The case for the independence of featural processing supports Merge and FLMP alike. The target article's criticisms of the latter model are founded on misunderstanding its application to natural language processing. In fact, the main difference in the functional properties of the models is the FLMP's ability to account for graded perceptual experience. @T3:It is startling to be informed that beliefs you have held for a quarter of a century are indefensible and implausible. So it comes as a relief to (...) discover that it was all just a big misunderstanding. (shrink)

We present a theory of conversation comprehension in which a line of the conversation is “understood” by relating it to one of seven possible “points”. We define these points, and present examples where it seems plausible that the failure to “get the point” would indeed constitute a failure to understand the conversation. We argue that the recognition of such points must proceed in both a top down and bottom up fashion, and thus is likely to be quite complicated. Finally, we (...) see the processing of information in the conversation to be dependent upon which point classification the user decides upon. (shrink)

The inductive category formation framework, an influential set of theories of learning in psychology and artificial intelligence, is deeply flawed. In this framework a set of necessary and sufficient features is taken to define a category. Such definitions are not functionally justified, are not used by people, and are not inducible by a learning system. Inductive theories depend on having access to all and only relevant features, which is not only impossible but begs a key question in learning. The crucial (...) roles of other cognitive processes (such as explanation and credit assignment) are ignored or oversimplified. Learning necessarily involves pragmatic considerations that can only be handled by complex cognitive processes.We provide an alternative framework for learning according to which category definitions must be based on category function. The learning system invokes other cognitive processes to accomplish difficult tasks, makes inferences, analyses and decides among potential features, and specifies how and when categories are to be generated and modified. We also examine the methodological underpinnings of the two approaches and compare their motivations. (shrink)

The present issue is the beginning of a new journal from various sub-disciplines and paradigms in order – Cognitive Systems Research – which we have to construct a coherent picture of how the various developed in response to what we perceive to be an pieces fit together overall. Such a synthesis is unfilled niche in the current literature in the areas of essential to the discovery of designs for general Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence.

Can we be held morally responsible for our actions? Yes, says Daniel Dennett. No, says Gregg Caruso. Reader, you decide.

Some thinkers argue that our best scientific theories about the world prove that free will is an illusion. Others disagree. The concept of free will is profoundly important to our self-understanding, our interpersonal relationships, and our moral and legal practices. If it turns out that no one is ever free and morally responsible, what would that mean for society, morality, meaning, and the law? Just Deserts brings together two philosophers – Daniel C. Dennett and Gregg D. Caruso – to (...) debate their respective views on free will, moral responsibility, and legal punishment. In three extended conversations, Dennett and Caruso present their arguments for and against the existence of free will and debate their implications. Dennett argues that the kind of free will required for moral responsibility is compatible with determinism – for him, self-control is key; we are not responsible for becoming responsible, but are responsible for staying responsible, for keeping would-be puppeteers at bay. Caruso takes the opposite view, arguing that who we are and what we do is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control, and because of this we are never morally responsible for our actions in the sense that would make us truly deserving of blame and praise, punishment and reward. These two leading thinkers introduce the concepts central to the debate about free will and moral responsibility by way of an entertaining, rigorous and sometimes heated philosophical dialogue. What emerges is a clear account of the latest thinking on free will, and what is at stake for our moral and legal practices. (shrink)

This book features a unique collection of dialogues with fourteen notable scholars on their opinions and observations about John Dewey, a renowned educational philosopher of the twentieth century. The book explores varying views about John Dewey, his philosophy, and his educational theory. In revealing positive, sometimes negative, occasionally surprising, and consistently insightful viewpoints, the author seeks to enable the reader to reflect on the primary question: does John Dewey’s consequential educational philosophy have an important role in twenty-first century education and (...) in nurturing and sustaining democratic ideals? (shrink)

This review discusses the possible role of α‐tubulin detyrosination, a reversible post‐translational modification that occurs at the protein's C‐terminus, in cellular morphogenesis. Higher eukaryotic cells possess a cyclic post‐translational mechanism by which dynamic microtubules are differentiated from their more stable counterparts; a tubulin‐specific carboxypeptidase detyrosinates tubulin protomers within microtubules, while the reverse reaction, tyrosination, is performed on the soluble protomer by a second tubulin‐specific enzyme, tubulin tyrosine ligase. In general, the turnover of microtubules in undifferentiated, proliferating cells is so rapid (...) that the microtubules accumulate very little detyrosinated tubulin; that is, they are enriched in tyrosinated tubulin. However, an early event common to at least three well‐studied morphogenetic events myogenesis, neuritogenesis, and directed cell motility is the elaboration of a polarized array of stable microtubules that become enriched in detyrosinated tubulin. The formation of this specialized array of microtubules in specific locations in cells undergoing morphogenesis suggests that it plays an important role in generating cellular asymmetries. (shrink)

Having accepted the invitation to write a regular column about art from Elizabeth Pochoda, then the literary editor of The Nation magazine, Arthur Danto wrote a lot of criticism. Danto wrests himself free of the history of art criticism when, in writing about recent predecessors, he claims that their critical approaches must be understood as artifacts of their historical time. The lack of an autonomous history of art criticism, one that would make current practice intelligible in terms of its own (...) history, should puzzle us. Many other genres of criticism plainly have histories that shape their current practice in terms both of subject and method. The value of Danto's essay as criticism is exhausted in its relation to the moment of the art world in which it participated. (shrink)

This paper challenges the presumed triumph of laboratory life in the history of twentieth-century biomedical research through an exploration of the relationships between laboratory, clinic, and field in the regional understanding and treatment of allergy in America. In the early establishment of allergy clinics, many physicians opted to work closely with botanists knowledgeable about the local flora in the region to develop pollen extracts in desensitization treatments, rather than rely upon pharmaceutical companies that had adopted a principle of standardized vaccines (...) beholden to bacteriology that gave no thought to the particularities of place where their products were to be sold. Natural historical sciences like plant ecology and systematics furnished important knowledge, resources, and practices in establishing a medical marketplace for allergy in America. And botanists similarly profited from biomedicine and allergic bodies in extending their network of knowledge about the plant world. (shrink)

In confronting the insalubrious ramifications of globalization, human rights scholars and activists have argued for greater national and international responsibility pursuant to the human right to health. Codified seminally in Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the right to health proclaims that states bear an obligation to realize the “highest attainable standard” of health for all. However, in pressing for the highest attainable standard for each individual, the right to health has been ineffective in (...) compelling states to address burgeoning inequalities in underlying determinants of health, focusing on individual medical treatments at the expense of public health systems. This article contends that the paradigm of individual health, focused on a right to individual medical care, is incapable of responding to health inequities in a globalized world and thereby hampers efforts to operationalize health rights through public health systems. While the right to health has evolved in international discourse over time, this evolution of the individual right to health cannot address the harmful societal ramifications of economic globalization. Rather than relying solely upon an individual right to medical care, envisioning a collective right to public health – a right applied at the societal level to address underlying determinants of health – would alleviate many of the injurious health inequities of globalization. (shrink)

In confronting the insalubrious ramifications of globalization, human rights scholars and activists have argued for greater national and international responsibility pursuant to the human right to health. Codified seminally in Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the right to health proclaims that states bear an obligation to realize the “highest attainable standard” of health for all. However, in pressing for the highest attainable standard for each individual, the right to health has been ineffective in (...) compelling states to address burgeoning inequalities in underlying determinants of health, focusing on individual medical treatments at the expense of public health systems. This article contends that the paradigm of individual health, focused on a right to individual medical care, is incapable of responding to health inequities in a globalized world and thereby hampers efforts to operationalize health rights through public health systems. While the right to health has evolved in international discourse over time, this evolution of the individual right to health cannot address the harmful societal ramifications of economic globalization. Rather than relying solely upon an individual right to medical care, envisioning a collective right to public health – a right applied at the societal level to address underlying determinants of health – would alleviate many of the injurious health inequities of globalization. (shrink)

John Greene has dismissed the evolutionary ethics of Simpson as a case in which science was “only a tool, a weapon, in defense of positions that were essentially religious and philosophical.”57 This position adopts an amorphous view of science, in which a scientific theory can be construed to support practically any rhetorical position. The relationship between theory and rhetoric, however, is more complex; it is interactive, with the theory and the rhetoric influencing and supporting one another. It is no coincidence (...) that Allee, Emerson, and Simpson all arrived at a biological basis of democracy and a naturalistic ethics during a period when the future of world politics and man's own morality were in question. Allee's commitment to world peace certainly antedated his theory of sociality, just as Simpson's commitment to democracy undoubtedly preceded his evolutionary views.By adopting a particular theory, however, the biologist necessarily imposes constraints on the corresponding rhetoric. Allee and Emerson could not, for example, have stressed the importance of the individual in democracy, given the orientation and framework of their biological research. There were differences among the social philosophies of Allee, Emerson, and Simpson; these differences depended, in part, on the specific evolutionary metaphors to which they subscribed. Allee's ideas with respect to cooperation were distinct from Emerson's, and both men differed strongly from Simpson on the role of the individual in evolution. The Chicago school was united by a conceptual framework that emphasized the population as the unit of selection, and the importance of cooperation in nature. But cooperation could play many roles: as a unifying principle for a theory of sociality, as an integrating mechanism in physiological functionalism, and as a biological source of hope for a society in the grips of a world war. (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)

Over the past several decades, philosophers have grown to recognize the role played by frameworks and models in the construction of human knowledge. Further, they have paid increasing attention to the origins of knowing processes in social and historical contexts of human practical activities, and to social transformation of the frameworks over time. In a series of original essays by prominent philosophers, Constructivism and Practice advances the understanding of the role of construction and model creation, reflects on the relationship of (...) these models to social practices, and considers whether our modes of knowing themselves have a history. These questions are thoughtfully considered in the light of the 'historical epistemology' first developed by Marx Wartofsky. Contributions by Joseph Margolis; Tom Rockmore; Lisa Dolling; Jaakko Hintikka; Anton Alterman; Stephen Toulmin; Michel Paty; John Stachel; Gregg Horowitz; Michael Kelly; Tom Huhn; Barbara Savedoff; Saul Fisher; Sybil Schwarzenbach; John Pittman; Raphael Sassower; and MaryAnn Cutter. (shrink)

Arthur C. Danto is unique among philosophers for the breadth of his philosophical mind, his eloquent writing style, and the generous spirit embodied in all his work. Any collection of essays on his philosophy has to engage him on all these levels, because this is how he has always engaged the world, as a philosopher and person. In this volume, renowned philosophers and art historians revisit Danto's theories of art, action, and history, and the depth of his innovation as a (...) philosopher of culture. Essays explore the importance of Danto's philosophy and criticism for the contemporary art world, along with his theories of perception, action, historical knowledge, and, most importantly for Danto himself, the conceptual connections among these topics. Danto himself continues the conversation by adding his own commentary to each essay, extending the debate with characteristic insight, graciousness, and wit. Contributors include Frank Ankersmit, Hans Belting, Stanley Cavell, Donald Davidson, Lydia Goehr, Gregg Horowitz, Philip Kitcher, Daniel Immerwahr, Daniel Herwitz, and Michael Kelly, testifying to the far-reaching effects of Danto's thought. Danto brought to philosophy the artist's unfettered imagination, and his ideas about postmodern culture are virtual road maps of the present art world. This volume pays tribute to both Danto's brilliant capacity to move between philosophy and contemporary culture and his pathbreaking achievements in philosophy, art history, and art criticism. (shrink)

In our life with science, we trust experts; we form judgements by inference from past evidence. We conduct ourselves very differently in the aesthetic domain. We avoid deferring to aesthetic experts. We form our judgements through direct perception of particulars rather than through inference. Why the difference? I suggest that we avoid aesthetic testimony and aesthetic inference, not because they’re unusable, but because we have adopted social norms to avoid them. Aesthetic appreciation turns out to be something like a game. (...) We have laid down certain rules and restrictions in order to shape a kind of activity we cherish. And aesthetic properties turn out to be a kind of social construct. Much like the goal of a game, they are constituted in part by our obedience to certain rules. The norms of aesthetic life are different from those of science because our purposes are different. We engage in science to get the right answers; we engage in aesthetic appreciation to be absorbed in the activity of the sensuous perception of particulars. Our aesthetic practices are a constructed shelter from science; they restore to us a small domain where we may once again engage in our own sensuous perception of particulars. (shrink)

Since the mid-1980s, Arthur C. Danto has been increasingly concerned with the implications of the demise of modernism. Out of the wake of modernist art, Danto discerns the emergence of a radically pluralistic art world. His essays illuminate this novel art world as well as the fate of criticism within it. As a result, Danto has crafted the most compelling philosophy of art criticism since Clement Greenberg. Gregg Horowitz and Tom Huhn analyze the constellation of philosophical and critical elements (...) in Danto's new- Hegelian art theory. In a provocative encounter, they employ themes from Kantian aesthetics to elucidate the continuing persistence of taste in shaping even this most sophisticated philosophy of art. (shrink)

One of the very few accounts in English of German idealism, this ambitious work advances and revises our understanding of both the history and the thought of the classical period of German philosophy. As he traces the structure and evolution of idealism as a doctrine, Frederick Beiser exposes a strong objective, or realist, strain running from Kant to Hegel and identifies the crucial role of the early romantics—Hölderlin, Schlegel, and Novalis—as the founders of absolute idealism.

C. Stephen Evans explains and defends Kierkegaard's account of moral obligations as rooted in God's commands, the fundamental command being `You shall love your neighbour as yourself'. The work will be of interest not only to those interested in Kierkegaard, but also to those interested in the relation between ethics and religion, especially questions about whether morality can or must have a religious foundation. As well as providing a comprehensive reading of Kierkegaard as an ethical thinker, Evans puts him into (...) conversation with contemporary moral theorists. Kierkegaard's divine command theory is shown to be an account that safeguards human flourishing, as well as protecting the proper relations between religion and state in a pluralistic society. (shrink)

C. D. C. Reeve develops a powerful new account of the age-old argument over whether the just are happier than the unjust, drawing from a new understanding of Plato's conception of philosophy.

_Verificationism_ is the first comprehensive history of a concept that dominated philosophy and scientific methodology between the 1930s and the 1960s. The verificationist principle - the concept that a belief with no connection to experience is spurious - is the most sophisticated version of empiricism. More flexible ideas of verification are now being rehabilitated by a number of philosophers. C.J. Misak surveys the precursors, the main proponents and the rehabilitators. Unlike traditional studies, she follows verificationist theory beyond the demise of (...) positivism to examine its reappearance in the work of modern philosophers. Most interestingly, she argues that despite feminism's strenuous opposition to positivism, verificationist thought is at the heart of much of contemporary feminist philosophy. _Verificationism_ is an excellent assessment of a major and influential system of thought. (shrink)

This article challenges conventional readings of Michel Foucault by examining his fascination with neoliberalism in the late 1970s. Foucault did not critique neoliberalism during this period; rather, he strategically endorsed it. The necessary cause for this approval lies in the broader rehabilitation of economic liberalism in France during the 1970s. The sufficient cause lies in Foucault's own intellectual development: drawing on his long-standing critique of the state as a model for conceptualizing power, Foucault concluded, during the 1970s, that economic liberalism, (...) rather than “discipline,” was modernity's paradigmatic power form. Moreover, this article seeks to clarify the relationship between Foucault's philosophical antihumanism and his assessment of liberalism. Rather than arguing that Foucault's antihumanism precluded a positive appraisal of liberalism, or that the apparent reorientation of his politics in a more liberal direction in the late 1970s entailed a partial retreat from antihumanism, this article contends that Foucault's brief, strategic, and contingent endorsement of liberalism was possible precisely because he saw no incompatibility between antihumanism and liberalism—but only liberalism of the economic variety. Economic liberalism alone, and not its political iteration, was compatible with the philosophical antihumanism that is the hallmark of Foucault's thought. (shrink)