures toward without ever explicitly formulating. Namely, that “If you deliberate about what to do while believing you’re not free, then you have inconsistent beliefs.” Alongside this conclusion, van Inwagen suggests that (1) inconsistency is an epistemic defect and (2) it is implausible that some truth is such that your simply believing it would make epistemically defective your engaging in so basic an activity as deliberation. In this way, the above conclusion plays an important role in van Inwagen’s overall argument for the thesis that we should (epistemically speaking) believe in free will. Finally, I show that this argument fares no better than the other. (shrink)

When confronting the unexplained, it is helpful to consider it from many different points of view. In an essay published in 2004, entitled "Sensors, Filters, and the Source of Reality," Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne of Princeton University's PEAR laboratory proposed that consciousness constructs its reality by ordering the information it derives from the external world through an array of physiological, psychological, and cultural filters. This thesis has now been considered by nineteen distinguished scholars who here present their commentaries from (...) a broad spectrum of professional and personal perspectives. Drawn from such diverse backgrounds as art, Buddhism, evolutionary biology, fantasy, out-of-body experiences, philosophy, physics, psychology, semiotics, and systems engineering, among others, these contributions offer an assortment of unique and fascinating glimpses of how our experiences and their styles of representation are reflected through these filters of consciousness. (shrink)

Analytic philosophers have disputed the nature of “artistic value” for over six decades, bringing much needed clarity and rigor to a subject discussed with fashionable obscurity in other disciplines. This essay frames debates between analytic philosophers on artistic value and suggests new directions for future research. In particular, the problem of “intrinsic value” is considered, that is, whether a work’s value derives from its experienced properties, as a work of art, or from cultural trends outside the work’s properties. It is (...) argued that neurobiological research helps resolve perceived differences between a work’s intrinsic and extrinsic values. A work can be both rewarding and punishing on its own, “intrinsic” merit—as a percipient, real thing in the world evoking predictable kinds of emotion—and with respect to ever shifting, “extrinsic” cultural norms. (shrink)

Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Entstehung und die Wirkung von Luther an unsere Zeit, Karl Gottlieb Bretschneiders vielgelesenes Buch der Auszüge, als Fallstudie darüber, wie moderne wissenschaftliche Theologen und Herausgeber Luther gelesen, kommentiert und anderen Lesern vorgestellt haben: in diesem Beispiel als Rationalist. Das Buch war umstritten. Der Beitrag befasst sich auch mit zwei konkurrierenden Auswahlen von Luthers Schriften, die von den konservativeren Protestanten Friedrich Perthes und Hans Lorenz Andreas Vent sowie den ultramontanen Katholiken Nikolaus Weis und Andreas Räß als Antwort (...) verfasst wurden. Es deutet darauf hin, dass eine stärkere Berücksichtigung solcher Zusammenstellungen und der Arbeitsmethoden der Compiler selbst – als Teil der kritischen Geschichte der Wissenschaft – sowohl unser Verständnis des tatsächlichen Einsatzes der Reformer und ihrer breiten Rezeption durch verschiedene Leser bereichern als auch neues Licht werfen wird über die Polemik des frühen neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. This article examines the creation and impact of Luther for Our Time, Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider’s much-read book of excerpts, as a case study of how modern scientific theologians and editors read, annotated, and introduced Luther to other readers: in this instance as a rationalist. The book was controversial. The article also looks at two competing selections of Luther’s texts prepared in response by the more conservative Protestants Friedrich Perthes and Hans Lorenz Andreas Vent and the ultramontane Catholics Nikolaus Weis and Andreas Räß. It suggests that greater consideration of such compilations and the working methods of the compilers themselves – part of the critical history of scholarship – will both enrich our understanding of the actual use of reformers and their broad reception by various readers, as well as shed new light on the polemics of the early nineteenth century. (shrink)

We give a new proof of the subanalyticity of the regular locus of a p-adic subanalytic set, replacing use of an approximation theorem by a more natural argument based on the flatness of certain homomorphisms given by Taylor expansions of strictly convergent power series at a non-standard point of Zmp.

In this paper, I develop the notion of an epistemic side constraint in order to overcome one of the main challenges to a goal-based approach to the structure of epistemic normativity. I argue that the rationale for such side constraints can be found in the work of John Locke and that his argument is best understood as the epistemic analog to David Gauthier’s argument as to the rationality of being moral.

Rituels et images sont mis en miroir dès le titre, annonçant d’emblée le sujet traité dans cet ouvrage collectif soigneusement édité par Anne-Françoise Jaccottet. Au croisement de l’iconographie, de l’histoire des religions et de l’archéologie, dix-neuf contributions mettent en lumière des points précis questionnant les liens réciproques entre images et rituels et donnent à cette publication un caractère remarquable. Ce recueil d’études s’inscrit dans le prolongement d’autres ouvrages connus...

Doxastic normativism is the thesis that norms are constitutive of or essential to belief, such that no mental state not subject to those norms counts as a belief. A common normativist view is that belief is essentially governed by a norm of truth. According to Krister Bykvist and Anandi Hattiangadi, truth norms for belief cannot be formulated without unpalatable consequences: they are either false or they impose unsatisfiable requirements on believers. I propose that we construe the fundamental norm of belief (...) as a knowledge norm, rather than a truth norm. I argue that a specific kind of knowledge norm—one that has a subject's obligation to believe that p depend on her being in a position to know that p—might avoid the well-known formulation problems with truth norms. (shrink)

In an anonymous referee report written in 1945, Church suggested a sweeping argument against verificiationism, the thesis that every truth is knowable. The argument, which was published with due acknowledgement by Fitch almost two decades later, has generated significant attention as well as some interesting successor arguments. In this paper, we present the most important episodes in this intellectual history using the logic that Church himself favoured, and we give reasons for thinking that the arguments are less than decisive. However, (...) we present some new arguments against verificationism that we believe to be dialectically effective. (shrink)

It is tempting to think that a process of choosing a point at random from the surface of a sphere can be probabilistically symmetric, in the sense that any two regions of the sphere which differ by a rotation are equally likely to include the chosen point. Isaacs, Hájek, and Hawthorne (2022) argue from such symmetry principles and the mathematical paradoxes of measure to the existence of imprecise chances and the rationality of imprecise credences. Williamson (2007) has argued from a (...) related symmetry principle to the failure of probabilistic regularity. We contend that these arguments fail, because they rely on auxiliary assumptions about probability which are inconsistent with symmetry to begin with. We argue, moreover, that symmetry should be rejected in light of this inconsistency, and because it has implausible decision- theoretic implications. -/- The weaker principle of probabilistic invariance says that the probabilistic comparison of any two regions is unchanged by rotations of the sphere. This principle supports a more compelling argument for imprecise probability. We show, however, that invariance is incompatible with mundane judgments about what is probable. Ultimately, we find reason to be suspicious of the application of principles like symmetry and invariance to nonmeasurable regions. (shrink)

(Goodsell, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 51(1), 127-150 2022) establishes the noncontingency of sentences of first-order arithmetic, in a plausible higher-order modal logic. Here, the same result is derived using significantly weaker assumptions. Most notably, the assumption of rigid comprehension—that every property is coextensive with a modally rigid one—is weakened to the assumption that the Boolean algebra of properties under necessitation is countably complete. The results are generalized to extensions of the language of arithmetic, and are applied to answer a question (...) posed by Bacon and Dorr (2024). (shrink)