Yarkoni's analysis clearly articulates a number of concerns limiting the generalizability and explanatory power of psychological findings, many of which are compounded in infancy research. ManyBabies addresses these concerns via a radically collaborative, large-scale and open approach to research that is grounded in theory-building, committed to diversification, and focused on understanding sources of variation.

Page's manifesto makes a case for localist representations in neural networks, one of the advantages being ease of interpretation. However, even localist networks can be hard to interpret, especially when at some hidden layer of the network distributed representations are employed, as is often the case. Hidden Markov models can be used to provide useful interpretable representations.

The hallmark of implicit learning is that complex knowledge can be acquired unconsciously. The second order conditionals of Reed and Johnson were developed to be complex, and they are popular materials for implicit learning research. Recently, it was demonstrated that in a sequence made noisy , shared features of the SOCs may be learned explicitly . What are these shared features? We hypothesized that low reversal frequency may play a significant role. We have varied reversal frequency, and discovered that reversal (...) frequency affected response times, inclusion exclusion behavior, and recognition ratings. Not only does it appear to be important to distinguish implicit and explicit knowledge, but also to distinguish what the knowledge is of. (shrink)

We argue that neural networks for semantic cognition, as proposed by Rogers & McClelland (R&M), do not acquire semantics and therefore cannot be the basis for a theory of semantic cognition. The reason is that the neural networks simply perform statistical categorization procedures, and these do not require any semantics for their successful operation. We conclude that this has severe consequences for the semantic cognition views of R&M.

Most models of response time (RT) in elementary cognitive tasks implicitly assume that the speed-accuracy trade-off is continuous: When payoffs or instructions gradually increase the level of speed stress, people are assumed to gradually sacrifice response accuracy in exchange for gradual increases in response speed. This trade-off presumably operates over the entire range from accurate but slow responding to fast but chance-level responding (i.e., guessing). In this article, we challenge the assumption of continuity and propose a phase transition model for (...) RTs and accuracy. Analogous to the fast guess model (Ollman, 1966), our model postulates two modes of processing: a guess mode and a stimulus-controlled mode. From catastrophe theory, we derive two important predictions that allow us to test our model against the fast guess model and against the popular class of sequential sampling models. The first prediction—hysteresis in the transitions between guessing and stimulus-controlled behavior—was confirmed in an experiment that gradually changed the reward for speed versus accuracy. The second prediction—bimodal RT distributions—was confirmed in an experiment that required participants to respond in a way that is intermediate between guessing and accurate responding. (shrink)

For various domains in proportional reasoning cognitive development is characterized as a progression through a series of increasingly complex rules. A multiplicative relationship between two task features, such as weight and distance information of blocks placed at both sides of the fulcrum of a balance scale, appears difficult to discover. During development, children change their beliefs about the balance scale several times: from a focus on the weight dimension (Rule I) to occasionally considering the distance dimension (Rule II), guessing (Rule (...) III), and applying multiplication (Rule IV; Siegler, 1981). Because of the detailed empirical findings the balance scale task has become a benchmark task for computational models of proportional reasoning. In this article, we present a large empirical study (N = 420) of which the findings provide a challenge for computational models. The effect of feedback and the effect of individually adapted training items on rule transition were tested for children using Rule I or Rule II. Presenting adapted training items initiates belief revision for Rule I but not for Rule II. The experience of making mistakes (by providing feedback) induces a change for both Rule I and Rule II. However, a delayed posttest shows that these changes are preserved after 2 weeks only for children using Rule I. We conclude that the transition from Rule I to Rule II differs from the transition from Rule II to a more complex rule. Concerning these empirical findings, we will review performance of computational models and the implications for a future belief revision model. It is one Thing, to show a Man that he is in an Error, and another, to put him in possession of Truth. John Locke. (shrink)

abstract As history shows, some human beings are capable of acting very immorally. 1 Technological advance and consequent exponential growth in cognitive power means that even rare evil individuals can act with catastrophic effect. The advance of science makes biological, nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction easier and easier to fabricate and, thus, increases the probability that they will come into the hands of small terrorist groups and deranged individuals. Cognitive enhancement by means of drugs, implants and biological (including (...) genetic) interventions could thus accelerate the advance of science, or its application, and so increase the risk of the development or misuse of weapons of mass destruction. We argue that this is a reason which speaks against the desirability of cognitive enhancement, and the consequent speedier growth of knowledge, if it is not accompanied by an extensive moral enhancement of humankind. We review the possibilities for moral enhancement by biomedical and genetic means and conclude that, though it should be possible in principle, it is in practice probably distant. There is thus a reason not to support cognitive enhancement in the foreseeable future. However, we grant that there are also reasons in its favour, but we do not attempt to settle the balance between these reasons for and against. Rather, we conclude that if research into cognitive enhancement continues, as it is likely to, it must be accompanied by research into moral enhancement. (shrink)

Unfit for the Future argues that the future of our species depends on radical enhancement of the moral aspects of our nature. Population growth and technological advances are threatening to undermine the conditions of worthwhile life on earth forever. We need to modify the biological bases of human motivation to deal with this challenge.

The reason of faith -- Thought and language -- Truth -- The Monologion arguments for the existence of God -- The Proslogion argument for the existence of God -- The divine attributes -- Thinking and speaking about God -- Creation and the word -- The Trinity -- Modality -- Freedom -- Morality -- Incarnation and atonement -- Original sin, grace, and salvation.

The purpose of this paper is to give an explication of the concept of health which does not rely on the concept of disease. The explication is informed by a view of the human individual as an acting subject and it therefore places the abilities of agents in the centre. Abilities may be qualified in different ways. The qualification essential for understanding the dimension of health and illness relates abilities to environmental circumstances and high-ranking projects in the life plan. For (...) this purpose generalized adaptedness is introduced as the overarching construction. The dimension of health and illness is characterized in terms of the adequacy of the repertoire for generalized adaptedness. Some immediate consequences concerning the notion of care are noted. (shrink)

This research project assesses the extent to which religion influences standards and behaviour in business, by comparing Islamic banking to co-operative banking as carried out by both Christians and Muslims. The study argues that Islamic banks are particu.

Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Integration is a transtheoretical and transdiagnostic clinical approach to working with patients who are using or considering using psychedelics in any context. The ongoing discussion of psychedelics in academic research and mainstream media, coupled with recent law enforcement deprioritization of psychedelics and compassionate use approvals for psychedelic-assisted therapy, make this model exceedingly timely. Given the prevalence of psychedelic use, the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, and the unique cultural and historical context in which psychedelics are placed, it (...) is important that mental health providers have an understanding of the unique motivations, experiences, and needs of people who use them. PHRI incorporates elements of harm reduction psychotherapy and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, and can be applied in both brief and ongoing psychotherapy interactions. PHRI represents a shift away from assessment limited to untoward outcomes of psychedelic use and abstinence-based addiction treatment paradigms and toward a stance of compassionate, destigmatizing acceptance of patients' choices. Considerations for assessment, preparation, and working with difficult experiences are presented. (shrink)

In this paper a dialogue game for critical discussion is developed. The dialogue game is a formalisation of the ideal discussion model that is central to the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation. The formalisation is intended as a preparatory step to facilitate the development of computational tools to support the pragma-dialectical study of argumentation. An important dimension of the pragma-dialectical discussion model is the role played by speech acts. The central issue addressed in this paper is how the speech act perspective (...) can be accommodated in the formalisation as a dialogue game. The starting point is an existing ‘basic’ dialogue game for critical discussion, in which speech acts are not addressed. The speech act perspective is introduced into the dialogue game by changing the rules that govern the moves that can be made and the commitments that these result in, while the rules for the beginning, for the end, and for the structure of the dialogue game remain unchanged. The revision of the move rules is based on the distribution of speech acts in the pragma-dialectical discussion model. The revision of the commitment rules is based on the felicity conditions that are associated with those speech acts. (shrink)

In the paper I investigate aspects of adverbial modification as an operation applying an adverb or adverbial phrase to a predicate and thereby creating a new predicate. The logic of adverbial modification, on this view, belongs to the logic of predicate modifiers. The theory I present is intended to cover not only adverbial modification but also attributive modification, but problems concerning the latter will not be given any special attention.

We show that a consistent, finitely axiomatized, sequential theory cannot prove its own inconsistency on every definable cut. A corollary is that there are at least three degrees of global interpretability of theories equivalent modulo local interpretability to a consistent, finitely axiomatized, sequential theory U.

In this paper we study the idea of theories with containers, like sets, pairs, sequences. We provide a modest framework to study such theories. We prove two concrete results. First, we show that first-order theories of finite signature that have functional non-surjective ordered pairing are definitionally equivalent to extensions in the same language of the basic theory of non-surjective ordered pairing. Second, we show that a first-order theory of finite signature is sequential (is a theory of sequences) iff it is (...) definitionally equivalent to an extension in the same language of a system of weak set theory called WS. (shrink)

This article critically evaluates the possible impact of the Charter on the relationship between the Court of Justice of the European Union and national constitutional courts. While it is premature to provide a definitive assessment of the kind of collaboration that these courts will develop, it is crucial to identify a number of features of the new landscape that will influence the direction in which the relationship between the CJEU and constitutional courts will evolve. This article discusses several reasons that (...) may result in better or a higher number of judicial interactions, as well as factors that may create tension or cause problems in the relationship between the CJEU and national constitutional courts. As such, it offers a framework that may help us to understand future post-Charter judgments by these courts setting out how they conceive their engagement with their counterpart on fundamental rights issues. (shrink)

This paper rejects Hume's famous claim that we never perceive our selves, by arguing that, under conditions specified, our perception of our bodies is perception of our selves. It takes as its point of departure Quassim Cassam's defence of a position to a similar effect but puts a different interpretation on the distinction between perceiving the body as an object, having spatial attributes, and perceiving it as a self or subject of experiences.

The book examines the evolution and current state of corporate social responsibility (CSR), using a five-stage maturity model: defensive, charitable, promotional, strategic and transformative CSR. The first four stages are dubbed CSR 1.0 and characterise most current CSR practice, while the fifth stage is named CSR 2.0 (also transformative or systemic CSR) and describes emergent and future CSR practices. Reasons are given why CSR 1.0 approaches have failed to have any significant impact on the most serious global social, environmental and (...) ethical challenges. The emergent CSR 2.0 will then be explored in detail by elaborating on five principles underlying the new approach, including: creativity, scalability, responsiveness, glocality and circularity. A four-part DNA Model is also introduced, covering value creation, good governance, societal contribution and ecological integrity, which provides the basis for defining and measuring CSR 2.0. Finally, a 70-question CSR 2.0 self-assessment diagnostic tool developed by the author is presented, with sample data to show how the tool can be used for future research and practitioner application. (shrink)

Corporate carbon footprint data has become ubiquitous. This data is also highly promissory. But as this paper argues, such data fails both consumers and citizens. The governance of climate change seemingly requires a strong foundation of data on emission sources. Economists approach climate change as a market failure, where the optimisation of the atmosphere is to be evidence based and data driven. Citizens or consumers, state or private agents of control, all require deep access to information to judge emission realities. (...) Whether we are interested in state-led or in neoliberal ‘solutions’ for either democratic participatory decision-making or for preventing market failure, companies’ emissions need to be known. This paper draws on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a Fortune 50 company’s environmental accounting unit to show how carbon reporting interferes with information symmetry requirements, which further troubles possibilities for contesting data. A material-semiotic analysis of the data practices and infrastructures employed in the context of corporate emissions disclosure details the situated political economies of data labour along the data processing chain. The explicit consideration of how information asymmetries are socially and computationally shaped, how contexts are shifted and how data is systematically straightened out informs a reflexive engagement with Big Data. The paper argues that attempts to automatise environmental accounting’s veracity management by means of computing metadata or to ensure that data quality meets requirements through third-party control are not satisfactory. The crossover of Big Data with corporate environmental governance does not promise to trouble the political economy that hitherto sustained unsustainability. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that if you're morally responsible for a state of affairs, you must be a cause of it. Ingmar Persson argues that this strand of common sense morality is asymmetrical, in that it features the act-omission doctrine, according to which there are stronger reasons against performing some harmful actions than in favour of performing any beneficial actions. He analyses the act-omission doctrine as consisting in a theory of negative rights, according to which there are rights not to (...) have one's life, body, and property interfered with, and a conception of responsibility as being based on causality. This conception of responsibility is also found to be involved in the doctrine of double effect. The outcome of Persson's critical examination of these ideas is that reasons of rights are replaced by reasons of beneficence, and we are made responsible for what is under the influence of our practical reasons. The argument gives rise to a symmetrical, consequentialist morality which is more demanding but less authoritative than common sense morality, because reasons of beneficence are weaker than reasons of rights. It is also argued that there are no non-naturalist external practical reasons, and all practical reasons are desire-dependent: so practical reasons cannot be universally binding. The question is whether such a morality possesses enough authority to command our compliance. This seems necessary in order for us to cope with the greatest moral problems of our time, such as aid to developing countries and anthropogenic climate change. (shrink)

This article objects to two arguments that William MacAskill gives in What We Owe the Future in support of optimism about the prospects of longtermism, that is, the prospects of positively influencing the longterm future. First, it grants that he is right that, whereas humans sometimes benefit others as an end, they rarely harm them as an end, but argues that this bias towards positive motivation is counteracted by the fact that it is practically easier to harm than to benefit. (...) For this greater easiness makes it likely both that accidental effects will be harmful rather than beneficial and that the means or side‐effects of the actions people perform with the aim of benefiting themselves and those close to them will tend to be harmful to others. Secondly, while our article agrees with him that values could lock‐in, it contends that the value of longtermism is unlikely to lock in as long as human beings have not been morally enhanced but remain partial in favor of themselves and those near and dear. (shrink)

There are no egalitarians in a pandemic. The scale of the challenge for health systems and public policy means that there is an ineluctable need to prioritize the needs of the many. It is impossible to treat all citizens equally, and a failure to carefully consider the consequences of actions could lead to massive preventable loss of life. In a pandemic there is a strong ethical need to consider how to do most good overall. Utilitarianism is an influential moral theory (...) that states that the right action is the action that is expected to produce the greatest good. It offers clear operationalizable principles. In this paper we provide a summary of how utilitarianism could inform two challenging questions that have been important in the early phase of the pandemic: (a) Triage: which patients should receive access to a ventilator if there is overwhelming demand outstripping supply? (b) Lockdown: how should countries decide when to implement stringent social restrictions, balancing preventing deaths from COVID‐19 with causing deaths and reductions in well‐being from other causes? Our aim is not to argue that utilitarianism is the only relevant ethical theory, or in favour of a purely utilitarian approach. However, clearly considering which options will do the most good overall will help societies identify and consider the necessary cost of other values. Societies may choose either to embrace or not to embrace the utilitarian course, but with a clear understanding of the values involved and the price they are willing to pay. (shrink)

In this paper we formulate a version of Second Incompleteness Theorem. The idea is that a sequential sentence has ‘consistency power’ over a theory if it enables us to construct a bounded interpretation of that theory. An interpretation of V in U is bounded if, for some n , all translations of V -sentences are U -provably equivalent to sentences of complexity less than n . We call a sequential sentence with consistency power over T a pro-consistency statement for T (...) . We study pro-consistency statements. We provide an example of a pro-consistency statement for a sequential sentence A that is weaker than an ordinary consistency statement for A . We show that, if A is $${{\sf S}^{1}_{2}}$$ , this sentence has some further appealing properties, specifically that it is an Orey sentence for EA . The basic ideas of the paper essentially involve sequential theories. We have a brief look at the wider environment of the results, to wit the case of theories with pairing. (shrink)

There is a “Pragmatist turn” visible in the field of organization science today, resulting from a renewed interest in the work of Pragmatist philosophers like Dewey, Mead, Peirce, James and others, and in its implications for the study of organizations. Following Wicks and Freeman, in the past decade Pragmatism has also entered the field of business ethics, which, however, has not been uniformly applauded in that field. Some scholars fear that Pragmatism may enhance already existing positivist and managerialist tendencies in (...) current business ethics, while others see more emancipatory potential in Pragmatism, arguing that it complements and supports stakeholder theory. In this paper, a comparison of the philosophical underpinnings of Pragmatist and Critical conceptions of business ethics is offered, concentrating on the Pragmatism of John Dewey and the Critical theory of the Frankfurt School, in particular of Axel Honneth. It is argued that these two developed along two converging lines. Along the first line, Dewey was far more skeptical and critical of capitalism than is often thought. Along the second line, the reactions to Pragmatism of Frankfurt School Critical theorists developed over time from generally hostile, to partially inclusive, to more fully integrative. At the crossroads of these converging lines a Pragmatist Critical perspective is developed and exemplified, and its implications for business ethics are outlined. (shrink)

In the past decade, the concept of recognition appears to have acquired an important theoretical position in the work and organization literature. While in principle recognition denotes a positive and social form of freedom, in current-day organizations recognition may be often negative or instrumental. In order to capture this ambivalence in organizational recognitive conditions, the recent work of the American philosopher Judith Butler appears particularly applicable. The purpose of this paper is to explore theoretically to what extent her views on (...) recognition shed new light on the variety of recognition patterns in current-day organizations. Towards that purpose, this paper first turns to the ‘master-slave’ episode in the work of Hegel and its influential interpretation by Kojève, which are at the heart of Butler’s reading and conception of recognition. As a second step, the ambivalent conception of recognition in the work of Butler is discussed and critically assessed, while in the final section this conception is extended to work and organizations. (shrink)

Ingmar Persson offers an original view of the processes of human action: deliberating on the basis of reasons for and against actions, making a decision about what to do, and implementing the decision in action in a way that makes the action intentional.

The thesis of the article is that processes of structural political change can be adequately understood only on the basis of a multi-dimensional concept of political legitimacy. It is argued that the most prominent account of the idea, namely Max Weber's typology of legitimate authority, is misleading because of both its incompleteness and its incoherence (II). Drawing on David Beetham, we instead propose to analytically differentiate between three universal, genetically linked dimensions of legitimacy: (1) a basically pragmatic one, (2) a (...) theoretically re flexive, and (3) a performatively expressive dimension (III). By means of this scheme it becomes possible to capture fundamental, regularly violent processes of legitimation, as well as historically different forms of legitimacy. Empirically, the usefulness of our proposal shall be shown by sketching, on the one hand, the formation of “early states”, and the emergence of modern revolutions on the other (IV). (shrink)

In this paper I investigate deontic detachment in a new system of deontic logic called DL. DL contains standard deontic logic.

Inclusive Ethics brings together two ideas which are part of our everyday morality, namely that we have a moral reason to benefit or do good to other beings, and that justice requires these benefits to be distributed equally. Ingmar Persson explores the difficulties of accepting a morality which combines both of these principles.

In his book Rethinking the Good: Moral Ideals and the Nature of PracticalReasoning Larry Temkin contrasts two views of ideals for evaluating outcomes:the Internal Aspects View and the Essentially Comparative View. He claimsthat the latter view can make the relation of being better/worse than all thingsconsidered nontransitive, while the former can’t. This paper argues that theInternal Aspects View can also be a source of nontransitivity. The gist of theargument is that perfect similarity as regards supervenient properties, likevalue, is compatible with (...) differences as regards their subvenient propertiesand that it’s logically possible that such sets of insufficient differences add upto differences that are sufficient for supervenient differences. Thus, perfectsimilarity or identity is nontransitive as regards the supervenient property ofvalue, and this implies that the relation of being better/worse than all thingsconsidered is also nontransitive. (shrink)

This paper discusses Nicholas Agar's argument in Humanity's End, that it can be morally permissible for human beings to prevent the coming into existence of morally enhanced people because this can harm the interests of the unenhanced humans. It contends that Agar's argument fails because it overlooks the distinction between morally permissible and morally impermissible harm. It is only if the harm to them would be of the morally impermissible kind that humans are provided with a reason to prevent the (...) coming into existence of enhanced people. But if their enhancement includes moral enhancement, it is unlikely that the enhanced people will cause morally impermissible harm. (shrink)