Perceptual tasks such as object matching, mammogram interpretation, mental rotation, and satellite imagery change detection often require the assignment of correspondences to fuse information across views. We apply techniques developed for machine translation to the gaze data recorded from a complex perceptual matching task modeled after fingerprint examinations. The gaze data provide temporal sequences that the machine translation algorithm uses to estimate the subjects' assumptions of corresponding regions. Our results show that experts and novices have similar surface behavior, such as (...) the number of fixations made or the duration of fixations. However, the approach applied to data from experts is able to identify more corresponding areas between two prints. The fixations that are associated with clusters that map with high probability to corresponding locations on the other print are likely to have greater utility in a visual matching task. These techniques address a fundamental problem in eye tracking research with perceptual matching tasks: Given that the eyes always point somewhere, which fixations are the most informative and therefore are likely to be relevant for the comparison task? (shrink)

Forensic evidence often involves an evaluation of whether two impressions were made by the same source, such as whether a fingerprint from a crime scene has detail in agreement with an impression taken from a suspect. Human experts currently outperform computer-based comparison systems, but the strength of the evidence exemplified by the observed detail in agreement must be evaluated against the possibility that some other individual may have created the crime scene impression. Therefore, the strongest evidence comes from features in (...) agreement that are also not shared with other impressions from other individuals. We characterize the nature of human expertise by applying two extant metrics to the images used in a fingerprint recognition task and use eye gaze data from experts to both tune and validate the models. The Attention via Information Maximization model quantifies the rarity of regions in the fingerprints to determine diagnosticity for purposes of excluding alternative sources. The CoVar model captures relationships between low-level features, mimicking properties of the early visual system. Both models produced classification and generalization performance in the 75%–80% range when classifying where experts tend to look. A validation study using regions identified by the AIM model as diagnostic demonstrates that human experts perform better when given regions of high diagnosticity. The computational nature of the metrics may help guard against wrongful convictions, as well as provide a quantitative measure of the strength of evidence in casework. (shrink)

Growth in racial and ethnic diversity among public school P-12 students stands in stark contrast to the teaching population who tend to be monolingual, White females. Secondary social studies teachers defy demographic teacher trends, as they tend to be male, albeit White males who still are not representative of the students they teach. What is missing from the discourse of student–teacher imbalance however is discussion surrounding diversity among social studies teacher educators. The purpose of this study was to examine racial, (...) ethnic, and gender demographics for social studies teacher educators using a framework of critical teacher demography. Findings revealed that social studies teacher educators tend to reflect the population of social studies teachers with many being White males. Furthermore, social studies teacher educators tend to focus their research on concepts such as democratic citizenship with little focus dedicated to critical multicultural issues. The paucity of diversity in demographics and research is critical for social studies teacher educators to consider if we are to reflect multiculturalism in 21st century schools. (shrink)

Big Ideas for Little Kids includes everything a teacher, a parent, or a college student needs to teach philosophy to elementary school children from picture books. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book explains why it is important to allow young children access to philosophy during primary-school education. Wartenberg also gives advice on how to construct a "learner-centered" classroom, in which children discuss philosophical issues with one another as they respond to open-ended questions by saying whether they agree (...) or disagree with what others have said. (shrink)

Issues of reliability are claiming center-stage in the epistemology of machine learning. This paper unifies different branches in the literature and points to promising research directions, whilst also providing an accessible introduction to key concepts in statistics and machine learning---as far as they are concerned with reliability.

The words quoted above distill the common secular conception of death. If we decline the traditional religious reassurances of an afterlife, or their fuzzy new age equivalents, and instead take the hard-boiled and thoroughly modern materialist view of death, then we likely end up with Gonzalez-Cruzzi. Rejecting visions of reunions with loved ones or of crossing over into the light, we anticipate the opposite: darkness, silence, an engulfing emptiness. But we would be wrong.

This paper is an exposition and evaluation of the Agustín Rayo's views about the epistemology and metaphysics of mathematics, as they are presented in his book The Construction of Logical Space.

v. 1. Editorial introduction -- v. 2. The English and Latin texts (i) -- v. 3. The English and Latin texts (ii).

This volume is a study of the influence of Timaeus on the development of Western cosmology in three axial periods of European culture: Late Antiquity, Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Examines how the educations of America's first four presidents, and in particular their scholarly devotion to ancient Greek and Roman classics, informed the beliefs and ideals that shaped the nation's constitution and government.

Thomas Reid is now recognized as one of the towering figures of the Enlightenment. Best known for his published writings on epistemology and moral theory, he was also an accomplished mathematician and natural philosopher, as an earlier volume of his manuscripts edited by Paul Wood for the Edinburgh Reid Edition, Thomas Reid on the Animate Creation, has shown. The Correspondence of Thomas Reid collects all of the known letters to and from Reid in a fully annotated form. (...) Letters already published by Sir William Hamilton and others have been reedited, and roughly half of the letters included appear in print for the first time. Writing in 1802, Reid's disciple and biographer Dugald Stewart doubted that Reid's correspondence &"would be generally interesting.&" This collection proves otherwise, for the letters illuminate virtually every aspect of Reid's life and career and, in some instances, provide us with invaluable evidence about activities otherwise undocumented in his manuscripts or published works. Through his correspondence we can trace Reid's relations with contemporaries such as David Hume and his colleagues at both King's College, Aberdeen, and the University of Glasgow, as well as his engagement with the most controversial philosophical, scientific, and political issues of his day. If anything, the letters assembled here serve as the starting point for understanding Reid and his place in the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Glymour and Quine propose two different formal criteria for theoretical equivalence. In this paper we examine the relationships between these criteria.

Thomas Hill, a leading figure in the recent development of Kantian moral philosophy, presents a set of essays exploring the implications of basic Kantian ideas for practical issues. The first part of the book provides background in central themes in Kant's ethics; the second part discusses questions regarding human welfare; the third focuses on moral worth-the nature and grounds of moral assessment of persons as deserving esteem or blame. Hill shows moral, political, and social philosophers just how valuable moral (...) theory can be in addressing practical matters. (shrink)

This book is a fiftieth anniversary republication of Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", a classic in the philosophy of mind. Through its argument for the irreducible subjectivity of consciousness, it played an essential role in making the study of consciousness a central part of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. It also spurred the now flourishing scientific attention to the consciousness of non-human creatures: mammals, birds, fish, mollusks, and insects. The book also includes a second essay (...) offering Nagel's more recent thoughts on the most promising positive response to the mind-body problem, as posed in the original essay. (shrink)

The purported fact that geometric theories formulated in terms of points and geometric theories formulated in terms of lines are “equally correct” is often invoked in arguments for conceptual relativity, in particular by Putnam and Goodman. We discuss a few notions of equivalence between first-order theories, and we then demonstrate a precise sense in which this purported fact is true. We argue, however, that this fact does not undermine metaphysical realism.

This paper presents a simple pair of first-order theories that are not definitionally (nor Morita) equivalent, yet are mutually conservatively translatable and mutually 'surjectively' translatable. We use these results to clarify the overall geography of standards of equivalence and to show that the structural commitments that theories make behave in a more subtle manner than has been recognized.

Wilhelm (Forthcom Synth 199:6357–6369, 2021) has recently defended a criterion for comparing structure of mathematical objects, which he calls Subgroup. He argues that Subgroup is better than SYM \(^*\), another widely adopted criterion. We argue that this is mistaken; Subgroup is strictly worse than SYM \(^*\). We then formulate a new criterion that improves on both SYM \(^*\) and Subgroup, answering Wilhelm’s criticisms of SYM \(^*\) along the way. We conclude by arguing that no criterion that looks only to the (...) automorphisms of mathematical objects to compare their structure can be fully satisfactory. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

Quine often argued for a simple, untyped system of logic rather than the typed systems that were championed by Russell and Carnap, among others. He claimed that nothing important would be lost by eliminating sorts, and the result would be additional simplicity and elegance. In support of this claim, Quine conjectured that every many-sorted theory is equivalent to a single-sorted theory. We make this conjecture precise, and prove that it is true, at least according to one reasonable notion of theoretical (...) equivalence. Our clarification of Quine’s conjecture, however, exposes the shortcomings of his argument against many-sorted logic. (shrink)

The word “emotion” has named a psychological category and a subject for systematic enquiry only since the 19th century. Before then, relevant mental states were categorised variously as “appetites,” “passions,” “affections,” or “sentiments.” The word “emotion” has existed in English since the 17th century, originating as a translation of the French émotion, meaning a physical disturbance. It came into much wider use in 18th-century English, often to refer to mental experiences, becoming a fully fledged theoretical term in the following century, (...) especially through the influence of two Scottish philosopher-physicians, Thomas Brown and Charles Bell. This article relates this intellectual and semantic history to contemporary debates about the usefulness and meaning of “emotion” as a scientific term. (shrink)

Nietzsche is often regarded as a paradigmatically anti-theoretical philosopher. Bernard Williams has said that Nietzsche is so far from being a theorist that his text “is booby-trapped not only against recovering theory from it, but, in many cases, against any systematic exegesis that assimilates it to theory.” Many would apply this view especially to Nietzsche’s moral philosophy. They would say that even when he is making positive normative claims, as against just criticizing existing morality, his claims have neither the content (...) nor the organization characteristic of moral theory. (shrink)

This paper makes an observation about the ``amount of structure'' that different classical and relativistic spacetimes posit. The observation substantiates a suggestion made by Earman and yields a cautionary remark concerning the scope and applicability of structural parsimony principles.

The Essays on the Active Powers of Man was Thomas Reid's last major work. It was conceived as part of one large work, intended as a final synoptic statement of his philosophy. The first and larger part was published three years earlier as Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man. These two works are united by Reid's basic philosophy of common sense, which sets out native principles by which the mind operates in both its intellectual and active aspects. The (...) Active Powers shows how these principles are involved in volition, action, and the ability to judge morally. Reid gives an original twist to a libertarian and realist tradition that was prominently represented in eighteenth-century British thought by such thinkers as Samuel Clarke and Richard Price. (shrink)

Explanations contribute to our understanding of the world byembedding phenomena into general nomic patterns that we recognize in the world. Manyof these patterns are, of course, causal ones, but the declaration as ``causal'' often fails to determinethe explanatory power of the pattern. More important is the systematization capacity and the empiricalcontent of the pattern or theory with respect to explanations. We can specify these parameters moreprecisely within the framework of the structuralist view of theories.

A good account of the agnostic attitude of Suspending Judgement should explain how it can be rendered more or less rational/justified according to the state of one's evidence – and one's relation to that evidence. I argue that the attitude of suspending judgement whether p constitutively involves having a belief; roughly, a belief that one cannot yet tell whether or not p. I show that a theory of suspending that treats it as a sui generis attitude, wholly distinct from belief, (...) struggles to account for how suspension of judgement can be rendered more or less rational (or irrational) by one's evidence. I also criticise the related idea that suspension essentially requires an 'Inquiring Attitude'. I show how a belief-based theory, in contrast, neatly accounts for the rational and epistemic features of suspending and so neatly accounts for why an agnostic has a genuine neutral opinion concerning the question whether p, as opposed to simply having no opinion. (shrink)

The concept of an ecological niche (econiche) has been used in a variety of ways, some of which are incompatible with a relational or functional interpretation of the term. This essay seeks to standardize usage by limiting the concept to functional relations between organisms and their surroundings, and to revise the concept to include epistemic relations. For most organisms, epistemics are a vital aspect of their functional relationships to their surroundings and, hence, a major determinant of their econiche. Rejecting the (...) traditional dualism of organism and environment, an econiche is defined as the reciprocal (dual) of a functionally specified class of organisms (FSTU). From this perspective, an econiche necessarily implies a certain type of organism, and a class of functionally similar organisms implies a special econiche.The econiche concept is also discussed in relation to other ecological terms that reflect the distributional patterns of organisms, such as habitat, and the concept of an empty niche is criticized. (shrink)

It has been suggested that we can tell whether two theories are equivalent by comparing the structure that they ascribe to the world. If two theories posit different structures, then they must be i...

The definition of art is controversial in contemporary philosophy. Whether art can be defined has also been a matter of controversy. The philosophical usefulness of a definition of art has also been debated. -/- Contemporary definitions can be classified with respect to the dimensions of art they emphasize. One distinctively modern, conventionalist, sort of definition focuses on art’s institutional features, emphasizing the way art changes over time, modern works that appear to break radically with all traditional art, the relational properties (...) of artworks that depend on works’ relations to art history, art genres, etc. – more broadly, on the undeniable heterogeneity of the class of artworks. The more traditional, less conventionalist sort of definition defended in contemporary philosophy makes use of a broader, more traditional concept of aesthetic properties that includes more than art-relational ones, and puts more emphasis on art’s pan-cultural and trans-historical characteristics – in sum, on commonalities across the class of artworks. Hybrid definitions aim to do justice to both the traditional aesthetic dimension as well as to the institutional and art-historical dimensions of art, while privileging neither. (shrink)

I present two arguments that aim to establish logical limits on what we can know. More specifically, I argue for two results concerning what we can know about questions that we cannot answer. I also discuss a line of thought, found in the writings of Pierce and of Rescher, in support of the idea that we cannot identify specific scientific questions that will never be answered.

" Our various cultures are symbolic environments or "spiritual ecologies" within which the Human Eros can thrive. This is how we inhabit the earth. Encircling and sustaining our cultural existence is nature.

Thomas Alexander shows that the primary, guiding concern of Dewey's philosophy is his theory of aesthetic experience.

For as long as humans have pondered philosophical issues, they have contemplated the good life. Yet most suggestions about how to live a good life rest on assumptions about what the good life actually is. Thomas Carson here confronts that question from a fresh perspective. Surveying the history of philosophy, he addresses first-order questions about what is good and bad as well as metaethical questions concerning value judgments. Carson considers a number of established viewpoints concerning the good life. He (...) offers a new critique of Mill's and Sidgwick's classic arguments for the hedonistic theory of value, employing thought experiments that invite us to clarify our preferences by choosing between different kinds of lives. He also assesses the desire- or preference-satisfaction theory of value in detail and takes a fresh look at both Nietzsche's Übermensch ideal and Aristotle's theory of the good life. In exploring foundational questions, Carson observes that many established theories rest on undefended assumptions about the truth of moral realism. Arguing against this stand, he defends the view that good means desirable and presents a divine-preference version of the desire-satisfaction theory. In this he contends that, if there exists a kind and omniscient God who created the universe, then what is good or bad is determined by His preferences; if such a God does not exist, what is good or bad depends on what we as rational humans desire. Value and the Good Life is the only book that defends a divine-preference theory of value as opposed to a divine-command theory of right and wrong. It offers a masterfully constructed argument to an age-old question and will stimulate all who seek to know what the good life truly is. (shrink)

I present an argument against the thesis of Uniqueness and in favour of Permissivism. Counterexamples to Uniqueness are provided, based on ‘Safespot’ propositions – i.e. a proposition that is guaranteed to be true provided the subject adopts a certain attitude towards it. The argument relies on a plausible principle: (roughly stated) If S knows that her believing p would be a true belief, then it is rationally permitted for S to believe p. One motivation for denying this principle – viz. (...) opposition to ‘epistemic consequentialism’ – is briefly discussed. The principle is extended to cover degrees of belief and compared with a couple of other well-known constraints on rational degrees of belief. (shrink)

Serena Olsaretti brings together new essays by leading moral and political philosophers on the nature of desert and justice, their relations with each other and with other values.

Husserl beruft sich immer wieder programmatisch auf Platon als den Gründervater der europäischen Philosophie, arbeitet jedoch die Bezüge der Phänomenologie zum Platonismus nie auf - obwohl er die "historische Rückbesinnung" auf die Urstiftung seines Denkens als wesentlichen Bestandteil der "Selbstbesinnung auf ein Selbstverständnis dessen hin, worauf man eigentlich hinaus will, als der man ist, als historisches Wesen" charakterisiert. Die vorliegende Arbeit will diese Reflexion leisten. Ihr Gegenstand ist mithin die Transformation Platonischer Gedanken in Husserls Phänomenologie. Dabei werden sechs Problemgebiete thematisiert: (...) A) Philosophie als Wissenschaft, B) Philosophie als Ethik, C) Philosophie als Polemik, D) Philosophie und das Ende der Lebenswelt, E) Philosophie und das Eigenrecht des Eidetischen, F) Philosophie und das Absolute. Den Abschnitten folgen jeweils kritische Erwägungen zu den Spannungen, die vor dem Platonischen Hintergrund innerhalb der Phänomenologie sichtbar werden. Die Arbeit zeigt, dass die Phänomenologie tatsächlich als eine eigenwillige Endstiftung des Platonismus betrachtet werden kann, wodurch sich eine neue Perspektive auf ihre programmatische und systematische Grundkonfiguration ergibt. (shrink)

This paper examines the evolution of Edmund Husserl’s theory of perceptual occlusion. This task is accomplished in two stages. First, I elucidate Husserl’s conclusion, from his 1901 Logical Investigations, that the occluded parts of perceptual objects are intended by partial signitive acts. I focus on two doctrines of that account. I examine Husserl’s insight that signitive intentions are composed of Gehalt and I discuss his conclusion that signitive intentions sit on the continuum of fullness. Second, the paper discloses how Husserl (...) transforms his 1901 philosophy in his 1913 revisions to the Sixth Logical Investigation, affirming that the occluded parts of perceptual objects are intended by empty contiguity acts. I demonstrate how he overturns the two core doctrines of his theory from the Investigations in these revisions, claiming that empty intentions are not composed of Gehalt and asserting that those acts break with the continuum of fullness. Husserl implements these changes to solve problems that arise from his recognition of two new kinds of intentions; darker and completely dark acts. Finally, in the conclusion, I cash out this analysis, by indicating that, in 1913, Husserl transforms his theory of fulfillment on the basis of his new insights about empty acts. (shrink)

This is a new edition of T. H. Green's Prolegomena to Ethics (1883), a classic of modern philosophy, in which Green sets out his perfectionist ethical theory. In addition to the text of the Prolegomena itself, this new edition provides an introductory essay, a bibliographical essay, and an index. Brink's extended editorial introduction examines the context, themes, and significance of Green's work and will be of special interest to readers working on the history of ethics, ethical theory, political philosophy, and (...) nineteenth century philosophy. (shrink)