Current work in language models (LMs) helps us speed up or even skip thinking by accelerating and automating cognitive work. But can LMs help us with critical thinking -- thinking in deeper, more reflective ways which challenge assumptions, clarify ideas, and engineer new concepts? We treat philosophy as a case study in critical thinking, and interview 21 professional philosophers about how they engage in critical thinking and on their experiences with LMs. We find that philosophers do not find LMs to (...) be useful because they lack a sense of selfhood (memory, beliefs, consistency) and initiative (curiosity, proactivity). We propose the selfhood-initiative model for critical thinking tools to characterize this gap. Using the model, we formulate three roles LMs could play as critical thinking tools: the Interlocutor, the Monitor, and the Respondent. We hope that our work inspires LM researchers to further develop LMs as critical thinking tools and philosophers and other 'critical thinkers' to imagine intellectually substantive uses of LMs. (shrink)

This reconsideration of Hume’s classic essay “Of Miracles” via the lens of American pragmatist ways of thinking about history and power shifts our attention from Hume’s epistemic concerns about the legitimacy of witnesses and testimony to his distaste for sacred history, his critical stance regarding the social force of revelation, and his disdain for religious authority. To view Hume’s essay both as an articulation of a critical philosophy of history and as an exercise in moral dynamism (social power or, authority, (...) is a result of epistemic transactions), is to intervene in both Hume studies and Contemporary Pragmatism. (shrink)

Under the lig ht of Being and Nothingness’s the o re t ical body – Sartre’s master piece –, it is intended to discuss the essential source of human reality as “n i h i l a t i o n” and ontological lack, as well as manifestations and cons e q u e nces from this primordial human passion to be transformed to coagulated transcendence, to be transformed in Being In-itself-For-itself: to be consciousness and, at the same t i (...) me, to be a complete and finished Being, with infinite de nsity and witho u t fissures. (shrink)

An examination of David Hume's philosophy of religion that situates his conception "true religion" within the context of his overall science of human nature, his rejection of popular religion, and his Ciceronian influence"--Provided by publisher.

Drawing on recent findings, this study examines whether valence concordant electromyography (EMG) responses can be explained as an unconditional effect of mere stimulus processing or as somatosensory simulation driven by task-dependent processing strategies. While facial EMG over the Corrugator supercilii and the Zygomaticus major was measured, each participant performed two tasks with pictures of album covers. One task was an affective evaluation task and the other was to attribute the album covers to one of five decades. The Embodied Emotion Account (...) predicts that valence concordant EMG is more likely to occur if the task necessitates a somatosensory simulation of the evaluative meaning of stimuli. Results support this prediction with regard to Corrugator supercilii in that valence concordant EMG activity was only present in the affective evaluation task but not in the non-evaluative task. Results for the Zygomaticus major were ambiguous. Our findings are in line with the view that EMG activity is an embodied part of the evaluation process and not a mere physical outcome. (shrink)

English summary: Marc Andre Wiegand analyzes the neo-Kantian premises of Gustav Radbruch's legal philosophy.

Social constructionists maintain that we invent the properties of the world rather than discover them. Is reality constructed by our own activity? Do we collectively invent the world rather than discover it? André Kukla presents a comprehensive discussion of the philosophical issues that arise out of this debate, analysing the various strengths and weaknesses of a range of constructivist arguments and arguing that current philosophical objections to constructivism are inconclusive. However, Kukla offers and develops new objections to constructivism, distinguishing between (...) the social causes of scientific beliefs and the view that all ascertainable facts are constructed. (shrink)

Over the past fifteen years there has been a considerable amount of debate concerning what theoretical population dynamic models tell us about the nature of natural selection and drift. On the causal interpretation, these models describe the causes of population change. On the statistical interpretation, the models of population dynamics models specify statistical parameters that explain, predict, and quantify changes in population structure, without identifying the causes of those changes. Selection and drift are part of a statistical description of population (...) change; they are not discrete, apportionable causes. Our objective here is to provide a definitive statement of the statistical position, so as to allay some confusions in the current literature. We outline four commitments that are central to statisticalism. They are: 1. Natural Selection is a higher order effect; 2. Trait fitness is primitive; 3. Modern Synthesis (MS)-models are substrate neutral; 4. MS-selection and drift are model-relative. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate how Xenophanes was ‘eleaticised’, i.e. attributed theses and arguments that belong to Parmenides and Melissus. I examine texts of Plato, Aristotle and Theophrastus in order to determine if they considered Xenophanes as a philosopher and a monist. I show that neither Plato nor Aristotle regarded him as a philosopher, but rather as a pantheist poet who claimed, in a vague way, that everything is one. But Theophrastus interpreted too literally Aristotle’s claims and was the first (...) to make Xenophanes a proper monist philosopher. (shrink)

Cet article examine l’influence sur la première hypothèse du Parménide de deux penseurs dont l’importance a été négligée par les critiques : Mélissos et Gorgias. Après avoir observé que les prédicats attribués à l’un ainsi que la forme démonstrative sont plus représentatifs de l’éléatisme de Mélissos que de celui de Parménide, nous expliquons ce constat par le fait que Platon reprenne une partie du Traité du Non-être de Gorgias qui vise elle-même essentiellement Mélissos. Nous démontrons alors que la première hypothèse, (...) et même l’ensemble de la seconde partie du Parménide, est un pastiche du Traité du Non-être, et nous en tirons des conclusions sur le statut de l’exercice dialectique mis en œuvre dans le Parménide. (shrink)

The central point of this essay is to demonstrate the incommensurability of ‘Darwinian fitness’ with the numeric values associated with reproductive rates used in population genetics. While sometimes both are called ‘fitness’, they are distinct concepts coming from distinct explanatory schemes. Further, we try to outline a possible answer to the following question: from the natural properties of organisms and a knowledge of their environment, can we construct an algorithm for a particular kind of organismic life-history pattern that itself will (...) allow us to predict whether a type in the population will increase or decrease relative to other types? 1. Introduction2. Darwinian fitness3. Reproductive fitness and genetical models of evolution4. The models of reproductive fitness4.1 The Standard Viability Model4.2 Frequency-dependent selection4.3 Fertility models4.4 Overlapping generations5. Fitness as outcome5.1 Fitness as actual increase in type5.2 Fitness as expected increase in type5.2.1 Expected increase within a generation5.2.2 Expected increase between generations5.2.3 Postponed reproductive fitness effects6. The book-keeping problem7. Conclusion. (shrink)

Both Hippolytus of Rome and Sextus Empiricus attribute a concept of λόγος to Empedocles, relying on fragments that seem to have nothing to do with this claim. This article aims to show how the identification and clarification of their common Stoic source helps us to understand these texts better, and to reconstruct an interpretation of Empedocles’ epistemology that has not attracted critical attention so far.

Occasions of Identity is an exploration of timeless philosophical issues about persistence, change, time, and sameness. Andre Gallois offers a critical survey of various rival views about the nature of identity and change, and puts forward his own original theory. He supports the idea of occasional identities, arguing that it is coherent and helpful to suppose that things can be identical at one time but distinct at another. Gallois defends this view, demonstrating how it can solve puzzles about persistence dating (...) back to the Ancient Greeks, and investigates the metaphysical consequences of rejecting the necessity and eternity of identities. (shrink)

Le génie de Léonard de Vinci, celui de Michel-Ange ressortent mieux sur le fond révélateur de l’Académie de Careggi, où Marsile Ficin règne en maître, évoquant sinon invoquant Platon. La culture platonicienne entretenue par Ficin - mais Cristoforo Landino ou Ange Politien sont tour à tour convoqués - délimite le contour d’un nouvel ordre artistique dont André Chastel, dans un travail de jeunesse qui engage déjà ses subtiles analyses d’histoire de l’art et des idées, rend raison avec passion. En quelques (...) pages lumineuses, Jean Wirth donne à ce maître livre sa juste place dans une tradition historiographique qu’il a contribué à renouveler. (shrink)

Covering the basics as well as recent research results, this book provides a very readable introduction to the exciting interface of computability and ...

ABSTRACT: In this essay I characterize arguments by analogy, which have an impor- tant role both in philosophical and everyday reasoning. Arguments by analogy are dif- ferent from ordinary inductive or deductive arguments and have their own distinct features. I try to characterize the structure and function of these arguments. It is further discussed that some arguments, which are not explicit arguments by analogy, nevertheless should be interpreted as such and not as inductive or deductive arguments. The result is that (...) a presumed outcome of a philosophical dispute will have to be reconsidered. (shrink)

Melissus’ fragment B9, where he claims that being has no body and no thickness, raises the question of how being can be extended and full and at the same time incorporeal. Most recent interpretations tried to avoid lending to “body” the meaning of “physical body”. My aim in this paper is to reconstruct Melissus’ notion of body, by examining its connection to “thickness”. I show that Melissus meant by “thick” something that has distinct parts and therefore supports in B9 the (...) indivisibility of being. I then indicate that he relied on the contrast between soul and body for his conception of corporeality, by highlighting that by Presocratic thinkers, the soul was considered as “thin” and regarded as something that could be exempt of the division into parts. I conclude that even though Melissus’ notion of incorporeality is very different from the one Plato will develop, he made a huge step toward its conceptualization. (shrink)

This paper examines two doxographies present in Ḥunayn’s summaries to Galen’s treatise On the Elements. We track the origin of these doxographies back, from Greek scolia to Galen’s treatise to Simplicius’ Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, which we show to be the ultimate source. We also point out that Simplicius’ Commentary inspired an interpretation of Parmenides and Melissus that we find in Ḥunayn’s texts. This allows us to see remnants of Simplicius’ Commentary in the Arabic world and to shed some light (...) on the production of these summaries to Galen’s work called Summaria Alexandrinorum. (shrink)