With the noted intelligence failures prior to the September 11 attacks and the 2003 Iraq War, the US intelligence community has recognized the need to acquire new, outside expertise to mitigate against future intelligence breakdowns. This recent attention on intelligence outreach provides Science and Technology Studies scholars with an opportunity to consider the role they might play in these efforts, as well as the various opportunities and difficulties that can shape these relationships, and the types of knowledge that can be (...) produced and known from engagements with these secret communities. This paper provides a reflection on how two STS scholars have attempted to intervene into intelligence and the lessons learned. (shrink)

While philosophy of sport clings for life, sport in Austalasia has undergone a significant transformation since the early 1990s. Sport is now considered 'more than a game'. That is, elite, high-performance sport is now big business that is also perceived as a powerful instrument for the expression of national identity and pride. This has resulted in a growing scientific and manaagement focus in university level sport, exercise and physcial education related courses (McKay et al. 1990). This reflects a similar trend (...) in universities in North America and the U.K. (shrink)

The intersection of biology and religion has spawned exciting new areas of academic research that raise issues central to understanding our own humanity and the living world. In this comprehensive and accessible survey, Michael L. Peterson and Dennis R. Venema explain the engagement between biology and religion on issues related to origins, evolution, design, suffering and evil, progress and purpose, love, humanity, morality, ecology, and the nature of religion itself. Does life have a chemical origin - or must (...) there be a divine spark? How can religious claims about divine goodness be reconciled with widespread predation, suffering, and death in the animal kingdom? Peterson and Venema develop a philosophical discussion around such controversial questions. The book situates each topic in its historical, scientific, and theological context, making it the perfect introduction for upper-level undergraduates, graduate students, scholars, and the interested general reader. (shrink)

In amblyopia, abnormal visual experience during development leads to an enduring loss of visual acuity in adulthood. Physiological studies in animal models suggest that intracortical GABAergic inhibition may mediate visual deficits in amblyopia. To better understand the relationship between visual cortical γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and perceptual suppression in persons with amblyopia (PWA), we employed magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to quantify GABA levels in both PWA and normally-sighted persons (NSP). In the same individuals, we obtained psychophysical measures of perceptual suppression for (...) a variety of ocular configurations. In PWA, we found a robust negative correlation between the depth of amblyopia (the difference in visual acuity between the amblyopic and non-amblyopic eyes) and GABA concentration that was specific to visual cortex and was not observed in a sensorimotor cortical control region. Moreover, lower levels of visual cortical GABA were associated with weaker perceptual suppression of the fellow eye by the amblyopic eye and stronger suppression of the amblyopic eye by the fellow eye. Taken together, our findings provide evidence that intracortical GABAergic inhibition is an important component of the pathology of human amblyopia and suggest possible therapeutic interventions to restore vision in the amblyopic eye through enhancement of visual cortical GABAergic signaling in PWA. (shrink)

Provides a broad European and cross-cultural perspective on the theory and practice of literature and the Left over the past 50 years.

Skeletal myoblasts have their origin early in embryogenesis within specific somites. Determined myoblasts are committed to a myogenic fate; however, they only differentiate and express a muscle‐specific phenotype after they have received the appropriate environmental signals. Once proliferating myoblasts enter the differentiation programme they withdraw from the cell cycle and form post‐mitotic multinucleated myofibres (myogenesis); this transformation is accompanied by muscle‐specific gene expression. Muscle development is associated with complex and diverse protein isoform transitions, generated by differential gene expression and mRNA (...) splicing. The myofibres are in a state of dynamic adaptation in response to hormones, mechanical activity and motor innervation, which modulate differential gene expression and splicing during this functional acclimatisation. This review will focus on the profound effects of thyroid hormone on skeletal muscle, which produce alterations in gene and isoform expression, biochemical properties and morphological features that precipitate in modified contractile/mechanical characteristics. Insight into the molecular events that control these events was provided by the recent characterisation of the MyoD gene family, which encodes helix‐loop‐helix proteins; these activate muscle‐specific transcription and serve as targets for a variety of physiological stimuli. The current hypothesis on hormonal regulation of myogenesis is that thyroid hormones (1) directly regulate the myoD and contractile protein gene families, and (2) induce thyroid hormone receptor‐transcription factor interactions critical to gene expression. (shrink)

Starting from Marr's ideas about levels of explanation, a theory of the data structures and access processes in human memory is demonstrated on 10 tasks. Functional characteristics of human memory are captured implementation-independently. Our theory generates a multidimensional task classification subsuming existing classifications such as the distinction between tasks that are implicit versus explicit, data driven versus conceptually driven, and simple associative (two-way bindings) versus higher order (threeway bindings), providing a broad basis for new experiments. The formal language clarifies the (...) binding problem in episodic memory, the role of input pathways in both episodic and semantic (lexical) memory, the importance of the input set in episodic memory, and the ubiquitous calculation of an intersection in theories of episodic and lexical access. (shrink)

This volume, the third in this Springer series, contains selected papers from the four workshops organized by the ESF Research Networking Programme "The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective" (PSE) in 2010: Pluralism in the Foundations of Statistics Points of Contact between the Philosophy of Physics and the Philosophy of Biology The Debate on Mathematical Modeling in the Social Sciences Historical Debates about Logic, Probability and Statistics The volume is accordingly divided in four sections, each of them containing papers (...) coming from the workshop focussing on one of these themes. While the programme's core topic for the year 2010 was probability and statistics, the organizers of the workshops embraced the opportunity of building bridges to more or less closely connected issues in general philosophy of science, philosophy of physics and philosophy of the special sciences. However, papers that analyze the concept of probability for various philosophical purposes are clearly a major theme in this volume, as it was in the previous volumes of the same series. This reflects the impressive productivity of probabilistic approaches in the philosophy of science, which form an important part of what has become known as formal epistemology - although, of course, there are non-probabilistic approaches in formal epistemology as well. It is probably fair to say that Europe has been particularly strong in this area of philosophy in recent years.​ . (shrink)

The ArugmentThis essay answers a single question: what was Robert Hooke, the Royal Society's curator of experiments, doing in his well-known 1665 work,Micrographia?Hooke was articulating a “universal cure of the mind” capable of bringing about a “reformation in Philosophy,” a change in philosophy's interpretive practices and organization. The work explicated the interpretive and political foundations for a community of optical instrument users coextensive with the struggling Royal Society. Standard observational practices would overcome the problem of using nonstandard instruments, while inherent (...) inrepresentation– the interpretive practice championed in the text – were important theological and political meanings. Hooke's kind of experimental philosophy undermined the claims made by “atheists” and “enthusiasts” – the enemies of the restored church and state – while also producing useful knowledge. Equally important, Hooke modeled the community described inMicrographiaupon the classicalres publica, but his community made important concessions to Restoration political realities, especially the growing role of commercial or transactional relationships. (shrink)

Using practical formalism a deontological ethical analysis of peer relations in organizations is developed. This analysis is composed of two types of duties derived from Kant's Categorical Imperative: negative duties to refrain from the use of peers and positive duties to provide help and assistance. The conditions under which these duties pertain are specified through the development of examples and conceptual distinctions. A number of implications are then discussed.

Are propositions of law true or false? If so, what does it mean to say that propositions of law are true and false? This book takes up these questions in the context of the wider philosophical debate over realism and anti-realism. Despite surface differences, Patterson argues that the leading contemporary jurisprudential theories all embrace a flawed conception of the nature of truth in law. Instead of locating that in virtue of which propositions of law are true, Patterson argues that lawyers (...) use forms of argument to show the truth of propositions of law. Additionally, Patterson argues that the realism/anti-realism debate in jurisprudence is part of a larger argument over the role of postmodernism in jurisprudence. For this, Patterson offers an analytic account of postmodernism and charts its implications for legal theory. This book will be of interest to those in legal theory, philosophy, social and political theory, and ethics. (shrink)

Symbols enable people to organize and communicate about the world. However, the ways in which symbolic knowledge is learned and then represented in the mind are poorly understood. We present a formal analysis of symbolic learning—in particular, word learning—in terms of prediction and cue competition, and we consider two possible ways in which symbols might be learned: by learning to predict a label from the features of objects and events in the world, and by learning to predict features from a (...) label. This analysis predicts significant differences in symbolic learning depending on the sequencing of objects and labels. We report a computational simulation and two human experiments that confirm these differences, revealing the existence of Feature-Label-Ordering effects in learning. Discrimination learning is facilitated when objects predict labels, but not when labels predict objects. Our results and analysis suggest that the semantic categories people use to understand and communicate about the world can only be learned if labels are predicted from objects. We discuss the implications of this for our understanding of the nature of language and symbolic thought, and in particular, for theories of reference. (shrink)

This commentary is divided into two parts. The first considers a possible role for Gray's predictor plus comparator mechanism in human episodic recognition memory. It draws on the computational specifications of recognition outlined in Humphreys et al. to demonstrate how the logically necessary components of recognition tasks might be mapped onto the mechanism. The second part demonstrates how the mechanism outlined by Gray might be implicated in a form of imitative learning suitable for the acquisition of complex tasks.

Taking up a single question--"What does it mean to say a proposition of law is true?"--this book advances a major new account of truth in law. Drawing upon the later philosophy of Wittgenstein, as well as more recent postmodern theory of the relationship between language, meaning, and the world, Patterson examines leading contemporary jurisprudential approaches to this question and finds them flawed in similar and previously unnoticed ways. He offers a powerful alternative account of legal justification, one in which linguistic (...) practice--the use of forms of legal argument--holds the key to legal meaning. (shrink)

In their book Entailment, Anderson and Belnap investigate the consequences of defining Lp (it is necessary that p) in system E as (pp)p. Since not all theorems are equivalent in E, this raises the question of whether there are reasonable alternative definitions of necessity in E. In this paper, it is shown that a definition of necessity in E satisfies the conditions { E Lpp, EL(pq)(LpLq), E pLp} if and only if its has the form C 1.C2 .... Cnp, where (...) each C iis equivalent in E to either pp or ((pp)p)p. (shrink)

Stephen Morse’s illuminating scholarship on law and neuroscience relies on a “folk psychological” account of human behavior in order to defend the law’s foundations for ascribing legal responsibility. The heart of Morse’s account is the notion of “mental state causation,” in which mental states cause behavior. Morse argues that causation of this sort is necessary to support legal responsibility. We challenge this claim. First, we discuss problems with the conception of mental causation on which Morse appears to rely. Second, we (...) present an alternative account to explain the link between mental states, reasons, and actions. We argue that the alternative account avoids the conceptual problems that arise for Morse’s conception of mental causation and that it also undergirds ascriptions of legal responsibility. If the alternative succeeds, then Morse’s conception of “mental state causation” is not necessary to support legal responsibility. (shrink)

This is a dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian philosophy, primarily covering philosophy in the 17th century, with a chronology and biography of Descartes's life and times and a bibliography of primary and secondary works related to Descartes and to Cartesians.

This volume, the third in this Springer series, contains selected papers from the four workshops organized by the ESF Research Networking Programme "The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective" in 2010: Pluralism in the Foundations of Statistics Points of Contact between the Philosophy of Physics and the Philosophy of Biology The Debate on Mathematical Modeling in the Social Sciences Historical Debates about Logic, Probability and Statistics The volume is accordingly divided in four sections, each of them containing papers coming (...) from the workshop focussing on one of these themes. While the programme's core topic for the year 2010 was probability and statistics, the organizers of the workshops embraced the opportunity of building bridges to more or less closely connected issues in general philosophy of science, philosophy of physics and philosophy of the special sciences. However, papers that analyze the concept of probability for various philosophical purposes are clearly a major theme in this volume, as it was in the previous volumes of the same series. This reflects the impressive productivity of probabilistic approaches in the philosophy of science, which form an important part of what has become known as formal epistemology - although, of course, there are non-probabilistic approaches in formal epistemology as well. It is probably fair to say that Europe has been particularly strong in this area of philosophy in recent years.​. (shrink)

This volume, the third in this Springer series, contains selected papers from the four workshops organized by the ESF Research Networking Programme "The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective" in 2010: Pluralism in the Foundations of Statistics Points of Contact between the Philosophy of Physics and the Philosophy of Biology The Debate on Mathematical Modeling in the Social Sciences Historical Debates about Logic, Probability and Statistics The volume is accordingly divided in four sections, each of them containing papers coming (...) from the workshop focussing on one of these themes. While the programme's core topic for the year 2010 was probability and statistics, the organizers of the workshops embraced the opportunity of building bridges to more or less closely connected issues in general philosophy of science, philosophy of physics and philosophy of the special sciences. However, papers that analyze the concept of probability for various philosophical purposes are clearly a major theme in this volume, as it was in the previous volumes of the same series. This reflects the impressive productivity of probabilistic approaches in the philosophy of science, which form an important part of what has become known as formal epistemology - although, of course, there are non-probabilistic approaches in formal epistemology as well. It is probably fair to say that Europe has been particularly strong in this area of philosophy in recent years.​. (shrink)

The contributors to this volume address global, regional, and local landscapes, cosmopolitan and indigenous cultures, and human and more-than-human ecology as they work to reveal place-specific tensional dynamics. This unusual book, which covers a wide-ranging array of topics, coheres into a work that will be a valuable reference for scholars of geography and the philosophy of place.

At the invitation of the Editors, we wrote an article (entitled, “Minds, Brains, and Norms”) detailing our views on a variety of claims by those arguing for the explanatory power of neuroscience in matters of law and ethics. The Editors invited comments on our article from four distinguished academics (Walter Glannon, Carl Craver, Sarah Robins, and Thomas Nadelhoffer) and invited our reply to their critique of our views. In this reply to our commentators, we correct some potential misunderstandings of our (...) views and further clarify our positions with discussions of the conceptual-empirical distinction, rule-following, explanations at the personal and subpersonal levels, memory, and lie detection. Although we acknowledge many of the criticisms advanced by our distinguished colleagues, we conclude that, in several important respects, their criticisms confirm the points made in our original article. (shrink)

Michael Tomasello ( 2016 ) prominently defends the view that there are uniquely human capacities required for shared intentions, therefore great apes do not share intentions. I show that these uniquely human capacities for abstraction are not necessary for shared intentionality. Excluding great apes from shared intentions because they lack certain capacities for abstraction assumes a specific interpretation of shared intentionality, which I call the Roleplaying Model. I undermine the necessity of abstraction for shared intentionality by presenting an alternative (...) model of shared intentionality, which I call the Normative Model. It is a modification of Margaret Gilbert’s ( 2013 ) Plural Subject theory, which I modify such that it is, in principle, compatible with nonhuman shared intentionality. To do this, I substitute Gilbert’s account of obligation for Kristin Andrews’ ( 2020 ) account of animal social norms. In this Normative Model, uniquely human capacities for abstraction are not required for shared intentionality. By undermining the necessity of uniquely human abstraction, I make cases of prima-facie cooperation in chimpanzees plausible instances of shared intentionality. The Roleplaying Model’s denial of nonhuman shared intentionality creates a problem insofar as apparent shared intentional activity cannot be fully analyzed. The Normative Model resolves this problem. (shrink)

Introduction to the Philosophy of Law: Readings and Cases employs a combination of case-based and theory-based materials to show novices in the field how the philosophy of law is related to concrete and actual legal practice. Ideal for undergraduates, it engages their curiosity about the law without sacrificing philosophical content. The authors emphasize a command of legal concepts and doctrine as a prelude to philosophical analysis. Designed to acquaint students with the fundamentals of jurisprudence and legal theory, Part I of (...) the book includes readings from influential philosophers representing eight different types of jurisprudence: natural law theory, positivism, constructivism, consequentialism, critical legal studies, feminist theory, practice theory, and new natural law theory. In Part II, the authors present a variety of cases that allow students to apply the theories in Part I to the actual practice of law. Unlike similar texts, which focus primarily on public law, this unique book addresses both private and public law, and includes cases on statutory interpretation, contract law, and tort law. Brief essays precede and discussion questions follow each case. Introduction to the Philosophy of Law: Readings and Cases serves as an exceptional text for courses in the philosophy of law, jurisprudence, and legal theory. (shrink)

This volume offers the first English language collection of academic essays on the post-Holocaust thought of Jean Améry, a Jewish-Austrian-Belgian essayist, journalist and literary author. Comprehensive in scope and multi-disciplinary in orientation, contributors explore central aspects of Améry's philosophical and ethical position, including dignity, responsibility, resentment, and forgiveness.

There are important synergies for the next generation of ethical leaders based on the alignment of modified or adjusted mental models. This entails a synergistic application of moral imagination through collaborative input and critique, rather than "me too" obedience. In this article, we will analyze the Milgram results using frameworks relating to mental models (Werhane et al., Profitable partnerships for poverty alleviation, 2009), as well as work by Moberg on "ethics blind spots'' (Organizational Studies 27(3): 413-428, 2006), and by Bazerman (...) and Chugh on "bounded awareness" (Harvard Business Review, 2006; Mind & Society 6: 1-18, 2007) Using these constructs to examine the Milgram experiment, we will argue that the ways in which the experiments are framed, the presence of an authority figure, the appeal to the authority of science, and the situation in which the naïve participant finds herself or himself, all create a bounded awareness, a narrow blind spot that encourages a climate for obedience, brackets out the opportunity to ask the moral question: "Am I hurting another fellow human being?" and may preclude the subject from utilizing moral imagination to opt out of the experiment. We will conclude that these forms of almost blind obedience to authority are correctable, but with difficulty. We will argue that linking the modification of mental models to an unbinding of awareness represents an important synergistic relationship and one that can build effectively on the lessons learned from our experience with moral imagination. (shrink)

Interpretations of Nietzsche as a virtue theorist have proliferated in recent years as commentators have sought to read him as a modern eudaimonistic philosopher while also attempting to show what makes his contribution to this tradition valuable and distinctive.1While some commentators still contend that interpreting Nietzsche as a eudaimonist is antithetical to his overtly-stated philosophical aims,2 over the last decade there has been a upsurge of support for such readings, especially from commentators who emphasise what they claim is the pervasive (...) influence of the Hellenistic tradition on his work. Keith Ansell-Pearson has argued that Epicurus was a key influence on Nietzsche’s middle period, for example; whereas Michael Ure has claimed that the Stoic thought of Seneca and Epictetus was also highly influential.3 Nevertheless, even those commentators who agree that Nietzsche can be informatively situated, or is even best situated, within the Hellenistic tradition cannot agree on two seemingly-intractable puzzles which any virtue-theoretical reading must solve in order to give a full account of his moral philosophy. The puzzles can be stated as follows: Puzzle 1: Which character traits does Nietzsche endorse as virtues? Puzzle 2: What is Nietzsche’s ethical ideal? This article offers an exegetical strategy to shed light on both puzzles, especially the first one regarding which character traits Nietzsche endorses as virtues which, as we shall see, is tougher to answer by a straightforward appeal to his texts. To elucidate this puzzle, I will propose that his approving comments regarding excellence-based moral philosophy indicate that his own ethics is also structured in terms of an ethical ideal with a requisite set of virtues which, following his ancient philosophical influences, he views as fundamentally connected. As Julia Annas notes, one the most distinctive ‘assumptions which ancient theories make [is] the relationship of [our] virtues to our final end’,4 and given Nietzsche’s interest in, and apparent endorsement of, ancient eudaimonism – especially compared to his invariably scathing remarks on the modern deontological and utilitarian traditions – we have reason to think that he shares this view.5 What is significant for this article, however, is that Nietzsche’s commitment to a kind of eudaimonism modelled on the ancient world offers a potential way to solve both puzzles. If his virtues and ethical ideal are connected in a similar way to ancient eudaimonistic theories, then understanding his ethical ideal allows us to infer which character traits he endorses as virtues, and vice versa. Although it might be objected that a method tackling both puzzles in tandem would be unworkable if their solutions were contained in each other, in what follows I will show that Nietzsche’s extensive comments on his ethical ideal of ‘becoming what one is’ positions us in a strong position to infer which character traits he prizes most highly. I will call these character traits ‘virtues of self-cultivation’. (shrink)

We review the current situation in the philosophy of time, partly to investigate Michael Dummett’s complaint that the philosophy of physics has become too specialized and technical to be able to communicate with mainstream philosophy. We conclude that the situation in this case is different: there is no special difficulty of intelligibility---the obstacle for communication between science and philosophy here is rather that what physics, or science in general, tells us is prima facie in conflict with common sense and (...) intuition. We argue that this difficulty is indeed prima facie: on closer inspection it appears that the scientific B-theory may explain our intuition better than the A-theory, even though the latter at first sight seems to completely mirror our direct experience. (shrink)

How are natural symbol systems best understood? Traditional “symbolic” approaches seek to understand cognition by analogy to highly structured, prescriptive computer programs. Here, we describe some problems the traditional computational metaphor inevitably leads to, and a very different approach to computation (Ramscar, Yarlett, Dye, Denny, & Thorpe, 2010; Turing, 1950) that allows these problems to be avoided. The way we conceive of natural symbol systems depends to a large degree on the computational metaphors we use to understand them, and machine (...) learning suggests an understanding of symbolic thought that is very different to traditional views (Hummel, 2010). The empirical question then is: Which metaphor is best? (shrink)

Shelley’s Swellfoot the Tyrant has recently begun to gain the concerted attention of critics, who have noted the play’s signature blend of low and high, of ephemeral, late Regency politics with the classic genres of Sophoclean tragedy, Aristophanic comedy, and mock epic. But Austin Warren’s famous and widely accepted definition of mock epic as “not mockery of the epic but elegantly affectionate homage, offered by a writer who finds [the serious epic] irrelevant to his age” does not describe Shelley’s earnest (...) goal of immediate political reform in authoring Swellfoot. Instead, the play evinces Shelley’s unique, conscious reconfiguration of four conventions characteristic of the high, classical epic: the “prosperous breeze”; the epic simile; katabasis or descent into the underworld; and divine intervention. I argue that Shelley’s comic adaptation of these epic conventions reflects his serious aim of helping effect reform through Swellfoot and embodies his absorption of the concept of Shakespeare’s history plays as an experimental hybrid of dramatic forms with epic subjects, gained during his earlier reading of A. W. Schlegel’s Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. Though the immediate suppression of Swellfoot prevented its relevance in its own historical moment, it comprises a singular hybrid of Aristophanic satire and Sophoclean tragedy with high epic conventions, while ironically also identifying Shelley as a proponent of the French neoclassical theory of the epic’s consciously didactic purpose propounded by Le Bossu. (shrink)

In this book, Michael Arbib, a researcher in artificial intelligence and brain theory, joins forces with Mary Hesse, a philosopher of science, to present an integrated account of how humans 'construct' reality through interaction with the social and physical world around them. The book is a major expansion of the Gifford Lectures delivered by the authors at the University of Edinburgh in the autumn of 1983. The authors reconcile a theory of the individual's construction of reality as a network (...) of schemas 'in the head' with an account of the social construction of language, science, ideology and religion to provide an integrated schema-theoretic view of human knowledge. The authors still find scope for lively debate, particularly in their discussion of free will and of the reality of God. The book integrates an accessible exposition of background information with a cumulative marshalling of evidence to address fundamental questions concerning human action in the world and the nature of ultimate reality. (shrink)

This interview took place through email during October-November, 2019. Michael: It’s a real pleasure to engage you in conversation. You were a foundation member of PESA and someone who in the pre-I...

Bishop and Trout here present a unique and provocative new approach to epistemology. Their approach aims to liberate epistemology from the scholastic debates of standard analytic epistemology, and treat it as a branch of the philosophy of science. The approach is novel in its use of cost-benefit analysis to guide people facing real reasoning problems and in its framework for resolving normative disputes in psychology. Based on empirical data, Bishop and Trout show how people can improve their reasoning by relying (...) on Statistical Prediction Rules. They then develop and articulate the positive core of the book. Their view, Strategic Reliabilism, claims that epistemic excellence consists in the efficient allocation of cognitive resources to reliable reasoning strategies, applied to significant problems. The last third of the book develops the implications of this view for standard analytic epistemology; for resolving normative disputes in psychology; and for offering practical, concrete advice on how this theory can improve real people's reasoning. This is a truly distinctive and controversial work that spans many disciplines and will speak to an unusually diverse group, including people in epistemology, philosophy of science, decision theory, cognitive and clinical psychology, and ethics and public policy. (shrink)

Science and philosophy study well-being with different but complementary methods. Marry these methods and a new picture emerges: To have well-being is to be "stuck" in a positive cycle of emotions, attitudes, traits and success. This book unites the scientific and philosophical worldviews into a powerful new theory of well-being.