We argue that thoughts are structures of concepts, and that concepts should be individuated by their origins, rather than in terms of their semantic or epistemic properties. Many features of cognition turn on the vehicles of content, thoughts, rather than on the nature of the contents they express. Originalism makes concepts available to explain, with no threat of circularity, puzzling cases concerning thought. In this paper, we mention Hesperus/Phosphorus puzzles, the Evans-Perry example of the ship seen through different windows, and (...) Mates cases, and we believe that there are many additional applications. (shrink)

The dynamics of populations of self-replicating, hierarchically structured individuals, exposedto accidents which destroy their sub-units, is analyzed mathematically, specifically with regardto the roles of redundancy and sexual repair. The following points emerge from this analysis:0 A population of individuals with redundant sub-structure has no intrinsic steady-statepoint; it tends to either zero or infinity depending on a critical accident rate α c . Increased redundancy renders populations less accident prone initially, but populationdecline is steeper if a is greater than a fixed (...) value α d . Periodic, sexual repair at system-specific intervals prevents continuous decline and stabilizesthe population insofar as it will now oscillate between two fixed population levels. The stabilizing sexual interval increases with increased complexity provided this is accom-panied by appropriate levels of redundancy. The model closely simulates the dynamics of heterosis effects. Repair fitness is a population fitness: the chance of an individual being repaired is a functionof the statistical make-up of the population as a whole at that particular period. Populationsliving at α > α c either engage in sexual repair at the appropriate time or they die out. The mathematical properties of the model illustrate mechanisms which possibly played arole in the evolution of a mortal soma in relation to sexual reproduction. (shrink)

This chapter explains the concept of effort on the basis of evidence from experimental and cognitive psychology, demonstrates how it has been used in conducting studies of brain activity, and goes on to examine the individual differences that play a role in determining the efficiency of brain networks associated with effortful control. It also reviews certain educational training methods; those when used among children can change these networks, along with conditional changes developed in adults through meditation training. The findings reveal (...) that meditation helps in producing better attentional performance and the subjective condition related to effort. The chapter also investigates how these training methods play a role in determining the concept of flow. (shrink)

Background The post-trial period is the time period after the end of study drug administration. It is unclear whether post-trial arrangements for patient surveillance are routinely included in study protocols and consents, and whether research ethics boards (REB) consider the post-trial period. Objectives The objective was to determine whether trial protocols and consent forms reviewed by the REB describe procedures for post-trial period surveillance. Methods An observational study of protocols of randomised trials of chronic therapies for cardiac conditions, approved by (...) the REB of two academic institutions affiliated with the University of Toronto in Canada (University Health Network and Mount Sinai Hospital) from 1995 to 2007. Plans for patient surveillance in the post-trial period described in the protocol or in the consent form before and after REB approval were recorded. Results 42 studies were identified including 18 heart failure and 15 coronary artery disease trials. Only four studies planned a clinical visit after trial termination, and an additional three planned a telephone contact after trial completion. Five trials submitted consent forms to the REB with a discussion of the post-trial period. Conclusions The majority of protocols and consent forms did not discuss plans for post-trial period surveillance. The post-trial period and the REB approval process could be improved by systematic follow-up being described in the protocol and consent form. The small number of trial protocols evaluated in the study may impair the degree to which the results can be generalised. (shrink)

Purpose. The article is devoted to the analysis of corporality as an attribute of plastic art in the Ancient art, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the modernism and the postmodernism. Theoretical basis. The authors consider historical development of the art as a change of paradigms. Within each paradigm a special understanding of art is created, which is characterized both by the act of creativity itself and by the evaluation of its results. Particularly urgent is the task to identify the origins (...) of these changes, to indicate their stages, the direction of the evolution of artistic creativity. In this context, corporality as a paradigm of European plastic art is considered in the article in the concrete historical dimension from the classics to the postmodernism. Originality. Postmodern experiments stimulate blurring the borders between the traditional forms and genres of art. Review of canonical ideas about the creation and destruction, order and chaos in art illustrates conscious reorientation from the classical understanding of artistic creativity to the construction of artifacts-simulacra, which is a characteristic feature in the oeuvre of contemporary artists, ranging from the pop art to the present day. Conclusions. The ideas of postmodern philosophers found their visual embodiment in modern artistic practices. Reconstruction of the body, re-switching of its elements according to the principle of chaotic collage, the interpretation of the human body as a separate substance isolated from the individual him/herself, which is presented as a phenomenon of mass culture, became the basis of the creative method of contemporary plastic art. The ideas of postmodern philosophers have found their visual embodiment in the contemporary artistic practices. (shrink)

The solution of the outer multiplicity problem in the tensor product of U(3) irreducible representations (irreps) developed by Biedenharn et al.(1–7) and realized through the well-known Draayer-Akiyama (DA) computer code(8) is extended to the quantum algebra Uq(3). An analytic formula for special stretched Uq(3) Wigner coefficients, $$\left\langle {(\lambda _1 \mu _1 ) H_1 , (\lambda _2 \mu _2 ) \varepsilon _2 \Lambda _2 m_2 \left| { (\lambda _3 \mu _3 ) H_3 } \right.} \right\rangle _{\max }^q $$ is derived using (...) a projection operator method.(9–10) In this expression Hi denotes the highest weight vector of the (λiμi) irrep; the subscript “max” means coefficients corresponding to a unit tensor operator with a maximal characteristic null space; and q is the usual quantum label so the standard U(3) Wigner coefficient, which is required in the DA code, can be obtained in the q→1 limit of the theory. To illustrate the theory, some Uq(3) Wigner coefficients for the tensor product (22)×(22) are calculated. The procedure for evaluating nonhighest weight Wigner Uq(3) coefficients follow the DA prescription. (shrink)

Context: Distributed language and interactivity are central members of a set of concepts that are rapidly developing into rigorous, exciting additions to 4E cognitive science. Because they share certain assumptions and methodological commitments with enactivism, the two have sometimes been confused; additionally, while enactivism is a well-developed paradigm, interactivity has relied more on methodological development and on a set of focal examples. Problem: The goal of this article is to clarify the core conceptual commitments of both interactivity-based and enactive approaches (...) to cognitive science by contrasting the two and highlighting their differences in assumptions, focus, and explanatory strategies. Method: We begin with the shared commitments of interactivity and enactivism - e.g., antirepresentationalism, naturalism, interdisciplinarity, the importance of biology, etc. We then give an overview of several important varieties of enactivism, including sensorimotor and anti-representationalist enactivism, and then walk through the history of the “core” varieties, taking care to contrast Maturana’s approach with that of Varela and the current researchers following in Varela’s footsteps. We then describe the differences between this latter group and interactivity-based approaches to cognitive science. Results: We argue that enactivism’s core concepts are explanatorily inadequate in two ways. First, they mis-portray the organization of many living systems, which are not operationally closed. Second, they fail to realize that most epistemic activity depends on engagement with non-local resources. Both problems can be dealt with by adopting an interactivity-based perspective, in which agency and cognition are fundamentally distributed and involve integration of non-local resources into the local coupling of organism and environment. Implications: The article’s primary goal is theoretical clarification and exposition; its primary implication is that enactive concepts need to be modified or extended in some way in order to explain fully many aspects of cognition and directed biological activity. Or, read another way, the article’s primary implication is that interactivity already provides a rich set of concepts for doing just that, which, while closely allied with enactivism in several ways, are not enactivist concepts. Constructivist content: The article consists entirely of a comparison between two constructivist fields of theory. Key Words: Interactivity, enactivism, distributed language, radical embodied cognitive science, ecological psychology, autonomy. (shrink)

Upshot: We agree with commenters that enactivism incorporates a broad variety of methodologies, metaphysical stances, concepts, and investigative approaches, and that this is a good thing. However, we remain concerned that autonomy and sense-making are problematic concepts for post-Varelian enactivism, and that they form the foundations of a conceptual framework that may hamper the development of effective explanations for cognitive activity, as well as the paradigmatic aspirations of this particular enactivist approach.

I had a strange dream, or half-waking vision, not long ago. I found myself at the top of a mountain in the mist, feeling very pleased with myself, not just for having climbed the mountain, but for having achieved my life's ambition, to find a way of answering moral questions rationally. But as I was preening myself on this achievement, the mist began to clear, and I saw that I was surrounded on the mountain top by the graves of all (...) those other philosophers, great and small, who had had the same ambition, and thought they had achieved it. And I have come to see, reflecting on my dream, that, ever since, the hard-working philosophical worms have been nibbling away at their systems and showing that the achievement was an illusion. True, their skeletons, indigestible to worms, remained, and were surprisingly similar to one another. But I was led to think again about what one can, and what one cannot, achieve in this direction. (shrink)

A simple model, illustrating the transition from a population of free swimming, solitary cells to one consisting of small colonies serves as a basis to discuss the evolution of the cooperative group. The transition is the result of a mutation of the dynamics of cell division, delayed cell separation leads to colonies of four cells. With this mutation cooperative features appear, such as synchronised cell divisions within colonies and coordinated flagellar function which enables the colony to swim in definite directions. (...) The selective advantages under given, environmental conditions are defined and the periods necessary for complete allelic replacement in small populations are calculated for asexual and sexual reproduction. The assumption of a steady-state population during allelic substitution is critically considered, particularly under conditions of competition. It is shown that density-dependent population control must operate in the process of selection. Sexual reproduction slows down the rate of selection even though all cells dre haploid. This phenomenon can be explained in general terms of `organizational dominance', where individual units coordinate the function of their neighbours which may be of a different allelotype.Cooperativity is pointed out as an a priori systemic feature which resides in the sub-units of systems, group formation and coordination appears thus as an almost inevitable event. A particular type of system described as ‘closed cycle of positive fitness interaction’ is discussed in more detail. It has the remarkable feature that its members cannot compete with each other; selection takes place between whole cycles .Gonium has a wide spectrum of `somatic plasticity' which enables it to assume various colonial configurations depending on physiological and environmental conditions. This feature can be explained as the result of dynamic flexibilities on the macro-molecular level. The particular relationship between the vast, molecular complexity and the relative simple dynamics of the cell cycle must lead eventually to the genetic fixation of an environmentally induced phenotype. (shrink)

R. M. Hare; I—The Presidential Address*: Principles, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 73, Issue 1, 1 June 1973, Pages 1–18, https://doi.org/10.10.

This book is divided into three parts: in Part I, R. M. Hare offers a justification for the use of philosophy of language in the treatment of moral questions, together with an overview of his moral philosophy of ‘universal prescriptivism’. The second part, and the core of the book, consists of five chapters originally presented as a lecture series under the title ‘A Taxonomy of Ethical Theories’. Hare identifies descriptivism and non‐descriptivism as the two main positions in modern moral philosophy. (...) The former he divides into Naturalism and Intuitionism, and the latter into Emotivism and Rationalism. Hare argues that all forms of descriptivism tend to lead to Relativism because the truth conditions of moral statements are culturally variant. Of the positions discussed, only Hare's own position, a form of Rationalism, which he calls Universal Prescriptivism, meets all of the requirements that an adequate ethical theory should meet. Part III consists of Hare's previously published essay ‘Could Kant have been a Utilitarian?’ (Utilitas 5, 1993). Here, Hare puts forward the controversial thesis that Kant's moral philosophy is, in its basic principles, compatible with utilitarianism. (shrink)

In the by now well known talks he gave at Princeton, Saul Kripke claimed that “[t]heoretical identities … are generally identities involving two rigid designators and therefore are examples of the necessary a posteriori.” 253-355; A rigid designator is an expression that designates the same object in all possible worlds when it is used. So Kripke is claiming that ‘Water is H20’ and ‘Heat is the motion of molecules’ are generally identities involving expressions like ‘water’ and ‘the motion of molecules’ (...) which designate the same objects in all possible worlds. If the identity statement is true, both sides designate the same object rigidly, i.e., in all possible worlds, and therefore the statement is necessarily true. On the other hand, whether it is true is determined ultimately by appeal to experience. It follows that if true, the identity is necessary a posteriori. (shrink)

In the early part of the paper, I attempt to explain a dispute between two parties who endorse the compositionality of language but disagree about its implications: Paul Horwich, and Jerry Fodor and Ernest Lepore. In the remainder of the paper, I challenge the thesis on which they are agreed, that compositionality can be taken for granted. I suggest that it is not clear what compositionality involves nor whether it obtains. I consider some kinds of apparent counterexamples, and compositionalist responses (...) to them in terms of covert indexicality and unspecific meanings. I argue that the last option is the best for most of the cases I consider. I conclude by stressing, as against Horwich and Fodor and Lepore, that the appropriate question concerns the extent to which compositionality obtains in a natural language, rather than whether it obtains or not, so that the answer is essentially messy, requiring detailed consideration of a wide range of examples. (shrink)

It is my intention in this paper to highlight the dangers which arise when people appeal to moral intuitions to settle questions in political, and in general in applied, philosophy. But first I want to ask why all or nearly all of us are in favour both of liberty and of equality – why all our intuitions are on their side. In the case of liberty it is easy to understand why. Although philosophers have held diverse theories about the concept (...) of liberty – theories which have been drawn together into two main groups in a famous lecture by Sir Isaiah Berlin – there cannot be much doubt that in the mind of the ordinary man to have liberty is to be under no constraint in doing what one wants to do. This, at any rate, is a main constituent of the concept of liberty as all of us understand it. Since, therefore, it seems self-evidently true that we want to be able to do what we want, we are bound to want liberty and, in general, to be in favour of it. We want it for ourselves; if we universalize our prescriptions, this constrains us to be in favour of it for others as well. That explains why, if any politician can claim that he is fighting for liberty, he is likely to win a large following. In the case of equality the matter is not so clear cut. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Lived Experience and Cognitive Science Reappraising Enactivism’s Jonasian Turn” by Mario Villalobos & Dave Ward. Upshot: We argue that Villalobos and Ward’s criticism misses two crucial aspects of Varelian enactivism. These are, first, that enactivism attempts to offer a rigorous scientific justification for its teleological claims, and second, that enactivism in fact pays too little attention to the nature of human phenomenology and intentionality, rather than anthropomorphically over-valuing it.

I argue against a standard conception of classification, according to which concepts classify by drawing boundaries. This conception cannot properly account for "higher-order vagueness." I discuss in detail claims by Crispin Wright about "definitely," and its connection with higher-order vagueness. Contrary to Wright, I argue that the line between definite cases of red and borderline ones is not sharp. I suggest a new conception of classification: many concepts classify without drawing boundaries; they are boundaryless. Within this picture, there are no (...) orders of vagueness, though the phenomena which suggest the description "higher-order vagueness" are real enough. (shrink)

A “white coat” ceremony functions as a rite of passage for students entering medical school. This comment provides a second option in response to the earlier, more enthusiastic, discussion of the ceremony by Raanan Gillon. While these ceremonies may serve important sociological functions, they raise three serious problems: whether the professional oath or “affirmation of professional commitment” taken in this setting has any legitimacy, how a sponsor of such a ceremony would know which oath or affirmation to administer, and what (...) the moral implications of this “bonding process” are. I argue that the initiation oath is morally meanignless if students are not aware of its content in advance, that different students ought to commit to different oaths, and that bonding of students to the medical profession necessarily separates them from identification with lay people who will be their patients. (shrink)

[R. M. Sainsbury] Evans argued that most ordinary proper names were Russellian: to suppose that they have no bearer is to suppose that they have no meaning. The first part of this paper addresses Evans's arguments, and finds them wanting. Evans also claimed that the logical form of some negative existential sentences involves 'really' (e.g. 'Hamlet didn't really exist'). One might be tempted by the view, even if one did not accept its Russellian motivation. However, I suggest that Evans gives (...) no adequate account of 'really', and I point to unclarities in Wiggins's similar, but distinct, attempt to use 'really' in the logical form of true negative existentials. /// [David Wiggins] Evans was not wrong (I maintain) to say that the senses of genuine proper names invoke and require objects. Names in fiction or hypothesis mimic such names. Pace Evans, Sainsbury and free logicians, proper names are scopeless. (Evans's 'Julius' is not a name.) Names create a presumption of existential generalization. In sentences such as 'Vulcan does not really exist', that presumption is bracketed. The sentence specifies by reference to story or report a concept identical with Vulcan and declares it be really uninstantiated. (The sentence, which partakes of play, is a kind of palimpsest.) It is explained why this second level view of 'exists' is to be preferred. (shrink)

This book sets high standards for itself. Regrettably it fails to meet them: apart from a few displays of thorough and competent research, it is generally based on substandard scholarship.

Phenomenal conservatives claim that seemings are sui generis mental states and can thus provide foundational non-doxastic justification for beliefs. Many of their critics deny this, claiming, instead, that seemings can be reductively analyzed in terms of other mental states—either beliefs, inclinations to believe, or beliefs about one’s evidence—that cannot provide foundational non-doxastic justification. In this paper, I argue that no tenable semantic reduction of ‘seems’ can be formulated in terms of the three reductive analyses that have been proposed by critics (...) of phenomenal conservatism. This is because Moore-paradoxical statements are generated when each of the reductive analyses is substituted for ‘seems’ in statements like ‘The stick is straight, but it does not seem to me that it’s straight.’ Since the latter statement is not Moore-paradoxical, the three proposed reductive analyses of ‘seems’ are unsuccessful. Absent a successful semantic reduction, however, there is no good reason to think a successful metaphysical reduction of seemings is forthcoming. Thus, there is an additional reason, unnoticed in the existing literature, to think that seemings are sui generis mental states. (shrink)

[R. M. Sainsbury] Evans argued that most ordinary proper names were Russellian: to suppose that they have no bearer is to suppose that they have no meaning. The first part of this paper addresses Evans's arguments, and finds them wanting. Evans also claimed that the logical form of some negative existential sentences involves 'really'. One might be tempted by the view, even if one did not accept its Russellian motivation. However, I suggest that Evans gives no adequate account of 'really', (...) and I point to unclarities in Wiggins's similar, but distinct, attempt to use 'really' in the logical form of true negative existentials. /// [David Wiggins] Evans was not wrong to say that the senses of genuine proper names invoke and require objects. Names in fiction or hypothesis mimic such names. Pace Evans, Sainsbury and free logicians, proper names are scopeless. Names create a presumption of existential generalization. In sentences such as 'Vulcan does not really exist', that presumption is bracketed. The sentence specifies by reference to story or report a concept identical with Vulcan and declares it be really uninstantiated. It is explained why this second level view of 'exists' is to be preferred. (shrink)

The ideas of thinkers belonging to the subjective or existential understanding, including Pascal, or people with mystical orientation are presented in a way that is compatible with different periods of their lives. We can see this in Pascal's short life, from scientific research to society meetings and then to monastic life. Pascal, who was a mystic and initially opposed to living in a monastery, thought of the crisis he experienced in changing his life as a sign. Pascal's work Pensées is (...) considered as a source that leads to philosophical thoughts as well as religious ones. In his work, Pascal tried to reveal the relationship between God and human wills, including conceptual analysis. This situation is related to the period in which the work was written and the author was in. Therefore, without knowing Pascal's life periods, it cannot be fully understood what he was trying to express, especially in his late works. With his work, Pascal showed that it was possible for a person to be both an excellent mathematician, a profound scientist, and a humble believer. Pascal's next period includes the previous one; We saw that while he was a good mathematician, he was also interested in science, and while he was a religious person, he used the principles of mathematics and science. He did not separate the elements encompassed that his life in an intellectual sense, but continued by combining them and changing their places of importance. After all, the essence of what Pascal is looking for is to find out what motivates people or what makes people human. In this article, the mental, material and spiritual areas expressed as Pascal's life stages will be discussed and examined as dialectical stages of his life. As a result, the nature of the relationship between religion and science will be tried to be shown with the example of Pascal. (shrink)