We welcome the proposal to use forward models to understand predictive processes in language processing. However, Pickering & Garrod (P&G) miss the opportunity to provide a strong framework for future work. Forward models need to be pursued in the context of learning. This naturally leads to questions about what prediction error these models aim to minimize.

Unification grammars are known to be Turing-equivalent; given a grammar G and a word w, it is undecidable whether w L(G). In order to ensure decidability, several constraints on grammars, commonly known as off-line parsability (OLP), were suggested, such that the recognition problem is decidable for grammars which satisfy OLP. An open question is whether it is decidable if a given grammar satisfies OLP. In this paper we investigate various definitions of OLP and discuss their interrelations, proving that some of (...) the OLP variants are indeed undecidable. We then present a novel, decidable OLP constraint which is more liberal than the existing decidable ones. (shrink)

People's treatment of others (humans, nonhuman animals, or other entities) often depends on whether they think the entity is worthy of moral concern. Recent work has begun to investigate which entities are included in a person's moral circle, examining how certain target characteristics (e.g., species category, perceived intelligence) and judge characteristics (e.g., empathy, political orientation) shape moral inclusion. However, the relative importance of target and judge characteristics in predicting moral inclusion remains unclear. When predicting whether a person will deem an (...) entity worthy of moral consideration, how important is it to know who is making the judgment (i.e., characteristics of the judge), who is being judged (i.e., characteristics of the target), and potential interactions between the two factors? Here, we address this foundational question by conducting a variance component analysis of the moral circle. In two studies with participants from the Netherlands, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia (N = 836), we test how much variance in judgments of moral concern is explained by between‐target differences, between‐judge differences, and by the interaction between the two factors. We consistently find that all three components explain substantial amounts of variance in judgments of moral concern. Our findings provide two important insights. First, an increased focus on interactions between target and judge characteristics is needed, as these interactions explain as much variance as target and judge characteristics separately. Second, any theoretical account that aims to provide an accurate description of moral inclusion needs to consider target characteristics, judge characteristics, and their interaction. (shrink)

The first classification of general types of transition between phases of matter, introduced by Paul Ehrenfest in 1933, lies at a crossroads in the thermodynamical study of critical phenomena. It arose following the discovery in 1932 of a suprising new phase transition in liquid helium, the “lambda transition,” when W. H. Keesom and coworkers in Leiden, Holland observed a λhaped “jump” discontinuity in the curve giving the temperature dependence of the specific heat of helium at a critical value. This apparent (...) jump led Ehrenfest to introduce a classification of phase transitions on the basis of jumps in derivatives of the free energy function. This classification was immediately applied by A.J. Rutgers to the study of the transition from the normal to superconducting state in metals. Eduard Justi and Max von Laue soon questioned the possibility of its class of “second-order phase transitions” -- of which the “lambda transition was believed to be the arche type -- but C.J. Gorter and H.B.G. Casimir used an “order parameter to demonstrate their existence in superconductors. As a crossroads of study, the Ehrenfest classification was forced to undergo a slow, adaptive evolution during subsequent decades. During the 1940s the classification was increasingly used in discussions of liquid-gas, order-disorder, paramagnetic-ferromagnetic and normal-super-conducting phase transitions. Already in 1944 however, Lars Onsagers solution of the Ising model for two-dimensional magnets was seen to possess a derivative with a logarithmic divergence rather than a jump as the critical point was approached. In the 1950s, experiments further revealed the lambda transition in helium to exhibit similar behavior. Rather than being a prime example of an Ehrenfest phase transition, the lambda transition was seen to lie outside the Ehrenfest classification. The Ehrenfest scheme was then extended to include such singularities, most notably by A. Brain Pippard in 1957, with widespread acceptance. During the 1960s these logarithmic infinities were the focus of the investigation of “scaling” by Leo Kadanoff, B. Widom and others. By the 1970s, a radically simplified binary classification of phase transitions into “first-order” and “continuous” transitions was increasingly adopted. (shrink)

Like every major new technology, genetic engineering is affecting the hopes and fears of many people. The risks involved are perceived differently by different groups. One group regards genetic engineering as a simple extension of older techniques with no special risks, e.g. traditional breeding. This conservative denial of special risks is confronted with a different kind of conservatism from a group which, in the name of the preservation of nature, opposes any kind of genetic engineering. A third group, rooted in (...) the liberal tradition, is prepared to accept the risks of genetic engineering as long as they are outweighed by prospective benefits. The liberal as well as the two conservative approaches, however, face serious difficulties in trying to develop a sound ethical argument concerning genetic engineering. In order to avoid these difficulties, an ethical approach focused on paradigmatic examples of good and evil is proposed. Such examples constitute rules of moral description, much as standards of measurement constitute rules of physical description. These rules are elaborated and interpreted in processes of social learning. In the present state of development of genetic engineering, such social learning requires appropriate institutional procedures. (shrink)

Hayek and the Efficient Market Hypothesis are often seen as proposing a similar theory of prices. Hayek is seen as proposing to understand prices as information conveyer, incorporating inform...

Heidegger hielt die unter dem Titel Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs angekundigte Vorlesung im Sommer-Semester 1925 in der Marburger Universitat. Er gelangte jedoch nicht mehr zur Ausfuhrung der zentralen Thematik. Der Themenkreis der Vorlesung ist mit der Nennung des Untertitels abgesteckt: Prolegomena zu einer Phanomenologie von Geschichte und Natur. Heideggers thematische Uberlegungen beginnen mit einer Kennzeichnung der Situation von Philosophie und Wissenschaft in der zweiten Halfte des 19. Jahrhunderts und stellen das seiner Deutung nach entscheidende Ereignis dieser Zeit heraus: den Durchbruch der (...) Phanomenologie als philosophische Forschung. Er untersucht ihre wesentlichen Entdeckungen, verteidigt sie gegen Missverstandnisse, um dann seinerseits Kritik vorzubringen, wo die Phanomenologie ihrer Forderung zu den Sachen selbst nicht gerecht wird. (shrink)

Being disposed to see the marvelous by moving into the familiar is one of the fundamental philosophical dispositions. The pre-Socratic philosophers—especially Heraclitus—emphasized the needfulness of listening. This is true in two senses: we need to learn to listen, and listening is itself a need for something. The logos in nature can be heard only by one who is “awake.” The problem is that most live as though they were asleep, immersed in their own world. Being in tune with nature opens (...) one to hear something beyond nature—namely, the logos of nature. This implies a paradox: one can understand nature—i.e., be open to hear its logos—only if one is already open to hear it. The logos speaks to all, but it only successfully communicates with its lover. The philosophical life is intelligible only from within an openness to the logos. In this essay, I will argue that living a philosophical life (i.e., a philo-logical life: literally, a life in love with logos) is something that one has always already had. In short, a philosophical life is not something that one can decide to have or not; it is essentially something that one is thrown into, or perhaps more accurately, something that one finds oneself already a part of—like being in love—as the fruit of an unmerited gift. The philosophical life is a life of grace, since it is something that is given from another. This essay sets out to examine the philosophical facets of the claim that the philosophical life is a life of grace. (shrink)

Kant’s critique/doctrine distinction tracks the difference between a canon for the understanding’s proper use and an organon for its dialectical misuse. The latter reflects the dogmatic use of reason to attain a doctrine of knowledge with no antecedent critique. In the 1790s, Fichte collapses Kant’s distinction and redefines dogmatism. He argues that deriving a canon is essentially dialectical and thus yields an organon: critical idealism is properly a doctrine of science or Wissenschaftslehre. Criticism is furthermore said to refute dogmatism, by (...) which Fichte means Spinozism. Schelling repudiates Fichte’s position in his Philosophical Letters by reviving Kant’s distinction. First, ‘critique’ for Schelling names a canon that is valid for all systems—including Spinozism—and thus favours none—not even the Wissenschaftslehre. Second, Schelling coins ‘dogmaticism’ to refer to what Kant calls ‘dogmatism’: reason’s uncritical claim to doctrine. Hence, he says all systems—even Fichte’s—are susceptible to the ‘enthusiasm’ of mistaking themselves for doctrines or ‘objects of knowledge’, instead of subjectively valid ‘objects of freedom’. I reconstruct Schelling’s argument for reviving Kant’s distinction, while noting two consequences for German idealism. First, if criticism favours no system, a system’s origin cannot be an act of knowledge, e.g., intellectual intuition, but only an act of endorsement. Second, if dogmaticism entails enthusiasm, a system’s goal cannot be absolute knowledge, but only infinite striving. Hence, by retrieving Schelling’s notion of dogmaticism, we can both gain a better understanding of the Letters and register the impact of a core Kantian distinction on the German idealist project. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.3 (2003) 227-231 [Access article in PDF] World Traveling as a Clinical Methodology for Psychiatric Care Suzanne M. Jaeger Keywords embodiment, dialogical consciousness, interpersonal communication, epistemic responsibility, self-knowledge, understanding IN HER ARTICLE "Moral Tourists and World Travelers," Nancy Potter suggests a way in which psychiatrists and psychologists could gain a better understanding of their mentally ill patients' experiences. Rather than assuming that hallucinations and (...) incoherent speech and behavior are merely senseless disconnections from reality, Potter argues that mental health care clinicians ought to spend time engaging patients on their own terms. Even when mental illness is a result of brain disease, much can be learned about the patient's experiences of their disease by temporarily setting aside the scientific frameworks of diagnosis and medical treatment. Potter uses Maria Lugones' concept of world traveling and recommends playfully accepting, and even entering into the patient's world (Lugones 1990). She calls world traveling a methodology and explains it in some detail. Moreover, at the close of her essay, Potter suggests that clinicians have a moral obligation to understand the mentally ill patient's world from the patient's perspective. This obligation is based on an appeal to our sense of what it is to be a responsible knower who attends to issues of trust and truth. Relying on arguments made by Lorraine Code (1987), Potter asserts that to try to understand the other's perspective is the responsible thing to do.My discussion focuses on the notion of play to which Potter appeals, as well as on what she sees as the moral obligation of clinicians to communicate with their mentally ill patients in extra-professional ways. This moral obligation arises because (a) the theoretical and professional frameworks of medical science are seen as inadequate, and (b) playfulness opens up mutually respectful, authentic interaction between persons. I generally agree with Potter's claims, and I want to situate them in the wider framework of an epistemological debate about the status of our knowledge of others. A broader context will help to elucidate the strengths of Potter's analysis as well as some points for critical discussion. I begin with the relationship of trust between clinicians and patients.Few people would disagree with the claim that patients need to be able to trust that their physicians are not harming them, but helping them to get better. If patients feel misunderstood, they will not trust their caretakers. This is probably even truer for psychiatric patients, whose conditions and loss of autonomy make establishing trust even more challenging. Psychiatric patients [End Page 227] often have their own ways of compensating for the symptoms of their mental illness. If either their will to survive or their compensatory strategies go unrecognized or misinterpreted, patients may respond by rejecting the well-intentioned efforts of caretakers to restore them to a degree of ease, measured as it must be by the standards of the professionals under whose care the patient remains. 1 Despite the fact that these standards are established through scientific testing procedures for the treatment of diseases, they may be experienced by patients as indifferent to the particular and unique features of their condition. Nestled within the issue of trust is thus a question of truth.Although current scientific knowledge of the human brain, and of human behavior, has made available a range of sophisticated therapies and psychotropic drugs, there are still many mental illnesses that leave families and clinicians wondering whether the treatment plans are providing any help. Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia are two examples. There is a difference between, on the one hand, containing the patient's behavior by admitting the patient to a psychiatric ward and managing symptoms with psychotropic medications, and, on the other hand, understanding what is happening for the patient, from his or her perspective. Although psychiatric patients may not have a realistic sense of either their abilities or the extent and nature of their disease, there may be much about their experiences that ought to be known and understood by the professionals caring for them... (shrink)

There is now considerable evidence that human sentence processing is expectation based: As people read a sentence, they use their statistical experience with their language to generate predictions about upcoming syntactic structure. This study examines how sentence processing is affected by readers' uncertainty about those expectations. In a self-paced reading study, we use lexical subcategorization distributions to factorially manipulate both the strength of expectations and the uncertainty about them. We compare two types of uncertainty: uncertainty about the verb's complement, reflecting (...) the next prediction step; and uncertainty about the full sentence, reflecting an unbounded number of prediction steps. We find that uncertainty about the full structure, but not about the next step, was a significant predictor of processing difficulty: Greater reduction in uncertainty was correlated with increased reading times. We additionally replicated previously observed effects of expectation violation, orthogonal to the effect of uncertainty. This suggests that both surprisal and uncertainty affect human RTs. We discuss the consequences for theories of sentence comprehension. (shrink)

La figure de l’entrepreneur est aujourd’hui utilisée dans une grande variété de discours publics. Ce travail cherche à remonter à l’une des sources théoriques de la constitution de cette figure : la théorie de l’entrepreneur de Schumpeter (1911a et 1911b). Ce retour montre que Schumpeter, dans son contexte intellectuel et théorique, est amené à importer une anthropologie philosophique en économie, celle de Nietzsche, auteur largement lu dans l’Autriche du début du xxe siècle. En transposant, à l’intérieur de sa théorie économique, (...) certaines caractéristiques majeures du grand homme créatif nietzschéen dans la figure de l’entrepreneur, Schumpeter développe une explication originale de la nature dynamique du marché et de l’évolution économique. Néanmoins il importe aussi de Nietzsche une série d’ambiguïtés, notamment en ce qui concerne l’origine de l’exceptionnalité individuelle de l’entrepreneur, et plus particulièrement de sa puissance créatrice. Une seconde ambiguïté est très largement héritée, qui concerne l’extension du modèle de l’individu entrepreneur : constitue-t-il une théorie de l’action valable pour tous les individus ou uniquement pour un type d’individus particuliers? Comment concilier exceptionnalité de l’entrepreneur et norme d’un entreprenariat pour tous? La dernière partie de ce travail s’attache ainsi à explorer ces ambiguïtés, qui apparaissent chez Schumpeter et ses successeurs, notamment Israël Kirzner.Codes JEL : B13, B25, B31, B40. (shrink)

Meillassoux seeks knowledge of transcendental reality, blaming Kant for the ‘correlationist’ proscription of independent access to either thought or being. For Meillassoux, correlationism blocks an account of the meaning of ‘ancestral statements’ regarding reality prior to humans. I examine three charges on which Meillassoux’s argument depends: (1) Kant distorts ancestral statements’ meaning; (2) Kant fallaciously infers causality’s necessity; (3) Kant’s transcendental idealism cannot grasp ‘the great outdoors’. I reject these charges: (1) imposes a Cartesian misreading, hence Meillassoux’s false assumption that, (...) for Kant, objects don’t exist without subjects; (2) misreads Kant, who infers causality’s necessity from the possibility of experience; (3) casts Kant’s idealism as subjective, ignoring his perspectival portrayal of it. (shrink)

'... diese 'Einführung in die Metaphysik' [ist] echte Einführung in Heidegger... keines der Werke Heideggers [ist] so lebendig zu lesen und so unmittelbar aufzufassen...' Universitas 4 (1954) 'Unter dem Titel dieser Vorlesung aus dem Jahre 1935 verbirgt sich in Wirklichkeit eine große Auseinandersetzung mit den Grundlagen unserer planetarischen Situation.' Süddeutsche Zeitung vom 7./8.11.1953.

Evolutionary systems biology (ESB) aims to integrate methods from systems biology and evolutionary biology to go beyond the current limitations in both fields. This article clarifies some conceptual difficulties of this integration project, and shows how they can be overcome. The main challenge we consider involves the integration of evolutionary biology with developmental dynamics, illustrated with two examples. First, we examine historical tensions between efforts to define general evolutionary principles and articulation of detailed mechanistic explanations of specific traits. Next, these (...) tensions are further clarified by considering a recent case from another field focused on developmental dynamics: stem cell biology. In the stem cell case, incompatible explanatory aims block integration. Experimental approaches aim at mechanistic explanation while dynamical system models offer explanation in terms of general principles. We then discuss an ESB case in which integration succeeds: search for general attractors using a dynamical systems framework synergizes with the experimental search for detailed mechanisms. Contrasts between the positive and negative cases suggest general lessons for achieving an integrated understanding of developmental and evolutionary dynamics. The key integrative move is to acknowledge two complementary aims, both relevant to explanation: identifying the space of possible dynamic states and trajectories, and mechanistic understanding of causal interactions underlying a specific phenomenon of interest. These two aims can support one another in a joint project characterizing dynamic aspects of evolving lineages. This more inclusive project can lead to insights that cannot be reached by either approach in isolation. (shrink)

Recent work in quantum information science has produced a revolution in our understanding of quantum entanglement. Scientists now view entanglement as a physical resource with many important applications. These range from quantum computers, which would be able to compute exponentially faster than classical computers, to quantum cryptographic techniques, which could provide unbreakable codes for the transfer of secret information over public channels. These important advances in the study of quantum entanglement and information touch on deep foundational issues in both physics (...) and philosophy. This interdisciplinary volume brings together fourteen of the world's leading physicists and philosophers of physics to address the most important developments and debates in this exciting area of research. It offers a broad spectrum of approaches to resolving deep foundational challenges - philosophical, mathematical, and physical - raised by quantum information, quantum processing, and entanglement. This book is ideal for historians, philosophers of science and physicists"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

This research investigated whether perceived situational appropriateness (defined as the degree of fit between product and intended usage situations) is predictive of consumer choices for foods and beverages, on the theoretical premise that intended usage situation acts as a frame of reference in orienting choices. Extant research on the topic, though suggestive of a link, is very limited in scope and almost completely lacking with regards to choice behaviour (as opposed to other aspects such as food acceptability or intake). To (...) address the hypotheses, data collected in a series of 15 experiments ($N= 2731$ consumers in total) -- covering a wide range of product categories and usage situations -- are presented. In all studies, participants evaluated a set of stimuli varying with respect to perceived appropriateness (low to high), and evaluated each stimulus either monadically using a choice likelihood scale or by performing a discrete choice task. Regression analyses from all studies consistently indicated that perceived appropriateness significantly predicted choice response. The results were robust with respect to variation in product category and experimental protocol and, overall, strongly support the notion that appropriateness can provide a simple yet powerful (in some case accounting for over 50\% of variance) predictor of consumer choice. Effect sizes varied substantially: perceived appropriateness explained from a minimum of 3\% to over 65\% of variance in consumer choice, and this variation was linearly related to the degree of product heterogeneity in the product sets. This research also investigated possible moderators of the link between appropriateness and choice, by relating the results to consumers’ product familiarity and involvement. While both traits significantly (and positively) affected choice, they did not interact with appropriateness. Possible explanations for these results, as well as other possible candidate moderators to explore in future research, are highlighted. (shrink)

This study provides evidence for implicit learning in syntactic comprehension. By reanalyzing data from a syntactic priming experiment (Thothathiri & Snedeker, 2008), we find that the error signal associated with a syntactic prime influences comprehenders' subsequent syntactic expectations. This follows directly from error‐based implicit learning accounts of syntactic priming, but it is unexpected under accounts that consider syntactic priming a consequence of temporary increases in base‐level activation. More generally, the results raise questions about the principles underlying the maintenance of implicit (...) statistical knowledge relevant to language processing, and about possible functional motivations for syntactic priming. (shrink)

The positive operator (valued) measures (POMs) allow one to generalize the notion of observable beyond the traditional one based on projection valued measures (PVMs). Here, we argue that this generalized conception of observable enables a consistent notion of unsharp reality and with it an adequate concept of joint properties. A sharp or unsharp property manifests itself as an element of sharp or unsharp reality by its tendency to become actual or to actualize a specific measurement outcome. This actualization tendency—or potentiality—of (...) a property is quantified by the associated quantum probability. The resulting single-case interpretation of probability as a degree of reality will be explained in detail and its role in addressing the tensions between quantum and classical accounts of the physical world will be elucidated. It will be shown that potentiality can be viewed as a causal agency that evolves in a well-defined way. (shrink)

The Meaning Circuit Hypothesis (MCH) is a synthesis of ideas providing John Wheeler’s outline of ultimate physics, which he fine-tuned over several decades from the 1970s onward. It is a ‘working hypothesis’ in which ‘existence is a ‘meaning circuit”’ that portrays the world as a “system self-synthesized by quantum networking.” It was strongly advocated by him for roughly two decades and since then has had an increasingly strong impact on the approach of many investigators of quantum theory; in particular, elements (...) such as the quantum participator and ‘it from bit’ are now considered by others as candidate components of a foundation for quantum theory in which information is involved essentially. Therefore, it is worthy of review and critique. (shrink)

Comparative biology builds up systematic knowledge of the diversity of life, across evolutionary lineages and levels of organization, starting with evidence from a sparse sample of model organisms. In developmental biology, a key obstacle to the growth of comparative approaches is that the concept of homology is not very well defined for levels of organization that are intermediate between individual genes and morphological characters. In this paper, we investigate what it means for ontogenetic processes to be homologous, focusing specifically on (...) the examples of insect segmentation and vertebrate somitogenesis. These processes can be homologous without homology of the underlying genes or gene networks, since the latter can diverge over evolutionary time, while the dynamics of the process remain the same. Ontogenetic processes like these therefore constitute a dissociable level and distinctive unit of comparison requiring their own specific criteria of homology. In addition, such processes are typically complex and nonlinear, such that their rigorous description and comparison not only requires observation and experimentation, but also dynamical modeling. We propose six criteria of process homology, combining recognized indicators with novel ones derived from dynamical systems modeling. We show how these criteria apply to animal segmentation and other ontogenetic processes. We conclude by situating our proposed dynamical framework for homology of process in relation to similar research programs, such as process structuralism and developmental approaches to morphological homology. (shrink)

In the article ”Against Physicalism-plus-God: How Creation Accounts for Divine Action in the World’, I defined a framework which allows us to make some progress in our understanding of how God acts in the world. In the present article, I apply this framework to the specific question of chance events. I show that chance does not provide an explanation for special divine action. Nevertheless, chance does not hamper God’s ability to act in the world, and creation provides a framework for (...) the understanding of chance, which is akin to what we see in modern science. (shrink)

Immunology — though deeply experimental in everyday practice — is also a theoretical discipline. Recent advances in the understanding of innate immunity, how it is triggered and how it shares features that have previously been uniquely ascribed to the adaptive immune system, can contribute to the refinement of the theoretical framework of immunology. In particular, natural killer cells and macrophages are activated by transient modifications, but adapt to long-lasting modifications that occur in the surrounding tissue environment. This process facilitates the (...) maintenance of self-tolerance while permitting efficient immune responses. In this Essay we extend this idea to other components of the immune system and we propose some general principles that lay the foundations for a unifying theory of immunity — the discontinuity theory. According to this theoretical framework, effector immune responses (namely, activated responses that lead to the potential elimination of the target antigen) are induced by an antigenic discontinuity; that is, by the sudden modification of molecular motifs with which immune cells interact. (shrink)

The logic of genetic discovery has changed little over time, but the focus of biology is shifting from simple genotype–phenotype relationships to complex metabolic, physiological, developmental, and behavioral traits. In light of this, the traditional reductionist view of individual genes as privileged difference‐making causes of phenotypes is re‐examined. The scope and nature of genetic effects in complex regulatory systems, in which dynamics are driven by regulatory feedback and hierarchical interactions across levels of organization are considered. This review argues that it (...) is appropriate to treat genes as specific actual difference‐makers for the molecular regulation of gene expression. However, they are often neither stable, proportional, nor specific as causes of the overall dynamic behavior of regulatory networks. Dynamical models, properly formulated and validated, provide the tools to probe cause‐and‐effect relationships in complex biological systems, allowing to go beyond the limitations of genetic reductionism to gain an integrative understanding of the causal processes underlying complex phenotypes. (shrink)

The Oxford Classical Texts, or Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, are renowned for their reliability and presentation. The series consists of a text without commentary but with a brief apparatus criticus at the foot of each page. There are now over 100 volumes, representing the greater part of classical Greek and Latin literature.