This article describes research to build an embodied conversational agent as an interface to a question-and-answer system about a National Science Foundation program. We call this ECA the LifeLike Avatar, and it can interact with its users in spoken natural language to answer general as well as specific questions about specific topics. In an idealized case, the LifeLike Avatar could conceivably provide a user with a level of interaction such that he or she would not be certain as to whether (...) he or she is talking to the actual person via video teleconference. This could be considered a extended version of the seminal Turing test. Although passing such a test is still far off, our work moves the science in that direction. The Uncanny Valley notwithstanding, applications of such lifelike interfaces could include those where specific instructors/caregivers could be represented as stand-ins for the actual person in situations where personal representation is important. Possible areas that come to mind that might benefit from these lifelike ECAs include health-care support for elderly/disabled patients in extended home care, education/training, and knowledge preservation. Another more personal application would be to posthumously preserve elements of the persona of a loved one by family members. We apply this approach to a Q/a system for knowledge preservation and dissemination, where the specific individual who had this knowledge was to retire from the US National Science Foundation. The system is described in detail, and evaluations were performed to determine how well the system was perceived by users. (shrink)

Leon J. Goldstein critically examines the philosophical role of concepts and concept formation in the social sciences. The book undertakes a study of concept formation and change by looking at four critical terms in anthropology , politics , and sociology.

The first part of the paper distinguishes between a real past which has nothing to do with historical events and an historical past made up of hypothetical events introduced for the purpose of explaining historical evidence. Attention is next paid to those so-called ancillary historical disciplines which study historical evidence, and it is noted that the historical event is brought in to explain the particular constellation of different kinds of historical evidence which are judged to belong together. The problem of (...) explaining events is then taken up, and an attempt is made to defend the view that such explanation must presuppose general laws. And this is followed by a discussion, partly speculative, of social-historical laws. The final section of the paper tries to argue that the subjective intentions of individuals are irrelevant to historical explanation. (shrink)

A collection of papers dealing with history as a way of knowing, not a mode of discourse.

Collingwood's well-known dicta about history and its practice are not expressions of a perverse idealism but are rooted in reflection on his own work as historian. The problem which informs his writings on history was to make sense of the discipline of history without opening the way to historical skepticism. The early view of his Speculum Mentis, rooted in an external philosophical stance and not in the actual practice of history, was actually skeptical. In his middle years he regarded history (...) as the science of historical evidence, but this view left obscure the interest of history in the historical past. In his most mature view, as expressed in The Idea of History, Collingwood comes to see how the discipline of history, judged in terms of its own procedures and not by external norms imposed upon it from other sources, is able to make responsible knowledge claims and avoid the threat of skepticism. His well-known views about the historian's re-thinking past thought, the autonomy of history and the historical imagination all play roles to that end, and are entirely reasonable when it is understood what Collingwood intends by them. They are part of his theory of historical knowing, not of historical explanation. (shrink)

In this enlightening and original study on the cultivation of a religious understanding of nature, Leon Niemoczynski applies Charles Sanders Peirce's thought on metaphysics to 'ecstatic naturalism,' the philosophical perspective developed by Robert Corrington. Niemoczynski points to Peirce's phenomenological and metaphysical understanding of possibility-the concept of 'Firstness'-as especially critical to understanding how the divine might be meaningfully encountered in religious experience. He goes on to define his own concept of speculative naturalism, offering a new approach to thinking about nature that (...) joins the essence of pragmatism with the heretical boldness of speculative thought. (shrink)

In a contribution to a symposium on “Causality in the Social Sciences,” Lewis Feuer remarks in passing that “Functionalism, in the form which Malinowski gave it, affirms that culture is an ‘organic unity’; it is the principle that in every culture, each custom, belief, and behavioral form ‘represents an indespensible part within a working whole.’” That culture is an integrated and organic unity is a view found quite often in the writings of Malinowski, though he does not maintain it with (...) full consistency. Sometimes he seems to say that a culture is made up of a number of grand institutions, each of which is an integrated unity, though the totality need not be. But whether affirmed or denied this thesis is not the doctrine, characteristic of almost every attempt made by Malinowski to explain cultural phenomena during the last quarter century of his life, which may be properly called “Malinowskian functionalism.” And that the doctrine cited by Feurer is sometimes formulated in such a way that the term “functional” or some variant is used, as in “culture is a functionally integrated organic unity,” makes no difference to my claim. I am not at all certain that the addition of the word “functionally” does anything for the view in question; it surely makes no difference to its scientific sterility. But that apart, the point I wish to make here is that a good many scholars who make references to Malinowski's functionalism have never bothered to discover just what in the world this is. They have been all too ready to cite the vague programmatic pronouncements in which Malinowski's writings abound, while seemingly oblivious to the fact that with rare exception every major attempt by Malinowski to account systematically for some kind of sociocultural phenomena reveals one and the same pattern of explanation. And it is this pattern alone which may be spoken of as Malinowski's method of functional analysis. (shrink)

This book introduces Robert Corrington’s “ecstatic naturalism,” a new perspective in understanding “sacred” nature and naturalism, and explores what can be done with this philosophical thought. This is an excellent resource for scholars of Continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, and American pragmatism.

This book introduces Robert Corrington’s “ecstatic naturalism,” a new perspective in understanding “sacred” nature and naturalism, and explores what can be done with this philosophical thought. This is an excellent resource for scholars of Continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, and American pragmatism.

Metaphysics, formerly the queen of science, fell into oblivion under the onslaught of empiricism and positivism and its very possibllity came to be denied. Professor Elders traces the history of this process and shows how St. Thomas innovated in determining both the subject of metaphysics and the manner in which one enters this science, particularly in the framework of his Aristotle commentaries. The work then considers being and its properties, its divisions into being in act and being in potency, into (...) the act of being essence, and into substance and the accidents. Finally the causes of being are considered. The work also introduces and surveys the extensive literature of Thomas interpretation of the past 50 years. (shrink)

Finally the causes of being are considered. The work also introduces and surveys the extensive literature of Thomas interpretation of the past 50 years.

Though many would prefer to have nothing to do with teleological explanations, it is evident that the writings of biologists and social scientists abound with them, and it is worth paying attention to the conditions under which they may be made responsibly. It emerges that responsible teleological statements would have to be made about instances of recurrent structures having specifiable characteristics, a situation which is patently the case for biology but still unsettled in, say, anthropology. In the final part of (...) the paper it is shown that satisfying this condition provides a basis for formulating general laws of the more orthodox kind. (shrink)