Research into the potential associations between tinnitus and cognition has investigated specific cognitive domains in laboratory settings despite adults with tinnitus reporting broad cognitive difficulties in every-day life. To address this limitation, the present study compared performance and perceived exertion on a visual office-like task in 38 adults with tinnitus and 38 adults without tinnitus matched for age, sex and educational background. All participants were also assessed for hearing, anxiety and depression, and participants with tinnitus were also assessed for tinnitus (...) handicap. No associations were found between presence of tinnitus and cognitive performance and perceived exertion on the visual office-like task when corrected for standard and extended high frequency hearing thresholds, anxiety, and depression. The correction for extended high frequency average hearing threshold was significant for performance but not perceived exertion on the visual office-like task. Overall, the results showed extended high frequency hearing, but not tinnitus, was associated with every-day cognitive performance. This indicates clinical testing of hearing thresholds above 8 kHz could support clinicians’ identification and management of cognitive difficulties. One management method suggested by the current findings would include provision of auditory stimulation at frequencies exceeding the frequency response of many current hearing aids. (shrink)

Probabilistic reasoning is heavily investigated in decision research. Violations of probability theory have been demonstrated numerously, for instance, the tendency to overestimate the joint probab...

BackgroundFreezing of gait is a disabling burden for Parkinson’s disease patients with poor response to conventional therapies. Combined deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus and substantia nigra moved into focus as a potential therapeutic option to treat the parkinsonian gait disorder and refractory FoG. The mechanisms of action of DBS within the cortical-subcortical-basal ganglia network on gait, particularly at the cortical level, remain unclear.MethodsTwelve patients with idiopathic PD and chronically-implanted DBS electrodes were assessed on their regular dopaminergic medication in (...) a standardized stepping in place paradigm. Patients executed the task with DBS switched off, conventional STN DBS and combined STN+SN DBS and were compared to healthy matched controls. Simultaneous high-density EEG and kinematic measurements were recorded during resting-state, effective stepping, and freezing episodes.ResultsClinically, STN+SN DBS was superior to conventional STN DBS in improving temporal stepping variability of the more affected leg. During resting-state and effective stepping, the cortical activity of PD patients in STIM OFF was characterized by excessive over-synchronization in the theta, alpha, and high-beta band compared to healthy controls. Both active DBS settings similarly decreased resting-state alpha power and reduced pathologically enhanced high-beta activity during resting-state and effective stepping compared to STIM OFF. Freezing episodes during STN DBS and STN+SN DBS showed spectrally and spatially distinct cortical activity patterns when compared to effective stepping. During STN DBS, FoG was associated with an increase in cortical alpha and low-beta activity over central cortical areas, while with STN+SN DBS, an increase in high-beta was prominent over more frontal areas.ConclusionsSTN+SN DBS improved temporal aspects of parkinsonian gait impairment compared to conventional STN DBS and differentially affected cortical oscillatory patterns during regular locomotion and freezing suggesting a potential modulatory effect on dysfunctional cortical-subcortical communication in PD. (shrink)

This paper presents a version of neurophenomenology based on generative modelling techniques developed in computational neuroscience and biology. Our approach can be described as _computational phenomenology_ because it applies methods originally developed in computational modelling to provide a formal model of the descriptions of lived experience in the phenomenological tradition of philosophy (e.g., the work of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, etc.). The first section presents a brief review of the overall project to naturalize phenomenology. The second section presents and evaluates (...) philosophical objections to that project and situates our version of computational phenomenology with respect to these projects. The third section reviews the generative modelling framework. The final section presents our approach in detail. We conclude by discussing how our approach differs from previous attempts to use generative modelling to help understand consciousness. In summary, we describe a version of computational phenomenology which uses generative modelling to construct a computational model of the inferential or interpretive processes that best explain this or that kind of lived experience. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: he Powers of Psychiatry. By Jonas Robitscher.

The vocabulary for describing odors in English natural language is not well understood, as prior studies of odor descriptions have often relied on preselected descriptors and odor ratings. Here, we present a data-driven approach that automatically identifies English odor descriptors based on their degree of olfactory association, and derive their semantic organization from their distributions in natural texts, using a distributional-semantic language model. We identify 243 descriptors that are much more strongly associated with olfaction than English words in general. We (...) then derive the semantic organization of these olfactory descriptors, and find that it is captured by four clusters that we name Offensive, Malodorous, Fragrant, and Edible. The semantic space derived from our model primarily differentiates descriptors in terms of pleasantness and edibility along which our four clusters are positioned, and is similar to a space derived from perceptual data. The semantic organization of odor vocabulary can thus be mapped using natural language data (e.g., online text), without the limitations of odor-perceptual data and preselected descriptors. Our method may thus facilitate research on olfaction, a sensory system known to often elude verbal description. (shrink)

Animal and human studies suggest that parenting style is transmitted from one generation to the next. The hypotheses of this study were that a mother’s rearing experiences would predict her own parenting resources and current maternal mood, motivation to care for her offspring, and relationship with her parents would underlie this association. In a subsample of 201 first-time mothers participating in the longitudinal Maternal Adversity, Vulnerability and Neurodevelopment project, we assessed a mother’s own childhood maltreatment and rearing experiences using the (...) Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and the Parental Bonding Instrument. At 6 months postpartum, mothers completed questionnaires on parenting stress, symptoms of depression, maternal motivation, and current relationship with their own parents. The sample consisted of mostly high socioeconomic status mothers recruited from Montréal or Hamilton, Canada, with an age range from 18 to 43 years. More severe maltreatment and less supportive rearing by the mother’s parents predicted increased parenting stress at 6 months. These associations were mediated through distinct psychosocial pathways: maltreatment on parenting stress through symptoms of depression ; maternal rearing on parenting stress through maternal motivation and symptoms of depression ; and paternal rearing on parenting stress through current relationship with the father. Maternal rearing experiences predict a mother’s own parenting resources though distinct psychosocial pathways, including depressed mood, maternal motivation, and social support. (shrink)

Animal and human studies suggest that parenting style is transmitted from one generation to the next. The hypotheses of this study were that a mother’s rearing experiences would predict her own parenting resources and current maternal mood, motivation to care for her offspring, and relationship with her parents would underlie this association. In a subsample of 201 first-time mothers participating in the longitudinal Maternal Adversity, Vulnerability and Neurodevelopment project, we assessed a mother’s own childhood maltreatment and rearing experiences using the (...) Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and the Parental Bonding Instrument. At 6 months postpartum, mothers completed questionnaires on parenting stress, symptoms of depression, maternal motivation, and current relationship with their own parents. The sample consisted of mostly high socioeconomic status mothers recruited from Montréal or Hamilton, Canada, with an age range from 18 to 43 years. More severe maltreatment and less supportive rearing by the mother’s parents predicted increased parenting stress at 6 months. These associations were mediated through distinct psychosocial pathways: maltreatment on parenting stress through symptoms of depression ; maternal rearing on parenting stress through maternal motivation and symptoms of depression ; and paternal rearing on parenting stress through current relationship with the father. Maternal rearing experiences predict a mother’s own parenting resources though distinct psychosocial pathways, including depressed mood, maternal motivation, and social support. (shrink)

Knee proprioception deficits and neuroplasticity have been indicated following injury to the anterior cruciate ligament. Evidence is, however, scarce regarding brain response to knee proprioception tasks and the impact of ACL injury. This study aimed to identify brain regions associated with the proprioceptive sense of joint position at the knee and whether the related brain response of individuals with ACL reconstruction differed from that of asymptomatic controls. Twenty-one persons with unilateral ACL reconstruction of either the right or left knee, as (...) well as 19 controls matched for sex, age, height, weight and current activity level, performed a knee joint position sense test during simultaneous functional magnetic resonance imaging. Integrated motion capture provided real-time knee kinematics to activate test instructions, as well as accurate knee angles for JPS outcomes. Recruited brain regions during knee angle reproduction included somatosensory cortices, prefrontal cortex and insula. Neither brain response nor JPS errors differed between groups, but across groups significant correlations revealed that greater errors were associated with greater ipsilateral response in the anterior cingulate, supramarginal gyrus and insula. This is the first study to capture brain response using fMRI in relation to quantifiable knee JPS. Activated brain regions have previously been associated with sensorimotor processes, body schema and interoception. Our innovative paradigm can help to guide future research investigating brain response to lower limb proprioception. (shrink)

Quasi-truth (a.k.a. pragmatic truth or partial truth) is typically advanced as a framework accounting for incompleteness and uncertainty in the actual practices of science. Also, it is said to be useful for accommodating cases of inconsistency in science without leading to triviality. In this paper, we argue that the formalism available does not deliver all that is promised. We examine the standard account of quasi-truth in the literature, advanced by da Costa and collaborators in many places, and argue that it (...) cannot legitimately account for incompleteness in science. We shall claim that it conflates paraconsistency and paracompleteness. It also cannot properly account for inconsistencies, because no direct contradiction of the form S ∧ ¬S can be quasi-true according to the framework; contradictions simply have no place in the formalism. Finally, we advance an alternative interpretation of the formalism in terms of dealing with distinct contexts where incompatible information is dealt with. This does not save the original program, but seems to make better sense of the apparatus. (shrink)

Jeg diskuterer i denne artikel en række principielle spørgsmål angående det der kaldes «religionens genkomst» i det moderne demokrati. Mit hovedeksempel er den såkaldte «Muhammed-krise», som stadigvæk debatte­res med stor intensitet i nationale og internationale sammenhænge. De tre hovedspørg­smål lyder: Hvilken plads kan religiøse synspunkter og ytringer gøre krav på i den demokratiske offentlighed? Kan vi indholdsmæssigt fastsætte grænsen for religiøs blasfemi ved lov eller står den til løbende demokratisk debat? I hvilken grad kan reli­giøse minoritetsgrupper kræve anerkendelse fra – (...) og beskyttelse mod – majoritetskultu­ren i moderne, liberale demokratier? Til det første spørgsmål svarer jeg med Jürgen Habermas at religiøse grupper bør forsøge at oversætte deres holdninger til ikke-religiøse argumenter, samtidig med at denne oversættelse af forskellige årsager ikke kan fremtvin­ges retsligt eller afkræves som betingelse for demokratisk deltagelse. Mht. til det andet spørgsmål argumenterer jeg – igen med Habermas – for, at den konkrete anvendelse af abstrakte retsprincipper som ytringsfrihed og religionsfrihed kræver åben, demokratisk debat med bred deltagelse for athave legitimitet. Resultatet af denne debat kan godtvære et strengt syn på, hvad der tæller som blasfemisk, men muligheden for at kritisere dette syn – eller for generel religionskritik – kan ikke undertrykkesuden at gå kompromis med det liberale demokratis grundprincipper. Som svar på det tredje spørgsmål, og som et kritisk supplement til Habermas, fremfører jeg med Axel Honneth, at samfundsmæssig integration ikke skabes af demokratiske debatter alene. Der kræves også en vis før-dis­kursiv atmosfære af solidaritet: Religiøse minoritetsgrupper kan ganske vist ikke kræve juridisk beskyttelse af religiøse følelser, men de kan påpege «asymmetriske anerkendel­sesforhold», f.eks. ensidigt negative fremstillinger i medierne, som forringer deres mulighed for at bidrage til samfundet som anerkendte og anerkendende medborgere. (shrink)

Based on a reading of K. E. Løgstrup’s The Ethical Demand and Emmanuel Levinas’ Totality and Infinity, the paper aims to show that it is respectively through trust and love, hospitality and friendship that the two thinkers envisage humans as being capable of realising unfulfillable and impossible ethical demands. It will be argued that they develop their ethical thinking along similar lines, yet, even when they come closest to each other conceptually, a difference in their phenomenological analysis of the I (...) and the other remains, which it is paramount to keep in mind in order to assess what they may contribute to each other’s thinking. (shrink)

The Danish theologian-philosopher K. E. Løgstrup is second in reputation in his homeland only to Søren Kierkegaard. He is best known outside Europe for his _The Ethical Demand_, first published in Danish in 1956 and published in an expanded English translation in 1997. _Beyond the Ethical Demand_ contains excerpts, translated into English for the first time, from the numerous books and essays Løgstrup continued to write throughout his life. In the first essay, he engages the critical response to _The Ethical (...) Demand,_ clarifying, elaborating, or defending his original positions. In the next three essays, he extends his contention that human ethics “demands” that we are concerned for the other by introducing the crucial concept of “sovereign expressions of life.” Like Levinas, Løgstrup saw in the phenomenon of “the other” the ground for his ethics. In his later works he developed this concept of “the sovereign expressions of life,” spontaneous phenomena such as trust, mercy, and sincerity that are inherently other-regarding. The last two essays connect his ethics with political life. Interest in Løgstrup in the English-speaking academic community continues to grow, and these important original sources will be essential tools for scholars exploring the further implications of his ethics and phenomenology. “K. E. Løgstrup’s work undoubtedly made in his time an original contribution to the field of moral philosophy and philosophy of religion. This translation makes extracts from his later publications on moral philosophy accessible to an English-speaking audience. I am again impressed by the depth of his ideas, which are certainly not outdated and still relevant for contemporary debates in moral philosophy.” —_Bert Musschenga, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam _ “Making a large part of Knud Løgstrup’s legacy accessible to the English-speaking public is an event of enormous cultural, philosophical and political importance—and we are all in debt to his disciple, Kies van Kooten Niekerk, and the University Press of Notre Dame, for making it happen. Løgstrup, alongside few other giants of 20th Century ethical thought, like Emmanuel Levinas or Hans Jonas, anticipated and articulated all the major challenges and urgent tasks with which the coming century is likely to confront the moral self. Our ethical discourse was all the poorer so far for being barred access to his findings and proposition. This will no longer be the case.” —_Zygmunt Bauman, emeritus, University of Leeds_ “The publication of an English translation of Knut Eljert Løgstrup's later works in ethics provides a wider readership with the opportunity to better understand his important contribution to ethics in the second half of the last century. With his notion of the _Sovereign Expressions of Life_ Løgstrup articulates his rejection of moral atomism that has become influential in recent times. The introduction and annotation by Kees van Kooten Niekerk are very helpful to see how Løgstrup's thought developed beyond _The Ethical Demand.” —__Hans S. Reinders, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam_. (shrink)

In the explosion of recent books on Heidegger, Karl Löwith’s work, now available in an excellent English edition, distinguishes itself by careful historical scholarship and insightful immanent critique. Along with Hannah Arendt, Hans Jonas, and Herbert Marcuse, Löwith was one of Heidegger’s first students; all were later forced into exile by the National Socialist movement their teacher publicly supported for a time. Löwith’s work on the philosophy of history and the nineteenth century is already well known in English; now (...) we can appreciate his evaluation of Heidegger. Invoking Nietzsche’s dictum, “One repays a teacher poorly if one always remains only a pupil”, Löwith here achieves a balanced critique of Heidegger’s thought and its political implications. He avoids both defensive apologies and ad hominem attacks: “Between the two extremes of fascination and repulsion, we are attempting to pursue a critical middle path”. As Richard Wolin explains in the introduction, “Throughout Löwith’s narrative it is not Heidegger’s greatness as a thinker that is in dispute, but the uses to which that greatness allowed itself to be put”. (shrink)

Jonas’ book is a collection of eighteen essays. His general themes are: a comparison of morality and world view in ancient times and during the technological revolution, an organic monism vs. dualism, and gnosticism. Specific topics taken up are: the necessity to awaken a social morality in economists, politicians and scientists, specifically in the practice of biological engineering, death and its recent medical definition, religion vs. philosophy or revelation vs. reason, Judaism vs. Christianity or creation vs. incarnation, is history’s (...) progress a moral good? (shrink)

The Black Mirror episode “Arkangel” tells a disturbing story of over-parenting driven by technology. The single mother Marie’s adoption of the Arkangel system has invited overwhelmingly negative moral evaluation from philosophers. But what accounts for the moral failure of a loving and concerned parent? Is it all about her flawed character, or are there situational factors at work? In the article, I first foreground the slipperiness of technology implicated in Albert Borgmann’s notion of the “device paradigm” and Hans Jonas’s (...) analysis of modern technology. Then I analyze the character of the Arkangel system in the light of the two philosophers’ works and show how the technology turns Marie into a failing parent. In the end, I offer tentative answers to the two questions; the answers shall also shed light on the problem of under-parenting driven by digital technology. (shrink)

We have lost one of the giants of the twentieth century physics when Yoichiro Nambu passed away in July, 2015, at the age of 94. Today's Standard Model, though still incomplete in many respects, is the culmination of the most successful theory of the Universe to date, and it is built upon foundations provided by discoveries made by Nambu in the 1960s: the mechanism of spontaneously broken symmetry in Nature (with G Jona-Lasinio) and the hidden new SU(3) symmetry of quarks (...) and gluons (with M-Y Han). In this volume honoring Nambu's memory, World Scientific Publishing presents a unique collection of papers written by his former colleagues, collaborating researchers and former students and associates, not only citing Nambu's great contributions in physics but also many personal and private reminiscences, some never told before. This book is a volume for all who benefited not only from Nambu's contributions toward understanding the Universe but also his warm and kind persona. It is a great addition to the history of contemporary physics. (shrink)

This paper describes the semiotic approach to organism in two proto-biosemiotic thinkers, Susanne K. Langer and Hans Jonas. Both authors develop ideas that have become central terms of biosemiotics: the organism as subject, the realisation of the living as a closed circular self, the value concept, and, in the case of Langer, the concept of symbol. Langer tries to develop a theory of cultural symbolism based on a theory of organism as a self-realising entity creating meaning and value. This (...) paper deals mainly with what both authors independently call “feeling”. Both authors describe “feeling” as a value-based perspective, established as a result of the active self interest manifested by an organic system. The findings of Jonas and Langer show the generation of a subject pole, or biosemiotic agent, under a more precise accent, as e.g. Uexküll does. Their ideas can also be affiliated to the interpretation of autopoiesis given by the late Francisco Varela . A synthesis of these positions might lead to insights how symbolic expression arises from biological conditions of living. (shrink)

Hans-Georg GADAMER, Hermeneutische Entwürfe. Vorträge und Aufsätze ; Pascal MICHON, Poétique d’une anti-anthropologie: l’herméneutique deGadamer ; Robert J. DOSTAL, The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer ; Denis SERON, Le problème de la métaphysique. Recherches sur l’interprétation heideggerienne de Platon et d’Aristote ; Henry MALDINEY, Ouvrir le rien. L’art nu ; Dominique JANICAUD, Heidegger en France, I. Récit; II. Entretiens ; Maurice MERLEAU-PONTY, Fenomenologia percepţiei ; Trish GLAZEBROOK, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Science ; Richard WOLIN, Heidegger’s Children. Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans (...) class='Hi'>Jonas and Herbert Marcuse ; Ivo DEGENNARO, Logos – Heidegger liest Heraklit ; O. K. WIEGAND, R. J. DOSTAL, L. EMBREE, J. KOCKELMANS and J. N. MOHANTY, Phenomenology on Kant, German Idealism, Hermeneutics and Logic ; James FAULCONER and Mark WRATHALL, Appropriating Heidegger. (shrink)

Discusses the ethical implications of modern technology and examines the responsibility of humanity for the fate of the world.

This book both consummates and demonstrates the basic thrust of Jonas's thought: the inseparability of ethics and metaphysics, the reality of values at the ...

Technology and responsibility: reflections on the new tasks of ethics.--Jewish and Christian elements in philosophy: their share in the emergence of the modern mind.--Seventeenth century and after: the meaning of the scientific and technological revolution.--Socio-economic knowledge and ignorance of goals.--Philosophical reflections on experimenting with human subjects.--Against the stream: comments on the definition and redefinition of death.--Biological engineering--a preview--Contemporary problems in ethics from a Jewish perspective.--Biological foundations of individuality.--Spinoza and the theory of organism.--Sight and thought: a review of "visual thinking."--Change and (...) permanence: on the possibility of understanding history.--The gnostic syndrome: typology of its thought, imagination, and mood.--The hymn of the pearl: case study of a symbol, and the claims for a Jewish origin of gnosticism.--Myth and mysticism: a study of objectification and interiorization in religious thought.--Origen's metaphysics of free will, fall, and salvation: a "divine comedy" of the universe.--The soul in gnosticism and Plotinus.--The abyss of the will: philosophical meditations on the seventh chapter of Paul's epistle to the Romans. (shrink)

Is the procreation asymmetry intuitively supported? According to a recent article in this journal, an experimental study suggests the opposite. Dean Spears (2020) claims that nearly three-quarters of participants report that there is a reason to create a person just because that person’s life would be happy. In reply, I argue that various confounding factors render the study internally invalid. More generally, I show how one might come to adopt the procreation asymmetry for the wrong reasons by misinterpreting one’s intuitions.

This chapter explains Franz Brentano's metaethical theory and how it purports to deal with such difficulties. Brentano explains correctness in emotions by analogy with correctness in judgements. For a judgement to be correct is for it to concord with a judgement made by someone who judges with self-evidence (Evidenz). Self-evident judgements are guaranteed to be correct, and they are based either on "inner perception" or on presentations of objects that are rejected apodictically. Brentano's metaethical theory concerns first and foremost the (...) psychology of valuing and of moral judgement. Brentano is clearly a cognitivist about evaluative and moral judgement; such judgements are judgements about the correctness of feelings, and judgements are cognitive acts. However, one aspect of his position that seems congenial to contemporary expressivism. This has to do with expressivist treatments of disagreement. Brentano's views seem akin to the kind of foundationalist intuitionism that is traditionally associated with non-naturalism. (shrink)

This paper offers a unified explanation for the procreation asymmetry and the non-identity thesis – two of the most intractable puzzles in population ethics. According to the procreation asymmetry, there are moral reasons not to create lives that are not worth living but no moral reasons to create lives that are worth living. I explain the procreation asymmetry by arguing that there are moral reasons to prevent the bad, but no moral reasons to promote the good. Various explanations for the (...) procreation asymmetry have failed to explain the non-identity thesis: if one could create a person with a good life or a different person with a better life, one has a moral reason to create the better life. I argue that reflections on the misfortune of unfulfilled potential allow us to circumvent the non-identity problem. (shrink)

Modal dispositionalists hold that dispositions provide the foundation of metaphysical necessity and possibility. According to the kind of modal dispositionalism that can be found in the present literature, a proposition p is possible just in case some things are disposed to be such that p. In the first part of this paper I show that combining this classic form of dispositionalism with the assumptions that the laws of nature are necessary and deterministic and that all dispositions are forward-looking in time (...) leads to the unattractive conclusion that every truth is necessary. I argue that the classic dispositionalist should be troubled by this result and in the second part of the paper I suggest a novel variant of dispositionalism that avoids it. This extended form of dispositionalism allows that some propositions are only indirectly underwritten by dispositions. (shrink)

Is there a pro tanto moral reason to create a life merely because it would be good for the person living it? Proponents of the procreation asymmetry claim there is not. Defending this controversial no reason claim, some have suggested that it is well in line with other phenomena in the moral realm: there is no reason to give a promise merely because one would keep it, and there is no reason to procreate merely to increase the extent of justice (...) in the world. Allegedly, some analogs extend so far as to support a unified theory of the no reason claim and the nonidentity thesis, that is, the view that of two persons leading lives of positive wellbeing, there is a reason to create the person with higher wellbeing. I dismantle the proposed analogs and show that they fail to meet various desiderata. Moreover, I refute Johann Frick's argument that the no reason claim follows from the assumption that reasons of beneficence are reasons to act for the sake of people. By criticizing attractive defenses for the no reason claim, I weaken its plausibility. (shrink)

Jonas Olson presents a critical survey of moral error theory, the view that there are no moral facts and so all moral claims are false. Part I explores the historical context of the debate; Part II assesses J. L. Mackie's famous arguments; Part III defends error theory against challenges and considers its implications for our moral thinking.

While early optimists have seen online discussions as potential spaces for deliberation, the reality of many online spaces is characterized by incivility and irrationality. Increasingly, AI tools are considered as a solution to foster deliberative discourse. Against the backdrop of previous research, we show that AI tools for online discussions heavily focus on the deliberative norms of rationality and civility. In the operationalization of those norms for AI tools, the complex deliberative dimensions are simplified, and the focus lies on the (...) detection of argumentative structures in argument mining or verbal markers of supposedly uncivil comments. If the fairness of such tools is considered, the focus lies on data bias and an input–output frame of the problem. We argue that looking beyond bias and analyzing such applications through a sociotechnical frame reveals how they interact with social hierarchies and inequalities, reproducing patterns of exclusion. The current focus on verbal markers of incivility and argument mining risks excluding minority voices and privileges those who have more access to education. Finally, we present a normative argument why examining AI tools for online discourses through a sociotechnical frame is ethically preferable, as ignoring the predicable negative effects we describe would present a form of objectionable indifference. (shrink)

A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

Language is ruled by conventions. In order to understand how language functions we need to know what conventions are. According to David Lewis conventions are regularities in action or in action and belief, that perpetuate themselves because they serve some common interest. Ruth Millikan has criticized this analysis for being too complex. She claims to offer an analysis in simpler terms that does neither rely on regularities nor rationality. She defines what she calls “natural conventions” as patterns that are reproduced (...) due partly to weight of precedent. After brief outlines of the two proposals it is shown in this article that Millikans argument against Lewis’ analysis is based on a misconception of regularities, that her own analysis does itself rely on regularities and that she cannot do without rationality if she wants to explain the conventionality of language. (shrink)

The book develops the metaphysics of meaning along the lines set up by Paul Grice, defining the three central notions of what is meant, said and implicated. The Gricean notion of what is said is threatened by semantic underdetermination: If the sentence underdetermines the thought it is used to express, what is said cannot be the proposition expressed by the sentence and meant by the speaker. This leads to a number of questions: How far does semantic underdetermination reach? Do we (...) have to extend or restrict the Gricean notion? Is what is said semantic or pragmatic? Keeping these metaphysical questions separate from the epistemological question of how the hearer understands what is meant, which is best explained by generalizing the Gricean theory of implicature derivation and combining it with a game-theoretic model, the book provides an original defense of a Gricean view in the ongoing debate about semantics and pragmatics. (shrink)

Experiences—visual, emotional, or otherwise—play a role in providing us with justification to believe claims about the world. Some accounts of how experiences provide justification emphasize the role of the experiences’ distinctive phenomenology, i.e. ‘what it is like’ to have the experience. Other accounts emphasize the justificatory role to the experiences’ etiology. A number of authors have used cases of cognitively penetrated visual experience to raise an epistemic challenge for theories of perceptual justification that emphasize the justificatory role of phenomenology rather (...) than etiology. Proponents of the challenge argue that cognitively penetrated visual experiences can fail to provide the usual justification because they have improper etiologies. However, extant arguments for the challenge’s key claims are subject to formidable objections. In this paper, I present the challenge’s key claims, raise objections to previous attempts to establish them, and then offer a novel argument in support of the challenge. My argument relies on an analogy between cognitively penetrated visual and emotional experiences. I argue that some emotional experiences fail to provide the relevant justification because of their improper etiologies and conclude that analogous cognitively penetrated visual experiences fail to provide the relevant justification because of their etiologies, as well. (shrink)