As many philosophers agree, the frame problem is concerned with how an agent may efficiently filter out irrelevant information in the process of problem-solving. Hence, how to solve this problem hinges on how to properly handle semantic relevance in cognitive modeling, which is an area of cognitive science that deals with simulating human's cognitive processes in a computerized model. By "semantic relevance", we mean certain inferential relations among acquired beliefs which may facilitate information retrieval and (...) practical reasoning under certain epistemic constraints, e. g., the insufficiency of knowledge, the limitation of time budget, etc. However, traditional approaches to relevance—as for example, relevance logic, the Bayesian approach, as well as Description Logic—have failed to do justice to the foregoing constraints, and in this sense, they are not proper tools for solving the frame problem/relevance problem. As we will argue in this paper, Non-Axiomatic Reasoning System (NARS) can handle the frame problem in a more proper manner, because the resulting solution seriously takes epistemic constraints on cognition as a fundamental theoretical principle. (shrink)

In this article, I present two conceptual problems for Craver's mutual manipulability account of constitutive relevance in mechanisms. First, constitutive relevance threatens to imply causal relevance despite Craver (and Bechtel)'s claim that they are strictly distinct. Second, if (as is intuitively appealing) parthood is defined in terms of spatio-temporal inclusion, then the mutual manipulability account is prone to counterexamples, as I show by a case of endosymbiosis. I also present a methodological problem (a case of experimental (...) underdetermination) and formulate two partial, but fallible solutions based on the notions of parthood and synchronicity. (shrink)

Despite the growth in research in philosophy of religion over the past several decades, recent years have seen a number of critical studies of this subfield in an effort to redirect the methods and topics of inquiry. This article argues that in addition to problems of religious parochialism described by critics such as Wesley Wildman, the subfield is facing a problem of relevance. In responding to this problem, it suggests that philosophers of religion should do three things: (...) first, be critically self-aware about their aims of inquiry; second, investigate concepts used by other philosophers, scientists, and religious studies scholars to identify and dispel confusion about religions; and third, following the model of applied ethics, work to clarify concepts and advance arguments of contemporary practical urgency. (shrink)

The main argument given for relevant alternatives theories of knowledge has been that they answer scepticism about the external world. I will argue that relevant alternatives also solve two other problems that have been much discussed in recent years, a) the bootstrapping problem and b) the apparent conflict between semantic externalism and armchair self-knowledge. Furthermore, I will argue that scepticism and Mooreanism can be embedded within the relevant alternatives framework.

I discuss a collection of problems in relevance logic. The main problems discussed are: the decidability of the positive semilattice system, decidability of the fragments of R in a restricted number of variables, and the complexity of the decision problem for the implicational fragment of R. Some related problems are discussed along the way.

In her seminal attack on modern moral philosophy, G. E. M. Anscombe claims that Kant's ‘rule about universalizable maxims is useless without stipulations as to what shall count as a relevant description of an action with a view to constructing a maxim about it’. Although this so-called problem of relevant descriptions has received considerable attention in the literature, there is little agreement on how it should be understood or solved. My aim in this paper is, first, to clarify the (...) problem by clearing up several misunderstandings, and, second, to show that the problem is rooted in a standard assumption about Kant's stance on the scope of moral principles—an assumption that precludes its solution. I argue that the problem consists in the fact that Kant's formula of universal law seems to stand in need of an account of moral sensibility that does not render the formula superfluous. But, as my discussion of existing solutions reveals, there can be no such account. Instead, I propose a dissolution: we should think of the formula of universal law itself as Kant's account of moral sensibility. In order to do so, we must reject the standard assumption that a principle is universal if and only if it holds for all instances of the action type that it specifies. (shrink)

Written more than a hundred years ago, Stein’s On the Problem of Empathy is, today more than ever, essential reading material for anyone interested in social cognition. In this book – which still inspires current research – Stein provides a systematic account of the empathic experience. Stein’s view of empathy as a process, and her understanding of its main forms and functions in presenting the other as a spiritual being, provide valuable insights on the intersubjective nature of the human (...) being. Yet, it is not only from the perspective of social cognition that Stein’s book is relevant today. In fact, the book approaches a wide range of issues, from the idea of personhood to social ontology and ethics, and it exemplifies the power of phenomenology to shed light on the basic structure of human consciousness (for an overview: Calcagno 2007; Lebech 2004; MacIntyre 2006; Moran 2004). In this chapter, my aim is to explore the relevance of Stein’s book on empathy for contemporary research by focusing on three main issues which, in my view, can enrich current scholarship. The first issue concerns Stein’s understanding of empathy as a three-step process through which we become conscious of the other’s experience. The second relates to her views of the intentional structure of the emotions as revelatory of the realm of value. The third is her idea that not only emotions but also moods might have correlates, e.g., the fact that the world appears to be bathed in black for the depressive person. These three issues are not exhaustive of the ways in which Stein’s early work can be an inspiration for today’s researchers, but they are illustrative of how her insights can advance three central debates of contemporary philosophy: on social cognition, on the relation between emotion and value, and on the intentionality of moods. (shrink)

Psychosomatic medicine, with its prevailing biopsychosocial model, aims to integrate human and exact sciences with their divergent conceptual models. Therefore, its own conceptual foundations, which often remain implicit and unknown, may be critically relevant. We defend the thesis that choosing between different metaphysical views on the ‘mind–body problem’ may have important implications for the conceptual foundations of psychosomatic medicine, and therefore potentially also for its methods, scientific status and relationship with the scientific disciplines it aims to integrate: biomedical sciences, (...) psychology and social sciences. To make this point, we introduce three key positions in the philosophical ‘mind–body’ debate and investigate their consequences for the conceptual basis of the biopsychosocial model in general and its ‘psycho-biological’ part in particular. Despite the clinical merits of the biopsychosocial model, we submit that it is conceptually underdeveloped or even flawed, which may hamper its use as a proper scientific model. (shrink)

In this paper I critically examine the Generality Problem and argue that it does not succeed as an objection to reliabilism. Although those who urge the Generality Problem are correct in claiming that any process token can be given indefinitely many descriptions that pick out indefinitely many process types, they are mistaken in thinking that reliabilists have no principled way to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant process types.

This chapter deals with the relationship between representation and language, which becomes more relevant if we do not intend the process of forming internal representations of reality but rather the representative function of language. Starting from some Fregean ideas, we present the notion of representation theorized by Searle. According to Searle, a belief is a “representation” that has a propositional content and a psychological mode: the propositional content or intentional content determines a set of conditions of satisfaction under certain aspects (...) and the psychological mode determines the direction of fit of the propositional content. We draw attention to some very interesting ideas proposed by Brandom in response to the challenge of Searle to AI, as they propose formal aspects of representation that rely on the use of ordinary language while avoiding the psychological order of explanation. (shrink)

The paper discusses the theory of relevance, advanced in the middle of the 1980s by Dan Sperber and Deidra Wilson, in the context of opposition between the proponents of “ideal language philosophy”, or formal semantics, and adherents of “ordinary language philoso­phy”. Though the theory was created as a version of cognitive pragmatics, an area at the junction of cognitive sciences and theoretical linguistics, it is of undoubted interest for philosophical comprehension of language, verbal communication, and the nature of meaning. (...) Treating verbal communication as a cognitive process, Sperber and Wilson for­mulate the two most important principles underlying the process – the cognitive principle of relevance and the communicative principle of relevance. The paper explains the basic notions of the theory – ostensive communication, informative and communicative inten­tions, optimal relevance, explicature; it reveals the advantages that the authors of the the­ory see in the “inferential” model of communication over the “code” model and discusses how they present the process of understanding a speaker’s utterance by a hearer on the “implicit” and “explicit” levels and what role in the process they ascribe to pragmatic inferences. The account of the relevance theory is accompanied by its comparison with the picture of verbal communication elaborated by Paul Grice, and it is shown that though Sperber and Wilson make a start from Grice’s ideas in many respects, they intro­duce significant alterations and so they are regarded as representatives of post-Gricean pragmatics. In conclusion, it is examined how, according to the relevance theory, the se­mantics/pragmatics distinction should be drawn. It is discussed how the proposed deci­sion alters the understanding of the nature of meaning and what consequences it has for philosophy. (shrink)

In his early work on the problem of coordination, Hans Reichenbach introduced axioms of coordination to describe the relationship between theory and observation. His insistence that these axioms are determinable a priori, however, causes him to ignore the normative dimensions of scientific inquiry and, in turn, generates a misleading interpretation of the theory-observation relationship. In response, I propose an alternative approach that describes this relationship through the framework of scientific practices. My argument will draw on two examples that have (...) not been explored by the philosophical literature in the context of coordination problems: the clinical definition of death and Stanley Prusiner’s prion hypothesis. (shrink)

The non-identity problem arises when our actions in the present could change which people will exist in the future, for better or worse. Is it morally better to improve the lives of specific future people, as compared to changing which people exist for the better? Affecting the timing of fetuses being conceived is one case where present actions change the identity of future people. This is relevant to questions of public health policy, as exemplified in some responses to the (...) Zika epidemic. There is philosophical disagreement about the relevance of non-identity: some hold that non-identity is not relevant, while others think that the only morally relevant actions are those that affect specific people. Given this disagreement, we investigated the intuitions about the moral relevance of non-identity within an educated sample of the public, because there was previously little empirical data on the public’s views on the non-identity problem. We performed an online survey with a sample of the educated general public. The survey assessed participants’ preferences between person-affecting and impersonal interventions for Zika, and their views on other non-identity thought experiments, once the non-identity problem had been explained. It aimed to directly measure the importance of non-identity in participants’ moral decision-making. We collected 763 valid responses from the survey. Half of the participants (50%) had a graduate degree, 47% had studied philosophy at a university level, and 20% had read about the non-identity problem before. Most participants favoured person-affecting interventions for Zika over impersonal ones, but the majority claimed that non-identity did not influence their decision (66% of those preferring person-affecting interventions, 95% of those preferring impersonal ones). In one non-identity thought experiment participants were divided, but in another they primarily answered that impersonally reducing the quality of life of future people would be wrong, harmful and blameworthy, even though no specific individuals would be worse off. Non-identity appeared to play a minor role in participants’ moral decision-making. Moreover, participants seem to either misunderstand the non-identity problem, or hold non-counterfactual views of harm that do not define harm as making someone worse off than they would have been otherwise. (shrink)

This paper discusses theoretical issues concerning Vygotsky’s work that have remained unaddressed in the dominant interpretations of his work, either in the former Soviet psychology or in the dominant Western interpretations. This paper builds on interpretations of Vygotsky’s concepts oriented by the unity of emotional and cognitive processes and focused on the search for new psychical unities on which to build a systemic representation of the human mind. Because Vygotsky did not provide a definite position on such questions, I have (...) centered on the analysis of the consequences of his legacy for the development of a definition of subjectivity from a cultural-historical standpoint. (shrink)

In their intriguing article “Bioethics and the Moral Authority of Experience,” Nelson and colleagues (2023) provide important insight into an important ethical problem. We frequently demand that th...

Among the many fundamental problems Wittgenstein discussed, two are especially relevant for evolutionary theory. The first one is the problem of negation and its relation to the intentionality of thought. Its resolution answers the question of how thought can anticipate reality though what is thought may not exist, and explains how empirical propositions are distinguishable from mathematical, logical, and conceptual (or what are traditionally called metaphysical) propositions. The second is the problem of the grounds of sensory experience. Wittgenstein’s (...) resolution of this problem is revolutionary since he showed that first-person, present-tense expressions (these are sentences by which we express what goes on in our mind) have no grounds at all, clarifying why we should abandon (all variants of) representative idealism. In combination with the resolution of the first problem, it enables us to develop new explanations about how during the course of development and evolution the mind evolves and evolved. (shrink)

A few years ago a book was published by Hannah Arendt with the title 'between Past and Future'. Many critics, especially in the USA, hailed this book — not ...

This article examines Robert Alexy's account of legal validity. It concludes that Alexy's account of legal validity lacks sufficient support given the author's methodological commitments. To reach that conclusion, it assesses the plausibility of simultaneously maintaining that the participant's perspective has conceptual privilege in the explanation of the nature of law, that legal discourse is a special case of general practical discourse, and that unjust considerations can be legally valid norms.

Chiappe and Kukla argue that relevance theory fails to solve the frame problem as defined by Fodor. They are right. They are wrong, however, to take Fodor’s frame problem too seriously. Fodor’s concerns, on the other hand, even though they are wrongly framed, are worth addressing. We argue that Relevance thoery helps address them.

The frame problem refers to the fact that organisms must be able to zero in on relevant aspects of the world and intelligently ignore the vast majority of the world that is irrelevant to their goals. In this paper we aim to point out the connection between two leading frameworks for thinking about how organisms achieve this. Predictive processing is a rapidly growing framework within cognitive science which suggests that organisms assign a high ‘weight’ to relevant aspects of the (...) world, effectively treating relevant aspects of the world as if they are more precise. This assignment of weight is called precision-weighting and is the predictive processing account of how organisms allocate their attention. Relevance Realization is a framework that conceptualizes an organism’s ability to realize relevance as resulting from a dynamical system in which a cognitive agent makes use of opponent processing relationships to zero in on relevant aspects of the world. In this paper we use recent work on the diametric model of autism and psychosis to demonstrate that the tradeoffs inherent to precision-weighting are also inherent to relevance realization. This connection will demonstrate that although these frameworks have a different intellectual background and use a different set of concepts and vocabulary, they are both pointing to the same underlying process. The fact that these different frameworks have converged on such a similar solution to the problem of how organisms realize relevance serves to demonstrate the plausibility of that solution. (shrink)

In their paper "Remembering," first published in the Philosophical Review in 1966, Martin and Deutscher develop what has since come to be known as the Causal Theory of Memory. The core claim of the Causal Theory of Memory runs as follows: If someone remembers something, whether it be "public," such as a car accident, or "private," such as an itch, then the following criteria must be fulfilled: 1. Within certain limits of accuracy he represents that past thing. 2. I f (...) the thing was "public," then he observed what he now represents. If the thing was "private," then it was his. 3. His past experience of the thing was operative in producing a state or successive states in him finally operative in producing his representation. These three statements express the condition which we consider to be separately necessary and jointly sufficient, if an event is to be an instance of remembering. (shrink)

Philosophical ethics comprises metaethics, normative ethics and applied ethics. These have characteristically received analytic treatment by twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophy. But there has been disagreement over their interrelationship to one another and the relationship of analytical ethics to substantive morality – the making of moral judgments. I contend that the expertise philosophers have in either theoretical or applied ethics does not equip them to make sounder moral judgments on the problems of bioethics than nonphilosophers. One cannot "apply" theories like Kantianism or (...) consequentialism to get solutions to practical moral problems unless one knows which theory is correct, and that is a metaethical question over which there is no consensus. On the other hand, to presume to be able to reach solutions through neutral analysis of problems is unavoidably to beg controversial theoretical issues in the process. Thus, while analytical ethics can play an important clarificatory role in bioethics, it can neither provide, nor substitute for, moral wisdom. Keywords: abortion, applied ethics, bioethics, metaethics, normative ethics CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Abstract‘Critique’ means the questioning judgement of human actions, particularly with reference to a criterion of judgement that is inseparable from the judged state of affairs but is dependent on a decision of the person judging. Informative judgements of a state of affairs contain two relevant components, one concerned with recognition of the objects of judgment, the other concerned with their evaluation. This evaluation is not directly extractable from that state of affairs, but the quality of the evaluation does depend in (...) part upon the quality of its explanation. Thus, when the content-description is flawed, the evaluation is affected by the flawed description. The phrase ‘the domestication of critique’ refers to the successful attempts that have been made to cause critics to neglect the truth claims of the judgement in favour of normative dominant interests. Domesticated critique is not concerned with the testing but rather with the justification or interpretation of a state of affairs. Domesticated critique does not depend on the quality of the argument but rather on whether the critique succeeds in legitimating dominant interests and immunising them against undomesticated critique. The educational relevance of the domestication of critique lies in the fact that a critical education which is domesticated will alleviate the need for overt repression on the part of dominant interests in favour of a particular view of the world and replace it with the semblance of a critical attitude that in fact reinforces the existing order through apparently rational means. Education based on domesticated critique can have no radical implications. (shrink)

Robb & Heil describe a higher-order version of the popular Causal Exclusion Problem. In particular, they ask whether the argument that led to a change in focus from event causation to causal relevance of properties can be iterated, leading us to focus on the causal relevance of properties of those properties, or properties of properties of those properties, and so on. In this paper, I investigate this curious higher-order problem and argue that the appeal of both (...) the original argument and its iterations reflects a lack of understanding of causal relata and a problem with the notion of causal relevance. (shrink)

Forty‐nine subjects judged the relevancy of sentence parts of a word problem (the Allsports problem). Patterns of subjects' judgments suggest three problem‐solving heuristics: a SETS heuristic, a TIME heuristic, and a QUESTION heuristic. Presentation of the question before the problem tends to suppress SETS and TIME heuristics. A computer program (ATTEND) is presented to simulate subjects' behavior on the Allsports problem. The program is context‐sensitive in that it can change a relevance judgment upon the (...) acquisition of further information. Averaged subject judgments and ATTEND judgments agree for 87% of the items. (shrink)

Recently, Walter Sinott-Armstrong and Justin Snedegar have argued for a general contrastivist theory of reasons. According to the contrastivist account of reasons, all reasons claims should be understood as a relation with an additional place for a contrast class. For example, rather than X being a reason for A to P simpliciter, the contrastivist claims that X is a reason for A to P out of {P,Q,R…}. The main goal of this paper is to argue that the contrastivist account of (...) reasons will be ill-fitted for accommodating certain features of moral reasons. In brief, the reason why the contrastivist analysis fails is that it cannot adequately allow for cases of morally correct whole-hearted action—cases where consideration of any alternate course of action would be misguided. But, if all consideration of alternate courses of action is misguided, then it is hard to see how one can set the relevant contrast class that is essential to the contrastivist view—any contrast class will seem out of place. In addition, I address some of the arguments that have been given in favor of the contrastivist account of reasons and argue that there are at least two ways that the non-contrastivist can respond to these arguments. (shrink)

Many significant moral theories, ones to which a large number of philosophers pledge themselves, employ in a fundamental way the criterion of universalizability. This is true not only of Kant and his more illustrious successors, but also utilitarians of many sorts. But concomitant with adherence to universalizability as a moral criterion is adherence to the belief that certain features of putatively moral acts and immoral acts are relevant and others irrelevant to the determination to the rightness or wrongness of those (...) acts. Despite the fact that this belief is problematic, few moral philosophers have openly struggled with the problem of relevant descriptions. It is as if investigation of this problem would invite unsettlable doubts about universalizability itself. (shrink)

Drawing on the relevant alternatives framework and Mary Kate McGowan’s work on conversational scorekeeping, I argue that usage of the term ‘conspiracy theory’ in ordinary language and public discourse typically entails the performance of what I call a dismissive conversational exercitive, a kind of speech act that functions to exclude certain propositions from (or prevent their inclusion in) the set of alternatives considered relevant in a given conversational context. While it can be legitimate to perform dismissive conversational exercitives, excluding alternatives (...) that deserve to be taken seriously can be highly problematic for a variety of reasons. For one, it can give rise to what I call the problem of premature conclusions when subjects illegitimately dismiss certain propositions as irrelevant and, as a result, prematurely take certain conclusions or claims to be warranted. Depending on the kind of conclusion or claim, the problem can come in different variants, three of which I shall examine in more detail: the problem of premature knowledge claims, the problem of premature causal claims, and the problem of premature generic generalizations. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the classical computational account of reasoning against a range of highly influential objections, sometimes called relevance problems. Such problems are closely associated with the frame problem in artificial intelligence and, to a first approximation, concern the issue of how humans are able to determine which of a range of representations are relevant to the performance of a given cognitive task. Though many critics maintain that the nature and existence of such problems provide grounds (...) for rejecting classical computationalism, I show that this is not so. Some of these putative problems are a cause for concern only on highly implausible assumptions about the extent of our cognitive capacities, whilst others are a cause for concern only on similarly implausible views about the commitments of classical computationalism. Finally, some versions of the relevance problem are not really objections but hard research issues that any satisfactory account of cognition needs to address. I conclude by considering the diagnostic issue of why accounts of cognition in general—and classical computational accounts, in particular—have faired so poorly in addressing such research issues.Keywords: Computationalism; Frame problem; Relevance. (shrink)

At the beginning of one of his inimitable discourses William James once said, ‘I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers’.1 In his succeeding discourse James himself departed from this theme. And so shall I. I shall not be contradicting other philosophers—at least not very often. What I aim to do is to take a fresh look at one of the main (...) traditions in American philosophy for insight and illumination on a way of dealing with some of the most serious issues of our time. But before I turn to that, my main theme, I want to pursue for a bit some variations on another, the cultural relevance of philosophy, for, as I view the matter, they are related. (shrink)

At the beginning of one of his inimitable discourses William James once said, ‘I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers’.1 In his succeeding discourse James himself departed from this theme. And so shall I. I shall not be contradicting other philosophers—at least not very often. What I aim to do is to take a fresh look at one of the main (...) traditions in American philosophy for insight and illumination on a way of dealing with some of the most serious issues of our time. But before I turn to that, my main theme, I want to pursue for a bit some variations on another, the cultural relevance of philosophy, for, as I view the matter, they are related. (shrink)

Psychiatry is a discipline on the border between the biomedical sciences on the one hand and the humanities and social sciences (most notably psychology and anthropology) on the other. This unique position undoubtedly contributes to the attractiveness of psychiatry as a medical specialism for many young doctors, but it also causes significant problems. Unlike other medical disciplines, in which the definitions of diseases are based on objective, measurable pathophysiological underpinnings, psychiatric diagnosis and classification has been based on descriptions of inherently (...) subjective mental and behavioral symptoms that are supposed to be deviant from "normal" psychology or behavior, as reflected in the current .. (shrink)