When first published twenty years ago, The Logic of Medicine presented a new way of thinking about clinical medicine as a scholarly discipline as well as a profession. Since then, advances in research and technology have revolutionized both the practice and theory of medicine. In this new, extensively rewritten edition, Dr. Murphy includes changes to show how these different areas of scholarship may affect details of "the logic of medicine" without compromising its fundamental coherence. New to this edition are discussions (...) of the challenge of the flood of new empirical data, new ideas in genetics, molecular biology, homeostasis, pathogenesis, cancer, aging, and Alzheimer's disease. Murphy also comments on such new theoretical topics as dynamic systems, chaos, and fractals and their impact on the burgeoning fields of philosophy and practice of medicine. Written with medical students in mind, the book includes a glossary, many new examples, and problems for solutions with comments on each. An entirely new chapter deals with modeling. Clinicians and researchers will also find the principles thought-provoking and illuminating. (shrink)

Derek Parfit (1942-2017) is the most famous philosopher you've likely never heard of. In 1984, Parfit published what was, and is still, hailed by many philosophers as a work of genius - one of the most cited works of philosophy since World War II, Reasons and Persons. At its core, he argued that we should be concerned less with our own interests and more with the common good. His book brims with brilliant argumentative detail and stunningly inventive thought experiments that (...) challenged contemporary views about what it means to be a person, why one should forego concern for oneself as an identity that persists over time, what it means to act on the basis of reasons, and what we owe to future generations. Parfit also - unfashionably at the time - believed in a kind of grand unified theory of morality, what he called theory x, a non-religious ethical theory wherein all the major moral theories were converging from different sides on the same mountaintop. Parfit has had an enormous influence not only on philosophy, but also beyond, particularly amongst those in the fields of climate ethics, poverty relief, and charitable giving. In this book, the first-full scale biography of Parfit, Dave Edmonds tells the story of the thinker that many philosophers consider the most important moral philosopher of the last century. Edmonds' rendering of the man in full skilfully illuminates the person behind the acclaimed philosopher. Despite Parfit's extraordinary mind, outward appearances suggest his was also an extraordinarily uneventful life - one largely spent in cloistered institutions from Eton to Oxford and one seemingly monomaniacally devoted to ideas. Edmonds' aim is to show how this son and grandson of missionaries went from a genial and outgoing history student to a captivating, yet monkish philosopher singularly devoted to saving morality. In doing so, Edmonds makes Parfit's profound, but often impenetrable, ideas accessible to a broad audience and gives life and body to the thoughts of a seemingly pure thinker that captured the imagination of a generation of philosophers. (shrink)

The SDML programming language which is optimized for modelling multi-agent interaction within articulated social structures such as organizations is described with several examples of its functionality. SDML is a strictly declarative modelling language which has object-oriented features and corresponds to a fragment of strongly grounded autoepistemic logic. The virtues of SDML include the ease of building complex models and the facility for representing agents flexibly as models of cognition as well as modularity and code reusability.

Edmond Hiriartborde & Paul Fraisse, « Les Aptitudes rythmiques », Monographie française de psychologie, n° 14, 1968. - Psychologie.

The mechanisms/abilities of agents compared to the emergent outcomes in three different scenarios from my past work is summarised: the El Farol Game; an Artificial Stock Market; and the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. Within each of these, the presence or absence of some different agent abilities was examined, the results being summarised here – some turning out to be necessary, some not. The ability in terms of the recognition of other agents, either by characteristics or by name is a recurring theme. (...) Some of the difficulties in reaching a systematic understanding of these connections is briefly discussed. (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique : "Cet ouvrage est écrit à quatre mains et porte sur la relation entre création artistique et sciences de la cognition. L'ouvrage propose deux approches de l'expérience esthétique. Une approche en troisième personne mobilisant des modèles propres aux systèmes dits auto-organisateurs issus de la biologie dédiée à la réception des œuvres d'art et une approche en première personne rendant compte par auto-analyse d'une pratique artistique vécue qui s'appuie également sur de tels systèmes, systèmes eux-mêmes liés (...) aux concepts d'émergence et de complexité". (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Circularity and the Micro-Macro-Difference” by Manfred Füllsack. Upshot: The target article is criticised because it conflates models of causation with causation itself. The arguments used in the target article to avoid a straightforward distinction between fine-grained measurements and the abstractions used to model them are discussed. The value of using the word “causation” to refer to atemporal models is questioned.

Examen de la philosophie de l'analyse structurale, analysant terme à terme les rapports entre la forme et le sens et débouchant sur une réflexion concernant les concepts annexes d'expression, de signal, de signe, de symbole, de langage et de discours.

A philosophical task force explores how AI is revolutionizing our lives - and what moral problems it might bring, showing us what to be wary of, and what to be hopeful for. There is no more important issue at present than artificial intelligence. AI has begun to penetrate almost every sphere of human activity. It will disrupt our lives entirely. David Edmonds brings together a team of leading philosophers to explore some of the urgent moral concerns we should have (...) about this revolution. The chapters are rich with examples from contemporary society and imaginative projections of the future. The contributors investigate problems we're all aware of, and introduce some that will be new to many readers. They discuss self and identity, health and insurance, politics and manipulation, the environment, work, law, policing, and defence. Each of them explains the issue in a lively and illuminating way, and takes a view about how we should think and act in response. Anyone who is wondering what ethical challenges the future holds for us can start here. (shrink)

Thus far in the development of the discipline of medical ethics, the overriding concern has been with solutions to specific problems. But discussion is hampered by lack of understanding of the scope and methodology of medical ethics, and its scientific and philosophical basis. In Underpinnings of Medical Ethics Edmond A. Murphy, James J. Butzow, and Edward L. Suarez-Murias offer much-needed clarification of the purview, ontological basis, and methodology of a medical ethics that is to be comprehensive and yet readily accepted (...) by all. The authors begin by describing the scope of the analysis and discussing possible ethical systems and paradigms. They then deal with the structures and concepts necessary in the formulation of a coherent philosophy: normality and disease, scientific and juridical law, certainty and certitude, decisions. Finally, they introduce particular human dimensions, such as quality of life, pain, and responsibility. Throughout, case examples illustrate the authors' theoretical framework. (shrink)

CHAPTER I THE ARISTOTELIAN LOGIC I WANT to understand the Universe. I want to find an interpretation of it which will satisfy me — the whole me, ...

From the standpoint of the theory of medicine, a formulation is given of three types of reasoning used by physicians. The first is deduction from probability models (as in prognosis or genetic counseling for Mendelian disorders). It is a branch of mathematics that leads to predictive statements about outcomes of individual events in terms of known formal assumptions and parameters. The second type is inference (as in interpreting clinical trials). In it the arguments from replications of the same process (data) (...) lead to conclusions about the parameters of a system, without calling into question either the probabilistic model or the criteria of evidence. The third is illation (as in the elucidation of symptoms in a patient). It is a process whereby, in the light of the total evidence and the conclusions from the other types of reasoning, one may modify, expand, simplify or demolish a conceptual framework proposed for deductions, and modify the nature of the evidence sought, the criteriology, the axioms, and the surmised complexity of the scientific theory. (The process of diagnosis as applied to a patient may in extreme cases lead to the discovery of an entirely new disease with its own, quite new, set of diagnostic criteria. This course cannot be accommodated inside either of the other two types of reasoning.) Illation has something of the character of Kuhn's scientific revolution in physics; but it differs in that it is the nature, not the degree or frequency of change that distinguishes it from Kuhn's normal science. (shrink)

This book reflects upon the manner in which medical research is performed and interpreted.

bruce@edmonds.name http://bruce.edmonds.name Abstract. Two kinds of problem are distinguished: the first of finding processes which produce complex outcomes from the interaction of simple parts, and the second of finding which process resulted in an observed complex outcome. The former I call the easy complexity problem and the later the hard complexity problem. It is often assumed that progress with the easy problem will aid process with the hard problem. However this assumes that the “reverse engineering” problem, of determining (...) the process from the outcomes is feasible. Taking a couple of simple models of reverse engineering, I show that this task is infeasible in the general case. Hence it cannot be assumed that reverse engineering is possible, and hence that most of the time progress on the easy problem will not help with the hard problem unless there are special properties of a particular set of processes that make it feasible. Assuming that complexity science is not merely an academic “game” and given the analysis of this paper, some criteria for the kinds of paper that have a reasonable chance of being eventually useful for understanding observed complex systems are outlined. Many complexity papers do not fare well against these critieria. (shrink)

First published in 1923, this book collects together sixteen essays written between 1912 and 1922 that reflect how the author's views on education became increasingly interwoven with their views on "things in general" — with half dealing with each subject. Reflecting this interweave, they are arranged chronologically rather than by subject due to their "unity of conviction and purpose". The author argues that the question "Is man free to direct the process of his own growth?" naturally follows from the question (...) "Is man a free agent?" Thus if freedom is inextricably linked to growth it becomes of paramount interest to the teacher and is explored here under a broad range of topics. (shrink)

A sensory receptor, in any organism anywhere, is sensitive through time to some distribution - energy, motion, molecular shape - indeed, anything that can produce an effect. The sensitivity is rarely direct: for example, it may track changes in relative variation rather than the absolute change of state (as when the skin responds to colder and hotter instead of to cold and hot as such); it may track differing variations under different conditions (the eyes' dark-adaptation; adaptation to sound frequencies can (...) lower the difference threshold; the kinesthetic sense will shut down if a limb is held in a stationary position too long - the limb 'going to sleep'); it may be subject to distortion of the input from overloading (dazzle producing strong-after-images); it may not be confined to one channel of sensitivity (the retina is sensitive to pressure; the hands can feel some strong sound-vibrations, the tympanum of the ear records touch). Strictly speaking there is no limit as to what intensities and what ranges receptors could be sensitive. Sharks are sensitive to electrostatic fields, homing pigeons to magnetic fields; snakes to infra-red rays; bacteria to acid concentrations; perhaps there has even been a mutant organism sensitive to the passage of cosmic rays, even though that would hardly have bestowed any conceivable survival value. What is irrefutable is that individual receptors differ markedly from organism to organism, between different members of the species (one dog being better at tracing smells than another; one person being able to sense light-waves of 375 nanometres, another not; children able to hear 20,000 Hz, older persons not), and between receptors of the same kind within one organism (one eye being sensitive to 765 nm and the other not; one ear deaf to 15,000 Hz and over, the other not). There are also just-noticeable-differences (JND's), in that one person can see two shades of a colour where another sees only one; similarly with sounds. (shrink)