Psychologically faithful deep neural networks (DNNs) could be constructed by training with psychophysics data. Moreover, conventional DNNs are mostly monocular vision based, whereas the human brain relies mainly on binocular vision. DNNs developed as smaller vision agent networks associated with fundamental and less intelligent visual activities, can be combined to simulate more intelligent visual activities done by the biological brain.

From Fall 2016 to Fall 2019 Marcelo Gleiser conducted a series of nine public dialogues between eminent scientists and humanists on challenging topics and ideas whose very definitions and meanings are disputed. Sponsored by the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement at Dartmouth College, founded by Gleiser, these events were held in theaters and universities across the US and immediately followed by workshops, open to the public, at which attendees could converse directly with participants. Great Minds Don't Think Alike collects edited versions (...) of these discussions, which set an example, in a time when public discourse is seriously threatened, of how people can engage in a fruitful exchange of ideas even when they strongly disagree. The cast of characters is stellar: David Chalmers and Antonio Damasio on consciousness, Sean Carroll and Alan Wallace on reality, Patricia Churchland and Jill Tarter on the future of intelligence, Rebecca Goldstein and Alan Lightman on faith, Jimena Canales and Paul Davies on time, Ed Boyden and Mark O'Connell on transhumanism, Elizabeth Kolbert and Siddhartha Mukherjee on immortality, and Jeremy DeSilva, David Grinspoon, and Tasneem Zehra Husain on being human. (shrink)

From Fall 2016 to Fall 2019 Marcelo Gleiser conducted a series of nine public dialogues between eminent scientists and humanists on challenging topics and ideas whose very definitions and meanings are disputed. Sponsored by the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement at Dartmouth College, founded by Gleiser, these events were held in theaters and universities across the US and immediately followed by workshops, open to the public, at which attendees could converse directly with participants. Great Minds Don't Think Alike collects edited versions (...) of these discussions, which set an example, in a time when public discourse is seriously threatened, of how people can engage in a fruitful exchange of ideas even when they strongly disagree. The cast of characters is stellar: David Chalmers and Antonio Damasio on consciousness, Sean Carroll and Alan Wallace on reality, Patricia Churchland and Jill Tarter on the future of intelligence, Rebecca Goldstein and Alan Lightman on faith, Jimena Canales and Paul Davies on time, Ed Boyden and Mark O'Connell on transhumanism, Elizabeth Kolbert and Siddhartha Mukherjee on immortality, and Jeremy DeSilva, David Grinspoon, and Tasneem Zehra Husain on being human. (shrink)

The present essay is addressed simultaneously to two distinct audiences.

A study in the philosophy of science, proposing a strong form of the doctrine of scientific realism' and developing its implications for issues in the philosophy of mind.

Paul Faulkner presents a new theory of testimony - the basis of much of what we know. He addresses the questions of what makes it reasonable to accept a piece of testimony, and what warrants belief formed on that basis. He rejects rival theories and argues that testimonial knowledge and testimonially warranted belief are based on trust.

_In Defense of Anarchism_ is a 1970 book by the philosopher Robert Paul Wolff, in which the author defends individualist anarchism. He argues that individual autonomy and state authority are mutually exclusive and that, as individual autonomy is inalienable, the moral legitimacy of the state collapses.

In this work, Paul Weithman offers a fresh, rigorous and compelling interpretation of John Rawls' reasons for taking his so-called 'political turn'.

Knowledge-first theories of justification are theories of justification that give knowledge priority when it comes to explaining when and why someone has justification for an attitude or an action. The emphasis of this article is on knowledge-first theories of justification for belief. As it turns out, there are a number of ways of giving knowledge priority when theorizing about justification, and what follows is a survey of more than a dozen existing options that have emerged in the early 21st century (...) since the publication of Timothy Williamson’s *Knowledge and Its Limits*. This article traces several of the general theoretical motivations that have been offered for putting knowledge first in the theory of justification. This is followed by an examination of existing knowledge-first theories of justification and their standing objections. These objections are largely, but not exclusively, concerned with the extensional adequacy of knowledge-first theories of justification. There are doubtless more ways to give knowledge priority in the theory of justified belief than are covered here, but the survey is instructive because it highlights potential shortcomings that would-be knowledge-first theorists of justification may wish either to avoid or else to be prepared with a suitable error theory. This entry concludes with a reflection about the extent to which the short history of, arguably, failed attempts to secure an unproblematic knowledge-first account of justified belief has begun to resemble the older Gettier dialectic. (shrink)

It is unreasonable to assume that our pre-scientific emotion vocabulary embodies all and only those distinctions required for a scientific psychology of emotion. The psychoevolutionary approach to emotion yields an alternative classification of certain emotion phenomena. The new categories are based on a set of evolved adaptive responses, or affect-programs, which are found in all cultures. The triggering of these responses involves a modular system of stimulus appraisal, whose evoluations may conflict with those of higher-level cognitive processes. Whilst the structure (...) of the adaptive responses is innate, the contents of the system which triggers them are largely learnt. The circuits subserving the adaptive responses are probably located in the limbic system. This theory of emotion is directly applicable only to a small sub-domain of the traditional realm of emotion. It can be used, however, to explain the grouping of various other phenomena under the heading of emotion, and to explain various characteristic failings of the pre-scientific conception of emotion. (shrink)

Reverence is an ancient virtue that survives among us in half-forgotten patterns of civility and moments of inarticulate awe. Reverence gives meaning to much that we do, yet the word has almost passed out of our vocabulary.Reverence, says philosopher and classicist Paul Woodruff, begins in an understanding of human limitations. From this grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control -- God, truth, justice, nature, even death. It is a quality of character (...) that is especially important in leadership and in teaching, although it figures in virtually every human relationship. It transcends religious boundaries and can be found outside religion altogether.Woodruff draws on thinking about this lost virtue in ancient Greek and Chinese traditions and applies lessons from these highly reverent cultures to today's world. The book covers reverence in a variety of contexts -- the arts, leadership, teaching, warfare, and the home -- and shows how essential a quality it is to a well-functioning society.First published by Oxford University Press in 2001, this new edition of Reverence is revised and expanded. It contains a foreword by Betty Sue Flowers, Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin, a new preface, two new chapters -- one on the sacred and one on compassion -- and an epilogue focused on renewing reverence in our own lives. (shrink)

For over twenty years, Paul Weithman has explored the thought of John Rawls to ask how liberalism can secure the principled allegiance of those people whom Rawls called 'citizens of faith'. This volume brings together ten of his major essays, which reflect on the task and political character of political philosophy, the ways in which liberalism does and does not privatize religion, the role of liberal legitimacy in Rawls's theory, and the requirements of public reason. The essays reveal Rawls (...) as a thinker deeply engaged with political and existential questions that trouble citizens of faith, and explore how - in firm opposition to political realism - he tries to show that the possibility of liberal democracy and the natural goodness of humanity are objects of reasonable faith. The volume will be of interest to political philosophers, political theorists, moral theologians, and religious ethicists. (shrink)

Philosophy and Kafka is a collection of original essays interrogating the relationship of literature and philosophy. The essays either discuss specific philosophical commentaries on Kafka’s work, consider the possible relevance of certain philosophical outlooks for examining Kafka’s writings, or examine Kafka’s writings in terms of a specific philosophical theme, such as communication and subjectivity, language and meaning, knowledge and truth, the human/animal divide, justice, and freedom.

When the COVID-19 surge hit New York City hospitals, the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College, and our affiliated ethics consultation services, faced waves of ethical issues sweeping forward with intensity and urgency. In this article, we describe our experience over an eight-week period (16 March through 10 May 2020), and describe three types of services: clinical ethics consultation (CEC); service practice communications/interventions (SPCI); and organizational ethics advisement (OEA). We tell this narrative through the prism of time, (...) describing the evolution of ethical issues and trends as the pandemic unfolded. We delineate three phases: anticipation and preparation, crisis management, and reflection and adjustment. The first phase focused predominantly on ways to address impending resource shortages and to plan for remote ethics consultation, and CECs focused on code status discussions with surrogates. The second phase was characterized by the dramatic convergence of a rapid increase in the number of critically ill patients, a growing scarcity of resources, and the reassignment/ redeployment of staff outside their specialty areas. The third phase was characterized by the recognition that while the worst of the crisis was waning, its medium- and long-term consequences continued to pose immense challenges. We note that there were times during the crisis that serving in the role of clinical ethics consultant created a sense of dis-ease as novel as the coronavirus itself. In retrospect we learned that our activities far exceeded the familiar terrain of clinical ethics consultation and extended into other spheres of organizational life in novel ways that were unanticipated before this pandemic. To that end, we defined and categorized a middle level of ethics consultation, which we have termed service practice communication intervention (SPCI). This is an underappreciated dimension of the work that ethics consult services are capable of in times of crisis. We believe that the pandemic has revealed the many enduring ways that ethics consultation services can more robustly contribute to the ethical life of their institutions moving forward. (shrink)

This volume brings together Paul Williams's previously published papers on the Indian and Tibetan interpretations of selected verses from the eighth and ninth chapters of the Bodhicaryavatara. In addition, there is a much longer version of the paper 'Identifying the Object of Negation', and nearly half the book consists of a wholly new essay, 'The Absence of Self and the Removal of Pain', subtitled 'How Santideva Destroyed the Bodhisattva Path'. This book will be of interest to those concerned with (...) the history and interpretation of Indian and Tibetan philosophy. (shrink)

Papers, Please, by Lucas Pope (2013), explores the story of a customs inspector in the fictional political regime of Arstotzka. In this paper we explore the stories, systems and moral themes of Papers, Please in order to illustrate the systemic approach to designing videogames for moral engagement. Next, drawing on the Four Component model of ethical expertise from moral psychology, we contrast this systemic approach with the more common scripted approach. We conclude by demonstrating the different strengths and weaknesses that (...) these two approaches have when it comes to designing videogames that engage the different aspects of a player’s moral expertise. (shrink)

The current state of knowledge in psychology, cognitive neuroscience and behavioral ecology allows a fairly robust characterization of at least some, so-called ?basic emotions? - short-lived emotional responses with homologues in other vertebrates. Philosophers, however are understandably more focused on the complex emotion episodes that figure in folk-psychological narratives about mental life, episodes such as the evolving jealousy and anger of a person in an unraveling sexual relationship. One of the most pressing issues for the philosophy of emotion is the (...) relationship between basic emotions and these complex emotion episodes. In this paper, I add to the list of existing, not necessarily incompatible, proposals concerning the relationship between basic emotions and complex emotions. I analyze the writings of ?transactional? psychologists of emotion, particularly those who see their work as a contribution to behavioral ecology, and offer a view of the basic emotion that focuses as much on their interpersonal functions as on their intrapersonal functions. Locating basic emotions and their evolutionary development in a context of processes of social interaction, I suggest, provides a way to integrate our knowledge of basic emotions into an understanding of the larger emotional episodes that have more obvious implications for philosophical disciplines such as moral psychology. (shrink)

Debates regarding clinical ethicists’ scope of practice are not novel and will continue to evolve. Rapid changes in healthcare delivery, outcomes, and expectations have necessitated flexibility in clinical ethicists’ roles whereby hospital-based clinical ethicists are expected to be woven into the institutional fabric in a way that did not exist in more traditional relationships. In this article we discuss three emerging roles: the ethicist embedded in the interdisciplinary team, the ethicist with an expanded educational mandate, and the ethicist as a (...) therapeutic presence in the patient care space. Such expanded capacities offer more robust, positive contributions to institutional culture, stakeholders’ relationships, and patient-centered care. (shrink)

This is a pdf of a Mathematica calculation that supplements the paper "Presentist Fragmentalism and Quantum Mechanics" forthcoming in Foundations of Physics. In that paper the Born rule (or at least a progenitor) is derived from experimental conditions on the mutual observations of two fragments. In this pdf the experimental conditions are applied to Hilbert space dimensions 3, 4, and 5. It turns out each of these have a 1-dimensional solution space which, it is hoped, can be interpretated as the (...) phase. (shrink)

What is unique and essential about theatre? What separates it from other arts? Do we need 'theatre' in some fundamental way? The art of theatre, as Paul Woodruff says in this elegant and unique book, is as necessary-and as powerful-as language itself. Defining theatre broadly, including sporting events and social rituals, he treats traditional theatre as only one possibility in an art that-at its most powerful-can change lives and bring a divine presence to earth. The Necessity of Theater analyzes (...) the unique power of theatre by separating it into the twin arts of watching and being watched, practiced together in harmony by watchers and the watched. Whereas performers practice the art of being watched-making their actions worth watching, and paying attention to action, choice, plot, character, mimesis, and the sacredness of performance space-audiences practice the art of watching: paying close attention. A good audience is emotionally engaged as spectators; their engagement takes a form of empathy that can lead to a special kind of human wisdom. As Plato implied, theatre cannot teach us transcendent truths, but it can teach us about ourselves. Characteristically thoughtful, probing, and original, Paul Woodruff makes the case for theatre as a unique form of expression connected to our most human insticts. The Necessity of Theater should appeal to anyone seriously interested or involved in theatre or performance more broadly. (shrink)

A broad-scale quantification of the measure of quality for scholarship is under way. This trend has fundamental implications for the future of academic publishing and employment. In this essay we want to raise questions about these burgeoning practices, particularly how they affect philosophy of education and similar sub-disciplines. First, details are given of how an ‘impact factor’ is calculated. The various meanings that can be attached to it are scrutinised. Second, we examine how impact factors are used to make various (...) ‘high stakes’ academic decisions, such as hiring and promotion, funding of research projects and how much money is to be awarded to a particular area. By focusing on a particular practice, problems with the application of the metric generally are outlined. Finally, we offer some general observations about the unintended consequences and other problems arising from the widespread use of this metric, including attempts to ‘game the system’. We argue that the use of impact factors increasingly shapes the kind of topics and issues scholars write on, their choices of methodology, and their choice of publication venues for their work. Technical measures and mechanisms tend to ‘colonise’ the qualitative and professional judgments that must also be part of the process of evaluation, and for which bibliometrics alone cannot offer a substitute. (shrink)

In Decision Space: Multidimensional Utility Analysis, first published in 2001, Paul Weirich increases the power and versatility of utility analysis and in the process advances decision theory. Combining traditional and novel methods of option evaluation into one systematic method of analysis, multidimensional utility analysis is a valuable tool. It provides formulations of important decision principles, such as the principle to maximize expected utility; enriches decision theory in solving recalcitrant decision problems; and provides in particular for the cases in which (...) an expert must make a decision for a group of people. The multiple dimensions of this analysis create a decision space broad enough to accommodate all factors affecting an option's utility. The book will be of interest to advanced students and professionals working in the subject of decision theory, as well as to economists and other social scientists. (shrink)

Educational research is dominated by a particular model: data is gathered and analysed. Much literature on methods concerns either ways of processing data, or ethical issues regarding its collection and handling. The present paper looks beyond these matters to the taken-for-granted idea of data itself. What can be meant by ‘data’? How does this connect with ideas of the given? What is the place of giving in education—in teaching and learning, in research itself? These issues are explored in the light (...) of information technology’s impact on research, uncovering ethical dimensions that the seeming naturalness of data otherwise obscures. (shrink)

A survey of recent literature would suggest that Aristotle has become a whipping boy for philosophers who would advocate equality between the sexes. What I hope to show is that we can actually advance the cause of sexual equality by treating him more judiciously. Aristotle does argue that men and women by nature have different psychologies, and even that men are psychologically superior to women. But contrary to what many today think he himself does not conclude from this proposition that (...) men and women ought to have roles entirely different within a city. Indeed, he leaves ample room in his theory for women to participate in political rule. We shall see by his own arguments that all women ought to have a vote in general assemblies, and that some women ought to hold high political office. (shrink)

The type of cognitive theory of emotion traditionally espoused by philosophers of mind makes two central claims. First, that the occurrence of propositional attitudes is essential to the occurrence of emotions. Second, that the identity of a particular emotional state depends upon the propositional attitudes that it involves. In this paper I try to show that there is little hope of developing a theory of emotion which makes these claims true. I examine the underlying defects of the programme, and show (...) that several recent variants fail to repair these defects. Furthermore, even if such a theory could be developed, it would not achieve many of the things that we look to a theory of emotion for. I argue that philosophers should turn their attention to new and more promising approaches. These have been developed by various of the special sciences, while philosophy has remained enthralled by traditional, propositional attitude psychology. (shrink)

Horror stories attached to some recent retailing events concerning Hoover, Ratners and others raise questions about a company’s ethical concern, whether it be part of its marketing strategy or ‘thrust upon it’. If ethics is to have a place in retail strategy that place is better focused around performance at an operational level rather than at the level of promotion or publicity. The author is Professor of Retailing at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham NG1 4BU, U.K. e‐mail: [email protected].

On the traditional deontic framework, what is required (what morality demands) and what is optimal (what morality recommends) can't be distinguished and hence they can't both be represented. Although the morally optional can be represented, the supererogatory (exceeding morality's demands), one of its proper subclasses, cannot be. The morally indifferent, another proper subclass of the optional-one obviously disjoint from the supererogatory-is also not representable. Ditto for the permissibly suboptimal and the morally significant. Finally, the minimum that morality allows finds no (...) place in the traditional scheme. With a focus on the question, What would constitute a hospitable logical neighborhood for the concept of supererogation?, I present and motivate an enriched logical and semantic framework for representing all these concepts of common sense morality. (shrink)

It has been suggested that moods are higher order-dispositions. This proposal is considered, and various shortcomings uncovered. The notion of a higher-order disposition is replaced by the more general notion of a higher-order functional state. An account is given in which moods are higher-order functional states, and the overall system of moods is a higher-order functional description of the mind. This proposal is defended in two ways. First, it is shown to capture some central features of our pre-scientific conception of (...) moods. Secondly, it is argued that the account is more likely to be psychologically realistic (in a sense to be defined) than accounts which are behaviourally equivalent, but which do not employ a hierarchy of functional descriptions. It is suggested that the hierarchical structure of the model mirrors a feature of the physical states that realise moods and emotions. (shrink)

Time, space, causality, communicating and acting together set limits on our freedom. Starting from the position of Wittgenstein, who advocates neither a position of pure subjectivity nor of pure objectivity, and taking into account what is implied by initiation into the symbolic order of language and culture, it is argued that the limitations on our freedom are not to be deplored. The problems of conservatism, relativism and scepticism—which confront us often in the context of education and child rearing—are inadequately dealt (...) with if attention is primarily focused on ways to resist or act differently. Following Cavell and his insistence that we should not try to escape from the existential conditions we find ourselves in and look for false certainties, the relevance of embracing a particular stance is elaborated. A commitment to giving substance to an ideal of ‘the good life’ is neither an injustice towards the other nor an ignorance of her freedom. On the contrary, here responsibility is accepted, and at the same time it is acknowledged that we always have only the particular points of departure that we contingently start from. Coming to terms with this kind of dependency constitutes living out the scepticism that is implied by our being human: the logic of this is given along with our human condition. (shrink)

The U.S. occupation of Japan transformed a brutal war charged with overt racism into an amicable peace in which the issue of race seemed to have disappeared.

How can a speaker can explain that P without explaining the fact that P, or explain the fact that P without explaining that P, even when it is true (and so a fact) that P? Or in formal mode: what is the semantic contribution of 'explain' such that 'She explained that P' can be true, while 'She explained the fact that P' is false (or vice versa), even when 'P' is true? The proposed answer is that 'explained' is a semantically (...) monadic predicate, satisfied by events of explaining. But 'the fact that P' (a determiner phrase) and 'that P' (a complementizer phrase) get associated with different thematic roles, corresponding to the distinction between a thing explained and the content of a speech act. (shrink)

The aim of appraisal theory in the psychology of emotion is to identify the features of the emotion-eliciting situation that lead to the production of one emotion rather than another². A model of emotional appraisal takes the form of a set of dimensions against which potentially emotion-eliciting situations are assessed. The dimensions of the emotion hyperspace might include, for example, whether the eliciting situation fulfills or frustrates the subject’s goals or whether an actor in the eliciting situation has violated a (...) norm. Richard Lazarus’s well-known model of emotional appraisal has six dimensions, and the regions of the resulting hyperspace that correspond to particular emotions are summarized by Lazarus as the ‘core relational themes’ of those emotions. Anger, for examples, is elicited by the core relational theme ‘a demeaning offence against me and mine’, sadness by ‘having experienced an irrevocable loss’ and guilt by ‘having transgressed a moral imperative’ (Lazarus, 1991). (shrink)