The notion of folk‐psychology as a primitive speculative theory of the mental is called into question. There is cause to believe that folk‐psychology has more in common with a naive physics than with early speculative physical theorising. The distinction between these is elaborated. The conclusion drawn is that commonsense ascription of psychological content, though not a suitable finishing point for cognitive science, should still provide a more reliable source of data than some contemporary theorists are willing to admit.

A Photcopy of Thinking Things Through, Princeton Univeresity Press, 1980.

Connectionism and classicism, it appears, have at least this much in common: both place some notion of internal representation at the heart of a scientific study of mind. In recent years, however, a much more radical view has gained increasing popularily. This view calls into question the commitment to internal representation itself. more strikingly still, this new wave of anti-representationalism is rooted not in 'armchair' theorizing but in practical attempts to model and understand intelligent, adaptive behaviour. In this paper we (...) first present, and then critically assess, a variety of recent anti-representationalist treatments. We suggest that so far, at least, the sceptical rhetoric outpaces both evidence and argument. Some probable causes of this premature scepticism are isolated. nonetheless, the anti-representationalist challenge is shown to be both important and progressive insofar as it forces us to see beyond the bare representational/ non-represenational dichotomy and to recognize instead a rich continuum of degrees and types of represenatationality. (shrink)

_Paradoxes from A to Z, Third edition_ is the essential guide to paradoxes, and takes the reader on a lively tour of puzzles that have taxed thinkers from Zeno to Galileo, and Lewis Carroll to Bertrand Russell. Michael Clark uncovers an array of conundrums, such as Achilles and the Tortoise, Theseus’ Ship, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma, taking in subjects as diverse as knowledge, science, art and politics. Clark discusses each paradox in non-technical terms, considering its significance and looking (...) at likely solutions. This third edition is revised throughout, and adds nine new paradoxes that have important bearings in areas such as law, logic, ethics and probability. Paradoxes from A to Z, Third edition is an ideal starting point for those interested not just in philosophical puzzles and conundrums, but anyone seeking to hone their thinking skills. (shrink)

For people to contribute to discourse, they must do more than utter the right sentence at the right time. The basic requirement is that they add to their common ground in an orderly way. To do this, we argue, they try to establish for each utterance the mutual belief that the addressees have understood what the speaker meant well enough for current purposes. This is accomplished by the collective actions of the current contributor and his or her partners, and these (...) result in units of conversation called contributions. We present a model of contributions and show how it accounts for a variety of features of everyday conversations. (shrink)

From island biogeography theory, the ethic of organic diversity was posited as a precept to guide applied biogeography. It states that humanity must act in such a way as to reduce the rate of worldwide species extinction for an indefinite period of time. Almost 50 years later, the ethic of organic diversity remains relevant in the context of the debate over species translocation practices. Ultimately, matters of biodiversity conservation are too complex to expect an exceptionless moral framework to determine whether (...) species translocation is acceptable in every situation. Instead, individual cases should be judged based on the adequacy of their decision-making processes. (shrink)

The conflict between drug and conventional rewards leads to a paradox: Sanctions against drug use decrease access to conventional rewards and push drug users toward drug abuse, whereas increased access to the rewards of family, friends, and work may help reduce drug abuse. Lack of control is not specific to drug addiction and is unlikely to yield to a shift in bookkeeping.

The most neglected sector of Kant's Critical Philosophy is his collec tion of remarks about biological phenomena in the second part of the Critique of Judgment, the Critique of Teleological Judgment. The reasons for this are numerous, but since in Kant, everything comes in threes, a three-fold collection will suffice. The Critique of Teleological Judgment itself is one reason. More than most of his writings, this segment of the Critical corpus suffers from what can most charitably be termed "mistakes of (...) exposition. " In this part of the third Critique, it is commonplace to find sub-arguments in Kant's general position somewhere other than their logical niche. The result is that the general theme behind his remarks about living phenomena is obscured. This difficulty has done much to discourage even the most enthusiastic of Kant admirers from investing their time on this work. Secondly, in this century, until very recently, there has been little interest in philosophical questions about biology. Twenty-one out of thirty-one sections of the Critique of Teleological Judgment (sections #61 and 63-83) deal either directly or indirectly with issues of interest in the philosophy of biology. Finally, the Critique of Teleological Judgment has been placed among the last on that list "of writings thought to formulate Kant's Critical system. This is not merely because of its temporal position. (shrink)

Naturalism admits of no single, simple definition (usually depending on the naturalist's commitment to science). After distinguishing ontological or metaphysic naturalism from methodological naturalism, I discuss the historical development of ontological naturalism, as well as arguments for or against naturalism. I then take moral goodness and badness as a case study of the problems and prospects for ontological naturalism.

Este artículo profundiza en los debates históricos y actuales en Canadá sobre la historia nacional y la enseñanza de la historia en el complicado escenario de trece jurisdicciones educativas de Canadá. En este trabajo se analizan los debates sobre los contenidos en la enseñanza de la historia y en los libros de texto, así como los enfoques en la escuela. Se analizan las formas en que un enfoque de pensamiento histórico está consolidándose en todo el país en el período actual, (...) con una mayor atención a la investigación en la enseñanza de la historia y su difusión y su mayor presencia en los planes provinciales. Se considera el papel del gobierno federal en estos cambios, las organizaciones privadas sin fines de lucro, y los proyectos financiados por el gobierno nacional, tales como el Historical Thinking Project y The History Education Network. (shrink)

We applied TETRAD II, a causal discovery program developed in Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Philosophy, to a database containing information on 204 U.S. colleges, collected by the US News and World Report magazine for the purpose of college ranking. Our analysis focuses on possible causes of low freshmen retention in U.S. colleges. TETRAD II finds a set of causal structures that are compatible with the data.

The current proxy voting system in the United States has become the subject of considerable controversy. Because institutional investment managers have the authority to vote their clients’ proxies, they have a fiduciary obligation to those clients. Frequently, in an attempt to fulfill that obligation, these institutional investors employ proxy advisory services to manage the thousands of votes they must cast. However, many proxy advisory services have conflicts of interest that inhibit their utility to those seeking to discharge their fiduciary duties. (...) In this article, we describe the current proxy advisory network as an example of how current notions of conflicts of interest fall short when explaining the behavior of an interconnected set of market players whose remit is to act in the best interests of their investors. We discuss what participants in this system should do to bring transparency and accuracy to the proxy advice industry. (shrink)

The contest between “Lockeian liberalism” and “classical republicanism” as explanatory frameworks for the intellectual history of the American Revolution, and therefore of the present-day United States, has been one of the longest running and most distinguished in recent U.S. historiography. It also has major implications for the history of political thought in the North Atlantic Anglophone world more widely. Yet this debate was merely suspended when it was held to have ended in an ill-defined compromise. Although some U.S. historians expressed (...) doubts and qualifications, attention in U.S. historiography moved on to other themes while leaving the initial problem unsolved. This article reopens the question; it suggests that a historicization of both these two categories is now both possible and necessary, and that their supersession will advance understanding of the Revolution. It seeks to help solve this problem by the same means that the debate began: that is, by re-establishing a link between U.S. and U.K. historiographies. (shrink)

Neither journalistic nor sensationalistic eye-witness accounts, this is the first book of serious reflection on the moral background and issues of internal legality surrounding the events of Guantanamo Bay.

A study of Plotinus's use of myth and metaphor, with special attention to the historical context and therapeutic use of his work.

The use of forward models is well established in cognitive and computational neuroscience. We compare and contrast two recent, but interestingly divergent, accounts of the place of forward models in the human cognitive architecture. On the Auxiliary Forward Model account, forward models are special-purpose prediction mechanisms implemented by additional circuitry distinct from core mechanisms of perception and action. On the Integral Forward Model account, forward models lie at the heart of all forms of perception and action. We compare these neighbouring (...) but importantly different visions and consider their implications for the cognitive sciences. We end by asking what kinds of empirical research might offer evidence favouring one or the other of these approaches. (shrink)

Biological brains are first and foremost the control systems for biological bodies. Biological bodies move and act in rich real‐world surroundings. These apparently mundane facts are amongst the main driving forces behind a growing movement within cognitive science – a movement that seeks to reorient the scientific study of mind so as to better accommodate the roles of embodiment and environmental embedding.

In April 1999, Dr. Curt Freed of the University of Colorado in Denver and Dr. Stanley Fahn of Columbia Presbyterian Center in New York presented the results of a four-year, $5.7 million government-financed study using tissue from aborted fetuses to treat Parkinson’s disease at a conference of the American Academy of Neurology. The results of the first government-financed, placebo-controlled clinical study using fetal tissue showed that the symptoms of some Parkinson’s patients had been relieved. This research study involved forty subjects, (...) nineteen women and twenty-one men; all suffered from Parkinson’s disease for an average of 13.5 years. In the study, each subject underwent neurosurgery: “four tiny burr holes, drilled through the wrinkle lines above the eyebrows into the skull, to clear a pathway to the brain. But only half received injections of fetal cells into the putamen, the region of the brain that controls movement; the other half received nothing. One year later, three members of the placebo group said their symptoms had improved.” In two-thirds of the transplant recipients, the fetal tissue took hold and seemed to establish a new network to produce the missing neurochemical dopamine. (shrink)

Human rights have increasingly come to the center of political and social philosophy since 1945. The have been widely discussed in publications on topical human rights issues, in the work of some of the most notable philosophers of the time like Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls, and in volumes on global justice. But, despite Habermas work in Diskurs Ethik, discussion ethics has never clearly been presented as a normative ethical theory in competition with the classical rivals such as utilitarianism and (...) Kantian ethics. This paper makes a clear, concise case recognition of human rights ethics as a contemporary normative ethical theory, and for its inclusion in future elementary textbooks. Universal legal human rights protect the central ethical human right to freedom of expression. Human Rights Ethics supersedes classical theories based on evident first principles because these principles are either merely asserted without justification or are justified by being superseded by the final self-justifying standard of definable ethical discussion. The very refutation of human rights ethics could be sound only through ethical discussion, with all parties exercising the ethical, but not yet universally legal, right to freedom of expression. Hence the refutation of the ethical right to freedom of expression cannot be sound. (shrink)

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.