Rich with historical and cultural value, these works are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

'Chatter' cannot always be taken lightly, for its insignificance and insubstantiality challenge the very notions of substance and significance through which rational discourses seek justification. This book shows that in 'chatter' Kierkegaard uncovered a specifically linguistic mode of negativity. The author examines in detail those writings of Kierkegaard in which he undertook complex negotiations with the threat - and also the promise - of 'chatter', which cuts across the distinctions in which the relation of language to reality - and above (...) all, the reality of 'existence' - is stabilized, and it therefore releases historical understanding from its established conventions. Chatter situates as well as takes the measure of the seminal importance of Kierkegaard for many of today's unresolved debates about the relation of language and philosophy to history. (shrink)

The 'Gettier Problem' has been central to epistemology since 1963, when Edmund Gettier presented a powerful challenge to the standard analysis of knowledge. Now twenty-six leading philosophers examine the issues that arise from Gettier's challenge, setting the agenda for future work on the central problem of epistemology.

DNA microarrays are perfectly suited for comparing gene expression in different populations of cells. An important application of microarray techniques is identifying genes which are activated by a particular drug of interest. This process will allow biologists to identify therapies targeted to particular diseases, and, eventually, to gain more knowledge about the biological processes in organisms. Such an application is described in this paper. It is focused on diabetes and obesity, which is a genetically heterogeneous disease, meaning that multiple defective (...) genes are responsible for the diseases. The paper is divided in three parts, each dealing with a different problem addressed to our study. First we validate the data from our microarray experiment. We identified significant systematic sources of variability which are potentially issues for other microarray datasets. Second, we applied multiple hypothesis testing to identify differentially expressed genes. We found a set of genes which appear to change in expression level over time in response to a drug treatment. Third, we tried to address the problem of identification of co-expressed genes using cluster analysis. This last problem is still under discussion. (shrink)

The science and technology of genetic testing is rapidly advancing with the consequences that genetic testing may well offer the prospect of being able to detect the onset of future disabilities. Some recent research also indicates that certain behavioural profiles may have a strong genetic basis, such as the determination to succeed and win or the propensity for risk-taking, which may be of interest to third parties. However, as this technology becomes more prevalent there is a danger that the genetic (...) information may be misused by entities such as employers, insurance companies, educational facilities, and finance companies and that people with particular genetic profiles may be discriminated against.This book explores the different types and the potential uses of genetic testing. The book highlights the ethical and legal dilemmas and the challenges arising as a result of emerging and rapidly advancing genetic science. Chapters in the book assess the importance and impact of the US Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act (GINA) in the employment and health insurance contexts asking whether it is proving to be an effective tool in addressing the issue of genetic discrimination and alleviating individuals' fears of discrimination. The book then goes on to make the case for regulation at the European Union level in order to protect the privacy of genetic information and to prevent the discriminatory use of genetic information in Europe. It considers what can be learnt from the experience of the US in addressing ethical and legal issues as well as the impact that the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is having on this debate within the EU. (shrink)

Recently several philosophers of science have proposed what has come to be known as the semantic account of scientific theories. It is presented as an improvement on the positivist account, which is now called the syntactic account of scientific theories. Bas van Fraassen claims that the syntactic account does not give a satisfactory definition of "empirical adequacy" and "empirical equivalence". He contends that his own semantic account does define these notations acceptably, through the concept of "embeddability", a concept which he (...) claims cannot be defined syntactically. Here, I define a syntactic relation which corresponds to the semantic relation of "embeddability". I suggest that the critical differences between the positivist account and van Fraassen's account have nothing to do with the distinction between semantics and syntax. (shrink)

This chapter examines how epistemic norms could be social norms, with a reliance on work on the philosophy and social science of social norms from Bicchieri (on the one hand) and Brennan, Eriksson, Goodin and Southwood (on the other hand). We explain how the social ontology of social norms can help explain the rationality of epistemic cooperation, and how one might begin to model epistemic games.

Much of scientific inference involves fitting numerical data with a curve, or functional relation. The received view is that the fittest curve is the curve which best balances the conflicting demands of simplicity and accuracy, where simplicity is measured by the number ofparameters in the curve. The problem with this view is that there is no commonly accepted justification for desiring simplicity. This paper presents a measure of the stability of equations. It is argued that the fittest curve is the (...) curve which best balances stability and accuracy. The received view is defended with a proof that simplicity corresponds to stability, for linear regression equations. 1This paper is based on part of my doctoral dissertation. My thanks go to my thesis supervisor Professor Alasdair Urquhart for his encouragement, constructive criticism, and for directing me to several relevant articles: to my advisor Professor Ian Hacking for reminding me to concentrate on results that might have some application in the real world; and to my friend Wendy Brandts for sharing her ideas on a closely related problem. My thanks also to an anonymous referee of The British Journal of the Philosophy of Science for several helpful comments, to my friends and family for unfailing support, and to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (awards 452-86-5885 and 453-87-0513) and the University of Toronto for financial assistance. (shrink)

v. 1 Making special relativity -- v. 2. Making general relativity -- v. 3. Physical science and the language of war -- v. 4. Quantum histories.

Karl Popper equates simplicity with falsifiability. He develops his argument for this equation through a geometrical example. There is a flaw in his example, which undermines his claim that simplicity is falsifiability. I point out the flaw here.

Much of scientific inference involves fitting numerical data with a curve, or functional relation. The received view is that the fittest curve is the curve which best balances the conflicting demands of simplicity and accuracy, where simplicity is measured by the number ofparameters in the curve. The problem with this view is that there is no commonly accepted justification for desiring simplicity.This paper presents a measure of the stability of equations. It is argued that the fittest curve is the curve (...) which best balances stability and accuracy. The received view is defended with a proof that simplicity corresponds to stability, for linear regression equations. (shrink)

Robert French has argued that a disembodied computer is incapable of passing a Turing Test that includes subcognitive questions. Subcognitive questions are designed to probe the network of cultural and perceptual associations that humans naturally develop as we live, embodied and embedded in the world. In this paper, I show how it is possible for a disembodied computer to answer subcognitive questions appropriately, contrary to French’s claim. My approach to answering subcognitive questions is to use statistical information extracted from a (...) very large collection of text. In particular, I show how it is possible to answer a sample of subcognitive questions taken from French, by issuing queries to a search engine that indexes about 350 million Web pages. This simple algorithm may shed light on the nature of human cognition, but the scope of this paper is limited to demonstrating that French is mistaken: a disembodied computer can answer subcognitive questions. (shrink)

The logic of scientific discovery is now a concern of computer scientists, as well as philosophers. In the computational approach to inductive inference, theories are treated as algorithms (computer programs), and the goal is to find the simplest algorithm that can generate the given data. Both computer scientists and philosophers want a measure of simplicity, such that simple theories are more likely to be true than complex theories. I attempt to provide such a measure here. I define a measure of (...) simplicity for directed graphs, inspired by Herbert Simon''s work. Many structures, including algorithms, can be naturally modelled by directed graphs. Furthermore, I adapt an argument of Simon''s to show that simple directed graphs are more stable and more resistant to damage than complex directed graphs. Thus we have a reason for pursuing simplicity, other than purely economical reasons. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Linguists who work within the tradition of transformational generative grammar tend to regard semantics as an intractable, perhaps ultimately ...

Armstrong's Materialist Theory of Mind is one of a handful of texts that began the physicalist revolution in the philosophy of mind. In this collection, distinguished philosophers examine what we still owe to it, how to expand it, as well as looking back on how it came about.

It seems likely that there is no threshold for the induction of cancer by ionising radiation. Hence even small radiation doses may result in a finite number of premature deaths if a large number of people are exposed. Various arguments are used to demonstrate that such deaths, if they occur, are acceptable; these arguments are shown to be flawed. Many of the arguments, and the ICRP's principle of justification, appear rooted in a utilitarian system of moral philosophy. Such a system (...) is superficially attractive as it appears objective and rational; however, the objectivity may be an illusion masking the underlying aims of the interested parties. (shrink)

Is science unified or disunified? This collection brings together contributions from prominent scholars in a variety of scientific disciplines to examine this important theoretical question. They examine whether the sciences are, or ever were, unified by a single theoretical view of nature or a methodological foundation and the implications this has for the relationship between scientific disciplines and between science and society.

Since the 1960s, many artists have incorporated ecological concerns into their work, an endeavor that has required new strategies in art-making. To explore recent American manifestations of these interests, the David and Alfred Smart Museum commissioned new projects from artists Mark Dion, Peter Fend, and Dan Peterman, each focusing on interrelationships between particular organisms—human beings-and a specific group of sites—a museum building, a river landscape, and a university campus. The results, exhibited at the Smart Museum during the summer (...) of 2000, evoke the varied scales, from the microscopic to the global, at which human actions affect the environment. This catalog documents each of the artists' projects through an array of images and words: Smart Museum Associate Curator Stephanie Smith provides an introduction and brief overviews of the three projects, each of the artists contribute statements, and photographers Susan Anderson and Tom van Eynde document—in over 100 images—the processes and projects that comprise the exhibition. (shrink)

David Gray Carlson and Peter Goodrich argue that the postmodern legal mind can be characterized as having shifted the focus of legal analysis away from the modernist understanding of law as a system that is unitary and separate from other aspects of culture and society. In exploring the various "other dimensions" of law, scholars have developed alternative species of legal analysis and recognized the existence of different forms of law. Carlson and Goodrich assert that the postmodern legal mind (...) introduced a series of "minor jurisprudences" or partial forms of legal knowledge, which both compete with and subvert the modernist conception of a unitary system of law. In doing so scholars from a variety of disciplines pursue the implications of applying the insights of their disciplines to law. Carlson and Goodrich have assembled in this volume essays from some of our leading thinkers that address what is arguably one of the most fundamental of interdisciplinary encounters, that of psychoanalysis and law. While psychoanalytic interpretations of law are by no means a novelty within common law jurisprudence, the extent and possibilities of the terrain opened up by psychoanalysis have yet to be extensively addressed. The intentional subject and "reasonable man" of law are disassembled in psychoanalysis to reveal a chaotic and irrational libidinal subject, a sexual being, a body and its drives. The focus of the present collection of essays is upon desire as an inner law, upon love as an interior idiom of legality, and represents a signficant and at times surprising development of the psychoanalytic analysis of legality. These essays should appeal to scholars in law and in psychology. The contributors are Drucilla Cornell, Jacques Derrida, Peter Goodrich, Pierre Legendre, Alain Pottage, Michel Rosenfeld, Renata Salecl, Jeanne L. Schroeder, Anton Schutz, Henry Staten, and Slavoj Zizek. David Gray Carlson is Professor of Law, Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. Peter Goodrich is Professor of Law, University of London and University of California, Los Angeles. (shrink)

Logic has sometimes been seen as an alternative to metaphysics and to speculation. In this paper it is argued that a different story should be told when it comes to temporal logic and tense-logic in particular. A. N. Prior’s first formulation of tense logic was mainly established in order to qualify the discussion of certain metaphysical and conceptual problems. Although temporal logic has now been developed in various abstract and rather technical ways, it may still serve as a great help (...) for anyone who wants to clarify the discussion of important existential questions like the nature of time, determinism, future contingency or freedom of choice. (shrink)

Frege famously claimed that logic is the science of truth: “To discover truths is the task of all science; it falls to logic to discern the laws of truth” (Frege, 1956, p. 289). But just like the other foundational concept of set, truth at that time was intimately associated with paradox; in the case of truth, the Liar paradox. The set-theoretical paradoxes had their teeth drawn by being recognised as reductio proofs of assumptions that had seemed too obvious to warrant (...) stating explicitly, but were now seen to be substantive, and more importantly inconsistent. Tarski includes the Liar paradox in his classic discussion of the concept of truth (Tarski, 1956), and developed it, in the form of his famous theorem on the undefinability of truth, as a reductio of the assumption that a language could be semantically closed, in the sense of being able to contain its own truth-predicate.Frege famously claimed that logic is the science of truth: “To discover truths is the task of all science; it falls to logic to discern the laws of truth” (Frege, 1956, p. 289). But just like the other foundational concept of set, truth at that time was intimately associated with paradox; in the case of truth, the Liar paradox. The set-theoretical paradoxes had their teeth drawn by being recognised as reductio proofs of assumptions that had seemed too obvious to warrant stating explicitly, but were now seen to be substantive, and more importantly inconsistent. Tarski includes the Liar paradox in his classic discussion of the concept of truth (Tarski, 1956), and developed it, in the form of his famous theorem on the undefinability of truth, as a reductio of the assumption that a language could be semantically closed, in the sense of being able to contain its own truth-predicate. (shrink)

This paper extends earlier work by its authors on formal aspects of the processes of contracting a theory to eliminate a proposition and revising a theory to introduce a proposition. In the course of the earlier work, Gardenfors developed general postulates of a more or less equational nature for such processes, whilst Alchourron and Makinson studied the particular case of contraction functions that are maximal, in the sense of yielding a maximal subset of the theory (or alternatively, of one of (...) its axiomatic bases), that fails to imply the proposition being eliminated. In the present paper, the authors study a broader class, including contraction functions that may be less than maximal. Specifically, they investigate "partial meet contraction functions", which are defined to yield the intersection of some nonempty family of maximal subsets of the theory that fail to imply the proposition being eliminated. Basic properties of these functions are established: it is shown in particular that they satisfy the Gardenfors postulates, and moreover that they are sufficiently general to provide a representation theorem for those postulates. Some special classes of partial meet contraction functions, notably those that are "relational" and "transitively relational", are studied in detail, and their connections with certain "supplementary postulates" of Gardenfors investigated, with a further representation theorem established. (shrink)

One might poetically muse that computers have the essence both of logic and machines. Through the case of the history of Separation Logic, we explore how this assertion is more than idle poetry. Separation Logic works because it merges the software engineer’s conceptual model of a program’s manipulation of computer memory with the logical model that interprets what sentences in the logic are true, and because it has a proof theory which aids in the crucial problem of scaling the reasoning (...) task. Scalability is a central problem, and some would even say the central problem, in appli- cations of logic in computer science. Separation Logic is an interesting case because of its widespread success in verification tools. For these two senses of model—the engineering/conceptual and the logical—to merge in a genuine sense, each must maintain their norms of use from their home disciplines. When this occurs, both the logic and engineering benefit greatly. Seeking this intersection of two different senses of model provides a strategy for how computer scientists and logicians may be successful. Furthermore, the history of Separation Logic for analysing programs provides a novel case for philosophers of science of how software engineers and computer scientists develop models and the components of such models. We provide three contributions: an exploration of the extent of models merging that is necessary for success in computer science; an introduction to the technical details of Separation Logic, which can be used for reasoning about other exhaustible resources; and an introduction to the problems, process, and results of computer scientists for those outside the field. (shrink)

This article presents seven principles that have guided our thinking about emotional intelligence, some of them new. We have reformulated our original ability model here guided by these principles, clarified earlier statements of the model that were unclear, and revised portions of it in response to current research. In this revision, we also positioned emotional intelligence amidst other hot intelligences including personal and social intelligences, and examined the implications of the changes to the model. We discuss the present and future (...) of the concept of emotional intelligence as a mental ability. (shrink)

David Hume's writings on history, politics and philosophy have shaped thought to this day. His bold scepticism ranged from common notions of the 'self' to criticism of standard theistic proofs. He insisted on grounding understandings of popular religious beliefs in human psychology rather than divine revelation, and he aimed to disentangle philosophy from religion in order to allow the former to pursue its own ends. In this book, Professors David W Purdie and Peter S Fosl decipher some (...) of Hume's most challenging texts for the modern reader, while preserving the sharp intellect and undaunted nerve for which Hume is famous. Hume's spirit is brought alive for contemporary times and his writing is made accessible for its intended audience: the general public."-- Back cover. (shrink)

Examines the link between nonmonotonic inference relations and theory revision operations, focusing on the correspondence between abstract properties which each may satisfy.

_Philosophy: The Classic Readings_ provides a comprehensive, single-volume collection of the greatest works of philosophy from ancient to modern times. Draws on both Eastern and Western philosophical traditions Arranged chronologically within parts on Ethics, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Religion, and Political Philosophy Features original readings from more than a hundred of the world's great philosophers - from Lao Tzu, Confucius, the Buddha, Plato, Śamkara, Aquinas, al-Ghazāli, Kant, and Kierkegaard, to Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Sartre, Arendt, and Quine and many others Provides an (...) extensive Timeline of Philosophy for situating historical figures and lines of thought. (shrink)

Situation Theory and Its Applications, Vol. 1 . Robin Cooper, Kuniaki Mukai, and John Perry (Eds.). Lecture Notes No. 22. ...

We address concerns raised by Maul (2012) regarding the validity of the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). We respond to requests for clarifications of our model, and explain why the MSCEIT’s scoring methods stand up to scrutiny and why many reported reliabilities of the MSCEIT may be underestimates, using reanalyses of the test’s standardization sample of N = 5,000 to illustrate our point. We also organize findings from four recent articles that provide evidence for the MSCEIT’s validity based on its (...) relations with other tests. (shrink)

Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better to be immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Since Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions first appeared, David Benatar's distinctive anthology designed to introduce students to the key existential questions of philosophy has won a devoted following among users in a variety of upper-level and even introductory courses.

Situation theory is the result of an interdisciplinary effort to create a full-fledged theory of information. Created by scholars and scientists from cognitive science, computer science and AI, linguistics, logic, philosophy, and mathematics, it aims to provide a common set of tools for the analysis of phenomena from all these fields. Unlike Shannon-Weaver type theories of information, which are purely quantitative theories, situation theory aims at providing tools for the analysis of the specific content of a situation. The question addressed (...) is not how much information is carried, but what information is carried. (shrink)

Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle is a collection of essays composed by students and friends of Thomas L. Pangle to honor his seminal work and outstanding guidance in the study of political philosophy. These essays examine both Socrates' and modern political philosophers' attempts to answer the question of the right life for human beings, as those attempts are introduced and elaborated in the work of thinkers from Homer and Thucydides to Nietzsche and Charles Taylor.

Identity, Morality, and Threat offers a critical examination of the social psychological processes that generate outgroup devaluation and ingroup glorification as the source of conflict. Daniel Rothbart and Karyna Korostelina bring together essays analyzing the causal relationship between escalating violence and opposing images of the Self and Other.

Title from title page of source document.

Despite the compelling subjective experience of executive self-control, we argue that ‘consciousness’ contains no top-down control processes. We propose that ‘consciousness’ involves no executive, causal or controlling relationship with any of the familiar psychological processes conventionally attributed to it. In our view all psychological processing and psychological products are non-conscious. In particular, we argue that all ‘contents of consciousness’ are generated by and within non-conscious brain systems in the form of a continuous self-referential personal narrative that is not directed or (...) influenced in any way by the ‘experience of consciousness’. This continuously updated personal narrative arises from selective ‘internal broadcasting’ of outputs from non-conscious executive systems that have access to all forms of cognitive processing, sensory information and motor control. The personal narrative provides information for storage in autobiographical memory and is underpinned by constructs of self and agency, also created in non-conscious systems. The experience of consciousness, is seen as a passive accompaniment to the non-conscious processes of internal broadcasting and the creation of the personal narrative. In this sense personal awareness is analogous to the rainbow which accompanies physical processes in the atmosphere but exerts no influence over them. Though at an individual level it is an end-product created by non-conscious executive systems, the personal narrative serves the powerful evolutionary function of enabling individuals to communicate (externally broadcast) the contents of internal broadcasting. This in turn allows the recipients to generate potentially adaptive strategies, such as predicting the behavior of others and underlies the development of social and cultural structures, that promote species survival. Consequently, it is the capacity to communicate to others the contents of the personal narrative that confers an evolutionary advantage – not the experience of consciousness (personal awareness) itself. (shrink)