Simulation software used for modeling has become as ubiquitous as computers themselves. Despite growing reliance on simulation in educational and workplace settings, users encounter frustration in using simulation software programs. The authors conducted a study with 26 engineering students and interviewed them about their experience learning the simulation software Arena for optimization modeling. These students experienced frustration with the process of learning to “think” like the simulation software. Students explained their difficulty with learning the software in a way that implied (...) human dialogue with a machine and negotiation with Arena in an attempt to overcome this frustration. Rather than being gender specific, frustrations were experienced by most male and female students equally, specifically those who held a perception of difference between human and machine “thinking.” The authors contend that communication difficulty with the embedded assumptions of the software is the source of frustration rather than deficiencies of users. (shrink)

Une entité est phénoménalement consciente si et seulement s’il existe quelque chose comme l’effet-que-ça-fait d’être cette entité. À partir de cette définition, aucun test empirique ne peut être fourni pour établir si une entité S est consciente ou pas. S peut croire qu’elle est consciente parce qu’en effet elle l’est, mais pour qu’un sujet W puisse attribuer la conscience à S, une théorie est nécessaire. Cette théorie doit fournir des critères intersubjectifs, basés sur l’observation du comportement, les propriétés physiques ou (...) quelque chose de cette sorte. En bref : (C) Pour qu’un sujet S puisse établir si une autre entité W est consciente, il doit faire appel à une théorie empirique proposant un critère d’un point de vue à la troisième personne pour l’attribution de la conscience. Il n’est pas possible de prouver que la conscience est un phénomène réel, mais les éliminativistes ne peuvent pas prouver non plus que ce ne soit pas le cas. Pour le réaliste, la conscience est donnée comme un fait brut, alors que pour l’éliminativiste l’existence de la conscience est une affirmation théorique. J’adhère à une vision réaliste de la conscience, supportée par le fait qu’il me semble vraiment que j’ai des expériences phénoménales, et par l’idée que la dichotomie réalité/ apparence ne s’applique pas aux contenus phénoménaux. Il y a manifestement des corrélations entre les phénomènes physiques et mentaux, qui donnent de bonnes raisons de croire qu’il y a des relations causales entre le monde physique (y compris le corps) et les esprits (conscients). Le dualisme des substances, le dualisme des propriétés, l’épiphénoménalisme et le panpsychisme ne parviennent pas à fournir une explication convaincante de ces corrélations. Une forme de physicalisme apparaît être l’alternative la plus raisonnable, en dépit du fait que l’esprit ne semble pas, d’un point de vue subjectif, être de nature physique. (shrink)

This work advances a theory in the metaphysics of phenomenal consciousness, which the author labels “e-physicalism”. Firstly, he endorses a realist stance towards consciousness and physicalist metaphysics. Secondly, he criticises Strong AI and functionalist views, and claims that consciousness has an internal character. Thirdly, he discusses HOT theories, the unity of consciousness, and holds that the “explanatory gap” is not ontological but epistemological. Fourthly, he argues that consciousness is not a supervenient but an emergent property, not reducible and endowed with (...) original causal powers, with respect to the micro-constituents of the conscious entity. Fifthly, he addresses the “zombie argument” and the “supervenience argument” within the e-physicalism framework. Finally, he elaborates on the claim that phenomenal properties are physical and discusses the “knowledge argument”. (shrink)

Kripke [1972] a présenté un argument très influent contre le physicalisme, basé sur l’idée suivante : les énoncés psycho-physiques—ceux qui identifient les phénomènes psychologiques de l’expérience à des phénomènes physiques—sont, s’ils sont vrais, nécessairement vrais. Pourtant, ils semblent être contingents. Par la suite, Levine [1983] a prétendu que l’apparence de contingence était due à un «fossé explicatif » qui se trouve dans ces énoncés : les phénomènes physiques ne semblent pas rendre compte de l’existence et des caractéristiques des phénomènes psychologiques. (...) Je suspecte que l’apparition du fossé explicatif résulte, du moins en partie, du fait que l’on prend la subjectivité de l’expérience comme une condition ontologique alors qu’elle serait épistémologique. Dans ce papier je présente et développe cette idée. (shrink)

The phenomenal properties of conscious mental states happen to be exclusively accessible from the first-person perspective. Consequently, some philosophers consider their existence to be incompatible with materialist metaphysics. In this paper I criticise one particular argument that is based on the idea that for something to be real it must (at least in principle) be accessible from an intersubjective perspective. I argue that the exclusively subjective access to phenomenal contents can be explained by the very particular nature of the epistemological (...) relation holding between a subject and his own mental states. Accordingly, this subjectivity does not compel us to deny the possibility that phenomenal contents are ontologically objective properties. First, I present the general form of the argument that I will discuss. Second, I show that this argument makes use of a criterion of reality that is not applicable to the case of subjective experience. Third, I discuss a plausible objection and give an argument for rejecting observation models of self-knowledge of phenomenal contents. These models fall prey to the homunculus illusion. (shrink)

Our first aim in this paper is to respond to four novel objections in Jason Stanley's ‘Context and Logical Form’. Taken together, those objections attempt to debunk our prior claims that one can perform a genuine speech act by using a sub‐sentential expression—where by ‘sub‐sentential expression’ we mean an ordinary word or phrase, not embedded in any larger syntactic structure. Our second aim is to make it plausible that, pace Stanley, there really are pragmatic determinants of the literal truth‐conditional content (...) of speech acts. We hope to achieve this second aim precisely by defending the genuineness of sub‐sentential speech acts. Given our two aims, it is necessary to highlight briefly their connection—which we do in the first part of the Introduction. Following that, we introduce Stanley's novel objections. This is the role of the second part of the Introduction. We offer our rebuttals in Section 2 (against ‘shorthand’) and Section 3 (against syntactic ellipsis, among other things). (shrink)

This is a very poorly written book. It is highly repetitive and verbose. Moreover, despite the repetition, it is fundamentally unclear—both because of unhelpful and unexplained terminology, and because of its distinctively tangled prose. Here is one example of the latter.

Our first aim in this paper is to respond to four novel objections in Jason Stanley's 'Context and Logical Form'. Taken together, those objections attempt to debunk our prior claims that one can perform a genuine speech act by using a subsentential expression—where by 'subsentential expression' we mean an ordinary word or phrase, not embedded in any larger syntactic structure. Our second aim is to make it plausible that, pace Stanley, there really are pragmatic determinants of the literal truthconditional content (...) of speech acts. We hope to achieve this second aim precisely by defending the genuineness of subsentential speech acts. Given our two aims, it is necessary to highlight briefly their connection—which we do in the first part of the Introduction. Following that, we introduce Stanley's novel objections. This is the role of the second part of the Introduction. We offer our rebuttals in Section 2 (against 'shorthand') and Section 3 (against syntactic ellipsis, among other things). (shrink)

Vernacularism is the view that logical forms are fundamentally assigned to natural language expressions, and are only derivatively assigned to anything else, e.g., propositions, mental representations, expressions of symbolic logic, etc. In this paper, we argue that Vernacularism is not as plausible as it first appears because of non-sentential speech. More specifically, there are argument-premises, meant by speakers of non-sentences, for which no natural language paraphrase is readily available in the language used by the speaker and the hearer. The speaker (...) can intend this proposition and the hearer can recover it (and its logical form). Since they cannot, by hypothesis, be doing this by using a sentence of their shared language, the proposition-meant has its logical form non-derivatively, which falsifies Vernacularism. We conclude the paper with a brief review of the debate on incomplete definite descriptions in which Vernacularism is assumed as a suppressed premise. (shrink)

Je commence par tenter de clarifier le concept de « conscience phénoménale », suivant la notion de « l’effet ça fait » élaborée par Nagel (1974). Deuxièmement, je défends la réalité de la conscience (phénoménale) en opposition avec l'éliminativisme. Il n’est pas possible de prouver que la conscience est un phénomène réel, mais les éliminativistes ne peuvent pas non plus prouver qu’elle n’en est pas un. Pour le réaliste, la conscience est donnée comme un fait brut. Troisièmement, j’introduis une notion (...) générale de physicalisme et de survenance [supervenience], et soutiens qu’un monisme physicaliste est la métaphysique la plus raisonnable. Ceci, étant donné l’existence de relations causales entre le corps et l’esprit, et malgré nos intuitions dualistes. Je prétends qu’il existe une propriété X, qui est une propriété physique ou une propriété survenante (sur le physique), telle que être conscient—au sens phénoménal—c’est instancier X. Enfin, je critique le panpsychisme et conclus que la conscience est une propriété de certaines entités physiques complexes. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPolitical actors use metaphor in their speeches in order to frame political issues [Charteris-Black, J.. Politicians and rhetoric: The persuasive power of metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan]. If they succeed in imposing a particular frame, especially when there is no agreement on the definition of certain political issues, this can become the prevailing way for referring to that issue [Semino, E.. Metaphor in discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press]. In this research, we argue that this was the case for the metaphor of (...) the JOURNEY in the Catalan political conflict during electoral periods. To that end we use Critical Metaphor Analysis [Charteris-Black, J.. Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan] to analyse televised campaign ads from the last three elections for the Parliament of Catalonia – from 2010, 2012, and 2015 – in order to identify how political actors’ use metaphors to talk about the Catalan political situation during these years and to verify if JOURNEY metaphor resulted into the dominant narrative. The results show that the political situation has been conceptualized in terms of a ‘process en route,’ although the narratives generated by the political actors that shaped that discourse differ. (shrink)

Graduates of doctoral programs are expected to be competent at designing and conducting research independently. Given the level of research competence needed to successfully conduct research, it is important that assessors of doctoral programs have a reliable and validated tool for measuring and tracking perceived research competence among their students and graduates. A high level of research competence is expected for all Ph.D. graduates worldwide, in addition to in all disciplines/fields. Moreover, graduates of Ph.D. programs may complete their studies in (...) one country but then obtain a research position in another country, emphasizing the need to ensure that all doctoral programs are fostering similar levels of research competence. Thus, the purpose of this study was to gather additional evidence for validity and reliability of the Research Competence scale. Specifically, we sought to extend the findings of by adapting the scale, translating it to other languages, and applying the tool with a sample of early stage researchers. Our findings provide initial evidence that the adapted PR-Comp is appropriate for use in three languages and across a variety of disciplines/programs of study. (shrink)

The concepts of time and identity seem at once unproblematic and frustratingly difficult. Time is an intricate part of our experience -- it would seem that the passage of time is a prerequisite for having any experience at all -- and yet recalcitrant questions about time remain. Is time real? Does time flow? Do past and future moments exist? Philosophers face similarly stubborn questions about identity, particularly about the persistence of identical entities through change. Indeed, questions about the metaphysics of (...) persistence take on many of the complexities inherent in philosophical considerations of time. This volume of original essays brings together these two essentially related concepts in a way not reflected in the available literature, making it required reading for philosophers working in metaphysics and students interested in these topics. The contributors, distinguished authors and rising scholars, first consider the nature of time and then turn to the relation of identity, focusing on the metaphysical connections between the two, with a special emphasis on personal identity. The volume concludes with essays on the metaphysics of death, issues in which time and identity play a significant role. This groundbreaking collection offers both cutting-edge epistemological analysis and historical perspectives on contemporary topics. Contributors:_ _Harriet Baber, Lynne Rudder Baker, Ben Bradley, John W. Carroll, Reinaldo Elugardo, Geoffrey Gorham, Mark Hinchliff, Jenann Ismael, Barbara Levenbook, Andrew Light, Lawrence B. Lombard, Ned Markosian, Harold Noonan, John Perry, Harry S. Silverstein, Matthew H. Slater, Robert J. Stainton, Neil A. Tognazzini The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket. (shrink)

Michael J. Zimmerman explores whether and how our ignorance about ourselves and our circumstances affects what our moral obligations and moral rights are. He rejects objective and subjective views of the nature of moral obligation, and presents a new case for a 'prospective' view.

In this work I attempt to articulate a principle or set of principles that can guide violent revolution, or emancipatory violence, and yet still prevent the end-stage backlash that generally follows; e.g., the Terror's culmination in which the originators are the targets of the Terror.

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.