In combination with post-selection, weak measurements can lead to surprising results known as anomalous weak values. These lie outside the bounds of the spectrum of the relevant observable, as in the canonical example of measuring the spin of an electron (along some axis) to be 100. We argue that the disturbance caused by the weak measurement, while small, is sufficient to significantly affect the measurement result, and that this is the most reasonable explanation of anomalous weak values.

In this paper we show that there are "E₀ many" orbit inequivalent free actions of the free groups Fn. 2 ≤ n ≤ ∞ by measure preserving transformations on a standard Borel probability space. In particular, there are uncountably many such actions.

Machine generated contents note: The Natural Order -- [Part] 11 -- Part 2: Expeditions to New Worlds -- Appendix -- Value and Economy -- Part I: Critique of political economy -- Part 2: The exploitation of the unique -- Topical additions -- Luck and Chance -- Notes.

We investigate the mathematics of a model of the human mind which has been proposed by the psychologist Jens Mammen. Mathematical realizations of this model consists of what the first author (A.T.) has called Mammen spaces, where a Mammen space is a triple in the Baumgartner–Laver model.Finally, consequences for psychology are discussed.

Urgent environmental problems call for vigorous research and theory on how humans develop a relationship with nature. For eight years, Peter Kahn studied children, young adults, and parents in diverse geographical locations, ranging from an economically impoverished black community in Houston to a remote village in the Brazilian Amazon. In these studies Kahn sought answers to the following questions: How do people value nature, and how do they reason morally about environmental degradation? Do children have a deep connection to the (...) natural world that gets severed by modern society? Or do such connections emerge, if at all, later in life, with increased cognitive and moral maturity? Are there universal features in the human relationship with nature? Kahn's empirical and theoretical findings draw on current work in psychology, biology, environmental behavior, education, policy, and moral development. (shrink)

Value is a basic concept in economics, ethics and sociology. Locke made labour the source of value, whereas Smith referred to an ideal exchange and Kant specified that commodities only have a market price, no intrinsic value. One can distinguish two modern concepts of value, an economic one trying to explain value in terms of utility, interest or preferences, and an ideal one considering values as ends in themselves. On this basis, Durkheim constructed his theory of value, which was developed (...) by his followers Mauss and Bouglé and further by Bataille. Their line of thought makes it possible to develop a conceptual framework, which can be used to criticise neo-liberalism, big business and the effects of globalisation, while at the same time defending the moral value of business and giving an interpretation of the anti-globalisation protests. (shrink)

Videnskabsteori handler om krav til videnskabelig viden, og disse krav hviler på forudsætninger, der kan ekspliciteres yderligere. -/- Specielt i dag er der dog brug for en bog, der ikke blot analyserer den klassiske videnskabsteori, men i samme diskurs også forholder sig til de meget forskellige tankegange, der i dag giver sig ud for at være videnskabsteori. -/- Om videnskabelig viden til dem, der ønsker et bedre videnskabsteoretisk overblik, og til dem som ønsker at gå mere i dybden med den (...) egentlige filosofiske videnskabsteori. Bogen henvender sig til studerende og færdige kandidater inden for især samfundsvidenskab og humaniora. -/- Asger Sørensens ambition med bogen er at bidrage til klarhed og fornuft i en verden, hvor ideologisk forblændelse ikke blot sker gennem massemedier og underholdningsindustri, men også gennem en akademisk teoriproduktion, der udvikler og anerkender alle mulige programmer for videnskab. (shrink)

Abstract: To evaluate the explanation of change blindness in terms of misrepresentation and determine its role for Rosenthal’s higher-order thought theory of consciousness, we present an alternative account of change blindness that affords an independent outlook and provides a viable alternative. First we describe Rosenthal’s actualism and the notion of misrepresentation, then introduce change blindness and the explanation of it by misrepresentation. Rosenthal asserts that, in change blindness, the first-order state tracks the post-change stimulus, but the higher-order state misrepresents it. (...) We propose the alternative that both post-change and pre-change content can be tracked by the first-order state, and that in change blindness the higher-order thought represents the pre-change state, resulting in a good-enough representation: true but not veridical. We compare the two explanations with respect to available data and analyse the principal theoretical claims. Discussing the rationale of the alternative account, we conclude that there is good reason to conceive of the mind as satisficing, geared towards reliability instead of truth-tracking, and guided by representations that are good enough as opposed to complete or corresponding to the facts. We end with some methodological remarks concerning the risk of cognitive biases in interdisciplinary research that brings together empirical and philosophical claims. (shrink)

We announce some new results regarding the classification problem for separable von Neumann algebras. Our results are obtained by applying the notion of Borel reducibility and Hjorth's theory of turbulence to the isomorphism relation for separable von Neumann algebras.

Recently, the possibility of misrepresentation has resurfaced in the debate between higher-order thought theorists and their opponents. One new element in the debate has been the rare cases of Charles Bonnet syndrome , proposed as empirical evidence for misrepresentation as posited by the higher-order theories. In this article I will spell out the argument supposedly underlying the claim that the RCB cases are genuine empirical evidence of misrepresentation. I will then proceed to show that this argument relies on a hidden (...) premise. With this premise exposed the argument cannot support the notion of misrepresentation posited by higher-order theories. (shrink)

In recent years increasing attention has been given to systematic comparison of theories of consciousness. Laudable practical projects have emerged in this regard, such as adversarial collaboration and the development of databases lending themselves to comparisons of empirical support for theories. In addition to the practical advances, theoretical advances have been made, such as a list of issues a theory of consciousness must address. We propose adding the issue of the ontogenetic emergence (O-emergence) of consciousness to the list of issues (...) we use to evaluate theories of consciousness. O-emergence concerns how and when consciousness emerges ontogenetically in human beings. The underlying assumption is that there exists a point in the development of a human individual before which that individual is not and cannot be conscious. This assumption, in turn, depends on a widely shared assumption of cognitive neuroscience, which is that consciousness somehow depends on — or derives from — brain activity. In this paper, we lay out the O-emergence criterion and investigate whether it can be accounted for within the Global Neuronal Workspace theory, the Self-Organizing Meta-representational Account, and the Reorganization of Elementary Functions framework. (shrink)

I will start by noting that Harry Frankfurt’s concept of wholeheartedness is in conflict with the intuition that free will should be efficacious in general, rather than pertain only to a small subset of decisions. To replace wholeheartedness I introduce a heuristic account for deliberation and decisions. I will show that introspective activity can lead to the individual having two types ‘introspective revelations’. By the onset of the introspective revelations a self-perpetuating loop is initiated. The loop consists of two elements (...) positively reinforcing each other. The two elements are introspective activity and introspective revelations. The effect is a propensity to ask oneself “what do I want?” whenever faced with a choice. This propensity, I submit, can give us what we want when we want free will. (shrink)

We prove that if V = L then there is a $\Pi _{1}^{1}$ maximal orthogonal (i.e., mutually singular) set of measures on Cantor space. This provides a natural counterpoint to the well-known theorem of Preiss and Rataj [16] that no analytic set of measures can be maximal orthogonal.

The dialectical aspect in the work of Georges Bataille is often neglected. At the suggestion of Foucault and Derrida, Bataille is most often even taken to be a non-dialectical thinker. But Bataille worked intensely with Hegel's ideas, his thought was expressed in Hegelian terms, and both his epistemology and his ontology can be considered a determinate negation of Hegel's position in the Phenomenology. This is shown, first, by analysing Bataille's notions of `inner experience', and, second, by showing how Bataille extends (...) dialectics to the natural, non-human realm, and even conceives the link between the human and non-human as itself dialectical. However, once we see the dialectical nature of his theoretical stance, we are struck by a great vagueness in his practical conception of where society ought to be going. (shrink)

Tong Shijun holds a concept of dialectics which can also be found in Mao’s writings and in classical Chinese philosophy. Tong, however, is ambivalent in his attitude to dialectics in this sense, and for this reason he recommends Chinese philosophy to focus more on formal logic. My point will be that with another concept of dialectics Tong can have dialectics without giving up on logic and epistemology. This argument is given substance by an analysis of texts by Mao, Tong and (...) Hegel. (shrink)

The distinction between teleology and deontology is today almost universally accepted within practical philosophy, but deontology is and has from the beginning been subordinate to utili-tarianism. ‘Deontology’ was constructed by Bentham to signify the art and science of private morality within a utilitarian worldview. The classical distinction was constructed by Broad as a refinement of Sidgwick’s utilitarianism, and then adopted by Frankena. To Broad it signified two opposite tendencies in ethics, in Frankena’s textbooks, however, it becomes an exclusive distinction, where (...) de-ontology signifies disregard for consequences, and it is therefore almost impossible to think of deontology as a framework for a com-prehensive ethical theory. This conception, however, is adopted by Rawls, and in his contractarian interpretation of deontology it is in fact no more within the sphere of ethics. (shrink)

According to Clifford Geertz, the purpose of anthropology is not to explain culture but to explicate it. That should cause us to rethink our relationship with machine learning. It is, we contend, perfectly possible that machine learning algorithms, which are unable to explain, and could even be unexplainable themselves, can still be of critical use in a process of explication. Thus, we report on an experiment with anthropological AI. From a dataset of 175K Facebook comments, we trained a neural network (...) to predict the emoji reaction associated with a comment and asked a group of human players to compete against the machine. We show that a) the machine can reach the same accuracy as the players, b) it fails in roughly the same ways as the players, and c) easily predictable emoji reactions tend to reflect unambiguous situations where interpretation is easy. We therefore repurpose the failures of the neural network to point us to deeper and more ambiguous situations where interpretation is hard and explication becomes both necessary and interesting. We use this experiment as a point of departure for discussing how experiences from anthropology, and in particular the tension between formalist ethnoscience and interpretive thick description, might contribute to debates about explainable AI. (shrink)

From A Theory of Justice to The Law of Peoples Rawls’s liberalism develops from individualism to a kind of communitarianism. This apparently makes him blind to conflicts between the individual and the collective, and the resulting position contributes to change his perspective on just war. From a duty to prevent war by civil disobedience he develops a duty to initiate war because of human right violations, and this must be criticized.

A tacit assumption in the field of consciousness studies is that the more empirical evidence a theory can explain, the better it fares when weighed against competitors. If one wants to take seriously the potential for empirical evidence to move forward debates in consciousness studies, there is a need to gather, organize, validate, and compare evidence. We present an inference to the best explanation (IBE) process on the basis of empirical support that is applicable in debates between competing theories of (...) consciousness. Our proposed IBE process consists in four steps: Assimilate, Compile, Validate, and Compare. Until now, the vast majority of the work in the field has consisted in gathering empirical evidence for theories i.e., the assimilation step. To illustrate the feasibility of our proposed IBE process, and what it may look like when applied in practice, we deliver a complete collection (the compilation step) of empirical support for the distinction between A-Consciousness and P-Consciousness and the overflow hypothesis. Finally, we offer an example of the validation step, by scrutinizing the interpretation of aphantasics’ performance on retro-cue paradigms offered in the literature in support of the overflow hypothesis. The compilation we deliver here is the first effort in the IBE process, the end result of which — hopefully — will be the ability of the research community to carry out side-by-side comparisons of theories and the empirical phenomena they claim to explain, i.e., the comparison step. (shrink)