Kirby and Paris have exhibited combinatorial algorithms whose computations always terminate, but for which termination is not provable in elementary arithmetic. However, termination of these computations can be proved by adding an axiom first introduced by Goodstein in 1944. Our purpose is to investigate this axiom of Goodstein, and some of its variants, and to show that these are potentially adequate to prove termination of computations of a wide class of algorithms. We prove that many variations of Goodstein's axiom are (...) equivalent, over elementary arithmetic, and contrast these results with those recently obtained for Kruskal's theorem. (shrink)
In recent years, philosophical discussions of free will have focused largely on whether or not free will is compatible with determinism. In this challenging book, David Hodgson takes a fresh approach to the question of free will, contending that close consideration of human rationality and human consciousness shows that together they give us free will, in a robust and indeterministic sense. In particular, they give us the capacity to respond appositely to feature-rich gestalts of conscious experiences, in ways that (...) are not wholly determined by laws of nature or computational rules. The author contends that this approach is consistent with what science tells us about the world; and he considers its implications for our responsibility for our own conduct, for the role of retribution in criminal punishment, and for the place of human beings in the wider scheme of things. -/- Praise for David Hodgson's previous work, The Mind Matters -/- "magisterial...It is balanced, extraordinarily thorough and scrupulously fair-minded; and it is written in clear, straightforward, accessible prose." --Michael Lockwood, Times Literary Supplement -/- "an excellent contribution to the literature. It is well written, authoritative, and wonderfully wide-ranging. ... This account of quantum theory ... will surely be of great value. ... On the front cover of the paper edition of this book Paul Davies is quoted as saying that this is "a truly splendid and provocative book". In writing this review I have allowed myself to be provoked, but I am happy to close by giving my endorsement to this verdict in its entirety!" --Euan Squires, Journal of Consciousness Studies -/- "well argued and extremely important book." --Sheena Meredith, New Scientist -/- "His reconstructions and explanations are always concise and clear." --Jeffrey A Barrett, The Philosophical Review -/- "In this large-scale and ambitious work Hodgson attacks a modern orthodoxy. Both its proponents and its opponents will find it compelling reading." --J. R. Lucas, Merton College, Oxford. (shrink)
In this book, John Searle makes a significant contribution to the philosophy of rational action, and its implications for the problem of free will. The book also marks a change in Searle’s thinking since his 1992 book The Rediscovery of the Mind , particularly in that he now leaves open, as a reasonable possibility, that consciousness may be able to cause things that cannot be fully explained by the causal behaviour of neurons: for me, a step in the right direction (...) (cf. Hodgson 1994). Searle also for the first time supports a non- Humean notion of the self, as an entity that can, as a whole, consciously try to do things. (shrink)
The alliance of pure market economies with democratic polities has traditionally been a problematic one. It is argued that orthodox theoretical conceptualizations of market behaviour and the application of such theory to our communal lives have entrenched an incoherent alliance. In particular, the reductive mechanism characteristic of both neo-classical economic theory and its deployment in our socio-economic order has severely undermined the telic agency required for the autonomy or self-rule definitive of an authentic democratic order. Such reduction is observed to (...) function through the disabling of the cognitive capacity of consumers and by disempowering the agency of workers such that coercion is misconceived as freely agreed contract. (shrink)
My paper responds to certain themes of Professor John McMurtry's recent book, Unequal Freedoms: The Global Market as an Ethical System. Although I am in general sympathy with McMurtry's penetrating critique of conventional market theory and practice, I find Unequal Freedoms ambivalent on the critical question of whether endorsing and enacting the life-value code McMurtry proposes would require only a mitigation of the principles and definitive activities of the competitive market system or whether significant reforms within the system would have (...) to be deep structural ones. It is argued that the second alternative is inescapable. I defend my perspective from the point of view of a philosophical analysis of orthodox or neo-classical theory-construction about the competitive market order. In particular, I examine three fundamental principles of such modelling: the maximization of the satisfaction of self-interest, the unboundedness of consumer desire for material goods, and the distribution of monetized wealth. In order for McMurtry's "civil commons" to survive, the practice of each of these principles would need to be radically modified. However, in doing so, competitive capitalism would lose its essential identity as a socio-economic order. (shrink)
This paper responds to Professor John McMurtry, primarily to his critique (Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 44, 2003) of my recent book, Economics as Moral Science (Springer-Verlag, 2001). Although agreeing with my attribution of a moral a priorism to orthodox or neo-classical economics, McMurtry takes issue with my conversion thesis, that ana priori, ethically committed theory can be transformed into a testable empirical science of actual behaviour through the application of institutional constraints to individual motivations. McMurtry views such a thesis (...) as logically possible but morally abhorrent. In so doing, he ascribes a version of economic determinism to me which, he claims, leads me to mistakenly understand the neo-classical paradigm as circumscribing the boundaries of reality itself and thereby entrenching the life-destructive values presupposed by this paradigm. I reject such a reading of Economics as Moral Science and explain the manner in which it is inconsistent both with the theoretical substance and practical agenda of my work. I propose that the irreducible basis of disagreement remains one wherein I believe that a more radical reform of the capitalist market order is mandatory to establish more defensible moral ideals than does McMurtry. My reply closes by recommending a constitutional partitioning of material goods such that we may more securely act outside the ethical constraints of neo-classical theory. (shrink)
Two disputes have continually frustrated attempts to provide a tenable method of enquiry for economic science:(a) Should theory construction in economics include a commitment to moral principles? Or should economic theory remain value-free? (b) Does the peculiar subject matter of economics demand a teleological, or a mechanistic pattern of explanation? It is the aim of this paper to shed light on both the preceding controversies by seeking to clarify the relation between them. In particular, it is argued via a case (...) study of the theory of rational choice that over-simplified mechanistic constructions have distorted the normative content and applicability of economic theory. (shrink)
This paper returns to a perennial controversy I examined in a previous paper in the Journal of Business Ethics (Vol. 2, 1983). Is economic theory an ethically neutral discipline or do its statements presuppose a commitment to moral values? Once again this issue is addressed via a case study of the neo-classical theory of rational choice. In the present paper I focus on behaviourist forms of operationalist attempts to short-circuit any argument that would seek to infer moral presuppositions from the (...) use of evaluative discourse. In particular, I examine strategies that have sought to excise from economic theory the mentalistic vocabulary required to describe valuations per se. And I argue that such tactics are deficient since they i) impoverish the explanatory power of economic theory, (ii) fail to recover the normative usefulness of the theory of choice, and (iii) camouflage the continued presupposition of moral commitments within neo-classical theory. (shrink)
The paper replies to Professor Alex Michalos'' keynote address, "Ethics Counsellors as a New Priesthood". Michalos argues that an intractable diversity of opinion about fundamental issues in ethical theory precludes substantive, well-founded ethical counselling. However, Michalos has inappropriately modelled his understanding of an acceptable structure and application for ethical theory on natural scientific theory. For we may countenance a less severe understanding of theory for ethical theory than in the hard sciences. In particular, instructive moral reasoning may tolerate a degree (...) of disagreement across human beings in their conception of moral good. On condition that such variance is not so considerable as to undermine a necessary commonality of language on ethical matters, there will be an adequate basis for warranted theory-construction in ethics and effective moral counselling underwritten by such theory. And, on the available historical evidence, such a condition can be met. (shrink)
Max Bennett is a distinguished Australian neuroscientist, Peter Hacker an Oxford philosopher and leading authority on Wittgenstein. A book resulting from their collaboration, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, has received high praise. According to the Blackwell website, G.H. von Wright asserts that it 'will certainly, for a long time to come, be the most important contribution to the mind-body problem that there is'; and Sir Anthony Kenny says it 'shows that the claims made on behalf of cognitive science are ill-founded'. (...) M.R. Bennett & P.M.S. Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003). (shrink)
Winner of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain Student Essay Competition 20091The competition question ‘What Does It Mean To Be An Educated Person?’ is associated with a powerful and influential line of thought in the philosophy of R. S. Peters. It is a question that needs always to be asked again. I respond by asking what it means, now, to be an educated person—that is, how the value of being an educated person is currently understood, and, further, how (...) it might be understood differently. The starting point of this paper then is not exactly the question of how we should best conceive of education, or of the educated person, in terms, for example, of initiation or of moral development. Instead I am concerned with who the supposedly educated person is today, according to the particular discourses and practices to which we are subject. I begin, then, by outlining the notion of the entrepreneurial self from the perspective of governmentality, with particular reference to questions of economy and the way in which the economic imperative is present in current policy. I then reconsider the idea of the educated person with reference to notions of economy and visibility as these relate to ideas of education and the self in Plato's The Republic. Discussion of readings of The Republic and of other texts of Plato by Stanley Cavell and Michel Foucault indicates how prevailing constructions of knowledge, practice, and subjectivity might be resisted. The question of what it means to be an educated person is thereby released from a particular mode of accounting for the self. (shrink)
Max Bennett is a distinguished Australian neuroscientist, Peter Hacker an Oxford philosopher and a leading authority on Wittgenstein. A book resulting from their collaboration (M. R. Bennett and P. M. S. Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003) has received high praise. According to the Blackwell website, G. H. von Wright asserts that it ‘will certainly, for a long time to come, be the most important contribution to the mind-body problem that there is’; and Sir Anthony Kenny says it (...) ‘shows that the claims made on behalf of cognitive science are ill-founded.’          The book builds on Wittgenstein’s remark that ‘Only of a human being and what resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one say: it has sensations; it sees, is blind; hears, is deaf; is conscious or unconscious’ (quoted at p. 71). The authors identify what they call the mereological fallacy, the fallacy of attributing to a part of something properties that are correctly attributed only to the whole. Much of the book is a development of the claim that most neuroscientists commit this fallacy by attributing to brains properties and activities that can properly be attributed only to persons.          I won’t give a general review of the book, which does make valuable points concerning the importance of using language accurately in discussing mental concepts: helpful and laudatory reviews can be found on the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews website (by Dennis Patterson) and in Philosophy 79, No. 307 (January 2004) 141-46 (by Daniel N. Robinson). However, I believe that some of its basic propositions are themselves fundamentally mistaken, and suggest that this is a consequence of disregard of opposing considerations, and insufficient recognition of the flexibility of language. I will discuss three basic propositions from the book, which are particularly relevant from the ‘consciousness studies’ point of view.. (shrink)
This paper achieves two general objectives. It first analyses BernardHodgson's "Economic As Moral Science" as a path-breaking internal critique of neo-classical economic theory, and it then demonstrates that the underlying neo-classical paradigm he presupposes suffers from a deeper-structural myopia than his standpoint recognizes. EMS mainly exposes the a priori moral prescriptions underlying orthodox consumer choice theory - namely, its classical utilitarian ground and four or, as argued here, five hidden universal categorical-ought prescriptions which the theory presupposes (...) as instrumental imperatives: (1) comparability evaluations by all consumer judgements; (2) non-satiety of consumer desire; (3) consistency and transitivity of consumer preferences; (4) diminishing rate of marginal substitution by consumer choice; and (5) an unlimited aggregate growth of commodity production, or "the liberal growth ethic". The article argues that Hodgson's refutation of the neo-classical claims of "value neutral scientific method" is sound, that his bridging of the Humean reason-desire divide by the "rational review" of wants is resonantly demonstrated, and that his argument for conversion of an "a priori-cum-normative-cum-idealized" neoclassical theory into scientific status is logically plausible but morally abhorrent. The principal objection to Hodgson's magisterial exposé of neo-classical doctrine's moral a priorism is that the latter's normative presuppositions are profoundly deranged at a level that he himself assumes as given. In consequence, there is theoretical closure at three levels: (1) to the underlying "life economy" of non-priced and non-profit production and distribution of goods otherwise in short supply; (2) to the "civil commons" infrastructure sustaining these non-commodity systems of social and ecological production and distribution; and (3) to the systemic despoiling of both by monetized market mechanisms which are falsely assumed as the defining limits of "the economy". (shrink)
This article examines and assesses BernardHodgson’s critique of the Neoclassical concept of rationality and its place in the literature. It is argued that Hodgson’s Trojan horse critique is superior to the others because it addresses the role of empiricist epistemology in reducing reason to instrumental rationality and consequent disappearance of the human subject of political economy. The second phase of the empiricist level of analysis reintroduces the capacities for ethical deliberation, self-determination, and the socio-historical conditions and (...) institutional setting of the economic agent. Because Hodgson’s solutions presuppose empiricist terrain, they are arbitrary. This occurs because the fundamental problem of Neoclassical rationality is its ontology. Yet by introducing the human subject into economic theory, Hodgson’s solutions move onto an ontological terrain adequate for economic analysis of human subjects. (shrink)
In his book Economics as a Moral Science , BernardHodgson argues that economics is not value neutral as is often claimed, but is a value-laden discipline. In the long argument for this in his book, Hodgson never discusses or even mentions corporations. This article explains that corporations are absent from Hodgson’s discussion because he considers only the consumption side of general equilibrium theory (GET), and it shows that if Hodgson had included corporations and the (...) production side, his overall argument would have been more complete and convincing. This article shows that Hodgson’s methodology, when applied to the production side of GET, has value implications for CEOs of large corporations, for shareholders and members of Boards of Directors, and for legislators and regulators of business. Hodgson’s claim that economics must consider the ability of economic agents to create or change the institutional, cultural, and organizational conditions of their own economic actions is supported and expanded. (shrink)
In this essay, my point of departure is BernardHodgson’s analysis of neo-classical economic theory and his demonstration that neo-classical economic thought is already a branch of normative theory. I undertake to broaden the demonstration by showing that other contemporary conceptions of economics are also irreducibly normative. The essay begins with an overview of Hodgson’s argument strategy, and a discussion of his thesis that economics is a moral science. This illustrates in what way moral presuppositions are at (...) play as core principles that both positivist and normativist economics take for granted. My strategy is to show that alternative conceptions of economics, in particular Schumpeterian accounts of evolution/innovation, and orthodox versions of ecological economics, share with classical and neo-classical economics normative assumptions about the common good, extending Hodgson’s thesis to one about moral science . For then these assumptions (both moral and scientific ) commit economics to unworkable notions of social and environmental optimization that ignore the pure historical contingency of physical, economic, social and cultural conditions. It is concluded that the relationship between facts and values must be fundamentally retheorized. (shrink)
The book includes contributions by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, George F. R. Ellis , Christopher D. Frith, Mark Hallett, David Hodgson, Owen D. Jones, Alicia Juarrero, J. A. Scott Kelso, Christof Koch, Hans Küng, Hakwan C. Lau, Dean Mobbs, ...
William James’ Principles of Psychology, in which he made famous the ‘specious present’ doctrine of temporal experience, and Edmund Husserl’s Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, were giant strides in the philosophical investigation of the temporality of experience. However, an important set of precursors to these works has not been adequately investigated. In this article, we undertake this investigation. Beginning with Reid’s essay ‘Memory’ in Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, we trace out a line of development of ideas about (...) the temporality of experience that runs through Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, William Hamilton, and finally the work of Shadworth Hodgson and Robert Kelly, both of whom were immediate influences on James (though James pseudonymously cites the latter as ‘E.R. Clay’). Furthermore, we argue that Hodgson, especially his Metaphysic of Experience (1898), was a significant influence on Husserl. (shrink)
William James' Principles of Psychology , in which he made famous the "specious present" doctrine of temporal experience, and Edmund Husserl's Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins were giant strides in the philosophical investigation of the temporality of experience. However, an important set of precursors to these works has not been adequately investigated. In this article, we undertake this investigation. Beginning with Reid's essay "Memory" in Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man , we trace out a line of development of (...) ideas about the temporality of experience that runs through Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, William Hamilton, and finally the work of Shadworth Hodgson and Robert Kelly, both of whom were immediate influences on James (though James pseudonymously cites the latter as 'E.R. Clay'). Furthermore, we argue that Hodgson, especially his Metaphysic of Experience (1898), was a significant influence on Husserl. (shrink)
We explore the interaction between oculomotor control and language comprehension on the sentence level using two well-tested computational accounts of parsing difficulty. Previous work (Boston, Hale, Vasishth, & Kliegl, 2011) has shown that surprisal (Hale, 2001; Levy, 2008) and cue-based memory retrieval (Lewis & Vasishth, 2005) are significant and complementary predictors of reading time in an eyetracking corpus. It remains an open question how the sentence processor interacts with oculomotor control. Using a simple linking hypothesis proposed in Reichle, Warren, and (...) McConnell (2009), we integrated both measures with the eye movement model EMMA (Salvucci, 2001) inside the cognitive architecture ACT-R (Anderson et al., 2004). We built a reading model that could initiate short “Time Out regressions” (Mitchell, Shen, Green, & Hodgson, 2008) that compensate for slow postlexical processing. This simple interaction enabled the model to predict the re-reading of words based on parsing difficulty. The model was evaluated in different configurations on the prediction of frequency effects on the Potsdam Sentence Corpus. The extension of EMMA with postlexical processing improved its predictions and reproduced re-reading rates and durations with a reasonable fit to the data. This demonstration, based on simple and independently motivated assumptions, serves as a foundational step toward a precise investigation of the interaction between high-level language processing and eye movement control. (shrink)
