Equipped with the ultimate query answering system, computers would finally be in a position to address all our information needs in a natural way. In this paper, we describe how Language and Computing nv (L&C), a developer of ontology-based natural language understanding systems for the healthcare domain, is working towards the ultimate Question Answering (QA) System for healthcare workers. L&C’s company strategy in this area is to design in a step-by-step fashion the essential components of such a system, each component (...) being designed to solve some one part of the total problem and at the same time reflect well-defined needs on the prat of our customers. We compare our strategy with the research roadmap proposed by the Question Answering Committee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), paying special attention to the role of ontology. (shrink)

A complete reconstruction of Lehmer’s ENIAC set-up for computing the exponents of p modulo two is given. This program served as an early test program for the ENIAC (1946). The reconstruction illustrates the difficulties of early programmers to find a way between a man operated and a machine operated computation. These difficulties concern both the content level (the algorithm) and the formal level (the logic of sequencing operations).

This book explores the various views on language and its relation to philosophy in the Platonic tradition by examening the reception of Plato’s Cratylus in antiquity in general, and the commentary of the Neoplatonist Proclus in particular.

This book puts the hymns by the Neoplatonist Proclus in the context of his philosophy and offers a detailed commentary together with a new translation of them.

A vast stream of empirical work has revealed that coach and athlete leadership are important determinants of sport teams’ functioning and performance. Although coaches have a direct impact on individual and team outcomes, they should also strive to stimulate athletes to take up leadership roles in a qualitative manner. Yet, the relation between coach leadership behavior and the extent of high-quality athlete leadership within teams remains underexposed. Based on organizational justice theory and the social identity approach, the present research tested (...) whether perceived justice of the coach positively predicts the quality of athlete leadership. Furthermore, we examined the role of group dynamic processes within this relation. Belgian volleyball and basketball players were asked to rate the justice of their coach, their team identification, the task cohesion, and the athlete leadership quality in the team. Structural equation modeling indicated that coaches’ perceived justice positively predicted the quality of athletes’ leadership, and that this relation was established through three intermediate steps. These results suggest that fair coach behavior does not only bridge the gap between leadership and followership, it also has the potential to improve the quality of athletes’ leadership within sport teams. More specifically, findings suggest that coaches’ perceived justice cultivates a shared social identity characterized by high levels of players’ identification with their team, which in turn increased their perceptions of the team’s task cohesion. Finally, this increased task cohesion encouraged the athlete leaders to demonstrate high-quality leadership. (shrink)

Bundel filosofische voordrachten over de object-kenmerken van voorwerpen van esthetisch welgevallen.

A complete reconstruction of Lehmer’s ENIAC set-up for computing the exponents of p modulo two is given. This program served as an early test program for the ENIAC (1946). The reconstruction illustrates the difficulties of early programmers to find a way between a man operated and a machine operated computation. These difficulties concern both the content level (the algorithm) and the formal level (the logic of sequencing operations).

A history of writing the history of computing is presented in its relationship to the history of mathematics. As with many historiographies, the initial history of computing was very much an internalistic history. In the late 1970s, the field became more serious and started looking at the histories of mathematics and technology for (methodological) inspiration. Whereas the history of mathematics was initially quite influential, it is the history of technology (in its U.S. form) that has become the dominant framework for (...) doing history of computing since the 1990s. (shrink)

There are indications that the interpersonal affective factor and the social deviation factor, both of which are underlying dimensions of psychopathy, have a positive and a negative relationship, respectively, with executive functioning. However, this is seldom taken into consideration in the research on the relationship between executive functioning and psychopathy, which may be an explanation for the many inconsistent results in this area as reported in the literature (e.g., Rogers, 2006). In the present study, executive functioning was studied using the (...) Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) in 53 inpatients of a Dutch forensic psychiatric clinic who were classified by means of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). Special attention was given to the relationship between the two separate factors and executive functioning. Age, educational level, and substance abuse were controlled for in the analysis. No difference was found between psychopathic (N = 17) and nonpsychopathic (N = 36) patients in the WCST scoring categories, nor was there a significant difference in the four diagnostic subgroups defined by the two factors. However, the trends observed do justify further study in this direction. (shrink)

Galileo proposed what has been called a proto-inertial principle, according to which a body un horizontal motion will conserve its motion. This statement is only true in counterfactual circumstances where no impediments are present. This paper analyzes how Galileo could have been justified in ascribing definite properties to this idealized motion. This analysis is then used to better understand the relation of Galileo’s proto-inertial principle to the classical inertial principle.

Within current debates about the future impact of Artificial Intelligence on human society, roughly three different perspectives can be recognised: the technology-centric perspective, claiming that AI will soon outperform humankind in all areas, and that the primary threat for humankind is superintelligence; the human-centric perspective, claiming that humans will always remain superior to AI when it comes to social and societal aspects, and that the main threat of AI is that humankind’s social nature is overlooked in technological designs; and the (...) collective intelligence-centric perspective, claiming that true intelligence lies in the collective of intelligent agents, both human and artificial, and that the main threat for humankind is that technological designs create problems at the collective, systemic level that are hard to oversee and control. The current paper offers the following contributions: a clear description for each of the three perspectives, along with their history and background; an analysis and interpretation of current applications of AI in human society according to each of the three perspectives, thereby disentangling miscommunication in the debate concerning threats of AI; and a new integrated and comprehensive research design framework that addresses all aspects of the above three perspectives, and includes principles that support developers to reflect and anticipate upon potential effects of AI in society. (shrink)

Central to many discussions of motivated reasoning is the idea that it runs afoul of epistemic normativity. Reasoning differently about information supporting our prior beliefs versus information contradicting those beliefs, is frequently equated with motivated irrationality. By analyzing the normative status of belief polarization, selective scrutiny, biased assimilation and the myside bias, I show this inference is often not adequately supported. Contrary to what’s often assumed, these phenomena need not indicate motivated irrationality, even though they are instances of belief-consistent information (...) processing. Second, I engage with arguments purporting to show that belief-consistent information processing does not indicate motivated irrationality because of its mere differential treatment of confirming and non-confirming evidence, but rather because it reveals the undermining presence of an irrelevant influence, such as a desire or partisan identity-driven cognition. While linking belief-consistent reasoning to a deeper source of directional motivation to make good on the claim that it indicates motivated irrationality is indeed what’s needed, two prominent such arguments fail. The non-normativity of many reasoning processes often taken to indicate motivated irrationality is not in fact well established. (shrink)

New and Emerging Science and Technology (NEST) based innovations, e.g. in the field of Life Sciences or Nanotechnology, frequently raise societal and political concerns. To address these concerns NEST researchers are expected to deploy socially responsible R&D practices. This requires researchers to integrate social and ethical aspects (SEAs) in their daily work. Many methods can facilitate such integration. Still, why and how researchers should and could use SEAs remains largely unclear. In this paper we aim to relate motivations for NEST (...) researchers to include SEAs in their work, and the requirements to establish such integration from their perspectives, to existing approaches that can be used to establish integration of SEAs in the daily work of these NEST researchers. Based on our analyses, we argue that for the successful integration of SEAs in R&D practice, collaborative approaches between researchers and scholars from the social sciences and humanities seem the most successful. The only way to explore whether that is in fact the case, is by embarking on collaborative research endeavours. (shrink)

Stimulating responsible conduct of research is considered important within universities and research organizations. In this contribution, we investigated if there are gender differences regarding three aspects: students’ attitudes towards integrity related issues, self-reported misconduct, and suspicions of misconduct and willingness to report fellow students. A questionnaire was sent to 1266 first year starting master students in the life sciences. Male students were significantly more likely to report not doing their fair share in group work and putting their name on work (...) without checking it. No significant differences were found regarding attitude and suspecting and reporting other students. (shrink)

The debate on whether and why misinformation is bad primarily focuses on the spread of false beliefs as its main harm. From the assumption that misinformation primarily causes harm through the spread of false beliefs as a starting point, it has been contended that the problem of misinformation has been exaggerated. Its tendency to generate false beliefs appears to be limited. However, the near-exclusive focus on whether or not misinformation dupes people with false beliefs neglects other epistemic harms associated with (...) it. Specifically, I show that misinformation also causes trouble for the epistemic goods of truth attainment, intellectual autonomy and debate pluriformity. Moreover, for each of these goods, I argue that emphasizing error-avoidance exacerbates, rather than mitigates, the harms caused by misinformation. These oversights and dilemmas show that prioritizing error-avoidance in the fight against misinformation is not a neutral default policy or necessarily a net positive. A shift in focus away from the spread of false beliefs as the main harm of misinformation is needed to better understand and counter its negative effects. (shrink)

Under review at Canadian Journal of Philosophy. This paper does five things: (1) It provides an analysis of meta-ethical Non-Realist Cognitivism. (2) It assesses two arguments in favour of the view which have been largely overlooked in analyses so far. (3) It argues that different proponents of the view offer crucially different strategies for vindicating moral objectivity without the metaphysical commitments of traditional non-naturalism. (4) Contrary to other commentators, it argues for the no-truthmaker interpretation of Parfit’s view. (5) It argues (...) that each version of Non-Realist Cognitivism is unlikely to be able to do the explanatory work that seemed to call for an ontologically committal non-naturalism. (shrink)

Van Vugt, van der Velde, and collaborators show how cognitive architectures can implement verbal theories of psychiatric problems. They show how one theory of depressive rumination can be implemented in the ACT‐R cognitive architecture by changing the contents of its simulated memory. These manipulations of memory habits lead the model to show impairments in a sustained attention task‐‐a plausible impairment given that people who suffer from depression have concentration complaints.

Policy makers call upon researchers from the natural and social sciences to collaborate for the responsible development and deployment of innovations. Collaborations are projected to enhance both the technical quality of innovations, and the extent to which relevant social and ethical considerations are integrated into their development. This could make these innovations more socially robust and responsible, particularly in new and emerging scientific and technological fields, such as synthetic biology and nanotechnology. Some researchers from both fields have embarked on collaborative (...) research activities, using various Technology Assessment approaches and Socio-Technical Integration Research activities such as Midstream Modulation. Still, practical experience of collaborations in industry is limited, while much may be expected from industry in terms of socially responsible innovation development. Experience in and guidelines on how to set up and manage such collaborations are not easily available. Having carried out various collaborative research activities in industry ourselves, we aim to share in this paper our experiences in setting up and working in such collaborations. We highlight the possibilities and boundaries in setting up and managing collaborations, and discuss how we have experienced the emergence of ‘collaborative spaces.’ Hopefully our findings can facilitate and encourage others to set up collaborative research endeavours. (shrink)

In the past 25 years, many philosophers have endorsed the view that the practical value of causal knowledge lies in the fact that manipulation of causes is a good way to bring about a desired change in the effect. This view is intuitively very plausible. For instance, we can predict a storm on the basis of a barometer reading, but we cannot avoid the storm by manipulating the state of the barometer (barometer status and storm are effects of a common (...) cause, viz. atmospheric conditions). In §1 we present textual evidence which shows that this view is very popular. In §2 we show that this standard view is too restrictive: the practical value of causal knowledge is wider. In §3 we introduce the distinction between ‘manipulative policy’ and ‘selective policy’ as a theoretical framework to account for this wider practical value. (shrink)

In dit artikel wordt de dominante metafysische oriëntatie in de hedendaagse meta-ethiek kritisch onder de loep genomen. Het hedendaagse debat, dat zich voornamelijk richt op de vraag hoe moraliteit metafysisch gezien 'in de werkelijkheid past', wordt gekenmerkt door een reeks complexe en soms esoterische discussies die, zo wordt betoogd, weinig bijdragen aan ons filosofische begrip van ethiek. Deze focus op metafysische grondslagen heeft geleid tot een tunnelvisie, waarin het debat gevangen zit tussen steeds ingewikkeldere vormen van non-cognitivisme, herconceptualisaties van 'objectiviteit' (...) en metafysische acrobatiek. Als alternatief wordt voorgesteld de aandacht in de meta-ethiek te verleggen naar het domein van praktisch redeneren. Door ons te concentreren op de patronen van geldige praktische argumentatie en het soort overwegingen dat mensen daadwerkelijk overtuigt, kunnen we wellicht een beter inzicht krijgen in de aard van ethische normativiteit en de rol ervan in ons leven. Het artikel pleit voor een meer pragmatische en minder metafysisch beladen benadering van de meta-ethiek, die zich richt op de daadwerkelijke praktijken van moreel redeneren en argumenteren. (shrink)

We study several modal languages in which some (sets of) generalized quantifiers can be represented; the main language we consider is suitable for defining any first order definable quantifier, but we also consider a sublanguage thereof, as well as a language for dealing with the modal counterparts of some higher order quantifiers. These languages are studied both from a modal logic perspective and from a quantifier perspective. Thus the issues addressed include normal forms, expressive power, completeness both of modal systems (...) and of systems in the quantifier tradition, complexity as well as syntactic characterizations of special semantic constraints. Throughout the paper several techniques current in the theory of generalized quantifiers are used to obtain results in modal logic, and conversely. (shrink)

How Galileo Galilei discovered the law of fall, and the difference that this makes Galileo’s law of fall is one of the crucial building blocks of classical mechanics. The question how this law was discovered has often been a topic of debate. This article offers a reconstruction of the developments within Galileo’s research that led to the discovery of the law. This reconstruction is offered to make a philosophical point regarding the epistemic status of experimental results: Galileo’s experiments can offer (...) sufficient justification for the acceptance of the law of fall only because of their place in a broad research programme. (shrink)

Despite technological innovations, clinical expertise remains the cornerstone of psychiatry. A clinical expert does not only have general textbook knowledge, but is sensitive to what is demanded for the individual patient in a particular situation. A method that can do justice to the subjective and situation-specific nature of clinical expertise is ethnography. Effective deep brain stimulation (DBS) for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) involves an interpretive, evaluative process of optimizing stimulation parameters, which makes it an interesting case to study clinical expertise. The (...) aim of this study is to explore the role of clinical expertise through an ethnography of the particular case of DBS optimization in OCD. In line with the topic of the special issue this article is a part of, we will also use our findings to reflect on ethnography as a method to study complex phenomena like clinical expertise. This ethnography of DBS optimization is based on 18 months of participant observation and nine in-depth interviews with a team of expert clinicians who have been treating over 80 OCD patients since 2005. By repeatedly observing particular situations for an extended period of time, we found that there are recurrent patterns in the ways clinicians interact with patients. These patterns of clinical practice shape the possibilities clinicians have for making sense of DBS-induced changes in patients’ lived experience and behavior. Collective established patterns of clinical practice are dynamic and change under the influence of individual learning experiences in particular situations, opening up new possibilities and challenges. We conclude that patterns of clinical practice and particular situations are mutually constitutive. Ethnography is ideally suited to bring this relation into view thanks to its broad temporal scope and focus on the life-world. Based on our findings, we argue that clinical expertise not only implies skillful engagement with a concrete situation but also with the patterns of clinical practice that shape what is possible in this specific situation. Given this constraining and enabling role of practices, it is important to investigate them in order to find ways to improve diagnostic and therapeutic possibilities. (shrink)

The novel use of symbolism in early modern mathematics poses both philosophical and historical questions. How can we trace its development and transmission through manuscript sources? Is it intrinsically related to the emergence of symbolic algebra? How does symbolism relate to the use of diagrams? What are the consequences of symbolic reasoning on our understanding of nature? Can a symbolic language enable new forms of reasoning? Does a universal symbolic language exist which enable us to express all knowledge? This book (...) brings together a collection of papers that address all these and related questions which were initially posed at a conference held in Ghent (Belgium) in August 2009. Scholars working on philosophy of science, history of philosophy and history of mathematics provide an insight into the role and function of symbolic representations in the development of early modern mathematics. The papers cover the period from early abbaco arithmetic and algebra (14h century) up to Leibniz (early 18th century). (shrink)

This collection of essays delineates the history of the rather disparate intellectual tradition usually labeled as "Platonic" or "Neoplatonic". In chronological order, the book covers the most eminent philosophic schools of thought within that tradition. The most important terms of the Platonic tradition are studied together with a discussion of their semantic implications, the philosophical and theological claims associated with the terms, the sources that furnish the terms, and the intellectual traditions aligned with or opposed to them. The contributors thereby (...) provide a vivid intellectual map of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Contributions are written in English or German. (shrink)

In this article we criticize two recent articles that examinethe relation between explanation and unification. Halonen and Hintikka (1999), on the one hand,claim that no unification is explanation. Schurz (1999), on the other hand, claims that all explanationis unification. We give counterexamples to both claims. We propose a pluralistic approach to the problem:explanation sometimes consists in unification, but in other cases different kinds of explanation(e.g., causal explanation) are required; and none of these kinds is more fundamental.

Recent years saw the rise of an interest in the roles and significance of thought experiments in different areas of human thinking. Heisenberg's gamma ray microscope is no doubt one of the most famous examples of a thought experiment in physics. Nevertheless, this particular thought experiment has not received much detailed attention in the philosophical literature on thought experiments up to date, maybe because of its often claimed inadequacies. In this paper, I try to do two things: to provide an (...) interesting interpretation of the roles played by Heisenberg's gamma ray microscope in interpreting quantum mechanics – partly based on Thomas Kuhn’s views on the function of thought experiments – and to contribute to the ongoing discussions on the roles and significance of thought experiments in physics. (shrink)

In the past 25 years, many philosophers have endorsed the view that the practical value of causal knowledge lies in the fact that manipulation of causes is a good way to bring about a desired change in the effect. This view is intuitively very plausible. For instance, we can predict a storm on the basis of a barometer reading, but we cannot avoid the storm by manipulating the state of the barometer (barometer status and storm are effects of a common (...) cause, viz. atmospheric conditions). In Section 1 we present textual evidence which shows that this view is very popular. In Section 2 we show that this standard view is too restrictive: the practical value of causal knowledge is wider. In Section 3 we introduce the distinction between ‘manipulative policy’ and ‘selective policy’ as a theoretical framework to account for this wider practical value. (shrink)

Within moral psychology, theories focusing on the conceptualization and empirical measurement of people’s morality in terms of general moral values –such as Moral Foundation Theory- (implicitly) assume general moral values to be relevant concepts for the explanation and prediction of behavior in everyday life. However, a solid theoretical and empirical foundation for this idea remains work in progress. In this study we explore this relationship between general moral values and daily life behavior through a conceptual analysis and an empirical study. (...) Our conceptual analysis of the moral value-moral behavior relationship suggests that the effect of a generally endorsed moral value on moral behavior is highly context dependent. It requires the manifestation of several phases of moral decision-making, each influenced by many contextual factors. We expect that this renders the empirical relationship between generic moral values and people’s concrete moral behavior indeterminate. Subsequently, we empirically investigate this relationship in three different studies. We relate two different measures of general moral values -the Moral Foundation Questionnaire and the Morality As Cooperation Questionnaire- to a broad set of self-reported morally relevant daily life behaviors (including adherence to COVID-19 measures and participation in voluntary work). Our empirical results are in line with the expectations derived from our conceptual analysis: the considered general moral values are poor predictors of the selected daily life behaviors. Furthermore, moral values that were tailored to the specific context of the behavior showed to be somewhat stronger predictors. Together with the insights derived from our conceptual analysis, this indicates the relevance of the contextual nature of moral decision-making as a possible explanation for the poor predictive value of general moral values. Our findings suggest that the investigation of morality’s influence on behavior by expressing and measuring it in terms of general moral values may need revision. (shrink)

The current study investigated how work-related disagreements—coined as conflicts—relate to workplace bullying, from the perspective of the target as well as the perpetrator. We hypothesized a positive indirect association between task conflicts and bullying through relationship conflicts. This process accounted for both for targets and perpetrators of bullying. Targets are distinguished from perpetrators in our assumption that this indirect effect is boosted by distributive conflict behavior, being yielding for targets and forcing for perpetrators. Results in a large representative sample of (...) the Flemish working population confirmed our hypotheses. Additionally, our study also revealed a direct effect from task conflicts to bullying in the analyses regarding the indirect as well as the conditional indirect effects. For perpetrators, both the indirect and direct relationships are moderated by forcing, underlining the importance of distributive conflict behavior particularly for the enactment of bullying behaviors. (shrink)

I show why Michael Friedman’s idea that we should view new constitutive frameworks introduced in paradigm change as members of a convergent series introduces an uncomfortable tension in his views. It cannot be justified on realist grounds, as this would compromise his Kantian perspective, but his own appeal to a Kantian regulative ideal of reason cannot do the job either. I then explain a way to make better sense of the rationality of paradigm change on what I take to be (...) Friedman’s own terms. (shrink)

We describe a neural monitor of environmental and physiological resources that informs effort expenditure. Depending on resources and environmental stability, serotonergic and dopaminergic neuromodulations favor different behavioral controls that are organized in corticostriatal loops. This broader perspective produces some suggestions and questions that may not be covered by the foraging approach to vigor of Shadmehr and Ahmed (2020).

1 Mathematical practice: a short overview This volume is a collection of essays that discuss the relationships between the practices deployed by logicians and mathematicians, either as individuals or as members of research communities, and the results from their research. We are interested in exploring the concept of 'practices' in the formal sciences. Though common in the history, philosophy and sociology of science, this concept has surprisingly thus far been little reflected upon in logic...

In this article we criticize two recent articles that examine the relation between explanation and unification. Halonen and Hintikka (1999), on the one hand, claim that no unification is explanation. Schurz (1999), on the other hand, claims that all explanation is unification. We give counterexamples to both claims. We propose a pluralistic approach to the problem: explanation sometimes consists in unification, but in other cases different kinds of explanation (e.g., causal explanation) are required; and none of these kinds is more (...) fundamental. (shrink)

Recently, there has been some excitement about the potential explanatory payoffs the newish metaphysical notion of grounding seems to have for metaethical non-naturalism. There has also been a recent upsurge in the debate about whether non-naturalism is implausibly committed to some acts being wrong because of some sui generis piece of ontology. It has, in response, been claimed that once we have a clear enough picture of the grounding role of moral laws on non-naturalism, this is not (objectionably) so. This (...) move, I argue, is inconsistent with certain constraints on what non-naturalist-friendly moral laws must be for them to do the explanatory work non-naturalism requires of them elsewhere. In other words, there is tension between the grounding reply to the supervenience objection and the grounding structure implied by some responses to the normative objection. (shrink)

Conversational artificial agents and artificially intelligent voice assistants are becoming increasingly popular. Digital virtual assistants such as Siri, or conversational devices such as Amazon Echo or Google Home are permeating everyday life, and are designed to be more and more humanlike in their speech. This study investigates the effect this can have on one’s conformity with an AI assistant. In the 1950s, Solomon Asch’s already demonstrated the power and danger of conformity amongst people. In these classical experiments test persons were (...) asked to answer relatively simple questions, whilst others pretending to be participants tried to convince the test person to give wrong answers. These studies were later replicated with embodied robots, but these physical robots are still rare. In light of our increasing reliance on AI assistants, this study investigates to what extent an individual will conform to a disembodied virtual assistant. We also investigate if there is a difference between a group that interacts with an assistant that communicates through text, one that has a robotic voice and one that has a humanlike voice. The assistant attempts to subtly influence participants’ final responses in a general knowledge quiz, and we measure how often participants change their answer after having been given advice. Results show that participants conformed significantly more often to the assistant with a human voice than the one that communicated through text. (shrink)

In response to an accusation of having said something inappropriate, the accused may exploit the difference between the explicit contents of their utterance and its implicatures. Widely discussed in the pragmatics literature are those cases in which arguers accept accountability only for the explicit contents of what they said while denying commitment to the implicature. In this paper, we sketch a fuller picture of commitment denial. We do so, first, by including in our discussion not just denial of implicatures, but (...) also the mirror strategy of denying commitment to literal meaning and, second, by classifying strategies for commitment denial in terms of classical rhetorical status theory. In addition to providing a systematic categorization of our data, this approach offers some clues to determine when such a defence strategy is a reasonable one and when it is not. (shrink)

In vice epistemology, bad epistemic outcomes, such as maintaining false beliefs, are interpreted as indicators of blameworthy irrationality. Conversely, a growing trend in philosophical psychology advocates for environmentalist explanations, suggesting these outcomes emerge because rational cognitive processes of faultless individuals falter due to polluted environmental inputs. Building on concrete examples, I first offer a systematic analysis of the relative explanatory merits of that environmentalist project. I then use this analysis to advance the rationality debate, which has recently been identified as (...) stagnating due to an observational equivalence between environmentalist and vice accounts. Although the conceptual imprecision of vice epistemology has frequently been critiqued, the framework developed here reveals that environmentalism is (also) unable to meet various theoretical desiderata. I show why this is so and argue that, to make progress, environmentalism needs a more substantive conception of epistemic rationality. To this end, I propose that a closer engagement with questions of cognitive agency – how rational creatures can “make up” their minds about what to believe – could enable the necessary progress. (shrink)