How can we increase awareness and understanding of other cultures using interactive digital visualizations of past civilizations? In order to answer the above question, this book first examines the needs and requirements of virtual travelers and virtual tourists. Is there a market for virtual travel? Erik Champion examines the overall success of current virtual environments, especially the phenomenon of computer gaming. Why are computer games and simulations so much more successful than other types of virtual environments? Arguments that (...) virtual environments are impeded by technological constraints or by a paucity of evaluation studies can only be partially correct, for computer games and simulations are also virtual environments. Many of the underlying issues are caused by a lack of engagement with the philosophical underpinnings of culture, presence and inhabitation, and there are few exemplars that engage the public with history and heritage using interactive media in a meaningful and relevant manner. The intention of Playing With the Past is to help designers and critics understand the issues involved in creating virtual environments that promote and disseminate historical learning and cultural heritage through a close study of the interactive design principles at work behind both real and virtual places. Topics discussed include the design of virtual environments, and especially virtual heritage environments, virtual place-making, cultural presence, the pros and cons of game-style interaction, augmented reality projects, and appropriate evaluation methods. Virtual heritage environments discussed in the book include projects from Antarctica, Australia, Mexico, Malta, Egypt, Babylon, the Netherlands, Cambodia, and India. (shrink)

Routledge is running a monograph sale through June 11th. Readers can now access The Phenomenology of Real and Virtual Places free-of-charge for seven days then the eBook can be purchased for £10/$15. Go to the online tfstore kortext com and look for the book using: the-phenomenology-of-real-and-virtual-places-384647 (EPUB version) the-phenomenology-of-real-and-virtual-places-390649 (PDF version) or check attached hyperlinks below. ABSTRACT: This collection of essays explores the history, implications, and usefulness of phenomenology for the study of real and virtual places. While the influence of (...) phenomenology on architecture and urban design has been widely acknowledged, its effect on the design of virtual places and environments has yet to be exposed to critical reflection. These essays from philosophers, cultural geographers, designers, architects, and archaeologists advance the connection between phenomenology and the study of place. The book features historical interpretations on this topic, as well as context-specific and place-centric applications that will appeal to a wide range of scholars across disciplinary boundaries. The ultimate aim of this book is to provide more helpful and precise definitions of phenomenology that shed light on its growth as a philosophical framework and on its development in other disciplines concerned with the experience of place. (shrink)

Virtual heritage has been explained as virtual reality applied to cultural heritage, but this definition only scratches the surface of the fascinating applications, tools and challenges of this fast-changing interdisciplinary field. This book provides an accessible but concise edited coverage of the main topics, tools and issues in virtual heritage. -/- Leading international scholars have provided chapters to explain current issues in accuracy and precision; challenges in adopting advanced animation techniques; shows how archaeological learning can be developed in Minecraft; they (...) propose mixed reality is conceptual rather than just technical; they explore how useful Linked Open Data can be for art history; explain how accessible photogrammetry can be but also ethical and practical issues for applying at scale; provide insight into how to provide interaction in museums involving the wider public; and describe issues in evaluating virtual heritage projects not often addressed even in scholarly papers. -/- The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in museum studies, digital archaeology, heritage studies, architectural history and modelling, virtual environments. (shrink)

While many papers may claim that virtual environments have much to gain from architectural and urban planning theory, few seem to specify in any verifiable or falsifiable way, how notions of place and interaction are best combined and developed for specific needs. The following is an attempt to summarize a theory of place for virtual environments and explain both the shortcomings and the advantages of this theory.

Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage can be seen as a collection of chapters designed to provoke thought and discussion, or it can be seen and used as separate chapters that may help class debate in courses dealing with the digital humanities, game studies (especially in the areas of serious games and game-based learning) or aspects of virtual heritage. While there are very few books in this intersecting area, the range of topics that could be investigated and debated is (...) huge. So instead I have concentrated on questions in areas that appear to be central to the intersection of these three areas, have not currently been debated to any great extent or are topics that would suit either individual reflection or classroom discussion and debate. (shrink)

This book provides an accessible but concise edited coverage of the main topics, tools and issues in virtual heritage.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Descartes’s Lettre Apologétique aux Magistrats d’Utrecht:New Facts and MaterialsErik-Jan BosThe lettre apologétique aux magistrats d’utrecht was Descartes’s final effort to obtain satisfaction from the Municipality or ‘Vroedschap’ of Utrecht. In 1643 the Vroedschap had condemned Descartes’s Epistola ad Dinetum and Epistola ad Voetium in defence of Descartes’s opponent Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676), professor of Theology at the University of Utrecht.1 In the Lettre apologétique Descartes requests the Utrecht Vroedschap to (...) revoke their condemnation, to clear his name and to reconsider Voetius’s position.The Lettre apologétique receives little attention in modern editions of Descartes’s works. Adam and Tannery give both the French and the Latin version of the Lettre apologétique, but with scanty annotation and an unsatisfactory introduction (AT VIIIB).2 The only other edition of the Lettre apologétique is provided by Verbeek, in La Querelle d’Utrecht (1988), but it does not go beyond Adam and Tannery’s edition.3In 1992, however, Verbeek noted that the Lettre apologétique could not possibly date from 1645, which was the hypothesis of Adam and Tannery and still is the [End Page 415] prevailing view.4 This raises once again the question of the real date of the Lettre apologétique as well as of the history of the text. In this essay I propose a new date and a new account of the history of the text. I also draw attention to the Dutch version of the Lettre apologétique, which Descartes sent to the Utrecht Vroedschap in 1648, but first I will give a short survey of Descartes’s dispute with Voetius.1. THE UTRECHT QUARRELIf we are to believe Descartes in his Lettre apologétique, it was Voetius who started the quarrel in 1639 by accusing him of atheism in several disputations, an accusation to which Voetius stuck throughout the affair.5 Descartes admits he is not mentioned in the writings of the Utrecht theologian, but “[Voetius] counted among the characteristics of atheism everything he knew to be commonly attributed to me” (AT VIIIB 205). A few years later, in 1641, Voetius called the adherents of the New Philosophy atheists outright. In a reaction to Descartes’s champion in Utrecht, the professor of medicine Henricus Regius (1598–1679), who claimed Aristotelian philosophy to be of no use for explaining natural phenomena, Voetius warned that the rejection of traditional philosophy would lead to scepticism and eventually to disbelief. With Descartes’s help Regius furnished a reply, in which he insinuated that it was, instead, the obscurities in Neo-Scholastic thought which led to the denial of God.6 This answer elicited protest from the University Senate. On the Senate’s request the Utrecht Vroedschap confiscated Regius’s book and forbade the teaching of any ideas deviating from Aristotle. Regius having been silenced, Descartes proceeded in a personal capacity. He vehemently attacked Voetius, first in the Epistola adDinetum, then in an elaborate work, the Epistola ad Voetium. The latter was meant as a response to a book opposing Descartes published by the professor of philosophy in Groningen, Martin Schoock (1614–1669), a friend of Voetius.7 The Vroedschap then condemned the works and Descartes became [End Page 416] subject to criminal charges. Thanks to his influential friends, Descartes was never put on trial, yet he felt that his reputation had been badly damaged. Several times he demanded satisfaction from the Utrecht Vroedschap, but to no avail.Until recently, the texts published in the polemic between Descartes and Voetius were considered to be of no more than anecdotal value in Descartes’s biography. It is only for the past decade that their philosophical relevance has been recognized. From what seemed to be unpromising material, various scholars have presented new perspectives on both Voetius and Descartes.8 They have shown that the objections raised by Voetius and Schoock against Cartesian philosophy prove to be more fundamental and to the point than formerly believed. Although Descartes never made a serious attempt on his own to meet Voetius on philosophical grounds, his writings are interesting because he brings forward theoretical positions which before he had... (shrink)

When quality in an organisational context includes more employee-oriented arrangements and systems, the introduction of a new relationship pattern between employers and employees can rightly be considered a quality program. In this article we describe the shifting roles of HRM and 'people management' in general within a changing environmental and organisational context. We present an original 'FIT' organisational model, in which the role of HRM as 'partner-champion' is highlighted, and which was implemented during the 1990s in a multinational company. (...) More specifically, we describe the company background, the motives for this new approach, the basic principles and the main phases of implementation of this new 'social contract'. (shrink)

Seite dualität: Anarchismus 121. Konsequenzen der individualitätszerstörenden Gleichheitstheorie: Stellung der Frau 123; unhistorische Denkweise 123; ...

When scientist investigate why things happen, they aim at giving an explanation. But what does a scientific explanation look like? In the first chapter (Theories of Scientific Explanation) of this book, the milestones in the debate on how to characterize scientific explanations are exposed. The second chapter (How to Study Scientific Explanation?) scrutinizes the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation, Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon and shows what went wrong. Next, it is the responsibility of current philosophers (...) of explanation to go on where Hempel, Kitcher and Salmon failed. However, we should go on in a clever way. We call this clever way the pragmatic approach to scientific explanation and clarify briefly what this approach consists in. The third chapter (A Toolbox for Describing and Evaluating Explanatory Practices) elaborates the pragmatic approach by presenting a toolbox for analysing scientific explanation. In the last chapter (Examples of Descriptions and Evaluations of Explanatory Practices) the approach is illustrated with real-life examples of scientists aiming at explaining. (shrink)

Daniel M. Hausman holds that preferences in economics are total subjective comparative evaluations—subjective judgments to the effect that something is better than something else all things told—and that economists are right to employ this conception of preference. Here, I argue against both parts of Hausman’s thesis. The failure of Hausman’s account, I continue, reflects a deeper problem, that is, that preferences in economics do not need an explicit definition of the kind that he seeks. Nonetheless, Hausman’s labors were not in (...) vain: his accomplishment is that he has articulated a useful model of the theory. (shrink)

I advance a novel challenge for Divine Command Theory based on the existence of psychopaths. The challenge, in a nutshell, is that Divine Command Theory has the implausible implication that psychopaths have no moral obligations and hence their evil acts, no matter how evil, are morally permissible. After explaining this argument, I respond to three objections to it and then critically examine the prospect that Divine Command Theorists might bite the bullet and accept that psychopaths can do no wrong. I (...) conclude that the Psychopathy Objection constitutes a serious and novel challenge for Divine Command Theory. (shrink)

Stuart White argues that egalitarians need a diverse toolkit of policy proposals in order to move closer to a just economic system. In particular he argues that a policy of Basic Capital grants should be included in this toolkit along with a variety of other more familiar instruments such as unconditional Basic Income, welfare state services and income supports, and support for worker cooperatives. The various policies in the egalitarian toolkit, however, have implications for issues other than contributing to a (...) more just economic system. In particular, they have implications for the long term stability, transformation, or even transcendence, of capitalism as an economic system. In this article I will argue that unconditional Basic Income has a greater potential to erode capitalism than does Basic Capital. While both of these policies in the egalitarian toolkit may make the economic system statically more just, over time Basic Capital grants are likely to strengthen capitalism as the core structure of the economic system, whereas unconditional Basic Income has the potential to erode the dominance of capitalism. As part of a long-term project of human emancipation, therefore, unconditional Basic Income should have priority over Basic Capital. (shrink)

Much controversy surrounds the question of what ought to be the proper definition of 'singularity' in general relativity, and the question of whether the prediction of such entities leads to a crisis for the theory. I argue that a definition in terms of curve incompleteness is adequate, and in particular that the idea that singularities correspond to 'missing points' has insurmountable problems. I conclude that singularities per se pose no serious problem for the theory, but their analysis does bring into (...) focus several problems of interpretation at the foundation of the theory often ignored in the philosophical literature. (shrink)

Neutral monism is a position in metaphysics defended by Mach, James, and Russell in the early twentieth century. It holds that minds and physical objects are essentially two different orderings of the same underlying neutral elements of nature. This paper sets out some of the central concepts, theses and the historical background of ideas that inform this doctrine of elements. The discussion begins with the classic neutral monism of Mach, James, and Russell in the first part of the paper, then (...) considers recent neo-Russellian versions in the second half. The chances for a revival of neutral monism are probably slight; its key ideas and starting points lie far from those in contemporary philosophy of mind. A better route might be through the philosophy of science and a deeper understanding of causation. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss three interrelated questions. First: is explanation in mathematics a topic that philosophers of mathematics can legitimately investigate? Second: are the specific aims that philosophers of mathematical explanation set themselves legitimate? Finally: are the models of explanation developed by philosophers of science useful tools for philosophers of mathematical explanation? We argue that the answer to all these questions is positive. Our views are completely opposite to the views that Mark Zelcer has put forward recently. Throughout this (...) paper, we show why Zelcer’s arguments fail. (shrink)

Goal‐directed cognition is often discussed in terms of specialized memory structures like the “goal stack.” The goal‐activation model presented here analyzes goal‐directed cognition in terms of the general memory constructs of activation and associative priming. The model embodies three predictive constraints: (1) the interference level, which arises from residual memory for old goals; (1) the strengthening constraint, which makes predictions about time to encode a new goal; and (3) the priming constraint, which makes predictions about the role of cues in (...) retrieving pending goals. These constraints are formulated algebraically and tested through simulation of latency and error data from the Tower of Hanoi, a means‐ends puzzle that depends heavily on suspension and resumption of goals. Implications of the model for understanding intention superiority, postcompletion error, and effects of task interruption are discussed. (shrink)

A ubiquitous argument against mental-state accounts of well-being is based on the notion that mental states like happiness and satisfaction simply cannot be measured. The purpose of this paper is to articulate and to assess this “argument from measurability.” My main thesis is that the argument fails: on the most charitable interpretation, it relies on the false proposition that measurement requires the existence of an observable ordering satisfying conditions like transitivity. The failure of the argument from measurability, however, does not (...) translate into a defense of mental-state accounts as accounts of well-being or of measures of happiness and satisfaction as measures of well-being. Indeed, I argue, the ubiquity of the argument from measurability may have obscured other, very real problems associated with mental-state accounts of well-being – above all, that happiness and satisfaction fail to track well-being – and with measures of happiness and satisfaction – above all, the tendency toward reification. I conclude that the central problem associated with the measurement of, e.g., happiness as a subjectively experienced mental state is not that it is too hard to measure, but rather that it is too easy to measure. (shrink)

This article examines the legitimacy attached to different types of multi-stakeholder data partnerships occurring in the context of sustainable development. We develop a framework to assess the democratic legitimacy of two types of data partnerships: open data partnerships and closed data partnerships. Our framework specifies criteria for assessing the legitimacy of relevant partnerships with regard to their input legitimacy as well as their output legitimacy. We demonstrate which particular characteristics of open and closed partnerships can be expected to influence an (...) analysis of their input and output legitimacy. (shrink)

In his recent book Lack of Character, John Doris argues that people typically lack character (understood in a particular way). Such a claim, if correct, would have devastating implications for moral philosophy and for various human moral projects (e.g. character development). I seek to defend character against Doris's challenging attack. To accomplish this, I draw on Socrates, Aristotle, and Kant to identify some of the central components of virtuous character. Next, I examine in detail some of the central experiments in (...) social psychology upon which Doris's argument is based. I argue that, properly understood, such experiments reveal differences in the characters of their subjects, not that their subjects lack character altogether. I conclude with some reflections on the significance of such experiments and the importance of character. (shrink)

I present a novel argument for the position that a morally unsurpassable God must create the best world that He has the power to create. I show that grace-based considerations of the sort proposed by Robert Adams neither refute my argument nor establish that a morally unsurpassable God need not create the best. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of my argument for the ‘no-best-world’ response to the problem of evil. (Published Online February 17 2004).

This paper examines issues of ontology and methodology in behavioral economics: the attempt to increase the explanatory and predictive power of economic theory by providing it with more psychologically plausible foundations. Of special interest is the epistemological status of neoclassical economic theory within behavioral economics, the runaway success story of contemporary economics. Behavioral economists aspire to replace the fundamental assumptions of orthodox, neoclassical economic theory. Yet, behavioral economists have gone out of their way to praise those very assumptions. Matthew Rabin, (...) for example, writes that behavioral economics “is not only built on the premise that [orthodox] economic methods are great, but also that most mainstream economic assumptions are great.” These apparently contradictory attitudes toward neoclassical theory raises the question of what, exactly, its epistemological status within behavioral economics is. This paper argues that the paradox can be resolved, and the question answered, by thinking of the epistemological status of neoclassical theory within behavioral economics in terms of Max Weber’s ideal types: analytical constructs that are not intended to be descriptively true of anything but which nevertheless can be used for a variety of theoretical purposes. The analysis is consistent with many of the insights from the philosophical literature on models in science and has important implications for the practice of economics—behavioral and neoclassical—as well as for the very nature of rationality. (shrink)

In this paper we chart epistemological similarities between shared function talk in biology and the engineering sciences, focusing on the notions of biological advantage function and technical advantage function. We start by showing that biological advantage function ascriptions are common in biology and that technical advantage function ascriptions are common in engineering science. We then proceed to show that these ascriptions have a very similar structure and that their epistemic value also is similar: both biological advantage function and technical advantage (...) function ascriptions provide the means to answer what-would-happen-if questions. We develop and illustrate our claims with four case studies: two from biology, and two from engineering design research. Our results offer new insights into a relatively neglected issue in both philosophy of biology and technology, viz. assessing the explanatory and predictive utility of function ascriptions. (shrink)

This paper examines a struggle over the future use of Nordic forests, which took place from 2009 to 2012 within a major research program, Future Forests—Sustainable Strategies under Uncertainty and Risk, organized and funded by Mistra, The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research. We explore the role of strategic environmental research in societal constructions of long-term challenges and future risks. Specifically, we draw attention to the role played by environmental research in the creation of future images that become dominant for (...) how societies structure action for the long term. We also show that this process is on several accounts problematic. Research labeled “strategic” or “relevant” is intended to manage long-term risks and challenges in a sustainable way, by taking into account the “open” and “plural” nature of the future. The case of Future Forests suggests, rather, that by contributing to the emergence of dominant future images, environmental research is entangled with a process of gradual consensus creation around what may be highly selective or biased narratives of the long term, which may conceal or postpone key forms of future conflict. (shrink)

This paper is a reaction to ‘Styles of Thought on the Continental Drift Debate’ by Pablo Pellegrini, published in this journal. The author argues that rationalist accounts of the continental drift debate fail because they overlook important issues. In this discussion we distinguish various forms of rationalism. Then we present a sophisticated rationalist account of the continental drift debate and argue that it is satisfactory because it explains all the central developments in that debate. Finally, we point to a problematic (...) tension in Pellegrini’s paper and unravel an underlying ambiguity. (shrink)

Grete Hermann’s essay “Die naturphilosophischen Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik” has received much deserved scholarly attention in recent years. In this paper, I follow the lead of Elise Crull who sees in Hermann’s work the general outlines of a neo-Kantian interpretation of quantum theory. In full support of this view, I focus on Hermann’s central claim that limited spatio-temporal, and even analogically causal, representations of events exist within an overall relational structure of entangled quantum mechanical states that defy any unified spatio-temporal description. (...) In my view, Hermann also advances an important transcendental argument that perspectival spatio-temporal representations of nature have their foundations in general relational networks that are not spatio-temporal. The key point is that the adoption of a perspectival system within the general network induces the representation but only for that context. These ideas are consistent with a perspectival subject–object principle in Kant and also with Weyl’s work on Lie groups and their representations. (shrink)

The present paper revisits the issue of rational decision making in John Rawls' original position. Drawing on Isaac Levi's theory of decision, I discuss how we can defend Rawls against John C. Harsanyi's charge that maximin reasoning in the original position is irrational. The discussion suggests that systematic application of Levi's theory is likely to have important consequences for ethics and political theory as well as for public policy.

A full appreciation for Ernst Mach's doctrine of the economy of thought must take account of his direct realism about particulars (elements) and his anti-realism about space-time laws as economical constructions. After a review of thought economy, its critics and some contemporary forms, the paper turns to the philosophical roots of Mach's doctrine. Mach claimed that the simplest, most parsimonious theories economized memory and effort by using abstract concepts and laws instead of attending to the details of each individual event (...) or experiment. For Mach, the individual case never truly repeated in all of its uniqueness, nor was all of the individual detail of a physical element adequately captured in abstract laws and schemata, however necessary these were for the pursuit of science. As can be shown from specific passages, some already published, some not, Mach's elements included physical qualia in nature similar to Russell's unsensed sensibilia, which existed even where there were no conscious observers. An argument will be presented to make the case that Mach believed in the mind-independent elements from the 1870s on, while other aspects of his thought evolved over time; I have thus dated the references to reflect this historical progression. I concentrate on Mach's ontology, as it bears on economy of thought, not his epistemology per se, which might well have been restricted to observable elements/sensations. After his own conversion to neutral monism, in the 1920s, Bertrand Russell echoed Mach's call for a 'future science' capable of handling the 'intrinsic character' of qualitative data directly without the excessive abstraction of physics. (shrink)

This paper investigates the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation: Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon. We argue that they do three things: construct an explication in the sense of Carnap, which then is used as a tool to make descriptive and normative claims about the explanatory practice of scientists. We also show that they did well with respect to, but that they failed to give arguments for their descriptive and normative claims. We think it is the responsibility (...) of current philosophers of explanation to go on where Hempel, Kitcher and Salmon failed. However, we should go on in a clever way. We call this clever way the “pragmatic approach to scientific explanation.” We clarify what this approach consists in and defend it. (shrink)

Why do corporations and wealthy philanthropists fund the human sciences? Examining the history of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), a private research institute founded in the early 1980s, this article shows that funders can find as much value in the social worlds of the sciences they sponsor as in their ideas. SFI became increasingly dependent on funding from corporations and libertarian business leaders in the 1990s and 2000s. At the same time, its intellectual work came to focus on the underlying (...) principles of adaptation, innovation, and decentralized coordination supposedly at work in ‘complex systems’ from biological ecosystems to markets and firms. This research cast the ideas of the libertarian economist Friedrich Hayek into a new scientific idiom. SFI also became a space where figures in business, media, academia, and politics could come to learn to see the world in a particular way—to acquire the subjectivity of what I call ‘the Santa Fe Institute libertarian’. At SFI, visitors did not simply learn the principles of neo-Hayekian complex system science. They came to see themselves as agents of social evolution, providing the spark that the free-market system needed to produce new technologies and new solutions to social problems without top-down political direction. For the Institute's corporate and libertarian financiers, SFI was not just a space where intellectuals described the world in favored ideological terms, but a space where elite actors became committed to the project of making a new political-economic order. (shrink)

Extension is probably the most general natural property. Is it a fundamental property? Leibniz claimed the answer was no, and that the structureless intuition of extension concealed more fundamental properties and relations. This paper follows Leibniz's program through Herbart and Riemann to Grassmann and uses Grassmann's algebra of points to build up levels of extensions algebraically. Finally, the connection between extension and measurement is considered.

In Robust Ethics, I defend a nontheistic version of moral realism according to which moral properties are sui generis, not reducible to other kinds of properties (e.g., natural properties or supernatural properties) and objective morality requires no foundation external to itself. I seek to provide a plausible account of the metaphysics and epistemology of the robust brand of moral realism I favor that draws on both analytic philosophy and contemporary empirical moral psychology. In this paper, I respond to some objections (...) to my view advanced by William Craig, Mark Murphy, Tyler McNabb, and Adam Johnson. (shrink)

We aim to further develop and evaluate the prospects of a uniquely Islamic extension of the Standard Aquinas/Calvin model. One obstacle is that certain Qur’an passages such as Surah 8:43–44 apparently suggest that Muslims have reason to think that Allah might be deceiving them. Consistent with perfect/maximally good being theology, Allah would allow such deceptions only if doing so leads to a greater good, so such passages do not necessarily give Muslims reason to doubt Allah’s goodness. Yet the possibility of (...) deception of the faithful threatens to provide a subjective defeater for the (epistemic) reliability of their cognitive faculties. (‘Even if Allah can be morally good while deceiving, how do you know you aren’t being deceived for a greater good on a more macro level, such as about the nature of the Qur’an?’) Similar in structure to Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN), this defeater threatens to undermine all of a Muslims warrant claims. We consider and evaluate the reply that there are other Qur’anic passages and/or additional conceptual resources in the Islamic tradition that provide grounds for thinking that God’s faithfulness or truthfulness is more centrally and securely embedded in a Muslim’s noetic structure than such doubts. Specifically, we will argue that under certain conditions, there exists a subjective defeater for some Muslims that, unlike McNabb’s approach, isn’t based off of the proper function condition but Plantinga’s truth aimed condition. (shrink)

Much recent philosophical literature on happiness and satisfaction is based on the belief that empirical research is relevant to philosophical conclusions. In his2010 book What is This Thing Called Happiness? Fred Feldman begs to differ. He suggests that there is no evidence that empirical research is relevant to long-standing philosophical questions; consequently, that philosophers have little reason to pay attention to the work of psychologists or economists; and that philosophers need not fear embarrassing themselves by being ignorant of important scientific (...) findings that bear directly on their work. Relying on an example invoked by Feldman himself, this paper makes the case that all three theses are false. The argument suggests a picture according to which science and philosophy stand in a symbiotic relationship, with scientists and philosophers engaging in a mutually beneficial exchange of ideas for the advancement of thegeneral knowledge. (shrink)

“The physics of representation” aims to define the word “representation” as used in the neurosciences, argue that such representations as described in neuroscience are related to and usefully illuminated by the representations generated by modern neural networks, and establish that these entities are “representations in good standing”. We suggest that Poldrack succeeds in, exposes some tensions between the broad use of the term in neuroscience and the narrower class of entities that he identifies in the end, and between the meaning (...) of “representation” in neuroscience and in psychology in, and fails in. This results in some hard choices: give up on the broad scope of the term in neuroscience or continue to embrace the broad, psychologically inflected sense of the term, and deny the entities generated by neural nets are representations in the relevant sense. (shrink)

New medical technologies promise to allow us to transform our core characteristics. Some see these technologies as filled with promise. Others see them as filled with existential risk. David DeGrazia argues that personal identity concerns raised by opponents to enhancement technology fail to impugn attempts by autonomous agents to bring about enhancements with which they autonomously identify. In advancing this argument DeGrazia evaluates five supposedly inviolable core narrative characteristics, concluding that none of these characteristics are in fact inviolable so long (...) as the individual contemplating transformation autonomously identifies with the change they decide to make. Employing insights gleaned from LA Paul’s recent work on the subject of transformative experiences I will argue that at least for some transformations, the prospects for autonomous identification are slim at best. The upshot will be that many of the core narrative traits discussed by DeGrazia will be inviolable in practice, if not in principle. (shrink)

It is plausible to claim that it is morally worse to kill an innocent person than to give any number of people a mild one‐hour headache. Alaistar Norcross has argued that consequentialists, at least, should reject this claim. According to him, any harm that can befall a person can be morally outweighed by a sufficient number of very small harms. He gives a general argument for this view, and tries to show, by means of an argument from analogy, that it (...) is less counter‐intuitive than it appears. I show that his main argument relies on a false assumption, and argue that the purported analogy is dubious. (shrink)