Psychology has always defined itself as a science and yet it has lacked the theoretical and methodological unity regarded as characteristic of the natural sciences. Nicolò Gaj explores the topical question of unification in psychology, setting out a conceptual framework for considerations of unity and disunity, and exploring the evidence of its fragmentation. He takes a critical look at the history of the most prominent attempts at unification, and at the desirability and feasibility of the whole project. The book represents (...) a unique and valuable attempt to address the issue of unification from a philosophical perspective, and via a combination of theoretical and empirical research. (shrink)

In his various lectures and writings, Whitehead articulates an evolving metaphysical vision in which process and relationship, rather than stasis and independent fixity, are primary. In so doing he performs a valuable philosophical service, pointing the way towards liberation from certain constraining assumptions and habits of thought. However, there are components of his vision that retain elements of fixity and separateness. I find these to be the aspects of his philosophy that are the most problematic, both in respect to internal (...) con­ceptual coherency and in relation to my own philosophical and spiritual vision. My intention is to elucidate some of the ways in which these components of his philosophy are problematic, and to present an alternative vision in which these elements of fixity and ontological separateness dissolve into a dynamic openness of flux and interrelationship. (shrink)

People with bad beliefs — roughly beliefs that conflict with those of the relevant experts and are maintained regardless of counter-evidence — are often cast as bad believers. Such beliefs are seen to be the result of, e.g., motivated or biased cognition and believers are judged to be epistemically irrational and blameworthy in holding them. Here I develop a novel framework to explain why people form bad beliefs. People with bad beliefs follow the social epistemic norms guiding how agents are (...) supposed to form and share beliefs within their respective communities. Beliefs go bad because these norms aren’t reliably knowledge-conducive. In other words, bad beliefs aren’t due to bad believers but due bad social epistemic norms. The framework also unifies different explanations of bad beliefs, is testable and provides distinct interventions to combat such beliefs. The framework also helps to capture the complex and often contextual normative landscape surrounding bad beliefs more adequately. On this picture, it’s primarily groups that are to be blamed for bad beliefs. I also suggest that some individuals will be blameless for forming their beliefs in line with their group’s norms, whereas others won’t be. And I draw attention to the factors that influence blameworthiness-judgements in these contexts. (shrink)

Epistemic structuralism, the idea that social structures have an immense influence on our inquiries and epistemic behavior, presents a unique challenge to the emerging field of vice epistemology. The most extreme application of this challenge results in the rejection of vice explanations in favor of structural explanations for epistemic behavior. Some vice epistemologists have expressed the intuitive idea that vice explanations and structural explanations may be synthesized, but the exact details of such a synthesis have yet to be adequately examined. (...) This paper starts by trying to gain clarity about structuralism and structuralist explanations in epistemology, then it discusses how a well-developed vice-structural explanation can be done. I end this paper by briefly noting a few crucial issues that demand further investigation. (shrink)

These essays represent an important contribution to modern philosophical theology. They begin with an appreciation of Basil Mitchell's work and then discuss the role of reason in the justification of Christian theism, giving special attention to the nature of informal reasoning in religion and science. The latter essays examine particular arguments raised by specific religious concepts, covering such topics as the problem of evil, conspicuous sanctity, atonement, and the Eucharist. Drawn from a wide spectrum of philosophers and theologians, the contributors (...) include Maurice Wiles, Grace M. Jantzen, Gordon Kaufman, J.R. Lucas, Rom Harr'e, Richard Swinburne, and Michael Dummett. (shrink)

‘I can't believe that,’ said Alice. ‘Can't you?’ the Queen said in a pitying tone. ‘Try again: draw a long breath and shut your eyes.’ Alice laughed. ‘There's no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can't believe impossible things.’ ‘I dare say you haven't had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘Why sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’.

Spontaneous collapse models are modifications of standard quantum mechanics in which a physical mechanism is responsible for the collapse of the wavefunction, thus providing a way to solve the so-called “measurement problem”. The two most famous of these models are the Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber (GRW) model and the Continuous Spontaneous Localisation (CSL) models. Here, we propose a new kind of non-relativistic spontaneous collapse model based on the idea of collapse points situated at fixed spacetime coordinates. This model shares properties of both GRW (...) and CSL models, while starting from different assumptions. We show that it can lead to a dynamics quite similar to that of the GRW model while also naturally solving the problem of indistinguishable particles. On the other hand, we can also obtain the same master equation of the CSL models. Then, we show how our proposed model solves the measurement problem in a manner conceptually similar to the GRW model. Finally, we show how the proposed model can also accommodate for Newtonian gravity by treating the collapses as gravitational sources. (shrink)

El hecho de la creación extrasistemática de normas jurídicas obliga a revisar los procedimientos interpretativos con los que habitualmente trabaja el jurista. Y el hecho de que los sujetos destinatarios de la regla jurídica estén incluidos en el proceso de formación de ésta hace cada vez más difícil identificar el momento en que la regla nace y se constituye en posible objeto de conocimiento. La relación entre sistema de fuentes, formas de posición de las normas y nuevas figuras sociales crea (...) un proceso circular en el que el destinatario y el juez se remiten mutuamente la justificación de la "norma. Nos encontramos así ante un derecho que es negocial en los contenidos, pero legal en las formas. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus or the globus pallidus is an established treatment for Parkinson’s disease that yields a marked and lasting improvement of motor symptoms. Yet, DBS benefit on gait disturbances in PD is still debated and can be a source of dissatisfaction and poor quality of life. Gait disturbances in PD encompass a variety of clinical manifestations and rely on different pathophysiological bases. While gait disturbances arising years after DBS surgery can be related to disease progression, (...) early impairment of gait may be secondary to treatable causes and benefits from DBS reprogramming. In this review, we tackle the issue of gait disturbances in PD patients with DBS by discussing their neurophysiological basis, providing a detailed clinical characterization, and proposing a pragmatic programming approach to support their management. (shrink)

Basil Bernstein rarely had a good press in the forty-odd years in which he presented his developing theories to the public. Early admiration for his sociolinguistic 'discoveries' - of codes which regulate, at a deep-structural level, family beliefs and behaviours and relationships, as well as surface utterances - turned quite quickly into a suspicion that his description of social class difference amounted to a declaration of working class deficit. Although Bernstein's writings, particularly in the 1990s, became opaque to the point (...) of seeming to be purposefully obscurantist, they have always been enlivened by clear, pithy and punchy statements which left no room for ambiguity about the case he was making. The struggle to achieve an education system which would offer genuinely equal opportunities to children from all class and cultural backgrounds continued to underpin the writing and teaching of his later years. (shrink)

In this paper, the aim is to explore how there can be a role for expression of affect in illocution, drawing upon some ideas about expression put forward by Karl Bühler. In a first part of the paper, I map some active discussions and open questions surrounding phenomena that seem to involve “expression of affect”. Second, I home in on a smaller piece of that larger puzzle; namely, a consideration of how there may be non-conventional expression of affect. I provide (...) some examples of what I take that to involve and set out some premises for approaching it. In a third section, I motivate such an interest by pointing to a question in speech act theory concerning ‘force conventionalism’. This is whether and how illocution can be performed non-conventionally—that is, whether (at least some) utterances can be communicated with illocutionary force without need of convention. I propose that where expression of affect may occur non-conventionally, it may in turn constitute one important route through which at least some kinds of illocution are achieved. In the fourth part of the paper, I sketch an account of such non-conventional expression of affect for the purposes of illocution, by exploring a broadly Bühlerian account of some affects; namely, that some affects are teleological in character, that coordinations may be involved in their satisfactional states, and that uptake of the expressed affect constitutes one subset of such satisfactional states. That exposition points to the contemporary relevance of the “action theory of expression” proposed by Bühler. (shrink)

b /b b i Quantum Implications /i /b is dedicated to David Bohm, his work, and the issues raised by his ideas.

This book analyzes the moral confusion of contemporary society, relating rival conceptions of morality with a wide variety of views about the nature and predicament of man. Mitchell argues that many secular thinkers possess a traditional "Christian" conscience which they find hard to defend in terms of an entirely secular world-view, but which is more in line with a Christian understanding of man.

Cambridge Professor Basil Willey wrote this volume as a companion to his preceding work on the Seventeenth Century Background. Whereas the 17th C. key word was "Truth," he maintains the 18th C key word was "Nature." Organized in 12 chapters including "The Wisdom of God in the Creation, Cosmic Toryism, Natural Morality--Shaftesbury, Nature in Satire, Jos. Priestley and the Socinian Moonlight, and Nature in Wordsworth.

In this work, I attempt to outline a critical history of Jansenism and its reception, especially in Pascal. In particular, in the first part, I will outline the interpretive lines that led to the formation of Jansenist thought and its main ideas, concerning the interpretation of predestination. In the second part, I will turn my attention to Jansenism as conceived in Port-Royal, with particular regard to Pascal’s interpretation and use of Jansen’s ideas, especially in relation to the complex dialectical relationship (...) that Pascal’s Jansenism entertains with the sciences. (shrink)

In this study, we performed a comparative analysis to examine the extent to which local governments (LGs) in two Mediterranean countries – Spain and Italy – use their websites to disclose information related to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in response to the launch of the United Nations' (UN) 2030 Agenda. We performed a manual content analysis of the official websites of all Italian and Spanish LGs with more than 100,000 inhabitants, constructing different disclosure indexes. We then used a non-parametric statistical (...) test to assess differences in disclosure behaviours between countries. Our findings show that the extent to which the investigated LGs disclose SDG-related information online remains limited. Based on Oliver's (1991) strategic responses framework, we postulate that Italian and Spanish LGs have responded to the launch of the SDGs by adopting compromise and avoidance strategies. (shrink)

This paper explores how Wundt’s and Bühler’s respective conceptions of gestural expression have implications for how each conceives of what, in broad terms, may be understood as a ‘grammar of gestures’: that is, the rules for the formation and performance of gestures with and without speech. Unlike previous scholarship that has looked at the relationship of Wundt and Bühler, the aim here will be to give particular attention to the relevance of their respective accounts for current philosophical and linguistic research (...) on gesture. Building off of Bühler, we can offer an alternative to the psychologistic and solipsistic model of gestural expression that can be found in Wundt and that seems to be resurgent today in work by McNeil and others. Via Bühler’s notions of diacrisis and of the underlying functions that guide human communication, we propose an understanding of the relationship between gestures and speech that aims to render accurately both the highly contextualised and the highly structured conditions of their mutual employment. (shrink)

In response to Caesar, who intends to reach Antonius in Italy, the boatman Amyclas sets out the celestial and terrestrial signs that foretell a storm and advises against putting out to sea. In this speech Lucan draws on the treatment of such phenomena in the didactic poems of Aratus and Vergil, but the allusions are remodelled in epic language and adapted to the narrative context of the episode. Further, in the story of Amyclas Lucan develops dramatic ideas mentioned in the (...) specific passages in which Aratus and Vergil reflect on the utility of their teachings. Thus the boatman’s meteorological doctrina is highlighted, though he is unable to gain any advantage from it. In fact, in contrast to Palinurus with Aeneas in Aen. 5 and to the rector ratis with Pompey in Luc. 8, Amyclas does not try to dissuade Caesar from the voyage and agrees to accompany him. His speech shows affinities with declamations on the theme of sailing and the presence of adverse omens; however, the speech of Amyclas sounds like a suasoria that has been interrupted. This aspect focuses the impossibility of communication between the two characters: Amyclas, powerlessly external to the civil wars, can only appeal to the force of nature, which Caesar impiously defies. (shrink)

Printed in Great Britain. Erratum slip inserted.

Mainstream cognitive neuroscience typically ignores the role of quantum physical effects in the neural processes underlying cogni¬tion and consciousness. However, many unsolved problems remain, suggesting the need to consider new approaches. We propose that quantum theory, especially through an ontological interpretation due to Bohm and Hiley, provides a fruitful framework for addressing the neural correlates of cognition and consciousness. In particular, the ontological interpretation suggests that a novel type of 'active information', connected with a novel type of 'quantum potential energy', (...) plays a key role in quantum physical processes. After introducing the ontological interpretation we illustrate its value for cognitive neuroscience by discussing it in the light of a proposal by Beck and Eccles about how quantum tunneling could play a role in controlling the frequency of synaptic exocytosis. In this proposal, quantum tunneling would enable the 'self' to control its brain without violating the energy conservation law. We argue that the ontological interpretation provides a sharper picture of what actually could be taking place in quantum tunneling in general and in synaptic exocytosis in particular. Based on the notions of active information and quantum potential energy, we propose a coherent way of understanding how mental processes (understood as involving non-classical physical processes) can act on traditional, classically describable neural processes without violating the energy conservation law. (shrink)

David Bohm is one of the foremost scientific thinkers of today and one of the most distinguished scientists of his generation. His challenge to the conventional understanding of quantum theory has led scientists to reexamine what it is they are going and his ideas have been an inspiration across a wide range of disciplines. _Quantum Implications_ is a collection of original contributions by many of the world' s leading scholars and is dedicated to David Bohm, his work and the issues (...) raised by his ideas. The contributors range across physics, philosophy, biology, art, psychology, and include some of the most distinguished scientists of the day. There is an excellent introduction by the editors, putting Bohm's work in context and setting right some of the misconceptions that have persisted about the work of David Bohm. (shrink)

Philosophical work on the concept of consent in the past few decades has got to grips with it as a rich notion. We are increasingly sensitive to consent not as a momentary, atomic, transactional thing, but as a complex idea admitting of various qualities and dimensions. In this paper we note that the recognition of this complexity demands a theoretical framework quite different to those presently extant, and we suggest that the enactive approach is one which offers significant value in (...) this regard. In consonance with arguments made by Laurie Penny about how consent is a continuous and dynamic process, we outline how an enactive approach identifies consent as temporally extended (rather than momentarily transactional), and as affected by the skilfulness of the agents involved, the fitness of community provided resources to negotiate the consensual relationship over time, and the unfolding of circumstances in the situation in which the joint action is taking place. We argue that the value of an enactive perspective on consent is in highlighting these complexities, and providing resources to articulate and theorise them in ways that are not open to other current approaches. (shrink)

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why physical processes give rise to consciousness (Chalmers 1995). Regardless of many attempts to solve the problem, there is still no commonly agreed solution. It is thus very likely that some radically new ideas are required if we are to make any progress. In this paper we turn to quantum theory to find out whether it has anything to offer in our attempts to understand the place of mind (...) and conscious experience in nature. In particular we will be focusing on the ontological interpretation of quantum theory proposed by Bohm and Hiley (1987, 1993), its further development by Hiley (Hiley and Callaghan 2012; Hiley, Dennis and de Gosson 2021), and its philosophical interpretation by Pylkkänen (2007, 2020). The ontological interpretation makes the radical proposal that quantum reality includes a new type of potential energy which contains active information. This proposal, if correct, constitutes a major change in our notion of matter. We are used to having in physics only mechanical concepts, such as position, momentum and force. Our intuition that it is not possible to understand how and why physical processes can give rise to consciousness is partly the result of our assuming that physical processes (including neurophysiological processes) are always mechanical. If, however, we are willing to change our view of physical reality by allowing non-mechanical, organic and holistic concepts such as active information to play a fundamental role, this, we argue, makes it possible to understand the relationship between physical and mental processes in a new way. It might even be a step toward solving the hard problem. (shrink)

In a scenario characterized by unpredictable developments, such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic, epidemiological models have played a leading part, having been especially widely deployed for forecasting purposes. In this paper, two real-world examples of modeling are examined in support of the proposition that science can convey inconsistent as well as genuinely perspectival representations of the world. Reciprocally inconsistent outcomes are grounded on incompatible assumptions, whereas perspectival outcomes are grounded on compatible assumptions and illuminate different aspects of the same object (...) of interest. In both cases, models should be viewed as expressions of specific assumptions and unconstrained choices on the part of those designing them. The coexistence of a variety of models reflects a primary feature of science, namely its pluralism. It is herein proposed that recent over-exposure to science’s inner workings and disputes such as those pertaining to models, may have led the public to perceive pluralism as a flaw—or more specifically, as disunity or fragmentation, which in turn may have been interpreted as a sign of unreliability. In conclusion, given the inescapability of pluralism, suggestions are offered as to how to counteract distorted perceptions of science, and thereby enhance scientific literacy. (shrink)

This book represents part of an ongoing effort to understand the rules, practices, agencies and agents which shape and change the social construction of pedagogic discourse. It draws together and re-examines the findings of the author's earlier work.