This paper addresses and proposes to resolve a longstanding problem in the philosophy of physics: whether and in what sense Albert Einstein’s Chasing the Light thought experiment was significant in the development of the theory of special relativity. Although Einstein granted this thought experiment pride of place in his 1949 Autobiographical Notes, philosophers and physicists continue to debate about what, if anything, the experiment establishes. I claim that we ought to think of Chasing the Light as Einstein’s first attempt to (...) problematize the very idea of the electromagnetic ether frame, and that it thereby contributed to his eventual adoption of one of special relativity’s two foundational axioms: the “light postulate”. This interpretation requires the assumption that Einstein had presupposed special relativity’s other axiom, the “principle of relativity”, when initially considering Chasing the Light. This argument is novel insofar as it provides evidence that such a presupposition by Einstein is both conceptually and historically plausible. Moreover, this paper directly challenges John D. Norton’s compelling claim that Chasing the Light is best understood as a refutation of emission theories of light propagation; while both interpretations of the experiment are conceptually coherent, I argue that the interpretation found in this paper is supported more straightforwardly by historical evidence. (shrink)

THIS ESSAY DEALS WITH D F NORTON’S INTERPRETATION OF HUME’S METHODOLOGY IN THE LATTER’S FAMOUS DISCUSSION OF MIRACLES IN THE FIRST INQUIRY. NORTON CONSTRUES "EXPERIENCE" TO MEAN PERSONAL, INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE. THE AUTHOR SHOWS THAT THERE IS ANOTHER SENSE OF THE WORD WHICH IS MORE COSMOPOLITAN AND ONE WHICH SQUARES MORE WITH THE USES OF EVIDENCE FOUND IN THE "HISTORY OF ENGLAND". ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATIONS OF THE HUME PASSAGE ARE GIVEN AND HUME’S METHOD IS COMPARED WITH R G COLLINGWOOD’S IMAGINATIVE (...) RECONSTRUCTIONIST IDEA OF HISTORY. (shrink)

The papers in the following volume are the outcome of a three-year long interdisciplinary research project. The project began with an in-person meeting hosted and funded by the Daimler und Benz Stiftung in Germany in March 2020 (the world was shutting down one nation at a time as we met). During the pandemic we continued to meet monthly online with support from Memorial University of Newfoundland. From the beginning it was the goal of the Working Group on Intelligence (WGI), as (...) we called ourselves, to broaden and deepen the AI debate with a more nuanced understanding of intelligence than is common in cognitive and computer science discussions of AI. We wished to draw on the history of philosophy, ecology, and the philosophy of mind to establish that intelligence is meant in many senses, to use an Aristotelian expression. The clarification of these various meanings is essential to the discussion around the ethics of AI, especially the question concerning the possibility of strong AI or Artificial General Intelligence. (shrink)

This paper examines whether the modern bioethical principles of respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice proposed by Beauchamp and Childress are existent in, compatible with, or acceptable to the leading Chinese moral philosophy—the ethics of Confucius. The author concludes that the moral values which the four prima facie principles uphold are expressly identifiable in Confucius’ teachings. However, Confucius’ emphasis on the filial piety, family values, the “love of gradation”, altruism of people, and the “role specified relation oriented ethics” will (...) inevitably influence the “specification” and application of these bioethical principles and hence tend to grant “beneficence” a favourable position that diminishes the respect for individual rights and autonomy. In contrast, the centrality of respect for autonomy and its stance of “first among equals” are more and more stressed in Western liberal viewpoints. Nevertheless, if the Confucian “doctrine of Mean” and a balanced “two dimensional personhood” approach are properly employed, this will require both theorists and clinicians, who are facing medical ethical dilemmas, of searching to attain due mean out of competing moral principles thus preventing “giving beneficence a priority” or “asserting autonomy must triumph”. (shrink)

An overview of the history of the concept of matter highlights the fact that alternative modes of explanation were successively employed. With the discovery of irrational numbers the initial conviction of the Pythagorean School collapsed and was replaced by an exploration of space as a principle of understanding. This legacy dominated the medieval period and had an after-effect well into modernity—for both Descartes and Kant still characterized matter in spatial terms. However, even before Galileo the mechanistic world view slowly entered (...) the scene—the world as chaos, particles in motion. Elevating movement to become the guiding principle in our understanding of matter dominated the main tendency of modern physics until the (end of the) 19th century. The discovery of irreversible processes (radio-activity for example) directed 20th century physics towards an exploration of the meaning of energy-operation. It turned out that even within 20th century physics long-standing legacies prevailed, because an account of the nature of matter continued to be torn apart by atomistic and holistic views—confronted by the problem of constancy and change (radical transformability versus persistence). Concrete, material reality exceeds the scope of any single mode of explanation—an insight that also serves a better understanding of the wave-particle duality. (shrink)

I have argued in other work that emotion, attentional functions, and executive functions are three interpenetrant global state variables, essentially differential slices of the consciousness pie. This paper will outline the columnar architecture and connectivities of the PAG (periaqueductal gray), its role in organizing prototype states of emotion, and the re-entry of PAG with the extended reticular thalamic activating system (“ERTAS”). At the end we will outline some potential implications of these connectivities for possible functional correlates of PAG networks that (...) are just starting to be mapped. Overall, we will look at many lines of evidence that PAG should be conceptualized as a peri-reticular structure that has a foundational role in emotion, in generating the meaningful organization of behavior by the brain through prototype emotional states, and in allowing the various emotional systems to globally influence and tune both the forebrain and brainstem. Finally, we address implications of these concepts for what is currently understood about consciousness, underlining the need for somewhat more humility within consciousness studies about our current level of understanding of consciousness in the brain, combined with a deeper appreciation of the intrinsic connections between emotion and consciousness. One hopes that more concerted empirical interest in structures underneath the thalamus, combined with a deeper appreciation for the fundamental role that organismic and social value must have in bootstrapping awareness in the developing brain, would begin more widely to influence the fundamental lines of neuroscientific research in both emotion studies and consciousness studies. (shrink)