A long-standing theme in discussion of perception and thought has been that our primary cognitive contact with individual objects and events in the world derives from our perceptual contact with them. When I look at a duck in front of me, I am not merely presented with the fact that there is at least one duck in the area, rather I seem to be presented withthisthing (as one might put it from my perspective) in front of me, which looks to (...) me to be a duck. Furthermore, such a perception would seem to put me in a position not merely to make the existential judgment that there is some duck or other present, but rather to make a singular, demonstrative judgment, that that is a duck. My grounds for an existential judgment in this case derives from my apprehension of the demonstrative thought and not vice versa. (shrink)

This volume continues the examination of issues of life and death which F.M. Kamm began in 'Morality, Mortality, ' Volume I (1993). Kamm continues her development of a non-consequentialist ethical theory and its application to practical ethical problems.

We maximally extend the quantum‐mechanical results of Muller and Saunders ( 2008 ) establishing the ‘weak discernibility’ of an arbitrary number of similar fermions in finite‐dimensional Hilbert spaces. This confutes the currently dominant view that ( A ) the quantum‐mechanical description of similar particles conflicts with Leibniz’s Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (PII); and that ( B ) the only way to save PII is by adopting some heavy metaphysical notion such as Scotusian haecceitas or Adamsian primitive thisness. We (...) take sides with Muller and Saunders ( 2008 ) against this currently dominant view, which has been expounded and defended by many. *Received July 2008; revised May 2009. †To contact the authors, please write to: F. A. Muller, Faculty of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Burg. Oudlaan 50, H5–16, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands; e‐mail: [email protected] , and Institute for the History and Foundations of Science, Utrecht University, Budapestlaan 6, IGG–3.08, 3584 CD Utrecht, The Netherlands; e‐mail: [email protected] . M. P. Seevinck, Institute for the History and Foundations of Science, Utrecht University, Budapestlaan 6, IGG–3.08, 3584 CD Utrecht, The Netherlands; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

This article is detective work, not philosophy. J. S. Mill's Autobiography records that at the age of seven he read, in Greek, ‘the first six dialogues of Plato, from the Euthyphron to the Theaetetus inclusive’. Which were the other dialogues? On the arrangement common today, it would be Crito, Apology, Phaedo, Cratylus. On the arrangement common then, Theages and Erastai replace Cratylus, which makes seven dialogues. I show that this must be the answer by the evidence of James Mill's commonplace (...) books and his writings on Plato. These reveal which collected edition of Plato he owned and which he would want to own. Conditions for studying Plato in the original were much harder than we are used to. The inquiry highlights both the ideological purity of the education James Mill designed for his son, and the difficulties he faced in realizing his plan. (shrink)

There is general acknowledgement that both the anterior cingulate and orbitofrontal cortex are implicated in reinforcement-guided decision making, and emotion and social behaviour. Despite the interest that these areas generate in both the cognitive neuroscience laboratory and the psychiatric clinic, ideas about the distinctive contributions made by each have only recently begun to emerge. This reflects an increasing understanding of the component processes that underlie reinforcement- guided decision making, such as the representation of reinforcement expectations, the exploration, updating and representation (...) of action values, and the appreciation that choices are guided not just by the prospect of reward but also by the costs that action entails. Evidence is emerging to suggest that the anterior cingulate and orbitofrontal cortex make distinct contributions to each of these aspects of decision making. (shrink)

It is a standing temptation for philosophers to find anticipations of their own views in the great thinkers of the past, but few have been so bold in the search for precursors, and so utterly mistaken, as Berkeley when he claimed Plato and Aristotle as allies to his immaterialist idealism. InSiris: A Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries Concerning the Virtues of Tar-Water, which Berkeley published in his old age in 1744, he reviews the leading philosophies of antiquity and finds (...) them on the whole a good deal more sympathetic to his own ideas than the ‘modern atheism’, as he calls it, of Hobbes and Spinoza or the objectionable principles of ‘the mechanic and geometrical philosophers’ such as Newton. But his strongest and, I think, his most interesting claim is that neither Plato nor Aristotle admitted ‘an absolute actual existence of sensible or corporeal things’. (shrink)

In this paper two models for movement of respiratory gases in the insect trachea are presented. One model considers the tracheal system as a single flexible compartment while the other model considers the trachea as a single flexible compartment with gas exchange. This work represents an extension of Ben-Tal’s work on compartmental gas exchange in human lungs and is applied to the insect tracheal system. The purpose of the work is to study nonlinear phenomena seen in the insect respiratory system. (...) It is assumed that the flow inside the trachea is laminar, and that the air inside the chamber behaves as an ideal gas. Further, with the isothermal assumption, the expressions for the tracheal partial pressures of oxygen and carbon dioxide, rate of volume change, and the rates of change of oxygen concentration and carbon dioxide concentration are derived. The effects of some flow parameters such as diffusion capacities, reaction rates and air concentrations on net flow are studied. Numerical simulations of the tracheal flow characteristics are performed. The models developed provide a mathematical framework to further investigate gas exchange in insects. (shrink)

This study is concerned with processes for discovering new theories in science. It considers a computational approach to scientific discovery, as applied to the discovery of theories in cognitive science. The approach combines two ideas. First, a process-based scientific theory can be represented as a computer program. Second, an evolutionary computational method, genetic programming, allows computer programs to be improved through a process of computational trialand-error. Putting these two ideas together leads to a system that can automatically generate and improve (...) scientific theories. The application of this method to the discovery of theories in cognitive science is examined. Theories are built up from primitive operators. These are contained in a theory language that defines the space of possible theories. An example of a theory generated by this method is described. These results support the idea that scientific discovery can be achieved through a heuristic search process, even for theories involving a sequence of steps. However, this computational approach to scientific discovery does not eliminate the need for human input. Human judgment is needed to make reasonable prior assumptions about the characteristics of operators used in the theory generation process, and to interpret and provide context for the computationally generated theories. (shrink)

Do we directly perceive physical objects? What is the significance of the qualification ‘directly’ here? Austin famously denied that there was a unique interpretation by which we could make sense of the traditional debate in the philosophy of perception. I look here at Thompson Clarke’s discussion of G. E. Moore and surface perception to answer Austin’s scepticism.

What is colour vision for? In the popular imagination colour vision is for “seeing the colours” — adding hue to the achromatic world of shape, depth and motion. On this view colour vision plays little more than an ornamental role, lending glamour to an otherwise monochrome world. This idea has guided much theorising about colour within vision science and philosophy. However, we argue that a broader approach is needed. Recent research in the psychology of colour demonstrates that colour vision is (...) integral to a variety of visual processes, helping us to perform many types of visual tasks. We discuss some of this research and consider its implications for philosophical theories of colour. (shrink)

Feature selection is a widely studied technique whose goal is to reduce the dimensionality of the problem by removing irrelevant features. It has multiple benefits, such as improved efficacy, efficiency and interpretability of almost any type of machine learning model. Feature selection techniques may be divided into three main categories, depending on the process used to remove the features known as Filter, Wrapper and Embedded. Embedded methods are usually the preferred feature selection method that efficiently obtains a selection of the (...) most relevant features of the model. However, not all models support an embedded feature selection that forces the use of a different method, reducing the efficiency and reliability of the selection. Neural networks are an example of a model that does not support embedded feature selection. As neural networks have shown to provide remarkable results in multiple scenarios such as classification and regression, sometimes in an ensemble with a model that includes an embedded feature selection, we attempt to embed a feature selection process with a general-purpose methodology. In this work, we propose a novel general-purpose layer for neural networks that removes the influence of irrelevant features. The Feature-Aware Drop Layer is included at the top of the neural network and trained during the backpropagation process without any additional parameters. Our methodology is tested with 17 datasets for classification and regression tasks, including data from different fields such as Health, Economic and Environment, among others. The results show remarkable improvements compared to three different feature selection approaches, with reliable, efficient and effective results. (shrink)

Purpose: In the educational field a lack of focus on the process of arriving at a level of profound understanding of a phenomenon can be observed. While classical approaches in education focus on "downloading," repeating, or sometimes optimizing relatively stable chunks of knowledge (both facts and procedural knowledge), this paper proposes to shift the center of attention towards a more dynamic and constructivist perspective: learning as a process of individual and collective knowledge creation and knowledge construction. The goal of this (...) process is to profoundly understand a phenomenon in its multi-dimensionality and complexity and to reflect on the processes that have lead to this understanding. The issue we want to tackle in this paper is how this profound understanding can be brought about in a technology-enhanced learning environment. Method: Part 1 of this paper explores strategies of technology-enhanced knowledge sharing/creation in the field of higher education. Part 2 presents a successful blended learning scenario that illustrates the implementation of these learning strategies in a concrete course design. In this case study students are involved in active theory construction processes by conducting virtual experiments with a virtual organism. Part 3 elaborates on the epistemological implications of this case study. Findings: A constructivist framework for modes of knowing and modes of coming to know is developed. It is shown that -- in order to reach a profound understanding of a phenomenon -- it is essential to take into account the multi-facetted character of knowledge and to use the strategy of double-loop learning. Conclusion: This leads to an understanding of learning/teaching as a process of socio-epistemological engineering. Furthermore, the role of the teacher changes in such a constructivist setting of learning/teaching: Their primary task is to provide a "pedagogically (and technologically) augmented environment." They are responsible for creating an atmosphere of collective knowledge construction and reflection. Beyond the role of a coach and moderator the teacher has to act as a facilitator or "enabler" for the (individual and collective) processes of double-loop learning. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a seldom-recognized connection between the ontology of abstract objects and a current issue in the philosophy of chemistry. Specifically, I argue that realism with regard to universals implies a view of chemical elements similar to F.A. Paneth’s thesis about the dual nature of the concept of element.

Context: The dominant approach to the study of perception is representational/computational, with an emphasis on the achievements of the brain and the nervous system, which are taken to construct internal models of the world. Alternatives include ecological, embedded, embodied, and enactivist approaches, all of which emphasize the centrality of action in understanding perception. Problem: Despite sharing many theoretical commitments that lead to a rejection of the classical approach, the alternatives are characterized by important contrasts and points of divergence. Here we (...) focus on the enactive and ecological approaches, in particular, on how they construe the status of the environment and the content of perception. Method: We begin with a review of James Gibson’s ecological psychology, highlighting it as a psychology for all organisms not just humans. Against this backdrop, we consider enactivist arguments against direct perception - a central assertion of the ecological approach - and in favor of interpreting the activity of perceptual agents as a kind of construction of a perceptually meaningful world. Results: We assess the merits of this interpretation and we conclude that it cannot be grounded on fundamental principles such as thermodynamics and organism-environment mutuality. Implications: As a consequence, enactivism remains close to representationalism and entails a form of dualism. Constructivist content: We advance a criticism of the constructivist foundations of the enactive approach to perception. Perception-action mutuality at the heart of enactivism does not require mental construction; indeed, perception-action mutuality obviates construction. (shrink)

Theaetetus, asked what knowledge is, replies that geometry and the other mathematical disciplines are knowledge, and so are crafts like cobbling. Socrates points out that it does not help him to be told how many kinds of knowledge there are when his problem is to know what knowledge itself is, what it means to call geometry or a craft knowledge in the first place—he insists on the generality of his question in the way he often does when his interlocutor, asked (...) for a definition, cites instead cases of the concept to be defined. (shrink)

This essay argues that the Putnam-Nussbaum thesis that modern functionalism is Aristotelian is false. It fails as an interpretation of Aristotle since it fails to notice that Aristotle’s conception of the material or physical side of the soul-body relation is one which no modern functionalist could share. The Putnam-Nussbaum thesis is examined within the context of the theory of perception. This involves the need to understand one of the most mysterious Aristotelian doctrines – the doctrine that in perception, the sense-organ (...) assumes the sensible form of the object perceived without its matter. (shrink)

Based on a non-consequentialist ethical theory, this book critically examines the prevalent view that if a fetus has the moral standing of a person, it has a right to life and abortion is impermissible. Most discussion of abortion has assumed that this view is correct, and so has focused on the question of the personhood of the fetus. Kamm begins by considering in detail the permissibility of killing in non-abortion cases which are similar to abortion cases. She goes on to (...) consider the case for the permissibility of abortion in many types of pregnancies, including ones resulting from rape, voluntary pregnancy, and pregnancy resulting from a voluntary sex act, even if the fetus is considered a person. This argument emerges as part of a broader theory of creating new people responsibly. Kamm explores the implications of this argument for informed consent to abortion; responsibilities in pregnancy that is not aborted, and the significance of extra-uterine gestation devices for the permissibility of abortion. (shrink)

First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.