Making up your mind can include making up your mind about how to change your mind. Here a suggestion for coding imputations of influence into the kinematics of judgmental probabilities is applied to the treatment of Newcomb problems in The Logic of Decision framework. The suggestion is that what identifies you as treating judgmental probabilistic covariance of X and Y as measuring an influence of X on Y is constancy of your probabilities for values of Y conditionally on values of (...) X as your judgmental probability distribution for values of X changes. (shrink)

Richard Jeffrey long held that decision theory should be formulated without recourse to explicitly causal notions. Newcomb problems stand out as putative counterexamples to this ‘evidential’ decision theory. Jeffrey initially sought to defuse Newcomb problems via recourse to the doctrine of ratificationism, but later came to see this as problematic. We will see that Jeffrey’s worries about ratificationism were not compelling, but that valid ratificationist arguments implicitly presuppose causal decision theory. In later work, Jeffrey argued that Newcomb problems are (...) not decisions at all because agents who face them possess so much evidence about correlations between their actions and states of the world that they are unable to regard their deliberate choices as causes of outcomes, and so cannot see themselves as making free choices. Jeffrey’s reasoning goes wrong because it fails to recognize that an agent’s beliefs about her immediately available acts are so closely tied to the immediate causes of these actions that she can create evidence that outweighs any antecedent correlations between acts and states. Once we recognize that deliberating agents are free to believe what they want about their own actions, it will be clear that Newcomb problems are indeed counterexamples to evidential decision theory. (shrink)

Richard Jeffrey said that Newcomb’s Problem may be seen “as a rock on which... Bayesianism... must founder” and the problem has been almost universally conceived as reconciling the science-fictional features of the decision problem with a plausible causal analysis. Later, Jeffrey renounced his earlier position that accepted Newcomb problems as genuine decision problems, suggesting “Newcomb problems are like Escher’s famous staircase”. We may interpret this to mean that we know there can be no such thing, though we see no (...) local flaw in the puzzle. In this paper, I develop the critique of Slezak to show that Jeffrey’s analogy is apt for a puzzle whose logical features can be precisely articulated and I propose an easily realizable experiment that convincingly supports this analysis. I suggest that these real-life analogs of Newcomb’s Problem have diverted attention from the essential function of the science-fiction of a predicting demon. Following Eells, similarities with realistic problems such as Prisoner’s Dilemma and common cause cases have suggested that Newcomb’s Problem may be given a coherent description and realized in some way consistent with classical causation. However, the peculiarity of the apparent link between one’s choice and the previously determined contents of the second box is the central, defining feature of Newcomb’s Problem. I argue that the predictor may not be merely a fiction providing insufficient “extra information” as both McKay and Levi suggest. Rather, I suggest that the decision problem permits a precise specification revealing the source of the notorious perplexity. Notwithstanding efforts to rescue the coherence of Newcomb’s Problem and a classical causal account, a simulation of the decision problem establishes the correctness of my analysis and, thereby, hopefully ending the debate. (shrink)

A fully adequate solution to Newcomb’s Problem (Nozick 1969) should reveal the source of its extraordinary elusiveness and persistent intractability. Recently, a few accounts have independently sought to meet this criterion of adequacy by exposing the underlying source of the problem’s profound puzzlement. Thus, Sorensen (1987), Slezak (1998), Priest (2002) and Maitzen and Wilson (2003) share the ‘no box’ view according to which the very idea that there is a right choice is misconceived since the problem is ill-formed or incoherent (...) in some way. Among proponents of this view, Richard Jeffrey (2004) recently declared that he renounces his earlier position that accepted Newcomb problems as genuine decision problems. Significantly, Jeffrey suggests that “Newcomb problems are like Escher’s famous staircase on which an unbroken ascent takes you back where you started” (Jeffrey (2004; 113)). Jeffrey’s analogy is apt for a puzzle whose specific logical features can be precisely articulated. Along the lines of these related approaches, I propose to improve and clarify them by providing such a deeper analysis that elucidates their essential, related insights. (shrink)

A selection of speeches and essays from the author's second decade as president of Yale University.

Collected for the first time in a single volume are essays which examine the developments in three fundamental biological disciplines - embryology, evolutionary biology, and genetics. These disciplines were in conflict for much of the twentieth century and the essays in this collection examine key methodological problems within these disciplines and the difficulties faced in overcoming the conflicts between them. Burian skilfully weaves together historical appreciation of the settings within which scientists work, substantial knowledge of the biological problems at stake (...) and the methodological and philosophical issues faced in integrating biological knowledge drawn from disparate sources. The final chapter describes what recent findings in development biology and genetics can tell us about the history and development of animals. Written in a clear, accessible style this collection should appeal to students and professionals in philosophy of science, and the philosophy and history of biology. (shrink)

In this reproduction of his original publication of 1649, Rene Descartes discusses how seekers of knowledge can best attain true insight of the world around them. Often referred to as simply the Discourse on the Method, this work is frequently cited as one of the most important to appear during the Enlightenment era. It discusses the ideal means through which those in search of knowledge can approach the world, and the practice of science, as a means of attaining true and (...) definitive insight. The Discourse on Method is influential chiefly for its role in establishing the scientific method; a technique which scientists have used to make valid discoveries over the centuries. Descartes instructs the reader to doubt everything, and to use this universal doubt as a starting point from which to approach a problem. In addition to matters of science, Descartes reflects upon his own personal, religious beliefs. In addition to his Method, Descartes also explains certain social and personal notions such as obeying the laws and statutes of his country and prioritizing self-advancement over the achievement of material wealth or fortune. Famous for including the much-quoted phrase "Je pense, donc je suis" - "I think, therefore I am" - the Discourse on Method today stands as a crucial cornerstone of countless educational courses on philosophy. (shrink)

Morse has produced a work that emphasizes the extreme significance and vital discipline of legal philosophy in representing the integration of legal principles and moral precepts. The Thinkers discusses, delineates, and analyzes the integral legal philosophies of Hobbes, Wilson, Aquinas, Augustine, Descartes, Hegel, Leibnitz, Kant, Carlyle,Thoreau, and Hohfeld.

Thinking through the body: educating for the humanities -- The body as background -- Self-knowledge and its discontents: from Socrates to somaesthetics -- Muscle memory and the somaesthetic pathologies of everyday life -- Somaesthetics in the philosophy classroom: a practical approach -- Somaesthetics and the limits of aesthetics -- Somaesthetics and Burke's sublime -- Pragmatism and cultural politics: from textualism to somaesthetics -- Body consciousness and performance -- Somaesthetics and architecture: a critical option -- Photography as performative process -- Asian (...) ars erotica and the question of sexual aesthetics -- Philosophy as awakened life : everyday aesthetics of embodiment in American transcendentalism and Japanese Zen practice -- Somatic style. (shrink)

The book begins with an overview that introduces the Theorem and the issues surrounding it, and explores how the essays that follow contribute to our understanding of those issues.

It is frequently claimed that the human mind is organized in a modular fashion, a hypothesis linked historically, though not inevitably, to the claim that many aspects of the human mind are innately specified. A specific instance of this line of thought is the proposal of an innately specified geometric module for human reorientation. From a massive modularity position, the reorientation module would be one of a large number that organized the mind. From the core knowledge position, the reorientation module (...) is one of five innate and encapsulated modules that can later be supplemented by use of human language. In this paper, we marshall five lines of evidence that cast doubt on the geometric module hypothesis, unfolded in a series of reasons: (1) Language does not play a necessary role in the integration of feature and geometric cues, although it can be helpful. (2) A model of reorientation requires flexibility to explain variable phenomena. (3) Experience matters over short and long periods. (4) Features are used for true reorientation. (5) The nature of geometric information is not as yet clearly specified. In the final section, we review recent theoretical approaches to the known reorientation phenomena. (shrink)

"Ce livre propose une enquête philosophique explorant le rapport à la mort dans nos sociétés. C’est une invitation à penser les liens humains à la fin de la vie. On évoque les liens intimes, mais également les liens sociaux encadrés par la loi. Dans un tel contexte, comment discerner les raisons anciennes et nouvelles convenant au bien de la cité? L’ouvrage s’adresse aux accompagnants en soins palliatifs. Il concerne également toute personne soucieuse pour elle-même et ses proches de réfléchir à (...) son voyage au bout de la vie. Nous sommes mortels, nous le savons et le fil de nos existences provoque des occasions de nous le rappeler. Dans la solitude de mourir s’inscrit l’appel à la compassion. Ainsi, pour les Grecs de l’Antiquité, l’image de la cigogne symbolisait la prise en charge des vieux par les jeunes, un signe de l’amitié politique. L’émergence de la culture palliative est intimement liée aux changements qui ont affecté l’évolution récente de la vie démocratique. Cette culture est née et s’est développée dans des circonstances politiques particulières. À l’observer, on peut déchiffrer certains codes de notre vie civique, ses aspirations, mais aussi ses ambiguïtés. Louis-André Richard propose d’examiner les questions actuelles en compagnie de Platon, d’Aristote, d’Augustin ou de Tocqueville. Grâce à eux, la philosophie, symbolisée par la sagesse de Minerve, est mise à contribution pour explorer la genèse et les métamorphoses de concepts comme la dignité et l’autonomie. Comment se déploie la dynamique de la raison et de la liberté à l’heure de notre mort? Tel est l’enjeu pour les roseaux pensants que nous sommes. Si notre frêle espèce appelle à la sollicitude de la cigogne, elle ne saurait négliger de convoquer aussi la sagesse de Minerve."--Résumé de l'éditeur. (shrink)

Strangers, Gods and Monster is a fascinating look at how human identity is shaped by three powerful but enigmatic forces. Often overlooked in accounts of how we think about ourselves and others, Richard Kearney skillfully shows, with the help of vivid examples and illustrations, how the human outlook on the world is formed by the mysterious triumvirate of strangers, gods and monsters. Throughout, Richard Kearney shows how strangers, gods and monsters do not merely reside in myths or fantasies (...) but constitute a central part of our cultural unconscious. Above all, he argues that until we understand better that the Other resides deep within ourselves, we can have little hope of understanding how our most basic fears and desires manifest themselves in the external world and how we can learn to live with them. (shrink)

Les périodes de confinement sont des moments éprouvants. On a la sensation de perdre nos repères. Nous nous sentons déboussolés. On peut cependant saisir l’occasion de faire le point. Sous le regard de la réflexion philosophique, ce petit livre est une tentative pour éviter de perdre le nord. L’auteur propose de courtes réflexions puisées à même la littérature philosophique. Sans prétention, il s’agit de fournir des pistes rendant intelligibles nos conditions d’êtres confinés.

I do not by any means with to take on the philosophy or aesthetics of music as a whole. In his review of Edward Lippman’s Humanistic Philosophy of Music, Monroe Beardsley lists six areas in which an ideal philosophy of music ought to provide guidance: an ontology of music, an answer to the question What is a musical work of art? a taxonomy of music, a categorical scheme for the basic and universal aspects of music; a hermeneutics or semiotics of (...) music, an answer to the question What, if anything, can music refer to? an epistemology of music; a theory of music criticism, an answer to the question What makes one musical work better than another? the foundations of a social philosophy of music.4 My subject here is the third item. I want most particularly to separate it from the fifth item, for to arrive at an interpretation of a particular piece is not to arrive at an evaluation of it. I shall also try, particularly in my discussion of Nelson Goodman’s seminal Languages of Art, to avoid the first item.5 And I shall try throughout to avoid embroilment in the question of how the aesthetic experience can be separated from the nonaesthetic.My subject is in fact only a part of the third item above, namely, current theories of musical expression. “Expression” is not equivalent to “meaning”; I understand and shall use the word “expression” to indicate a kind of meaning that entails some kind of reference outside the internal syntax of the artwork itself. As Goodman remarks, “rather obviously, to express is to refer in some way to what is expressed.”6 How this reference is made by the artwork is interaction with the listener, and what sort of purpose it serves—these concerns will be the focus of this essay. To choose this focus is not to deny something of which I have no doubt, both from Peter Faltin’s careful arguments and from my own experience: there is a kind of musical meaning that is purely syntactic, that operates without reference outside the internal operations or procedures of musical systems themselves.7 But through this may be ontologically the most fundamental kind of musical meaning, it is not the only kind. To listen for this alone is not the only way to approach music. Indeed, I should guess it is not the most fundamental way for many listeners. 4. I paraphrase and abbreviate from Monroe C. Beardsley, review of A Humanistic Philosophy of Music by Edward A. Lippman, Musical Quarterly 66 : 305.5. See Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols ; all further references to this work, abbreviated LA, will be included in the text.6. Goodman, “Reply to Beardsley,” Erkenntnis 12, pt. 1 : 171; and see Edward T. Cone: “Expressive values in any art … cannot arise from analytical values alone. How could they? Unless one wishes to explain what it could possibly mean for a work of art to ‘express itself,’ then one must agree that expression, by its very definition, implies a relationship between the work of art and something else; while analytical values are derivable purely from internal structure” . Anthony Newcomb, professor of music at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of The Madrigal at Ferrara. He is currently at work on a book on musica ficta, Understood Accidentals in Renaissance Vocal Polyphony, 1450-1600, and a study of the relationship between structure and expression in nineteenth-century music. (shrink)

Most recent accounts of will-power have tried to explain it as reducible to the operation of beliefs and desires. In opposition to such accounts, this paper argues for a distinct faculty of will-power. Considerations from philosophy and from social psychology are used in support.

Being able to estimate quantity is important in everyday life and for success in the STEM disciplines. However, people have difficulty reasoning about magnitudes outside of human perception. This study examines patterns of estimation errors across temporal and spatial magnitudes at large scales. We evaluated the effectiveness of hierarchical alignment in improving estimations, and transfer across dimensions. The activity was successful in increasing accuracy for temporal and spatial magnitudes, and learning transferred to the estimation of numeric magnitudes associated with events (...) and objects. However, there were also a number of informative differences in performance on temporal, spatial, and numeric magnitude measures, suggesting that participants possess different categorical information for these scales. Educational implications are discussed. (shrink)

Most individuals realise that we have a moral obligation to avoid the evils of war. But this realization raises a host of difficult questions when we, as responsible individuals, witness harrowing injustices such as ""ethnic cleansing"" in Bosnia or starvation in Somalia. With millions of lives at stake, is war ever justified? And, if so, for what purpose? In this book, Richard J. Regan confronts these controversial questions by first considering the basic principles of just-war theory and then applying (...) those principles to historical and ongoing conflicts. Part One presents two opposing viewpoints: first, that war is not subject to moral norms and, second, that war is never morally permissible. The author rejects both perspectives, and moves to define the principles of just-war theory. He evaluates the roles of the president, Congress and, most importantly, the UN Security Council in determining when long-term US military involvement is justified. The moral limits of war conduct and the moral problem of using, or threatening to use, nuclear weapons are also discussed. On the just cause to wage war, Regan argues that defense of nations and nationals - whether in self-defense or in defense of others - remains the ""only"" classical cause that in the modern world would justify resorting to war. With respect to military intervention in secessionist and revolutionary wars, he contends that such intervention might be justified, but that prudence dictates extreme caution. In considering acceptable war conduct, Regan elaborates the specific principle of discrimination and proportionality; he maintains that civilians uninvolved in the enemy's war should not be directly targeted and that the costs of military action must be proportionate to the anticipated benefits of destroying military targets. The second part of the book presents case studies of eight historical wars - World War I, the Vietnam War, the Falklands War, the revolution and civil war in Nicaragua, the civil war in El Salvador, the Gulf War, the intervention in Somalia, and the Bosnian War - and poses several provocative questions about each. It invites readers and students to apply just-war principles to complex war-related situations and to understand the factual contingencies involved in moral judgements about war decisions. The book should be of particular interest to students of the moral issues of international relations and to readers interested more generally in philosophy, theology and political science. (shrink)

This book gives a descriptive analysis of specific Madhyamika texts. It compares the ideology of Kumarajiva (a translator of the four Madhyamika treatises 400 A.D.) with the ideologies of the three Chinese contemporaries - HuiYuan, Seng-Jui and Seng-Chao. It envisages an intercultural transmission of religious and philosophical ideas from India to China.

INTRODUCTION TO ASPECTS OF FACE PROCESSING: TEN QUESTIONS IN NEED OF ANSWERS. HD Ellis 1. INTRODUCTION These proceedings of the first international ...

If aesthetics is both surface and depth, impassioned immediacy yet also critical distance of judgment, how can this doubleness be held together in one ...

This book encourages a debate over musical modernity; a debate considering the question whether an examination of the history of European art music may enrich our picture of modernity and whether our understanding of music's development may be transformed by insights into the nature of modernity provided by other historical disciplines.

This paper discusses Frege's account of definition by induction in Grundgesetze and the two key theorems Frege proves using it.

Richard Swinburne presents a substantially rewritten and updated edition of his most celebrated book. No other work has made a more powerful case for the probability of the existence of God. Swinburne gives a rigorous and penetrating analysis of the most important arguments for theism: the cosmological argument; arguments from the existence of laws of nature and the 'fine-tuning' of the universe; from the occurrence of consciousness and moral awareness; and from miracles and religious experience. He claims that while (...) none of these arguments are deductively valid, they do give inductive support to theism and that, even when the argument from evil is weighed against them, taken together they offer good grounds to support the probability that there is a God. The overall structure of the discussion and its conclusion have been retained for this new edition, but much has been changed in order to strengthen the argumentation and to take account of Swinburne's subsequent work on the nature of consciousness and the problem of evil, and of the latest philosophical and scientific writing, especially in respect of the laws of nature and the argument from fine-tuning. This is now the definitive version of a classic in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)