This article focuses on the role of unions and their influence on economic inequality. Section 2 reviews the literature regarding the union effect on wages and wage inequality. Section 3 considers the separate contributions of union power, membership composition, bargaining coordination, and wage policy. Section 4 introduces the distinction between membership and coverage, while the following two sections discuss the impact of union power on earnings inequality when coverage is either exclusive or inclusive. Section 7 discusses the rationale for unions (...) aiming for wage compression while Section 8 estimates how the presence of trade unions has influenced the extent and dynamics of earnings inequality across advanced economies during the 1980s and 1990s. For this purpose indicators have been developed for trends in equality and union presence from different sources. Section 9 concludes. (shrink)

The reason of faith -- Thought and language -- Truth -- The Monologion arguments for the existence of God -- The Proslogion argument for the existence of God -- The divine attributes -- Thinking and speaking about God -- Creation and the word -- The Trinity -- Modality -- Freedom -- Morality -- Incarnation and atonement -- Original sin, grace, and salvation.

In this paper we introduce Dynamic Epistemic Logic, which is alogic for reasoning about information change in a multi-agent system. Theinformation structures we use are based on non-well-founded sets, and canbe conceived as bisimulation classes of Kripke models. On these structures,we define a notion of information change that is inspired by UpdateSemantics (Veltman, 1996). We give a sound and complete axiomatization ofthe resulting logic, and we discuss applications to the puzzle of the dirtychildren, and to knowledge programs.

In this paper, we argue for a theoretical separation of the free-energy principle from Helmholtzian accounts of the predictive brain. The free-energy principle is a theoretical framework capturing the imperative for biological self-organization in information-theoretic terms. The free-energy principle has typically been connected with a Bayesian theory of predictive coding, and the latter is often taken to support a Helmholtzian theory of perception as unconscious inference. If our interpretation is right, however, a Helmholtzian view of perception is incompatible with Bayesian (...) predictive coding under the free-energy principle. We argue that the free energy principle and the ecological and enactive approach to mind and life make for a much happier marriage of ideas. We make our argument based on three points. First we argue that the free energy principle applies to the whole animal–environment system, and not only to the brain. Second, we show that active inference, as understood by the free-energy principle, is incompatible with unconscious inference understood as analagous to scientific hypothesis-testing, the main tenet of a Helmholtzian view of perception. Third, we argue that the notion of inference at work in Bayesian predictive coding under the free-energy principle is too weak to support a Helmholtzian theory of perception. Taken together these points imply that the free energy principle is best understood in ecological and enactive terms set out in this paper. (shrink)

The free energy principle, an influential framework in computational neuroscience and theoretical neurobiology, starts from the assumption that living systems ensure adaptive exchanges with their environment by minimizing the objective function of variational free energy. Following this premise, it claims to deliver a promising integration of the life sciences. In recent work, Markov blankets, one of the central constructs of the free energy principle, have been applied to resolve debates central to philosophy (such as demarcating the boundaries of the mind). (...) The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we trace the development of Markov blankets starting from their standard application in Bayesian networks, via variational inference, to their use in the literature on active inference. We then identify a persistent confusion in the literature between the formal use of Markov blankets as an epistemic tool for Bayesian inference, and their novel metaphysical use in the free energy framework to demarcate the physical boundary between an agent and its environment. Consequently, we propose to distinguish between “Pearl blankets” to refer to the original epistemic use of Markov blankets and “Friston blankets” to refer to the new metaphysical construct. Second, we use this distinction to critically assess claims resting on the application of Markov blankets to philosophical problems. We suggest that this literature would do well in differentiating between two different research programmes: “inference with a model” and “inference within a model.” Only the latter is capable of doing metaphysical work with Markov blankets, but requires additional philosophical premises and cannot be justified by an appeal to the success of the mathematical framework alone. (shrink)

In this paper we study essential hereditary undecidability. Theories with this property are a convenient tool to prove undecidability of other theories. The paper develops the basic facts concerning essentially hereditary undecidability and provides salient examples, like a construction of essentially hereditarily undecidable theories due to Hanf and an example of a rather natural essentially hereditarily undecidable theory strictly below. We discuss the (non-)interaction of essential hereditary undecidability with recursive boolean isomorphism. We develop a reduction relation essential tolerance, or, in (...) the converse direction, lax interpretability that interacts in a good way with essential hereditary undecidability. We introduce the class of $$\Sigma ^0_1$$ Σ 1 0 -friendly theories and show that $$\Sigma ^0_1$$ Σ 1 0 -friendliness is sufficient but not necessary for essential hereditary undecidability. Finally, we adapt an argument due to Pakhomov, Murwanashyaka and Visser to show that there is no interpretability minimal essentially hereditarily undecidable theory. (shrink)

In this paper, we set out to develop a theoretical and conceptual framework for the new field of Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience. This framework should be able to integrate insights from several relevant disciplines: theory on embodied cognition, ecological psychology, phenomenology, dynamical systems theory, and neurodynamics. We suggest that the main task of Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience is to investigate the phenomenon of skilled intentionality from the perspective of the self-organization of the brain-body-environment system, while doing justice to the phenomenology (...) of skilled action. In previous work, we have characterized skilled intentionality as the organism's tendency toward an optimal grip on multiple relevant affordances simultaneously. Affordances are possibilities for action provided by the environment. In the first part of this paper, we introduce the notion of skilled intentionality and the phenomenon of responsiveness to a field of relevant affordances. Second, we use Friston's work on neurodynamics, but embed a very minimal version of his Free Energy Principle in the ecological niche of the animal. Thus amended, this principle is helpful for understanding the embeddedness of neurodynamics within the dynamics of the system “brain-body-landscape of affordances.” Next, we show how we can use this adjusted principle to understand the neurodynamics of selective openness to the environment: interacting action-readiness patterns at multiple timescales contribute to the organism's selective openness to relevant affordances. In the final part of the paper, we emphasize the important role of metastable dynamics in both the brain and the brain-body-environment system for adequate affordance-responsiveness. We exemplify our integrative approach by presenting research on the impact of Deep Brain Stimulation on affordance responsiveness of OCD patients. (shrink)

The concept of affordances is rapidly gaining traction in the philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences. Affordances are opportunities for action provided by the environment. An important open question is whether affordances can be used to explain mental action such as attention, counting, and imagination. In this paper, we critically discuss McClelland’s (‘The Mental Affordance Hypothesis’, 2020, Mind, 129(514), pp. 401–427) mental affordance hypothesis. While we agree that the affordance concept can be fruitfully employed to explain mental action, we argue (...) that McClelland’s mental affordance hypothesis contain remnants of a Cartesian understanding of the mind. By discussing the theoretical framework of the affordance competition hypothesis, we sketch an alternative research program based on the principles of embodied cognition that evades the Cartesian worries. We show how paradigmatic mental acts, such as imagination, counting, and arithmetic, are dependent on sensorimotor interaction with an affording environment. Rather than make a clear distinction between bodily and mental action, the mental affordances highlight the embodied nature of our mental action. We think that in developing our alternative research program on mental affordances, we can maintain many of the excellent insights of McClelland’s account without reintroducing the very distinctions that affordances were supposed to overcome. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with notions of consequence. On the one hand, we study admissible consequence, specifically for substitutions of Σ 1 0 -sentences over Heyting arithmetic . On the other hand, we study preservativity relations. The notion of preservativity of sentences over a given theory is a dual of the notion of conservativity of formulas over a given theory. We show that admissible consequence for Σ 1 0 -substitutions over HA coincides with NNIL -preservativity over intuitionistic propositional logic . (...) Here NNIL is the class of propositional formulas with no nestings of implications to the left . The identical embedding of IPC -derivability into a consequence relation has in many cases a left adjoint. The main tool of the present paper will be an algorithm to compute this left adjoint in the case of NNIL -preservativity. In the last section, we employ the methods developed in the paper to give a characterization the closed fragment of the provability logic of HA. (shrink)

In his _Between Logic and the World_, in the course of presenting his theory of generics, Nickel (Between logic and the world, Oxford University Press, 2016) argues for a theory of characteristicness, or “genericity”, which states that a property is characteristic for a kind if and only if its presence among the members of that kind is explicable by some explanatory domain that recognizes the existence of that kind in the course of engaging the explanatory strategies made available by that (...) explanatory domain. I argue that this notion of genericity is too narrow, excluding properties characteristic for kinds that go unrecognized in such explanatory domains. In particular, Nickel’s theory excludes some characteristic properties of anthropic kinds, such as lilies and cedars, members of which have properties that may be similarly exploited in various human practices despite having divergent geneses. I argue for a generalization of Nickel’s view of genericity where explicability of presence is only one sort of genericity, with others, such as practicability, being possible too. (shrink)

New findings from the neurosciences receive much interest for use in the applied field of education. For the past 15 years, neuroeducation and the application of neuroscience knowledge were seen to have promise, but there is presently some lack of progress. The present paper states that this is due to several factors. Neuromyths are still prevalent, and there is a confusion of tongues between the many neurodisciplines and the domains of behavioral and educational sciences. Second, a focus upon cognitive neuroimaging (...) research has yielded findings that are scientifically relevant, but cannot be used for direct application in the classroom. A third factor pertains to the emphasis which has been on didactics and teaching, whereas the promise of neuroeducation for the teacher may lie more on pedagogical inspiration and support. This article states that the most important knowledge and insights have to do with the notion of brain plasticity; the vision that development is driven by an interaction between a person’s biology and the social system. This helps individuals to select and process information, and to adapt to the personal environment. The paper describes how brain maturation and neuropsychological development extend through the important period of adolescence and emergent adulthood. Over this long period, there is a major development of the Executive Functions that are essential for both cognitive learning, social behavior and emotional processing and, eventually, personal growth. The paper describes the basic neuroscience knowledge and insights – or “neuroscientific literacy” – that the educational professional should have to understand and appreciate the above-described themes. The authors formulate a proposal for four themes of neuroscience content “that every teacher should know.” These four themes are based on the Neuroscience Core Concepts formulated by the Society for Neuroscience. The authors emphasize that integrating neuroscientific knowledge and insights in the field of education should not be a one-way street; attempts directed at improving neuroscientific literacy are a transdisciplinary undertaking. Teacher trainers, experts from the neuroscience fields but also behavioral scientists from applied fields should all contribute to for the educational innovations needed. (shrink)

In this paper, we address the question of how an agent can guide its behavior with respect to aspects of the sociomaterial environment that are not sensorily present. A simple example is how an animal can relate to a food source while only sensing a pheromone, or how an agent can relate to beer, while only the refrigerator is directly sensorily present. Certain cases in which something is absent have been characterized by others as requiring ‘higher’ cognition. An example of (...) this is how during the design process architects can let themselves be guided by the future behavior of visitors to an exhibit they are planning. The main question is what the sociomaterial environment and the skilled agent are like, such that they can relate to each other in these ways. We argue that this requires an account of the regularities in the environment. Introducing the notion of general ecological information, we will give an account of these regularities in terms of constraints, information and the form of life or ecological niche. In the first part of the paper, we will introduce the skilled intentionality framework as conceptualizing a special case of an animal’s informational coupling with the environment namely skilled action. We will show how skilled agents can pick up on the regularities in the environment and let their behavior be guided by the practices in the form of life. This conceptual framework is important for radical embodied and enactive cognitive science, because it allows these increasingly influential paradigms to extend their reach to forms of ‘higher’ cognition such as long-term planning and imagination. (shrink)

Argument schemes are abstractions substantiating the inferential connection between premise(s) and conclusion in argumentative communication. Identifying such conventional patterns of reasoning is essential to the interpretation and evaluation of argumentation. Whether studying argumentation from a theory-driven or data-driven perspective, insight into the actual use of argumentation in communicative practice is essential. Large and reliably annotated corpora of argumentative discourse to quantitatively provide such insight are few and far between. This is all the more true for argument scheme corpora, which tend (...) to suffer from a combination of limited size, poor validation, and the use of ad hoc restricted typologies. In the current paper, we describe the annotation of schemes on the basis of two distinct classifications: Walton’s taxonomy of argument schemes, and Wagemans’ Periodic Table of Arguments. We describe the annotation procedure for each, and the quantitative characteristics of the resulting annotated text corpora. In doing so, we extend the annotation of the preexisting US2016 corpus of televised election debates, resulting in, to the best of our knowledge, the two largest consistently annotated corpora of schemes in argumentative dialogue publicly available. Based on evaluation in terms of inter-annotator agreement, we propose further improvements to the guidelines for annotating schemes: the argument scheme key, and the Argument Type Identification Procedure. (shrink)

We anticipate a further decline of patients who eventually will become brain dead. The intensive care unit (ICU) is considered a last resort for patients with severe and multiple organ dysfunction. Patients with primary central nervous system failure constitute the largest group of patients in which life-sustaining treatment is withdrawn. Almost all these patients are unconscious at the moment physicians decide to withhold and withdraw life-sustaining measures. Sometimes, however competent ICU patients state that they do not want to live anymore (...) because of the severity of their illness or the poor prognosis and ask for withdrawal of life-sustaining measures like mechanical ventilation. Do we consider the unconscious patient as potential organ donor before withdrawal of mechanical ventilation? This is paradoxically rare in the case of the conscious ICU patient. Is it practically possible and ethically feasible to obtain consent for organ donation from this group of patients? (shrink)

In this paper we study proofs of some general forms of the Second Incompleteness Theorem. These forms conform to the Feferman format, where the proof predicate is fixed and the representation of the set of axioms varies. We extend the Feferman framework in one important point: we allow the interpretation of number theory to vary.

In everyday situations, and particularly in some sport and working contexts, humans face an inherently unpredictable and uncertain environment. All sorts of unpredictable and unexpected things happen but typically people are able to skillfully adapt. In this paper, we address two key questions in cognitive science. First, how is an agent able to bring its previously learned skill to bear on a novel situation? Second, how can an agent be both sensitive to the particularity of a given situation, while remaining (...) flexibly poised for many other possibilities for action? We will argue that both the sensitivity to novel situations and the sensitivity to a multiplicity of action possibilities are enabled by the property of skilled agency that we will call metastable attunement. We characterize a skilled agent’s flexible interactions with a dynamically changing environment in terms of metastable dynamics in agent-environment systems. What we find in metastability is the realization of two competing tendencies: the tendency of the agent to express their intrinsic dynamics and the tendency to search for new possibilities. Metastably attuned agents are ready to engage with a multiplicity of affordances, allowing for a balance between stability and flexibility. On the one hand, agents are able to exploit affordances they are attuned to, while at the same time being ready to flexibly explore for other affordances. Metastable attunement allows agents to smoothly transition between these possible configurations so as to adapt their behaviour to what the particular situation requires. We go on to describe the role metastability plays in learning of new skills, and in skilful behaviour more generally. Finally, drawing upon work in art, architecture and sports science, we develop a number of perspectives on how to investigate metastable attunement in real life situations. (shrink)

This paper deals with the question of agency and intentionality in the context of the free-energy principle. The free-energy principle is a system-theoretic framework for understanding living self-organizing systems and how they relate to their environments. I will first sketch the main philosophical positions in the literature: a rationalist Helmholtzian interpretation (Hohwy 2013; Clark 2013), a cybernetic interpretation (Seth 2015b) and the enactive affordance-based interpretation (Bruineberg and Rietveld 2014; Bruineberg et al. 2016) and will then show how agency and intentionality (...) are construed differently on these different philosophical interpretations. I will then argue that a purely Helmholtzian is limited, in that it can account only account for agency in the context of perceptual inference. The cybernetic account cannot give a full account of action, since purposiveness is accounted for only to the extent that it pertains to the control of homeostatic essential variables. I will then argue that the enactive affordance-based account attempts to provide broader account of purposive action without presupposing goals and intentions coming from outside of the theory. In the second part of the paper, I will discuss how each of these three interpretations conceives of the sense agency and intentionality in different ways. (shrink)

We formulate a formal framework in which we combine the theory of dynamic epistemic logic and the theory of games. In particular, we show how we can use tools of dynamic epistemic logic to reason about information change ? and in particular, the effect of communication acts ? in such a game of imperfect information. We show how this framework allows for the formulation of specific assumptions in pragmatics of communication, as well as the formulation of general results about the (...) value of information. (shrink)

The central result of this paper is the small‐is‐very‐small principle for restricted sequential theories. The principle says roughly that whenever the given theory shows that a definable property has a small witness, i.e., a witness in a sufficiently small definable cut, then it shows that the property has a very small witness: i.e., a witness below a given standard number. Which cuts are sufficiently small will depend on the complexity of the formula defining the property. We draw various consequences from (...) the central result. E.g., roughly speaking, (i) every restricted, recursively enumerable sequential theory has a finitely axiomatized extension that is conservative with respect to formulas of complexity ; (ii) every sequential model has, for any n, an extension that is elementary for formulas of complexity, in which the intersection of all definable cuts is the natural numbers; (iii) we have reflection for ‐sentences with sufficiently small witness in any consistent restricted theory U; (iv) suppose U is recursively enumerable and sequential. Suppose further that every recursively enumerable and sequential V that locally inteprets U, globally interprets U. Then, U is mutually globally interpretable with a finitely axiomatized sequential theory. The paper contains some careful groundwork developing partial satisfaction predicates in sequential theories for the complexity measure depth of quantifier alternations. (shrink)

The process-dissociation procedure has been used in a variety of experimental contexts to assess the contributions of conscious and unconscious processes to task performance. To evaluate whether motivation affects estimates of conscious and unconscious processes, participants were given incentives to follow inclusion and exclusion instructions in a perception task and a memory task. Relative to a control condition in which no performance incentives were given, the results for the perception task indicated that incentives increased the participants' ability to exclude previously (...) presented information, which in turn both increased the estimate of conscious processes and decreased the estimate of unconscious processes. However, the results also indicated that incentives did not influence estimates of conscious or unconscious processes in the memory task. The findings suggest that the process-dissociation procedure is relatively immune to influences of motivation when used with a memory task, but that caution should be exercised when the process-dissociation is used with a perception task. (shrink)

In this paper, we characterize the strength of the predicative Frege hierarchy, , introduced by John Burgess in his book [J. Burgess, Fixing frege, in: Princeton Monographs in Philosophy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005]. We show that and are mutually interpretable. It follows that is mutually interpretable with Q. This fact was proved earlier by Mihai Ganea in [M. Ganea, Burgess’ PV is Robinson’s Q, The Journal of Symbolic Logic 72 619–624] using a different proof. Another consequence of the our (...) main result is that is mutually interpretable with Kalmar Arithmetic . The fact that interprets EA was proved earlier by Burgess. We provide a different proof. Each of the theories is finitely axiomatizable. Our main result implies that the whole hierarchy taken together, , is not finitely axiomatizable. What is more: no theory that is mutually locally interpretable with is finitely axiomatizable. (shrink)

Smartphone use plays an increasingly important role in our daily lives. Philosophical research that has used first wave or second wave theories of extended cognition in order to understand our engagement with digital technologies has focused on the contribution of these technologies to the completion of specific cognitive tasks (e.g., remembering, reasoning, problem-solving, navigation).However, in a considerable number of cases, everyday smartphone use is task-unrelated. In psychological research, these cases have been captured by notions such as absent-minded smart-phone use (Marty-Dugas (...) et al., 2018) or smartphone-related inattentiveness (Liebherr et al., 2020).Given the prevalence of these cases, we develop a conceptual framework that can accommodate the functional and phenomenological characteristics of task-unrelated smartphone use. To this end, we will integrate research on second wave extended cognition with mind-wandering research and introduce the concept of ‘extended mind-wandering’. Elaborating the family resemblances approach to mind-wandering (Seli, Kane, Smallwood, et al., 2018), we will argue that task-unrelated smartphone use shares many characteristics with mind-wandering. We will suggest that an empirically informed conceptual analysis of cases of extended mind-wandering can enrich current work on digitally extended cognition by specifying the influence of the attention economy on our cognitive dynamics. (shrink)

Business schools are the “nurseries” of the corporate world. This article offers an empirical analysis of the business student ethos on the basis of research conducted at three Dutch universities. A theoretical framework in the tradition of virtue ethics and dubbed “moral ethology” is used to identify the values business schools convey to their students. The central research question is: What types of ethos do Dutch business students have? Forty‐three undergraduate students participated in Q‐methodological research, a mixed qualitative–quantitative small‐sample method. (...) Five different types of ethos were generated: Do‐Good Managers, Market Managers, Searching Managers, Balancing Managers, and Radical Market Managers. Some general characteristics that apply to all the types of ethos were identified, such as the search for efficiency. It is argued that business schools should pay much more attention to the values that are endorsed in both life and business and should help students to address situations in which values are neglected. (shrink)

The 35 commentaries cover a wide range of topics and take many different stances on the issues explored by the target article. We have organised our response to the commentaries around three central questions: Are Friston blankets just Pearl blankets? What ontological and metaphysical commitments are implied by the use of Friston blankets? What kind of explanatory work are Friston blankets capable of? We conclude our reply with a short critical reflection on the indiscriminate use of both Markov blankets and (...) the free energy principle. (shrink)

_Seeking Understanding: The Lifelong Pursuit to Build the Scientific Mind_ explores the multiple ways in which the human mind grows in understanding of the self and the world as an essential dimension of transformative learning along the lifespan.

A variety of logical frameworks have been developed to study rational agents interacting over time. This paper takes a closer look at one particular interface, between two systems that both address the dynamics of knowledge and information flow. The first is Epistemic Temporal Logic (ETL) which uses linear or branching time models with added epistemic structure induced by agents’ different capabilities for observing events. The second framework is Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL) that describes interactive processes in terms of epistemic event (...) models which may occur inside modalities of the language. This paper systematically and rigorously relates the DEL framework with the ETL framework. The precise relationship between DEL and ETL is explored via a new representation theorem characterizing the largest class of ETL models corresponding to DEL protocols in terms of notions of Perfect Recall , No Miracles , and Bisimulation Invariance . We then focus on new issues of completeness . One contribution is an axiomatization for the dynamic logic of public announcements constrained by protocols, which has been an open problem for some years, as it does not fit the usual ‘reduction axiom’ format of DEL. Finally, we provide a number of examples that show how DEL suggests an interesting fine-structure inside ETL. (shrink)

This article critically evaluates the possible impact of the Charter on the relationship between the Court of Justice of the European Union and national constitutional courts. While it is premature to provide a definitive assessment of the kind of collaboration that these courts will develop, it is crucial to identify a number of features of the new landscape that will influence the direction in which the relationship between the CJEU and constitutional courts will evolve. This article discusses several reasons that (...) may result in better or a higher number of judicial interactions, as well as factors that may create tension or cause problems in the relationship between the CJEU and national constitutional courts. As such, it offers a framework that may help us to understand future post-Charter judgments by these courts setting out how they conceive their engagement with their counterpart on fundamental rights issues. (shrink)

In the past decade, the concept of recognition appears to have acquired an important theoretical position in the work and organization literature. While in principle recognition denotes a positive and social form of freedom, in current-day organizations recognition may be often negative or instrumental. In order to capture this ambivalence in organizational recognitive conditions, the recent work of the American philosopher Judith Butler appears particularly applicable. The purpose of this paper is to explore theoretically to what extent her views on (...) recognition shed new light on the variety of recognition patterns in current-day organizations. Towards that purpose, this paper first turns to the ‘master-slave’ episode in the work of Hegel and its influential interpretation by Kojève, which are at the heart of Butler’s reading and conception of recognition. As a second step, the ambivalent conception of recognition in the work of Butler is discussed and critically assessed, while in the final section this conception is extended to work and organizations. (shrink)

The rise of the platform economy in the past two decades (and neoliberal capitalist expansion and crises more in general), have on the whole negatively affected working conditions, leading to growing concerns about the “human side” of organizations. To address these concerns, the purpose of this paper is to apply Axel Honneth’s recognition theory and method of normative reconstruction to working conditions in the platform economy. The paper concludes that the ways in which platform organizations function constitutes a normative paradox, (...) promising flexibility and autonomy while at the same time creating working conditions that undercut these promises. The paper ends with a critical discussion of Honneth’s approach, possible supplementing ideas and further lines of future research. (shrink)

In this paper, we show that the predicate logics of consistent extensions of Heyting's Arithmetic plus Church's Thesis with uniqueness condition are complete $\Pi _{2}^{0}$. Similarly, we show that the predicate logic of HA*, i.e. Heyting's Arithmetic plus the Completeness Principle (for HA*) is complete $\Pi _{2}^{0}$. These results extend the known results due to Valery Plisko. To prove the results we adapt Plisko's method to use Tennenbaum's Theorem to prove 'categoricity of interpretations' under certain assumptions.

This article looks at how imaginaries of land and climate play a role in farmland investment discourses and practices. Foreign farmland investors in the fertile black earth region of Russia and Ukraine have ‘celebrated’ soil fertility while largely ignoring climatic factors. The article shows a centuries-long history of outsiders coming to the region lured by the fertile soils, while grossly underestimating climate which has had disastrous implications for farm viability and the environment. Comparisons with historical and contemporary literature on other (...) regions suggest that the underestimation of climatic risks by newcomers is remarkably prevalent in resource frontiers. (shrink)

Perception is, at least sometimes, something we do. This paper is concerned with how to account for perceptual agency (i.e., the active aspect of perception). Eilan divides accounts of perceptual agency up into two camps: enactivist theories hold that perceptual agency is accounted for by the involvement of bodily action, while mental theories hold that perceptual agency is accounted for by the involvement of mental action in perception. In Structuring Mind (2017), Sebastian Watzl aligns his ‘activity view’ with the mental (...) action route and develops the view that the mental activity of attending infuses perceptual experience with agency. Moreover, Watzl claims that his view can accommodate enactivist intuitions, while rejecting their claims about embodiment.In this paper, we scrutinize the relevant notion of mental action involved in the mental action route. We analyze the involvement of the body in overt acts of attention (like sniffing and smelling) and argue that a constitutively embodied account of mental action provides a better analysis of overt attention than a conjunctive account in which overt attention involves a bodily and a (separate) mental action. Furthermore, we argue that the standard cases of covert attention (such as the Posner paradigm) involve the body in multiple ways.In closing, we discuss the relevance of our analysis for the debate on perceptual agency and the embodied mind thesis. We conclude that the embodied mental action route to theorizing perceptual agency provides the best analysis of perceptual agency but comes with significant commitments about the embodiment of attention. (shrink)