What is possible and why? What is the difference between the merely possible and the actual? In Kants Modal Metaphysics Nicholas Stang examines Kants lifelong engagement with these questions and their role in his philosophical development. This is the first book to trace Kants theory of possibility all theway from the so-called pre-Critical writings of the 1750s and 1760s to the Critical system of philosophy inaugurated by the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. Stang argues that the key to (...) understanding both the change and the continuity between Kants pre-Critical and Critical theory of possibility is his transformation of the ontological question about possibility-what is it for a being to be possible?-into a question in transcendental philosophy-what is it to represent an object as possible? (shrink)

Proposals to make us smarter than the greatest geniuses or to add thousands of years to our life spans seem fit only for the spam folder or trash can. And yet this is what contemporary advocates of radical enhancement offer in all seriousness. They present a variety of technologies and therapies that will expand our capacities far beyond what is currently possible for human beings. In _Humanity's End,_ Nicholas Agar argues against radical enhancement, describing its destructive consequences. Agar examines (...) the proposals of four prominent radical enhancers: Ray Kurzweil, who argues that technology will enable our escape from human biology; Aubrey de Grey, who calls for anti-aging therapies that will achieve "longevity escape velocity"; Nick Bostrom, who defends the morality and rationality of enhancement; and James Hughes, who envisions a harmonious democracy of the enhanced and the unenhanced. Agar argues that the outcomes of radical enhancement could be darker than the rosy futures described by these thinkers. The most dramatic means of enhancing our cognitive powers could in fact kill us; the radical extension of our life span could eliminate experiences of great value from our lives; and a situation in which some humans are radically enhanced and others are not could lead to tyranny of posthumans over humans. (shrink)

In this provocative book, philosopher Nicholas Agar defends the idea that parents should be allowed to enhance their children’s characteristics. Gets away from fears of a Huxleyan ‘Brave New World’ or a return to the fascist eugenics of the past Written from a philosophically and scientifically informed point of view Considers real contemporary cases of parents choosing what kind of child to have Uses ‘moral images’ as a way to get readers with no background in philosophy to think about (...) moral dilemmas Provides an authoritative account of the science involved, making the book suitable for readers with no knowledge of genetics Creates a moral framework for assessing all new technologies. (shrink)

In the first in-depth philosophical study of the subject, Nicholas Gier examines the published and unpublished writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, to show the striking parallels between Wittgenstein and phenomenology. Between 1929 and 1933, the philosopher proposed programs that bore a detailed resemblance to dominant themes in the phenomenology of Husserl and some “life-world” phenomenologists. This sound, thoroughly readable study examines how and why he eventually moved away from it. Gier demonstrates, however, that Wittgenstein’s phenomenology continues as his “grammar” of (...) the post-1933 works, which continue to present instructive parallels with Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

In this provocative book, philosopher Nicholas Agar defends the idea that parents should be allowed to enhance their children’s characteristics. Gets away from fears of a Huxleyan ‘Brave New World’ or a return to the fascist eugenics of the past Written from a philosophically and scientifically informed point of view Considers real contemporary cases of parents choosing what kind of child to have Uses ‘moral images’ as a way to get readers with no background in philosophy to think about (...) moral dilemmas Provides an authoritative account of the science involved, making the book suitable for readers with no knowledge of genetics Creates a moral framework for assessing all new technologies. (shrink)

Proposals to make us smarter than the greatest geniuses or to add thousands of years to our life spans seem fit only for the spam folder or trash can. And yet this is what contemporary advocates of radical enhancement offer in all seriousness. They present a variety of technologies and therapies that will expand our capacities far beyond what is currently possible for human beings. In _Humanity's End,_ Nicholas Agar argues against radical enhancement, describing its destructive consequences. Agar examines (...) the proposals of four prominent radical enhancers: Ray Kurzweil, who argues that technology will enable our escape from human biology; Aubrey de Grey, who calls for anti-aging therapies that will achieve "longevity escape velocity"; Nick Bostrom, who defends the morality and rationality of enhancement; and James Hughes, who envisions a harmonious democracy of the enhanced and the unenhanced. Agar argues that the outcomes of radical enhancement could be darker than the rosy futures described by these thinkers. The most dramatic means of enhancing our cognitive powers could in fact kill us; the radical extension of our life span could eliminate experiences of great value from our lives; and a situation in which some humans are radically enhanced and others are not could lead to tyranny of posthumans over humans. (shrink)

This book is a tour-de-force on how human consciousness may have evolved. From the "phantom pain" experienced by people who have lost their limbs to the uncanny faculty of "blindsight," Humphrey argues that raw sensations are central to all conscious states and that consciousness must have evolved, just like all other mental faculties, over time from our ancestorsodily responses to pain and pleasure. '.

Our understanding of communication and its evolution has advanced significantly through the study of simple models involving interacting senders and receivers of signals. Many theorists have thought that the resources of mathematical information theory are all that are needed to capture the meaning or content that is being communicated in these systems. However, the way theorists routinely talk about the models implicitly draws on a conception of content that is richer than bare informational content, especially in contexts where false content (...) is important. This article shows that this concept can be made precise by defining a notion of functional content that captures the degree to which different states of the world are involved in stabilizing senders’ and receivers’ use of a signal at equilibrium. A series of case studies is used to contrast functional content with informational content, and to illustrate the explanatory role and limitations of this definition of functional content. _1_ Introduction _2_ Modelling Framework _3_ Two Kinds of Content _3.1_ Informational content _3.2_ Functional content _4_ Cases _4.1_ Case 1: Simplest case _4.2_ Case 2: Partial pooling _4.3_ Case 3: Bottleneck _4.4_ Case 4: Partial common interest _4.5_ Case 5: Deception _4.6_ Case 6: A further problem arising from divergent interests _5_ Discussion Appendix. (shrink)

Logic is essential to correct reasoning and also has important theoretical applications in philosophy, computer science, linguistics, and mathematics. This book provides an exceptionally clear introduction to classical logic, with a unique approach that emphasizes both the hows and whys of logic. Here Nicholas Smith thoroughly covers the formal tools and techniques of logic while also imparting a deeper understanding of their underlying rationales and broader philosophical significance. In addition, this is the only introduction to logic available today that (...) presents all the major forms of proof--trees, natural deduction in all its major variants, axiomatic proofs, and sequent calculus. The book also features numerous exercises, with solutions available on an accompanying website. -/- Logic is the ideal textbook for undergraduates and graduate students seeking a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the subject. -/- Provides an essential introduction to classical logic Emphasizes the how and why of logic Covers both formal and philosophical issues Presents all the major forms of proof--from trees to sequent calculus Features numerous exercises, with solutions available online The ideal textbook for undergraduates and graduate students . (shrink)

This paper sets out a view about the explanatory role of representational content and advocates one approach to naturalising content – to giving a naturalistic account of what makes an entity a representation and in virtue of what it has the content it does. It argues for pluralism about the metaphysics of content and suggests that a good strategy is to ask the content question with respect to a variety of predictively successful information processing models in experimental psychology and cognitive (...) neuroscience; and hence that data from psychology and cognitive neuroscience should play a greater role in theorising about the nature of content. Finally, the contours of the view are illustrated by drawing out and defending a surprising consequence: that individuation of vehicles of content is partly externalist. (shrink)

An interesting feature of some sets of representations is that their structure mirrors the structure of the items they represent. Founding an account of representational content on isomorphism, homomorphism or structural resemblance has proven elusive, however, largely because these relations are too liberal when the candidate structure over representational vehicles is unconstrained. Furthermore, in many cases where there is a clear isomorphism, it is not relied on in the way the representations are used. That points to a potential resolution: that (...) an isomorphism must be used, hence usable, if it is to be an ingredient in a theory of content. This paper argues that the class of exploitable isomorphisms can indeed play a content-constituting role. (shrink)

Are bacteriophage T4 and the long-nosed elephant fish valuable in their own right? Nicholas Agar defends an affirmative answer to this question by arguing that anything living is intrinsically valuable. This claim challenges received ethical wisdom according to which only human beings are valuable in themselves. The resulting biocentric or life-centered morality forms the platform for an ethic of the environment. -/- Agar builds a bridge between the biological sciences and what he calls "folk" morality to arrive at a (...) workable environmental ethic and a new spectrum--a new hierarchy--of living organisms. The book overturns common-sense moral belief as well as centuries of philosophical speculation on the exclusive moral significance of humans. Spanning several fields, including philosophy of psychology, philosophy of science, and other areas of contemporary analytic philosophy, Agar analyzes and speaks to a wide array of historic and contemporary views, from Aristotle and Kant, to E. O. Wilson, Holmes Rolston II, and Baird Callicot. The result is a challenge to prevailing definitions of value and a call for a scientifically-informed appreciation of nature. (shrink)

There is ongoing controversy as to whether the genome is a representing system. Although it is widely recognised that DNA carries information, both correlating with and coding for various outcomes, neither of these implies that the genome has semantic properties like correctness or satisfaction conditions, In the Scope of Logic, Methodology, and the Philosophy of Sciences, Vol. II. Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp. 387–400). Here a modified version of teleosemantics is applied to the genome to show that it does indeed have semantic (...) properties – there is representation in the genome. The account differs in three respects from previous attempts to apply teleosemantics to genes. It emphasises the role of the consumer of representations. It rejects the standard assumption that genetic representation can be used to explain the course of an organism’s development. And it identifies the explanatory role played by representational properties of the genome. A striking consequence of this account is that other inheritance systems could also be representational. Thus, a version of the parity thesis is accepted. However, the criteria for being an inheritance system are demanding, so semantic properties are not ubiquitous. (shrink)

1. Introduction 2. Reward-Guided Decision Making 3. Content in the Model 4. How to Deflate a Metarepresentational Reading Proust and Carruthers on metacognitive feelings 5. A Deflationary Treatment of RPEs? 5.1 Dispensing with prediction errors 5.2 What is use of the RPE focused on? 5.3 Alternative explanations—worldly correlates 5.4 Contrast cases 6. Conclusion Appendix: Temporal Difference Learning Algorithms.

In this chapter I show how challenges to our ability to tame the uncertainty of a pandemic leaves us vulnerable to uncertainty phobia. This is because not all the uncertainty that matters can be tamed by our knowledge of the relevant probabilities, contrary to what many believe. We are vulnerable because unrelievable wild uncertainty is a hard burden to bear, especially so when we must act in the face of it. -/- The source of unrelievable wild uncertainty is that the (...) nature of probability distributions matters for whether knowledge of them tames uncertainty. It matters because a warrant for the taming is provided by two theorems, but this warrant applies only to some kinds of probability distribution. Essentially, this is because the theorems are about what happens at a mathematical limit but real life never reaches the limit. Consequently, the warrant depends on how quickly the random processes producing the uncertainty converge towards their limit. If they are governed by one class of probability distributions, they converge quickly enough to possess the warrant. If they are governed by another class of probability distributions, they converge towards their limit too slowly and so do not possess that warrant. The random processes of pandemics involve the slow kind . -/- Faced with such a burden, as we are in a pandemic, we are tempted to retreat into uncertainty phobia, leading to fixed definite opinions, precisely when the exercise of sound judgement to determine our responses requires our opinions to be hedged and mobile. Coping with a pandemic requires us to bear the burden of unrelievable wild uncertainty rather than give in to the temptation of uncertainty phobia. Pandemics require the virtue of epistemic forbearance. (shrink)

I hope I have convinced the reader that DR theory offers at least some exciting potential when applied to the semantics of belief reports. It differs considerably from other approaches, and it makes intuitively acceptable predictions that other theories do not. The theory also provides a novel approach to the semantics of other propsitional attitude reports. Further, DR theory enables one to approach the topic of anaphora within belief and other propositional attitude contexts in a novel way, thus combining the (...) semantics developed here with one of the theory's original motivations (Kamp, 1981a). However, these are unfortunately topics that I must reserve for another time. (shrink)

A thought process is an unfolding causal chain. Some thoughts cause others in virtue of their contents. Paradigmatic cases of personal level inference involve something more, some kind of appreciation or feeling that the conclusion follows from the premises. First- order processes are inadequate to account for the phenomenon. Attempts to capture the additional ingredient in terms of second-order beliefs have proven problematic. An intermediate position has, however, been overlooked. The extra ingredient could be an epistemic feeling, a form of (...) procedural metacognition. Extensive psychological research has shown that epistemic feelings are involved in monitoring many kinds of cognitive process, affecting how the processes unfold. Inferences may be no different. Inferences are also plausibly accompanied by an epistemic feeling, something like a feeling of reliability or unreliability. Such a feeling accounts for the phenomenological datum. It can also play a significant epistemic role for the thinker. (shrink)

The rapid developments in technologies -- especially computing and the advent of many 'smart' devices, as well as rapid and perpetual communication via the Internet -- has led to a frequently voiced view which Nicholas Agar describes as 'radical optimism'. Radical optimists claim that accelerating technical progress will soon end poverty, disease, and ignorance, and improve our happiness and well-being. Agar disputes the claim that technological progress will automatically produce great improvements in subjective well-being. He argues that radical optimism (...) 'assigns to technological progress an undeserved pre-eminence among all the goals pursued by our civilization'. Instead, Agar uses the most recent psychological studies about human perceptions of well-being to create a realistic model of the impact technology will have. Although he accepts that technological advance does produce benefits, he insists that these are significantly less than those proposed by the radical optimists, and aspects of such progress can also pose a threat to values such as social justice and our relationship with nature, while problems such as poverty cannot be understood in technological terms. He concludes by arguing that a more realistic assessment of the benefits that technological advance can bring will allow us to better manage its risks in future. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that neuroscience has been harmed by the widespread adoption of seriously inadequate methodologies or philosophies of science - most notably inductivism and falsificationism. I argue that neuroscience, in seeking to understand the human brain and mind, needs to follow in the footsteps of evolution.

The experience of having to suffer debilitating pain is far too common in the United States, and many patients continue to be inadequately treated by their doctors. Although many physicians freely admit that their pain management practices may have been somewhat lacking, many more express concern that the prescribing of heightened levels of opioid analgesics may result in closer regulatory scrutiny, criminal investigation, or even criminal prosecution.Although several researchers have examined the regulatory environment and the threat of sanction or harm (...) it poses to physicians and patients, few have examined the likelihood of investigation or prosecution stemming from the aggressive use of opioids in physician-directed pain management. Accordingly, in an effort to assess whether the fear of prosecution is realistic and, if so, what factors contribute to its likelihood, we surveyed chief prosecutors in four states about their knowledge, opinions, and attitudes concerning opioids and the prosecution of physicians stemming from the treatment of patients who were either terminally ill or suffering from chronic noncancer pain. (shrink)

This paper advocates explicitness about the type of entity to be considered as content- bearing in connectionist systems; it makes a positive proposal about how vehicles of content should be individuated; and it deploys that proposal to argue in favour of representation in connectionist systems. The proposal is that the vehicles of content in some connectionist systems are clusters in the state space of a hidden layer. Attributing content to such vehicles is required to vindicate the standard explanation for some (...) classificatory networks’ ability to generalise to novel samples their correct classification of the samples on which they were trained. (shrink)

A basic deep neural network (DNN) is trained to exhibit a large set of input–output dispositions. While being a good model of the way humans perform some tasks automatically, without deliberative reasoning, more is needed to approach human‐like artificial intelligence. Analysing recent additions brings to light a distinction between two fundamentally different styles of computation: content‐specific and non‐content‐specific computation (as first defined here). For example, deep episodic RL networks draw on both. So does human conceptual reasoning. Combining the two takes (...) advantage of the complementary costs and benefits of each. It also offers a better model of human cognitive competence. (shrink)

Concepts are our tools for thinking. They enable us to engage in explicit reasoning about things in the world. Like physical tools, they can be more or less good, given the ways we use them – more or less dependable for categorisation, learning, induction, action-planning, and so on. Do concept users appreciate, explicitly or implicitly, that concepts vary in dependability? Do they feel that some concepts are in some way defective? If so, we metacognize our concepts. One example that has (...) been studied is a person’s judgement about how well they have learnt a new category. There are many other forms that concept-metacognition could take. This paper offers a preliminary taxonomy of different forms of metacognition directed at concepts. It suggests that concept-metacognition may affect the way one concept from a range of candidates is selected for use, and the way a concept is relied on in reasoning. Concept-metacognition may also play a pivotal role in the social process of constructing concepts, in replacing the old and constructing the new tools for thinking. (shrink)

A step towards a theory of consciousness would be to characterise the effect of consciousness on information processing. One set of results suggests that the effect of consciousness is to interfere with computations that are optimally performed non-consciously. Another set of results suggests that conscious, system 2 processing is the home of norm-compliant computation. This is contrasted with system 1 processing, thought to be typically unconscious, which operates with useful but error-prone heuristics. -/- These results can be reconciled by separating (...) out two different distinctions: between conscious and non-conscious representations, on the one hand, and between automatic and deliberate processes, on the other. This pair of distinctions is used to illuminate some existing experimental results and to resolve the puzzle about whether consciousness helps or hinders accurate information processing. This way of resolving the puzzle shows the importance of another category, which we label ‘type 0 cognition’, characterised by automatic computational processes operating on non-conscious representations. (shrink)

The Scenes of Inquiry advocates a radical shift of concern in philosophical, historical, and sociological studies of the sciences, from answers and doctrines to questions and problems, and explores the consequences of such a shift. Nicholas Jardine has expanded the book considerably for this paperback edition, adding a substantial preface, an extensive bibliography, and three new essays which develop the book's themes and pursue its aims further. 'Philosophers, historians, sociologists, and not least scientists, should read it' Times Higher Education (...) Supplement. (shrink)

Can findings from psychology and cognitive neuroscience about the neural mechanisms involved in decision-making can tell us anything useful about the commonly-understood mental phenomenon of making voluntary choices? Two philosophical objections are considered. First, that the neural data is subpersonal, and so cannot enter into illuminating explanations of personal level phenomena like voluntary action. Secondly, that mental properties are multiply realized in the brain in such a way as to make them insusceptible to neuroscientific study. The paper argues that both (...) objections would be weakened by the discovery of empirical generalisations connecting subpersonal properties with the personal level. It gives three case studies that furnish evidence to that effect. It argues that the existence of such interrelations are consistent with a plausible construal of the personal-subpersonal distinction. Furthermore, there is no reason to suppose that the notion subpersonal representation relied on in cognitive neuroscience illicitly imports personal-level phenomena like consciousness or normativity, or is otherwise explanatorily problematic. (shrink)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was hailed by Bertrand Russell as 'one of the supreme intellects of all time'. A towering figure in seventeenth-century philosophy, his complex thought has been championed and satirized in equal measure, most famously in Voltaire's _Candide_. In this outstanding introduction to his philosophy, Nicholas Jolley introduces and assesses the whole of Leibniz's philosophy. Beginning with an introduction to Leibniz's life and work, he carefully introduces the core elements of Leibniz's metaphysics: his theories of substance, identity and (...) individuation; monads and space and time; and his important debate over the nature of space and time with Newton's champion, Samuel Clarke. He then introduces Leibniz's theories of mind, knowledge, and innate ideas, showing how Leibniz anticipated the distinction between conscious and unconscious states, before examining his theory of free will and the problem of evil. An important feature of the book is its introduction to Leibniz's moral and political philosophy, an overlooked aspect of his work. The final chapter assesses legacy and the impact of his philosophy on philosophy as a whole, particularly on the work of Immanuel Kant. Throughout, Nicholas Jolley places Leibniz in relation to some of the other great philosophers, such as Descartes, Spinoza and Locke, and discusses Leibniz's key works, such as the _Monadology_ and _Discourse on Metaphysics_. (shrink)

In this paper I present a novel supertask in a Newtonian universe that destroys and creates infinite masses and energies, showing thereby that we can have infinite indeterminism. Previous supertasks have managed only to destroy or create finite masses and energies, thereby giving cases of only finite indeterminism. In the Nothing from Infinity paradox we will see an infinitude of finite masses and an infinitude of energy disappear entirely, and do so despite the conservation of energy in all collisions. I (...) then show how this leads to the Infinity from Nothing paradox, in which we have the spontaneous eruption of infinite mass and energy out of nothing. I conclude by showing how our supertask models at least something of an old conundrum, the question of what happens when the immovable object meets the irresistible force. (shrink)

Ruth Millikan has hypothesised that human cognition contains ‘consistency testers’. Consistency testers check whether different judgements a thinker makes about the same subject matter agree or conflict. Millikan’s suggestion is that, where the same concept has been applied to the world via two routes, and the two judgements that result are found to be inconsistent, that makes the thinker less inclined to apply those concepts in those ways in the future. If human cognition does indeed include such a capacity, its (...) operation will be an important determinant of how people use concepts. It will have a major impact on which concepts they deploy and which means of application (conceptions) they rely on. Since consistency testers are a selection mechanism at the heart of conceptual thinking, they would be crucial to understanding how concepts are selected – why some are retained and proliferate and others die out. Hence, whether consistency testers for concepts exist, and how they operate, is an important question for those seeking to understand the cultural evolution of concepts, and of the words we use to express them. (shrink)

Socrates' attitude towards falsehood is quite puzzling in the Republic. Although Socrates is clearly committed to truth, at several points he discusses the benefits of falsehood. This occurs most notably in Book 3 with the "noble lie" (414d-415c) and most disturbingly in Book 5 with the "rigged sexual lottery" (459d-460c). This raises the question: What kinds of falsehoods does Socrates think are beneficial, and what kinds of falsehoods does he think are harmful? And more broadly: What can this tell us (...) about the relationship between ethics and epistemology? The key to answering these questions lies in an obscure and paradoxical passage in Book II; at 382a-d Socrates distinguishes between "true falsehoods" and "impure lies." True falsehoods are always bad, but impure lies are sometimes beneficial. Despite Socrates' insistence that he is not saying anything deep, his distinction is far from straightforward. Nevertheless, in order to determine why some falsehoods are beneficial and why some are always harmful, we must understand what exactly true falsehoods are and how they differ from impure lies. In this paper, I argue that true falsehoods are a restricted class of false beliefs about ethics; they are false beliefs about how one should live and what one should pursue. I refer to these beliefs as "normative commitments." False normative commitments are always pernicious because they create and sustain psychological disharmony. Unlike true falsehoods, impure lies can be about anything. Nevertheless, they are only beneficial when they help produce and sustain true normative commitments. I argue that the upshot of this is that practical concerns have a kind of primacy over theoretical concerns. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Plato on Knowledge as a Power1Nicholas D. SmithAt 471C4 in Plato’s Republic, the argument takes a sudden turn when Glaucon becomes impatient with all of the specific prescriptions Socrates has been making, and asks to return to the issue Socrates had earlier set aside—whether or not the city he was describing could ever be brought into being. In response to Glaucon’s impatient question, Socrates articulates his “third wave of (...) paradox” (472ag–7), namely, that the ills of the cities will never be ended until either philosophers become rulers or rulers become philosophers (473c11–d6). Glaucon immediately responds that such a view is likely to be greeted with violence and scorn (473e6–474a4), and so Socrates must hasten to explain his odd claim. His explanation, it turns out, is that true philosophers have an enormous cognitive advantage over non-philosophers—philosophers have and use knowledge (ἐπιστήμη), whereas non-philosophers have and use only opinion (δόξα).2 This distinction, between επιστήμη and δόξα, turns out: to be a distinction between two different cognitive powers (δυνάμεις—477d7–e3). And different powers, Plato clearly tells us, apply to or take as their objects (Plato says they are “ἐπί”) different things (477dl).In this paper, I shall argue that the relationship between the cognitive powers and their various objects has been fundamentally misunderstood, which has led scholars into one or more misinterpretations of important and explicit features of the text. At the heart of these misunderstandings, I claim, is [End Page 145] their shared misconception of the relation between the cognitive power and its objects as interpretable in terms of the relationship between a cognitive stale and what the content of that state is of or about.3 One consequence of the view for which I shall argue is that what has come to be known as the “two-worlds theory”4 of Plato’s epistemology is seriously mistaken, but no less mistaken than the alternatives given by its recent critics. Another consequence that I shall draw from my argument is that Plato should be understood neither as a kind of foundationalist with regard to knowledge and warrant, as some have supposed him to be,5 nor as a coherentist, as others have supposed,6 but, rather, as a kind of causal reliabilist. [End Page 146]1. KNOWLEDGE AS A POWERScholarly interpretations of Plato’s epistemology have routinely sought to understand the relationships between each cognitive power of Republic Book V and the objects of the ἐφ’ ᾦ (“what it is related to”) condition by which it is differentiated from other δυνάμεις as Plato’s way of telling us what each sort of cognition is of or aboul. 7 So, for example, we find Gail Fine using the expressions “belief [δόξα] is set over [Fine’s translation of Plato’s ἐπί] …” and “knowledge is set over …” interchangeably with “belief is of …” or “belief is about…” and “knowledge is of …” or “knowledge is about …”8 Against the “two-worlds theory,” Fine argues that, for Plato, there can be knowledge of sensibles and beliefs about Forms. Accordingly, since she assimilates the power-ἐπί-object set of relations to the cognilion-of/about-object relation, she concludes—in order to account for knowledge of sensibles and beliefs about Forms—that the objects of knowledge and opinion must be propositions. Plato’s claims that knowledge is ἐπί what is, whereas opinion is ἐπί what is and is not, Fine understands as, “One can only know true propositions; one can believe both true and false propositions.”9 We shall see later that this “veridical” understanding of what Plato means to identify as “what is,” and “what is and is not” fails to account for important and explicit elements of Plato’s exposition of the epistemological and metaphysical distinctions he is making. For now, it is enough to note that Fine understands the ἐφ’ᾦ) relation in terms of our cognition-of/about-object relation. One finds the same assimilation made by those who advance existential readings of Plato’s “is” and “is not,”10 as [End Page 147] well as those who have urged that we adopt predicative readings of “is” and “is not.”11But I think there are very serious problems with this assimilation. Plato is very... (shrink)

In this paper we explore how compositional semantics, discourse structure, and the cognitive states of participants all contribute to pragmatic constraints on answers to questions in dialogue. We synthesise formal semantic theories on questions and answers with techniques for discourse interpretation familiar from computational linguistics, and show how this provides richer constraints on responses in dialogue than either component can achieve alone.

Recent work combining cognitive neuroscience with computational modelling suggests that distributed patterns of neural firing may represent probability distributions. This paper asks: what makes it the case that distributed patterns of firing, as well as carrying information about (correlating with) probability distributions over worldly parameters, represent such distributions? In examples of probabilistic population coding, it is the way information is used in downstream processing so as to lead to successful behaviour. In these cases content depends on factors beyond bare information, (...) contra Brian Skyrms’ (2010) view that representational content can be fully characterised in information-theoretic terms. (shrink)

Metaphysical graphical structuralism is the view that at some fundamental level the world is a mathematical graph of nodes and edges. Randall Dipert has advanced a graphical structuralist theory of fundamental particulars and Alexander Bird has advanced a graphical structuralist theory of fundamental properties. David Oderberg has posed a powerful challenge to graphical structuralism: that it entails the absurd inexistence of the world or the absurd cessation of all change. In this paper I defend graphical structuralism. A sharper formulation, some (...) theorems about such structures, and careful attention to the interaction of metaphysical and mathematical features, shows that the absurdities depend on assumptions that are not essential to the view and brings to light a surprising fact about the necessary structure of fundamental properties. (shrink)

Abstract. A rhesus monkey, Helen, from whom the striate cortex was almost totally removed, was studied intensively over a period of 8 years. During this time she regained an effective, though limited, degree of visually guided behaviour. The evidence suggests that while Helen suffered a permanent loss of `focal vision she retained (initially unexpressed) the capacity for `ambient vision.

Elselijn Kingma argues that Christopher Boorse’s biostatistical theory (the BST) does not show how the reference classes it uses are objective and naturalistic. Recently, philosophers of medicine have attempted to rebut Kingma’s concerns. I argue that these rebuttals are theoretically unconvincing, and that there are clear examples of physicians adjusting their reference classes according to their prior knowledge of health and disease. I focus on the use of age-adjusted reference classes to diagnose low bone mineral density in children. In addition (...) to using the BST’s age, sex, and species, physicians also choose to use other factors to define reference classes, such as pubertal status, bone age, body size, and muscle mass. I show that physicians calibrate the reference classes they use according to their prior knowledge of health and disease. Reference classes are also chosen for pragmatic reasons, such as to predict fragility fractures. (shrink)

The most constructive response to the crisis in moral theory has been the revival of virtue ethics, which has the advantages of being personal, contextual, and, as will be argued, normative as well. It is also proposed that the best way to refound virtue ethics is to return to the Greek concept of technē tou biou, literally "craft of life." The ancients did not distinguish between craft and fine art, and the meaning of technē, even in its Latin form, ars, (...) still retains the meaning of skillful crafting and discipline. In Greco-Roman culture, techniques were very specific, covering dietetics, economics, and erotics. In ancient China, moral cultivation was intimately connected to the arts, from archery to poetry, music, and dance, such that virtually every activity would have both moral and aesthetic meaning. Using R. D. Collingwood's distinction between craft and fine art, it is proposed that the latter, particularly the performing arts of music and dance, can serve as a model for virtue ethics in our times. (shrink)

When scientists choose one theory over another, they reject out of hand all those that are not simple, unified or explanatory. Yet the orthodox view of science is that evidence alone should determine what can be accepted. Nicholas Maxwell thinks he has a way out of the dilemma.

In his important recent book Schroeder proposes a Humean theory of reasons that he calls hypotheticalism. His rigourous account of the weight of reasons is crucial to his theory, both as an element of the theory and constituting his defence to powerful standard objections to Humean theories of reasons. In this paper I examine that rigourous account and show it to face problems of vacuity and consonance. There are technical resources that may be brought to bear on the problem of (...) vacuity but implementation is not simple and philosophical motivation a further difficulty. Even supposing vacuity is fixed, the problems of consonance bring to light a different obstruction lying in Schroeder’s path. There is a difference between the general weighing of reasons and the context specificity of the correct placing of weight on them in deliberation and this difference cannot be fixed by the resources in the account. For these reasons we are still waiting for a plausible Humean theory of reasons. (shrink)

The New Thinking contained in this volume rejects an Evolutionary Psychology that is committed to innate domain-specific psychological mechanisms: gene-based adaptations that are unlearnt, developmentally fixed and culturally universal. But the New Thinking does not simply deny the importance of innate psychological traits. The problem runs deeper: the concept of innateness is not suited to distinguishing between the two positions. That points to a more serious problem with the concept of innateness as it is applied to human psychological phenotypes. This (...) paper argues that the features of recent human evolution highlighted by the New Thinking imply that the concept of inherited representation, set out here, is a better tool for theorising about human cognitive evolution. (shrink)

The most constructive response to the crisis in moral theory has been the revival of virtue ethics, which has the advantages of being personal, contextual, and, as will be argued, normative as well. It is also proposed that the best way to refound virtue ethics is to return to the Greek concept of technē tou biou, literally "craft of life." The ancients did not distinguish between craft and fine art, and the meaning of technē, even in its Latin form, ars, (...) still retains the meaning of skillful crafting and discipline. In Greco-Roman culture, techniques were very specific, covering dietetics, economics, and erotics. In ancient China, moral cultivation was intimately connected to the arts, from archery to poetry, music, and dance, such that virtually every activity would have both moral and aesthetic meaning. Using R. D. Collingwood's distinction between craft and fine art, it is proposed that the latter, particularly the performing arts of music and dance, can serve as a model for virtue ethics in our times. (shrink)

Attempting to compare scientific theories requires a philosophical model of meaning. Yet different scientific theories have at times—particularly in early chemistry—pre-supposed disparate theories of meaning. When two theories of meaning are incommensurable, we must say that the scientific theories that rely upon them are meta-incommensurable. Meta- incommensurability is a more profound sceptical threat to science since, unlike first-order incommensurability, it implies complete incomparability.

There is increasing evidence for epigenetically mediated transgenerational inheritance across taxa. However, the evolutionary implications of such alternative mechanisms of inheritance remain unclear. Herein, we show that epigenetic mechanisms can serve two fundamentally different functions in transgenerational inheritance: (i) selection-based effects, which carry adaptive information in virtue of selection over many generations of reliable transmission; and (ii) detection-based effects, which are a transgenerational form of adaptive phenotypic plasticity. The two functions interact differently with a third form of epigenetic information transmission, (...) namely information about cell state transmitted for somatic cell heredity in multicellular organisms. Selection-based epigenetic information is more likely to conflict with somatic cell inheritance than is detection-based epigenetic information. Consequently, the evolutionary implications of epigenetic mechanisms are different for unicellular and multicellular organisms, which underscores the conceptual and empirical importance of distinguishing between these two different forms of transgenerational epigenetic effect. (shrink)