‘Fascinating’, ‘brilliant’, ‘oddly moving’, ‘a warm human picture’ – this biography was enthusiastically received when it came out in 1957. And no wonder. It is not only the lively story of a distinguished man but a lucid account of his work and its significance. The author, who was himself a philosopher and journalist, has followed the bright thread of Russell’s personality with affectionate insight, from the three-day-old baby who looked about him ‘in a very energetic way’, and the boy who (...) jibbed at taking Euclid on trust, through the many turns of his life, to the undimmed octogenarian, still questioning and still deeply concerned. The subject is a great one and the biographer has matched it. (shrink)

Let φ be a monadic second order sentence about a finite structure from a class K which is closed under disjoint unions and has components. Compton has conjectured that if the number of n element structures has appropriate asymptotics, then unlabelled (labelled) asymptotic probabilities ν(φ) (μ(φ) respectively) for φ always exist. By applying generating series methods to count finite models, and a tailor made Tauberian lemma, this conjecture is proved under a mild additional condition on the asymptotics of the number (...) of single component K-structures. Prominent among examples covered, are structures consisting of a single unary function (or partial function) and a fixed number of unary predicates. (shrink)

Over 25 years ago, the first author conjectured in [15] that the existence of arbitrarily large primes is provable from the axioms I Δ₀(π) + def(π), where π(x) is the number of primes not exceeding x, IΔ₀(π) denotes the theory of Δ₀ induction for the language of arithmetic including the new function symbol π, and de f(π) is an axiom expressing the usual recursive definition of π. We prove a modified version in which π is replaced by a more general (...) function ξ that counts some of the primes below x (which primes depends on the values of parameters in ξ), and has the property that π is provably Δ₀(ξ) definable. (shrink)

Preparing the Next Generation of Oral Historians is an invaluable resource to educators seeking to bring history alive for students at all levels. Filled with insightful reflections on teaching oral history, it offers practical suggestions for educators seeking to create curricula, engage students, gather community support, and meet educational standards. By the close of the book, readers will be able to successfully incorporate oral history projects in their own classrooms.

This book's importance is derived from three sources: careful conceptualization of teacher induction from historical, methodological, and international perspectives; systematic reviews of research literature relevant to various aspects of teacher induction including its social, cultural, and political contexts, program components and forms, and the range of its effects; substantial empirical studies on the important issues of teacher induction with different kinds of methodologies that exemplify future directions and approaches to the research in teacher induction.

This paper has two related goals. First, we develop an expressivist account of negation which, in the spirit of Alan Gibbard, treats disagreement as semantically primitive. Our second goal is to make progress toward a unified expressivist treatment of modality. Metaethical expressivists must be expressivists about deontic modal claims. But then metaethical expressivists must either extend their expressivism to include epistemic and alethic modals, or else accept a semantics for modal expressions that is radically disjunctive. We propose that expressivists (...) look to Amie Thomasson’s work for a general strategy for offering a unified expressivist account of modality. Modals in general, we propose, are devices for expressing metalinguistic commitments within the object language, with deontic, epistemic, and metaphysical modals all expressing different kinds of metalinguistic commitments. (shrink)

One obvious solution to the puzzles of apparently coincident objects is a sort of reductionism - the tree really just is the wood, the statue is just the clay, and nothing really ceases to exist in the purported non-identity showing cases. This paper starts with that approach and its underlying motivation, and argues that if one follows those motivations - specifically, the rejection of coincidence, and the belief that 'genuine' object-destroying changes must differ non-arbitrarily from accidental changes, that one can (...) plausibly be pushed to an extreme nihilism, that denies the existence of any objects at all. (shrink)

“Engineers are generally an ethically motivated profession, knowing that their achievements are open to scrutiny and that much of the activity relates to work of a team.” What form such engineering ethics should take today is explored here by Sir Alan Muir Wood, FRS, FEng, FICE, Consultant, Sir William Halcrow and Partners.

“Engineers are generally an ethically motivated profession, knowing that their achievements are open to scrutiny and that much of the activity relates to work of a team.” What form such engineering ethics should take today is explored here by Sir Alan Muir Wood, FRS, FEng, FICE, Consultant, Sir William Halcrow and Partners.

Alan Wood's claim that ‘Marx did not consider capitalism unjust’ is based on three reasons: 1) According to Marx, the conceptions of justice is the highest expression of the rationality of social facts from the juridical point of view; 2) Marx argues that whether an economic trade or social institution is a just one depends on its compatibility with modes of production; 3) according to Marx, possession of surplus value by the capitalists does not include unequal or unjust trades. (...) Wood presents these three reasons in detail and provides specific referential support for them. This paper argues that Wood fails to provide sufficient referential support to his proposition and his interpretation of the relevant texts is mistaken, and hence that Wood’s claim is invalid. (shrink)

Co-published with the University of Queensland Press. HPC holds rights in North America and U. S. Dependencies. Since its first publication in 1976, Alan Chalmers's highly regarded and widely read work--translated into eighteen languages--has become a classic introduction to the scientific method, known for its accessibility to beginners and its value as a resource for advanced students and scholars. In addition to overall improvements and updates inspired by Chalmers's experience as a teacher, comments from his readers, and recent developments (...) in the field, this fourth edition features an extensive chapter-long postscript that draws on his research into the history of atomism to illustrate important themes in the philosophy of science. Identifying the qualitative difference between knowledge of atoms as it figures in contemporary science and metaphysical speculations about atoms common in philosophy since the time of Democritus offers a revealing and instructive way to address the question at the heart of this groundbreaking work: What is this thing called science? (shrink)

This masterful work on Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason explores Kant's treatment of the Idea of God, his views concerning evil, and the moral grounds for faith in God. Kant and Religion works to deepen our understanding of religion's place and meaning within the history of human culture, touching on Kant's philosophical stance regarding theoretical, moral, political, and religious matters. Wood's breadth of knowledge of Kant's corpus, philosophical sharpness, and depth of reflection sheds light not only on (...) Kant, but also on the fate of religion and its relation to philosophy in the modern world. (shrink)

This Element offers a new account of the philosophical significance of logical empiricism that relies on the past forty years of literature reassessing the project. It argues that while logical empiricism was committed to empiricism and did become tied to the trajectory of analytic philosophy, neither empiricism nor logical analysis per se was the deepest philosophical commitment of logical empiricism. That commitment was, rather, securing the scientific status of philosophy, bringing philosophy into a scientific conception of the world.

Misunderstanding Science? offers a challenging new perspective on the public understanding of science. In so doing, it also challenges existing ideas of the nature of science and its relationships with society. Its analysis and case presentation are highly relevant to current concerns over the uptake, authority, and effectiveness of science as expressed, for example, in areas such as education, medical/health practice, risk and the environment, technological innovation. Based on several in-depth case-studies, and informed theoretically by the sociology of scientific knowledge, (...) the book shows how the public understanding of science questions raises issues of the epistemic commitments and institutional structures which constitute modern science. It suggests that many of the inadequacies in the social integration and uptake of science might be overcome if modern scientific institutions were more reflexive and open about the implicit normative commitments embedded in scientific cultures. (shrink)

Originally published in 1989, The Deconstruction of Time was the first to examine what has become the fundamental, even defining, project in continental ...

We are all concerned by the environmental threats facing us today. Environmental issues are a major area of concern for policy makers, industrialists and public groups of many different kinds. While science seems central to our understanding of such threats, the statements of scientists are increasingly open to challenge in this area. Meanwhile, citizens may find themselves labelled as "ignorant" in environmental matters. In Citizen Science Alan Irwin provides a much needed route through the fraught relationship between science, the (...) public and the environmental threat. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become nearly ubiquitous in modern society, from components of mobile applications to medical support systems, and everything in between. In societally impactful systems imbued with AI, there has been increasing concern related to opaque AI, that is, artificial intelligence where it is unclear how or why certain decisions are reached. This has led to a recent boom in research on “explainable AI” (XAI), or approaches to making AI more explainable and understandable to human users. In the (...) military domain, numerous bodies have argued that autonomous and AI-enabled weapon systems ought not incorporate unexplainable AI, with the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United States Department of Defense both explicitly including explainability as a relevant factor in the development and use of such systems. In this article, I present a cautiously critical assessment of this view, arguing that explainability will be irrelevant for many current and near-future autonomous systems in the military (which do not incorporate any AI), that it will be trivially incorporated into most military systems which do possess AI (as these generally possess simpler AI systems), and that for those systems with genuinely opaque AI, explainability will prove to be of more limited value than one might imagine. In particular, I argue that explainability, while indeed a virtue in design, is a virtue aimed primarily at designers and troubleshooters of AI-enabled systems, but is far less relevant for users and handlers actually deploying these systems. I further argue that human–machine teaming is a far more important element of responsibly using AI for military purposes, adding that explainability may undermine efforts to improve human–machine teamings by creating a prima facie sense that the AI, due to its explainability, may be utilized with little (or less) potential for mistakes. I conclude by clarifying that the arguments are not against XAI in the military, but are instead intended as a caution against over-inflating the value of XAI in this domain, or ignoring the limitations and potential pitfalls of this approach. (shrink)

Philosophical arguments usually are and nearly always should be abductive. Across many areas, philosophers are starting to recognize that often the best we can do in theorizing some phenomena is put forward our best overall account of it, warts and all. This is especially true in esoteric areas like logic, aesthetics, mathematics, and morality where the data to be explained is often based in our stubborn intuitions. -/- While this methodological shift is welcome, it's not without problems. Abductive arguments involve (...) significant theoretical resources which themselves can be part of what's being disputed. This means that we will sometimes find otherwise good arguments which suggest their own grounds are problematic. In particular, sometimes revising our beliefs on the basis of such an argument can undermine the very justification we used in that argument. -/- This feature, which I'll call self-effacingness, occurs most dramatically in arguments against our standing views on the esoteric subject matters mentioned above: logic, mathematics, aesthetics, and morality. This is because these subject matters all play a role in how we reason abductively. This isn't an idle fact; we can resist some challenges to our standing beliefs about these subject matters exactly because the challenges are self-effacing. The self-effacing character of certain arguments is thus both a benefit and limitation of the abductive turn and deserves serious attention. I aim to give it the attention it deserves. (shrink)

How might social theory, public understanding of science and science policy best inform one another? What have been the key features of science-society relations in the modern world? How are we to re-think science-society relations in the context of globalization, hybridity and changing patterns of governance? This topical and unique book draws together the three key perspectives on science-society relations: public understanding of science, scientific and public governance, and social theory. The book presents a series of case studies (including the (...) debates on genetically modified foods and the AIDS movement in the USA) to discuss critically the ways in which social theorists, social scientists, and science policy makers deal with science-society relations. ‘Science' and 'society' combine in many complex ways. Concepts such as citizenship, expertise, governance, democracy and the public need to be re-thought in the context of contemporary concerns with globalization and hybridity. A radical new approach is developed and the notion of ethno-epistemic assemblage is used to articulate a new series of questions for the theorization, empirical study and politics of science-society relations. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: So far in this book, we have examined algorithmic decision systems from three autonomy-based perspectives: in terms of what we owe autonomous agents (chapters 3 and 4), in terms of the conditions required for people to act autonomously (chapters 5 and 6), and in terms of the responsibilities of agents (chapter 7). -/- In this chapter we turn to the ways in which autonomy underwrites democratic governance. Political authority, which is to say the ability of a government to exercise (...) power, may be justifiable or not. Whether it is justified and how it can come to be justified is a question of political legitimacy. Political legitimacy is another way in which autonomy and responsibility are linked. This relationship is the basis of the current chapter, and it is important in understanding the moral salience of algorithmic systems. We will draw the connection as follows. We begin, in section 8.1, by describing two uses of technology: crime predicting technology used to drive policing practices and social media technology used to influence elections (including by Cambridge Analytica and by the Internet Research Agency). In section 8.2 we consider several views of legitimacy and argue for a hybrid version of normative legitimacy based on one recently offered by Fabienne Peter. In section 8.3 we will explain that the connection between political legitimacy and autonomy is that legitimacy is grounded in legitimating processes, which are in turn based on autonomy. Algorithmic systems—among them PredPol and the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook-Internet Research Agency amalgam—can hinder that legitimation process and conflict with democratic legitimacy, as we argue in section 8.4. We will conclude by returning to several cases that serve as through-lines to the book: Loomis, Wagner, and Houston Schools. -/- The link below is to an open-access copy of the chapter. (shrink)