Reasoning under uncertainty, that is, making judgements with only partial knowledge, is a major theme in artificial intelligence. Professor Paris provides here an introduction to the mathematical foundations of the subject. It is suited for readers with some knowledge of undergraduate mathematics but is otherwise self-contained, collecting together the key results on the subject, and formalising within a unified framework the main contemporary approaches and assumptions. The author has concentrated on giving clear mathematical formulations, analyses, justifications and consequences of (...) the main theories about uncertain reasoning, so the book can serve as a textbook for beginners or as a starting point for further basic research into the subject. It will be welcomed by graduate students and research workers in logic, philosophy, and computer science as a textbook for beginners, a starting point for further basic research into the subject, and not least, an account of how mathematics and artificial intelligence can complement and enrich each other. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAlthough formative of modern value theory, the moral beauty view—which states that moral virtue is beautiful and moral vice is ugly—is now mostly neglected by philosophers. The two contemporary defences of the view mostly capitalize on its intuitive attractiveness, but to little avail: such considerations hardly convince sceptics of what is nowadays a rather unpopular view. Historically, the view was supported by thought experiments; and although these greatly increase its plausibility, they also raise empirical questions, which they leave unanswered. Here, (...) I offer a novel defence of the moral beauty view, capitalizing on empirical evidence and arguing via an inference to the best explanation. (shrink)

This paper concerns the question of how to draw inferences common sensically from uncertain knowledge. Since the early work of Shore and Johnson (1980), Paris and Vencovská (1990), and Csiszár (1989), it has been known that the Maximum Entropy Inference Process is the only inference process which obeys certain common sense principles of uncertain reasoning. In this paper we consider the present status of this result and argue that within the rather narrow context in which we work this complete (...) and consistent mode of uncertain reasoning is actually characterised by the observance of just a single common sense principle (or slogan). (shrink)

I offer a set of sufficient conditions for beauty, drawing on Parsons and Carlson’s account of ‘functional beauty’. First, I argue that their account is flawed, whilst falling short of...

According to immoralists, some artworks are better aesthetically in virtue of their immorality. A. W. Eaton recently offered a novel defence of this view, seeking to overcome shortcomings in previous accounts, thereby occasioning a reconsideration of immoralism. Yet, as I argue in this paper, Eaton’s attempt is unsuccessful, insofar as it consists partly of inadequately supported claims, and partly—and more interestingly, albeit paradoxically––of covert moralist assumptions that are, eo ipso, incompatible with immoralism. I then turn to a parallel debate in (...) ethics concerning the possibility of admirable immorality, suggesting that a consideration of the state of that debate further supports my argument against immoralism. I close by suggesting some strategies by which immoralists may offer a rejoinder, although I note that their prospects are rather dim, not least because available defences of immoralism and similar positions all seem to share the same flawed pattern. (shrink)

Ugliness is a neglected topic in contemporary analytic aesthetics. This is regrettable given that this topic is not just genuinely fascinating, but could also illuminate other areas in the field, seeing as ugliness, albeit unexplored, does feature rather prominently in several debates in aesthetics. This paper articulates a ‘deformity-related’ conception of ugliness. Ultimately, I argue that deformity, understood in a certain way, and displeasure, jointly suffice for ugliness. First, I motivate my proposal, by locating a ‘deformity-related’ conception of ugliness in (...) aesthetic tradition, offering examples in support, and rejecting related alternative suggestions. Second, I argue that the proposal boasts considerable merits. Not only does it capture much of what we ordinarily think of as ugly, but it also comprises an objective criterion for ugliness, offers unity and comprehensiveness, and is informative and explanatorily potent. Third, I discuss a number of objections, thereby demonstrating that the proposal withstands reflective scrutiny. (shrink)

This paper is a sequel to an earlier result of the authors that in making inferences from certain probabilistic knowledge bases the maximum entropy inference process, ME, is the only inference process respecting “common sense.” This result was criticized on the grounds that the probabilistic knowledge bases considered are unnatural and that ignorance of dependence should not be identified with statistical independence. We argue against these criticisms and also against the more general criticism that ME is representation dependent. In a (...) final section, however, we provide a criticism of our own of ME, and of inference processes in general, namely that they fail to satisfy compactness. (shrink)

We have all heard people say ‘Beauty is only skin-deep’, or ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’: our culture promulgates a conception of beauty as subjective, superficial, and independent of other values like moral goodness or knowledge and understanding. Yet our taste in beauty affects many aspects of our lives, sometimes playing a decisive – and often detrimental – role in areas as wide-ranging as our identity and self-esteem, our morally salient decisions, and our relationship to the environment. (...) This presents us with a choice: we can either ignore the facts – leaving our conception of beauty unchanged and allowing our taste to influence much in our lives while either not acknowledging such influence, or perhaps seeking to reprimand it; or we can take the power of beauty seriously and seek to harmonise our taste with our values. I argue for the latter option and propose a way of bringing beauty and taste in line with what matters to us using the notion of functional beauty. Adopting this strategy, I suggest, can have a powerful – and positive – impact on our self-esteem and wellbeing, our relationship to others, as well as our attitudes towards the environment. (shrink)

There is a tendency in contemporary (analytic) aesthetics to consider- ably restrict the scope of things that can be beautiful or ugly. This peculiarly modern tendency is holding back progress in aesthetics and robbing it of its potential contribution to other domains of inquiry. One view that has suffered neglect as a result of this tendency is the moral beauty view, whereby the moral virtues are beautiful and the moral vices are ugly. This neglect stems from an assumption to the (...) effect that virtues and vices simply cannot be beautiful or ugly. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it develops an account of form, under which, it argues, possession of form suffices for an object’s candidature for beauty and ugliness. Second, it argues that, under the foregoing proposal, the moral beauty view turns out to be a coherent position, and so should be taken seriously in both aesthetics and ethics. (shrink)

We examine the closure conditions of the probabilistic consequence relation of Hawthorne and Makinson, specifically the outstanding question of completeness in terms of Horn rules, of their proposed (finite) set of rules O. We show that on the contrary no such finite set of Horn rules exists, though we are able to specify an infinite set which is complete.

We give an account of some relationships between the principles of Constant and Atom Exchangeability and various generalizations of the Principle of Instantial Relevance within the framework of Inductive Logic. In particular we demonstrate some surprising and somewhat counterintuitive dependencies of these relationships on ostensibly unimportant parameters, such as the number of predicates in the overlying language.

Pure Inductive Logic is the study of rational probability treated as a branch of mathematical logic. This monograph, the first devoted to this approach, brings together the key results from the past seventy years, plus the main contributions of the authors and their collaborators over the last decade, to present a comprehensive account of the discipline within a single unified context.

This paper corrects three widely held misunderstandings about Maxent when used in common sense reasoning: That it is language dependent; That it produces objective facts; That it subsumes, and so is at least as untenable as, the paradox-ridden Principle of Insufficient Reason.

The opinion of Mr. Justice Francis of the English High Court which denied the parents of Charlie Gard, who had been born with an extremely rare mutation of a genetic disease, the right to take their child to the United States for a proposed experimental treatment occasioned world wide attention including that of the Pope, President Trump, and the US Congress. The case raise anew a debate as old as the foundation of Western medicine on who should decide and on (...) what standard when there is a conflict between a family and the treating physicians over a possible treatment. This paper will explore the different approaches of the British and American courts on the issue and the various proposals from that of John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice to a processed-based approach for resolving such disputes. As carefully crafted as the opinion of Mr Justice Nicholas Francis in the Gard case proved to be, it left commentators unsatisfied. A widespread criticism, captured in an article by Michael Dougherty in The National Review was for the state to ‘get out of the way of the parents trying to act in the best interests of the child’.1 Although he conceded the parents could be adding to the suffering of the child by taking Charlie to America for an experimental therapy and agreed that such a choice ‘may be the wrong decision,’ in Dougherty’s view, it should still be ‘their decision’. Dougherty’s stand was the popular response to the question of ‘Who should decide?’ It fails, however, to propose any rationale for the decision. It provided no norms, no standards and no guidelines for the parents. Their motive could equally well be indifference to the suffering of the child as concern for his well-being. Furthermore, even good, loving parents may make …. (shrink)

Linda Zagzebski recently put forward a new theory, moral exemplarism, that is meant to provide an alternative to theories like consequentialism and deontology, and which proposes to define key moral terms by direct reference to exemplars. The theory’s basic structure is straightforward. A virtuous person is defined as a person like that, where that points to individuals like Leopold Socha, Confucius, Jesus Christ, and so on. A key component of this theory is the function played by the emotions, specifically the (...) emotion of admiration, which helps us identify moral exemplars, inspires our emulation of them, and grounds moral motivation. In other words, admiration tracks persons like that. The aim of this article is to show that unless moral exemplarism recognises and incorporates an aesthetic dimension to morality, as did, for instance, eighteenth-century sentimentalists by recognising the categories of moral beauty and ugliness, the theory suffers important theoretical difficulties, whilst failing to yield some of the theoretical merits that it boasts. To this end, I will cast doubt on the prominent role accorded to the emotion of admiration for morality, arguing that it has to either be qualified as a specific kind of admiration––namely that which takes the beautiful as its object––or be replaced altogether with the affective response to the beautiful, a mark of which is pleasure or delight in the contemplation of an object. In short, an aesthetics of character is necessary in order to properly theorise the affective and motivational components of morality under an exemplarist framework. (shrink)

Considerable progress in personality and social psychology has been largely ignored by philosophers, many of whom still remain sceptical concerning whether the conception of character presupposed by virtue theory is descriptively adequate. Here, I employ the five-factor model of personality, currently the consensus view in personality psychology, to respond to a strong reading of the situationist challenge, whereby most people lack dispositions that are both cross-situationally consistent and temporally stable. I show that situationists rely on a false dichotomy between character (...) traits and situations, and that evidence supports the empirical adequacy of the sorts of character traits presupposed by virtue ethics. Additionally, I suggest that the personality traits of the five-factor model are relevant to virtue theory, in so far as they are malleable, morally salient, and seem to structurally parallel Aristotelian virtues and vices. Thus, contra situationism, the five-factor model supports the descriptive adequacy of a virtue-theoretical framework. (shrink)

In What Is Literature? Sartre claims, "One does not write for slaves."1 This takes place in the context of an argument Sartre makes in claiming literature is an appeal to the freedom of others.2 Furthermore, the acts of reading and writing are collaborative occasions that invent and re-invent the world by disclosing it and creating it.3 It is important to be precise about what Sartre believes must be presupposed in order for literature to function. The force of committed literature is (...) not propaganda that attempts to control the reader; it only comes about from the a priori existence of free subjects. Thus, Sartre notes, "The book does not serve my freedom; it requires it. Indeed, one cannot address oneself to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 424-425 [Access article in PDF] Martin Beck Matustík. Jürgen Habermas: A Philosophical-Political Profile. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001. Pp. xxxvii + 341. Cloth, $85.00. Paper, $29.95.Martin Beck Matustík's Jürgen Habermas is arguably the most exciting contribution to critical theory debates and scholarship in the last decade. Not only does it provide an original and convincing portrayal of Habermas's life (...) and work to date, it shows Matustík as one of the pre-eminent twenty first-century critical theorists in his own right. And it confirms for radical social theorists that a confrontation with Habermas remains a productive encounter, for as with all of the greatest figures in the history of philosophy, we learn as much from his mistakes as from his successes.Matustík's brilliant innovation is to literally invent a new genre of philosophical biography. Studying the relationship between Habermas's life and his writings, Matustík distinguishes between authoring (the dramatic situations of one's life) and authorship (one's theoretical and political oeuvre). Taken separately, both Habermas's authoring and authorship demonstrate huge, sometimes culpable, blindnesses and aporias. Combined, they show him to be one of the most nuanced and provocative intellectuals of our age.Habermas's authorship is quite well known and academically influential, resulting recently in what some have called a critical theory industry. (Matustík previously explored this authorship in Postnational Identity: Critical Theory and Existential Philosophy in Habermas, Kierkegaard, and Havel [Guilford, 1993].) Through a fascinating account of his well-known major works combined with many lesser known (and untranslated) ones such as the Kleine Politische Schriften, Matustík convincingly describes Habermas's oeuvreas an integration of "the constitutional needs of 1945 with the revolutionary core of 1968, while searching for an audience and the procedurally supported life forms that would receive this historical integration" (91). Matustík's reconstruction of the existential dimension of Habermas's communicative turn continues to challenge more conservative third-generation critical theorists as well as those discontents who merely focus on his formalistic and legalistic turn since the publication of the monumental Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns. Left here, Jürgen Habermas would already constitute a major contribution.But all is not left here; the bulk of the text engages the dramatic, generational profiles that comprise Habermas's heretofore underthematized authoring, including:his "existentially motivated philosophical birthday," May 8, 1945;his 1953 public break with Heidegger, publishing "Mit Heidegger gegen Heidegger denken";his participation in the anti-nuclear movement of the late 1950s;his "break" with the student movement after Benno Ohnesorg's murder by Berlin police in 1967;his involvement in the controversies around the German Autumn in 1977; andhis qualified support for the Gulf War in 1991, and then again for the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo/a.In the connection between authoring and authorship, Habermas's true richness as an intellectual emerges. For he has been involved in an intricate dance between what Matustík calls "learning by disaster" and "blindness by disaster" that captures the true heart of communicative ethics and critical social theory for a skeptical age. First his blindness: [Habermas] says yes only to those aspects of the student movement that fit within his horizon.... He misses the core of the worldwide student movements, the core inspired by the postcolonial turn and its constitutive liberation struggles by various oppressed gender, sex, race, and economic classes. His partial no to the student movement expresses his own blindness to this main student challenge. His no is born from his blindness by disaster—his blindness by the light of liberation in 1945. (252, italics in original) Still, from as early as 1945 Habermas's life is also marked by a constantly recurring struggle with "learning by disaster," for he is indeed cognizant of the possible invasion of communication by the "monstrously" or "traumatically" unspeakable (Auschwitz). Matustík sees Habermas's writings and profile as a form of witnessing to the disasters of the traumatic past... (shrink)

The issue of physician refusal of requested treatment has fueled a two-pronged debate in our society-one on the meaning of futility and the other on the limits of patient autonomy. The latter is a genuinely philosophic dispute; the former, it seems, is a modern relapse into nominalism.It is not the meaning of a word, but the moral basis for the actions of the par-ticipants that should be the focus of our attention, Yet the medical literature distracts us with articles titled (...) “Medical Futility: Its Meaning and Ethical Implica-tions” “The Problem with Futility” “Who Defines Futility?,” “The Illusion of Futility,” and even “Beyond Futility.”The history of the futility debate, which was launched by a 1983 study of Bedell and Delbanco that demonstrated the ineffectiveness of CPR for certain catego-ries of patients, has been documented elsewhere. Here we will inquire if the term, and its rapid intrusion into the medical lexicon, serves a useful purpose or if, as Truog suggested, we would all be better off if this new buzzword were jettisoned. (shrink)

¿De qué forma es posible el pensamiento auténtico, como un acto libre y creador, en el mundo actual? Tal pregunta, arranque de este libro, es elaborada por Carlos París desde una doble perspectiva: desde la “agresión” que supone la actual “sociedad de masas programadas” -cuya capacidad de absorción engloba y manipula la misma “protesta”- y desde las exigencias de la racionalidad científica actual. Nacido en Bilbao en 1925, y catedrático desde 1951 en las Universidades de Santiago, Valencia y Autónoma de (...) Madrid, el profesor París ha sido testigo de excepción -además de activo protagonista- de la evolución experimentada por la filosofía española en el curso de los últimos veinte años. La introducción en nuestro país de la “filosofía científica”, que tanto habría de contribuir a la higienización del ambiente filosófico tras de su prolongado enrarecimiento por la escolástica de la postguerra, tuvo en él a uno de sus promotores más caracterizados. Ha sabido conjugar el interés por los problemas de la ciencia y la técnica modernas con un interés parejo por los problemas del hombre y la sociedad, como lo acreditan sus libros y publicaciones en revistas. Los trabajos incluidos en esta obra dan una idea de su investigación en una amplia gama de dominios, que discurren desde la antropología filosófica hasta la metodología científica. (shrink)

Ten years of educational reform have not brought dramatic improvements. In Ideology and Educational Reform, David Paris traces the underlying ideological problems that make genuine reform difficult. These include different and often conflicting beliefs concerning the proper role of public education as well as the public's natural ambivalence about schools as government agencies.Paris describes three major themes in public education—common school, human capital, and clientelism. He critically evaluates current policies and proposed reforms associated with each of these topics, (...) including moral education, the school-economy relationship, school choice, and the delivery of social services. Paris proposes better ways for dealing with ideological problems in school practice, and he suggests appropriate directions for policy reform. (shrink)

La historia personal y profesional de Carlos París discurre al hilo de la convulsa historia de España del último medio siglo, y la narra con una honestidad de la que muy pocos pueden hacer gala. Así, sin ira y sin tapujos, describe, por ejemplo, cómo pasó de una adhesión inicial a presupuestos falangistas a ser candidato del PCE, valorando cada etapa y cada motivo de cambio con un gran sentido crítico. Por su pluma desfilan también personajes fundamentales en la vida (...) española de los últimos cincuenta años con quienes Carlos París ha tenido una sólida relación, como Manuel Fraga, Javier Solana, Manuel Castells, Rosa Regàs, Ricardo de la Cierva, José Antonio Maravall, José María Valverde, Nicolás Sartorius y un largo etcétera. De la lectura de estas memorias se desprende, en fin, el retrato de una gran figura intelectual y humana que jamás se ha limitado a ser convidado de piedra ni en su país ni en el tiempo que le ha tocado vivir.Carlos París (Bilbao, 1925) es Catedrático Emérito de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, en la que fundó su Departamento de filosofía y de cuya Facultad de Filosofía y Letras fue elegido decano en las primeras elecciones. Es Doctor Honoris Causa por la Universidad de Valencia y ha sido Presidente de la Sociedad Española de Filosofía y del Ateneo Científico, Literario y Artístico de Madrid. Su obra ha sido objeto de diversos estudios y congresos internacionales, y recientemente se ha creado un Foro dedicado al análisis y difusión de su pensamiento. Hay que destacar, sobre todo, sus ensayos: Física y filosofía, 1952; Crítica de la civilización nuclear, 1985 o Fantasía y razón moderna-Don Quijote, Odiseo y Fausto, 2001, entre muchos otros; y también sus obras de creación literaria: la novela Bajo constelaciones burlonas (1981) o el libro de relatos La machina speculatrix-Cuatro sarcasmos sobre el mundo actual (1989). (shrink)

Este trabajo es una reconstrucción hipotética de la desaparecida iglesia románica medieval de Samper de Calanda, que se basa en las fuentes documentales conservadas y en los materiales procedentes de su fábrica, reutilizados en la iglesia barroca actual. Destacan sendos dinteles de puerta insertos en las paredes norte y sur, cuyo diseño se debe al arquitecto Giacomo de Vignola, que fechamos en el siglo xvii. Palabras clave: iglesias románicas, iglesias barrocas, Giacomo Vignola, arquitectura renacentista, siglo XVII This work is a (...) hypothetical rebuilding of the missing medieval Romanesque church of Samper de Calanda, wich is based on preserved sources of information and material from its masonry, which have been reused in the existent church, which was built during the Baroque period. We must speak about two separate lintels in north and south walls, designed by architect Giacomo de Vignola, dated in the 17thcentury. Key words: Romanesque churches, Baroque churches, Giacomo Vignola, Renaissance architecture. (shrink)

Philosophical aesthetics has recently been expanding its purview—with exciting work on everyday aesthetics, somaesthetics, gustatory aesthetics, and the aesthetics of imperceptibilia like mathematics and human character—reclaiming territory that was lost during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the discipline begun concentrating almost exclusively on the philosophy of art and restricted the aesthetic realm to the distally perceptible. Yet there remains considerable reluctance towards acknowledging the aesthetic character of many of these objects. This raises an important question—partly made salient again by (...) the ongoing expansion of the aesthetic domain, and partly by the fact that many still seem resistant to this aesthetic diversification—which aestheticians seem to avoid: what, if anything, constrains the scope of beauty or the aesthetic? I argue that form, construed as comprising a degree, however minimal, of experienceable complexity, is necessary and sufficient for an object's candidature for the possession of aesthetic properties. Such a condition serves to discriminate between attempts to expand the scope of the aesthetic that are legitimate and those that are not. If correct, my view suggests that the aesthetic realm, though not limitless, is very broad indeed—but this, I think, is as it should be. (shrink)

We present six significant open problems in Pure Inductive Logic, together with their background and current status, with the intention of raising awareness and leading ultimately to their resolution.

We answer some problems set by Priest in [11] and [12], in particular refuting Priest's Conjecture that all LP-models of Th(N) essentially arise via congruence relations on classical models of Th(N). We also show that the analogue of Priest's Conjecture for I δ₀ + Exp implies the existence of truth definitions for intervals [0,a] ⊂ₑ M ⊨ I δ₀ + Exp in any cut [0,a] ⊂e K ⊆ M closed under successor and multiplication.

We investigate the relative probabilistic support afforded by the combination of two analogies based on possibly different, structural similarity (as opposed to e.g. shared predicates) within the context of Pure Inductive Logic and under the assumption of Language Invariance. We show that whilst repeated analogies grounded on the same structural similarity only strengthen the probabilistic support this need not be the case when combining analogies based on different structural similarities. That is, two analogies may provide less support than each would (...) individually. (shrink)

This essay will analyze a single script, the television commercial that advertises the Fiat 500L in the United States, released in 2013. This commercial has stimulated wide debate both in Italy and the United States. It was generally well received by the press, even if it did attract some criticism on the part of those who simply read it as the latest version of a series of stereotypes of Italian mores. Without neglecting the functional dynamic of advertising, this analysis will (...) focus in particular on the decisive role played by Italianness and the Italian language. (shrink)

In the quest for identity and healing, what belongs to the humanities and what to clinical psychology? Ginette Paris uses cogent and passionate argument as well as stories from patients to teach us to accept that the human psyche seeks to destroy relationships and lives as well as to sustain them. This is very hard to accept which is why, so often, the body has the painful and dispiriting job of showing us what our psyche refuses to see. In (...) jargon-free language, the author describes her own story of taking a turn downwards and inwards in the search for a metaphorical personal 'death'. If this kind of mortality is not attended to, then more literal bodily ailments and actual death itself can result. Paris engages with one of the main dilemmas of contemporary psychology and psychotherapy: how to integrate findings and insights from neuroscience and medicine into an approach to healing founded upon activation of the imagination. At present, she demonstrates, what is happening is damaging to both science and imagination. (shrink)

Neuroscience and psychiatry -- Psychotherapy and psychiatry -- Diagnosis in psychiatry -- The boundaries of mental disorders -- Mood and mental illness -- Psychiatry's problem children -- Evidence-based psychiatry -- Psychiatric drugs: miracles and limitations -- Talk therapies: the need for a unified method -- Psychiatry in practice -- Training psychiatrists -- Psychiatry and society -- The future of psychiatry.

Iconic signs are overrepresented in the vocabularies of young deaf children, but it is unclear why. It is possible that iconic signs are easier for children to learn, but it is also possible that adults use iconic signs in child-directed signing in ways that make them more learnable, either by using them more often than less iconic signs or by lengthening them. We analyzed videos of naturalistic play sessions between parents and deaf children aged 9–60 months. To determine whether iconic (...) signs are overrepresented during child-directed signing, we compared the iconicity of actual parent productions to the iconicity of simulated vocabularies designed to estimate chance levels of iconicity. For almost all dyads, parent sign types and tokens were not more iconic than the simulated vocabularies, suggesting that parents do not select more iconic signs during child-directed signing. To determine whether iconic signs are more likely to be lengthened, we ran a linear regression predicting sign duration, and found an interaction between age and iconicity: while parents of younger children produced non-iconic and iconic signs with similar durations, parents of older children produced non-iconic signs with shorter durations than iconic signs. Thus, parents sign more quickly with older children than younger children, and iconic signs appear to resist that reduction in sign length. It is possible that iconic signs are perceptually available longer, and their availability is a candidate hypothesis as to why iconic signs are overrepresented in children’s vocabularies. (shrink)