Reviewing the state of play in the attempt to naturalise content a quarter of a century after John Haugeland’s survey paper “The Intentionality All-Stars”, Dan Hutto and Glenda Satne propose a new naturalistic account of content that supposedly synthesizes what is best in the three failed programs of neo-Cartesianism, neo-Behaviourism and neo-Pragmatism. They propose to appeal to a Relaxed Naturalism, a non-reductive genealogical form of explanation and a primitive notion of contentless ur-intentionality. In this paper I argue that the authors’ (...) Relaxed Naturalism is a broad form of Scientific Naturalism and, as such, it is unable to account for the problem of conceptual normativity that arises for any scientific naturalist attempt to explain content – whether reductive or not. This is based on the irreconcilability of the objective third-personal character of scientific inquiry and the intersubjective second-personal nature of the normativity of content. I suggest that the authors would do better to simply become neo-Pragmatists who, properly understood, are Liberal Naturalists who have the conceptual and methodological resources to acknowledge and do justice to conceptually normative content. (shrink)

This the tenth volume in the Vancouver Studies in Cogntive Science series. It concerns metarepresentation: the construction and use of representations that represent other representations. Metarepresentations are ubiquitous among human beings, whenever we think or talk about mental states or linguistic acts, or theorize about the mind or language. It is crucial to the unconscious process we use to divine the mental states of others, and ultimately to any workable theory of the mind. This volume collects previously unpublished studies on (...) the subject by an interdisciplinary group of contributors, including: Daniel Dennett, Alvin Goldman, Keith Lehrer, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby. (shrink)

In many-valued logics with the unit interval as the set of truth values, from the standard negation and the product (or, more generally, from any strict Frank t-norm) all measurable logical functions can be derived, provided that also operations with countable arity are allowed. The question remained open whether there are other t-norms with this property or whether all strict t-norms possess this property. We give a full solution to this problem (in the case of strict t-norms), together with convenient (...) sufficient conditions. We list several families of strict t-norms having this property and provide also counterexamples (the Hamacher product is one of them). Finally, we discuss the consequences of these results for the characterization of tribes based on strict t-norms. (shrink)

What is the interplay of high-tech industrial agglomeration and urban innovation? How does high-tech industrial agglomeration affect urban innovation? What are the heterogeneous effects of high-tech industry agglomeration on urban innovation in different conditions? To answer these questions, this paper analyzes the interrelationship between high-tech industry agglomeration and urban innovation based on panel data of China’s Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration from 2010 to 2019. We discuss the influence mechanism of high-tech industrial agglomeration on urban innovation by exploring the mediating (...) effect of industrial structure optimization and the threshold effect of industrial attributes. The heterogeneous impact of high-tech industry agglomeration on urban innovation is also been further studied. We find that the interaction relationship between high-tech industry agglomeration and urban innovation output is positive. The advancement of industrial structure plays a positive intermediary role between high-tech industrial agglomeration and urban innovation output, while the rationalization of industrial structure shows a suppressing effect. There are different threshold effects between capital intensity and technology intensity. The influence of high-tech agglomeration on urban innovation is positive only when the capital intensity exceeds 1.125. However, the influence is always positive in different levels of technology intensity, significantly. When the technology intensity is higher than 9.012E − 06, the degree and significance of this positive impact would decrease. There are heterogeneous impacts of high-tech industry agglomeration on urban innovation output in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration in different time stages, urban innovation development stages, and urban circles. (shrink)

ObjectiveThe objective of the study was to explore the relationship between social support and fatigue as well as the mediating role of social functioning on that relationship.BackgroundPsychosocial factors such as social support and social functioning may influence patients’ fatigue symptoms. There is limited evidence on the relationship between social support, social functioning, and fatigue in liver transplant recipients.MethodsA total of 210 patients with liver transplants from two tertiary hospitals were enrolled in the current study. Questionnaires used include one for general (...) demographic data, the Perceived Social Support Scale, Social Disability Screening Schedule, and Fatigue Symptom Inventory.ResultsA total of 126 recipients reported fatigue. Gender, residence, BMI, and liver function were the primary factors affecting fatigue. Social support was positively correlated with social functioning and was negatively correlated with fatigue. The effect of social support on fatigue was partially mediated by social functioning.ConclusionThe fatigue of liver transplant recipients should be attended to. The higher the social support, the lower the fatigue of liver transplant recipients. Social support may also reduce fatigue through social functioning. The liver transplant team should help the liver transplant recipient establish a social support system, restore social functioning, and reduce fatigue symptoms. (shrink)

In previous studies, as an important object of inheritance and promotion of Chinese culture in Chinese colleges and universities, the psychological change mechanism of college students in the process of receiving cultural identity education has not attracted widespread attention. This study focuses on ideological and political education in colleges and universities, and innovatively believes that in order to improve college students’ identification with Chinese culture, and make them consciously “internalize in mind and externalize in practice,” it is necessary to explore (...) their psychological structure and mechanism of action in the process of accepting identity education and take measures to actively intervene. The study employs the method of questionnaire investigation, acquiring 1,119 effective samples from 30 universities in Fujian province. By establishing the theoretical framework of “cognitive identity—emotional identity—ideological identity—behavioral identity,” analyzing and examining the data, it is found out that: cognitive identity affecting behavioral identity positively in a noticeable way; by raising individual emotional identity, cognitive identity strengthening university students’ behavioral identity; cognitive identity inspiring behavioral identity with benefits of ideological identity; it being verified that there exists an intermediary chain reaction between emotional identity, ideological identity, cognitive identity, and behavioral identity. As a result, the followings are proposed: further integrating the worthy Chinese traditional culture into university curriculum and developing students’ cognitive education of traditional culture; exploring the aesthetic dimension of worthy Chinese traditional culture and deepening the students’ emotional identity of traditional culture; demonstrating the essence of the worthy Chinese traditional culture and advancing the students’ ideological identity of traditional culture; and intensifying the practice of the worthy Chinese traditional culture and motivating the students’ behavioral identity of traditional culture. (shrink)

In her editorial introduction to the special issue 10 years of Viewing from Within: the Legacy of Francisco Varela as well as in her co-authored contribution 'The validity of first-person descriptions as authenticity and coherence' , Claire Petitmengin expresses some reservations about the way I have been characterizing reflection in some of my earlier writings. In replying to the criticism, I will use the occasion to amplify some of my previous remarks, pinpoint what I take to be some ambiguities in (...) Petitmengin and Bitbol's own positive proposal, make some additional points that relate directly to the important questions that they raise in their joint paper, and finish off with a few remarks regarding one of the central claims made by Vermersch in his contribution to the special issue. (shrink)

Matthew Kramer has recently proposed a distinction between norms that are free-floating and those that are not. The distinction, he argued, enables us to distinguish between norms that can be incorporated into the law and those that cannot. In this essay I argue that his distinction is based on several theoretical errors, and that even if it were successful, it is unclear why his distinction is relevant for the question of the boundaries between law and morality. I also provide many (...) examples from actual legal systems of legal norms that do not correspond to Kramer’s distinction. I conclude the essay by suggesting that Kramer’s argument exemplifies a prevalent problem in contemporary legal philosophy, in which much work is often based on simplistic models of law and uses them to develop ‘conceptual’ arguments for what closer attention to the facts shows are empirical questions. As a result many current jurisprudential debates are not helpful for understanding legal phenomena. Recognizing this point is important for reorienting legal philosophy towards other questions which would be more helpful for illuminating its subject-matter. (shrink)

From an evolutionary point of view, the function of moral behaviour may be to secure a good reputation as a co-operator. The best way to do so may be to obey genuine moral motivations. Still, one's moral reputation maybe something too important to be entrusted just to one's moral sense. A robust concern for one's reputation is likely to have evolved too. Here we explore some of the complex relationships between morality and reputation both from an evolutionary and a cognitive (...) point of view. (shrink)

This chapter examines whether an individual’s being worse off than others should be a relevant consideration in the allocation of limited medical resources. It reviews arguments pressed by proponents of different theories of justice about whether being worse off than others makes special demands on health care resource prioritization. Even if there is good reason to restrict the concern for the worse off to those with worse health in the prioritization and allocation of health care resources, additional issues remain. One (...) is how to determine who has worse health, and whether the worse off are those with the worse overall health or those with the most serious medical condition now in need of treatment. Another issue is whether only individuals’ present health, or instead their lifetime health, including past and expected future health, is relevant. (shrink)

The availability of a range of new psychotropic agents raises the possibility that these will be used for enhancement purposes (smart pills, happy pills, and pep pills). The enhancement debate soon raises questions in philosophy of medicine and psychiatry (eg, what is a disorder?), and this debate in turn raises fundament questions in philosophy of language, science, and ethics. In this paper, a naturalistic conceptual framework is proposed for addressing these issues. This framework begins by contrasting classical and critical concepts (...) of categories, and then puts forward an integrative position that is based on cognitive-affective research. This position can in turn be used to consider the debate between pharmacological Calvinism (which may adopt a moral metaphor of disorder) and psychotropic utopianism (which may emphasize a medical metaphor of disorder). I argue that psychiatric treatment of serious psychiatric disorders is justified, and that psychotropics are an acceptable kind of intervention. The use of psychotropics for sub-threshold phenomena requires a judicious weighing of the relevant facts (which are often sparse) and values. (shrink)

In the introduction to Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, Husserl remarks that “we get entangled in the most peculiar difficulties, contradictions, and confusions” (Hua X, 4) the moment we seek to account for time-consciousness. I think most scholars of Husserl’s writings on these issues would agree. Attempting to unravel the inner workings of time-consciousness can indeed easily induce a kind of intellectual vertigo. Let us consequently start with some of the basic questions that motivated Husserl’s inquiry.

This chapter addresses the flexibility problem for massive modularity. It argues that massively modular architectures exhibit flexibility largely as a result of context-sensitive competition between modules for the allocation of cognitive resources. Thus, it is the cognitive system as a whole that exhibits flexibility, rather than any particular subsystem within it.

Volume 19, Issue 10, October 2019, Page 8-9.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Ideal of Shared Decision Making Between Physicians and PatientsDan W. Brock (bio)IntroductionShared treatment decision making, with its division of labor between physician and patient, is a common ideal in medical ethics for the physician-patient relationship.1 Most simply put, the physician's role is to use his or her training, knowledge, and experience to provide the patient with facts about the diagnosis and about the prognoses without treatment and with (...) alternative treatments. The patient's role in this division of labor is to provide the values—his or her own conception of the good—with which to evaluate these alternatives, and to select the one that is best for himself or herself. As a rough guide to practice, this is a reasonable conception; most of the time it is likely to produce sound treatment decisions. However, as an ideal it is too simplistic, and is subject to several challenges that I will explore in this paper.Some challenges relate to the physician's role. This facts/values division of labor seems to assume that the physician can and should provide the facts about treatment alternatives in a value-neutral form. But some have questioned whether the sciences on which medicine is based are, or can be, value free. Moreover, the concepts of health and disease, and of the normal and pathological, are held by many to be value laden. And even if it is possible for physicians to provide only value-neutral facts to the patient, should the physicians' role be restricted in this way?Other challenges that I will present in the paper are to the patient's role [End Page 28] as provider of the values for the evaluation of the different treatment alternatives. One defense of this role is based on the claim that physicians are not in a position to know reliably what is in a patient's best interests (Buchanan, forthcoming). I believe at least as influential—even if often not explicitly stated—is an extreme subjectivism about values that assumes that the patient's own ultimate values, which define his or her own conception of the good, are incorrigible. By incorrigible, I mean they cannot be mistaken. In the standard case in which treatment is pursued for the patient's benefit, this extreme subjectivism is thought to support the patient's values guiding treatment decision making and treatment. I will explore this incorrigibility claim and will argue that on each of the main philosophical conceptions of the good for persons it is indefensible and should not be the basis for shared treatment decision making.Underlying this view of the physician-patient division of labor are assumptions and beliefs about the nature and relation of facts and values, and science and ethics, that are largely the legacy of a logical positivism that has long since been rejected by most philosophers. It is time that these unstable foundations for our normative ideal of the physician-patient relation were finally removed and replaced with more defensible underpinnings.Two Models of the Physician-Patient RelationshipPositivists insisted on a relatively sharp distinction between descriptive or empirical claims and science, on the one hand, and evaluative claims and ethics, on the other.2 Descriptive statements and the claims of science were to be true or false according to whether they in fact correctly described and explained the world. By remaining properly descriptive or empirical, science could, at least in principle, be entirely value neutral or value free.In its more extreme versions, positivism held that ethical judgments lacked cognitive content, but were instead expressions of emotions or attitudes, and as such could be neither true nor false, correct or mistaken. Because no evaluative statements were held to be logically entailed by any descriptive or empirical statements, moral reasoning was thought to be properly understood not as reasoning but as attempts at nonrational persuasion.3 Many drew from this an extreme subjectivism in ethics along the lines of what I have called above the incorrigibility thesis—there is no meaningful sense in which an individual's ultimate values defining his or her own conception of the good life could be mistaken, false, or unfounded.These... (shrink)

The past decade has witnessed a notable turn in philosophical orientation in the Nordic countries. For the first time, the North has a generation of philosophers who are oriented to phenomenology. This means a vital rediscovery of the phenomenological tradition as a partly hidden conceptual and methodological resource for taking on contemporary philosophical problems. The essays collected in the present volume introduce the reader to the phenomenological work done in the Nordic countries today. The material is organized under three general (...) headings: metaphysics, facticity, and interpretation. The first part, "Metaphysics", asks if phenomenology is, or could be taken as, a metaphysical inquiry. It studies this possibility in a systematic as well as in a historical perspective. The second part, "Facticity", focuses on the double character of the philosophizing subject, on the one hand, as a worldly being bound by a cultural and historical situation, and on the other hand, as the one who thinks this condition and gives it an interpretation. It studies four aspects of facticity in particular: language, dwelling, alterity, and generation. The third part, "Interpretation", clarifies the different notions of interpretation central to phenomenology, understood as hermeneutics. (shrink)

Despite the importance of ethical leadership, the impacts of its different facets on firm-level performance are unclear. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm and the group engagement model, we propose that ethical leadership consisting of leader humane orientation, leader responsibility and sustainability orientation and leader moderation orientation are beneficial to firm performance, and leader justice orientation plays moderating roles. We empirically tested this theoretical framework employing multi-source survey data collected from 264 Chinese firms. The findings reveal that both (...) leader humane orientation and leader responsibility and sustainability orientation have positive influences on both firm financial and social performance, while leader moderation orientation only has positive influence on firm financial performance. In addition, leader justice orientation positively moderates the relationship between leader humane orientation and leader responsibility and sustainability orientation and financial performance as well as the relationship between leader moderation orientation and social performance. These findings provide theoretical and practical implications for understanding how different facets of ethical leadership jointly function to influence firm performance. (shrink)

The text surveys the development of the debate between Zahavi and Brough/Sokolowski regarding Husserl’s account of inner time-consciousness. The main arguments on both sides are reconsidered, and a compromise is proposed.

The leader–member relationship has been identified as a key determinant of successful working relationships and business outcomes in China. A high-quality leader–member relationship helps managers and employees to meet the demands they face and gives them the opportunity to develop socially, emotionally and morally. Such relationships form the basis of the overall well-being and success of the organisation. This article contributes to relationally oriented leadership theories and more specifically to the leader–member exchange theory by examining the theory in the context (...) of Western expatriate managers and Chinese employees in China. The first aim of the study is to analyse the similarities and differences between the LMX theory, which owes its origins to Western corporate experience, and the social and moral norms of guanxi, a crucial element in the Chinese value system. Since Westerners and Chinese people can give different interpretations to guanxi, the second aim of the article is to discuss the ethical challenges to the Western manager arising from guanxi. The findings of this study have implications not only for China, but also for other Chinese communities where guanxi is endorsed and practised. (shrink)

Careerism refers to an individual’s propensity to achieve their personal and career goals through nonperformance-based activities. We investigated the role of several dispositional predictors of careerism, including Five-factor model personality traits, primary psychopathy, and exchange ideology. Based on data from 131 respondents, as expected, we observed that emotional stability was negatively correlated with careerism. Primary psychopathy and exchange ideology explained additional variance in careerism after accounting for FFM traits. Relative importance analyses indicated that psychopathy and exchange ideology were equally important (...) in predicting careerism. We highlight the need for future research efforts investigating the combined effects of contextual factors—particularly, human resource practices—and individual differences to understand careerism in the workplace. (shrink)

Data science is not simply a method but an organising idea. Commitment to the new paradigm overrides concerns caused by collateral damage, and only a counterculture can constitute an effective critique. Understanding data science requires an appreciation of what algorithms actually do; in particular, how machine learning learns. The resulting ‘insight through opacity’ drives the observable problems of algorithmic discrimination and the evasion of due process. But attempts to stem the tide have not grasped the nature of data science as (...) both metaphysical and machinic. Data science strongly echoes the neoplatonism that informed the early science of Copernicus and Galileo. It appears to reveal a hidden mathematical order in the world that is superior to our direct experience. The new symmetry of these orderings is more compelling than the actual results. Data science does not only make possible a new way of knowing but acts directly on it; by converting predictions to pre-emptions, it becomes a machinic metaphysics. The people enrolled in this apparatus risk an abstraction of accountability and the production of ‘thoughtlessness’. Susceptibility to data science can be contested through critiques of science, especially standpoint theory, which opposes the ‘view from nowhere’ without abandoning the empirical methods. But a counterculture of data science must be material as well as discursive. Karen Barad’s idea of agential realism can reconfigure data science to produce both non-dualistic philosophy and participatory agency. An example of relevant praxis points to the real possibility of ‘machine learning for the people’. (shrink)

The paper argues that members of future generations have an entitlement to natural resources equal to ours. Therefore, if a currently living individual destroys or degrades natural resources then he must pay compensation to members of future generations. This compensation takes the form of “primary goods” which will be valued by members of future generations as equally useful for promoting the good life as the natural resources they have been deprived of. As a result of this policy, each generation inherits (...) a “Commonwealth” of natural resources plus compensation. It is this inherited “Commonwealth” which members of that generation must then pass on to members of the next generation. Once this picture is accepted, the standard bundle of property rights is problematic, for it takes the owner of a constituent of the Commonwealth to have the right to “waste, destroy or modify” that item at will. This paper therefore presents a revised set of property rights which takes seriously the idea that each generation has an equal claim on the resources that nature has bequeathed us, whilst allowing certain effects on those natural resources by each generation, and a degree of exclusive use of those natural resources owned by an individual. (shrink)

Framed as a consideration of the other contributions to the present volume of the Journal of Indian Philosophy, this essay attempts to scout and characterize several of the interrelated doctrines and issues that come into play in thinking philosophically about the doctrine of svasaṃvitti, particularly as that was elaborated by Dignāga and Dharmakīrti. Among the issues thus considered are the question of how mānasapratyakṣa (which is akin to manovijñāna) might relate to svasaṃvitti; how those related doctrines might be brought to (...) bear with respect to some problems addressed with reference to the further doctrine (also closely related to svasaṃvitti) concerning pramāṇaphala; and the distinctiveness of Dharmakīrti’s sahopalambhaniyama argument for svasaṃvitti. A question recurrently considered throughout the essay has to do with whether (following Akeel Bilgrami) svasaṃvitti reflects a perceptual or a constitutive understanding of self-awareness. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Life and Death: Philosophical Essays in Biomedical Ethics. By Dan W. Brock.

Dan Arbib | Résumé : Nous proposons ici une analyse du concept cartésien d’infini à partir de trois paradoxes : 1) du point de vue du corps cartésien, l’infini occupe deux places peu compatibles, à la fois fondateur de la rationalité et inséré en elle ; 2) du point de vue de l’histoire de l’histoire de la métaphysique, l’infini apparaît pour satisfaire l’exigence de la représentation et pour y déroger ; 3) du point de vue de l’histoire des noms divins, (...) les enjeux du nom de l’infini se trouvent par deux fois neutralisés, d’une part par le scotisme contre l’effort thomiste ou bonaventurien, d’autre part par les post-cartésiens contre les plus grandes audaces cartésiennes. — Ces trois paradoxes superposables questionnent la cohérence du dispositif cartésien dont l’infini constitue le coeur. |: I propose here an analysis of the Cartesian concept of infinity based on three paradoxes : 1) from a Cartesian viewpoint, infinity occupies two places which are potentially incompatible, both as founder of rationality and inserted in it ; 2) from the viewpoint of the history of metaphysics, infinity appears to satisfy the requirement of representation and to break it ; 3) from the viewpoint of the history the divine names, the stakes of the name of infinite are twice neutralized, first by scoticism against Thomas Aquinas or Bonaventure, then by post-Cartesian philosophers against Descartes’ boldness. — These three superposable paradoxes question the coherence of the Cartesian system of which infinity constitutes the centre. (shrink)

In my short commentary, I dwell on the distinction between basic and complex empathy, and suggest that a basic perception-based form of empathy might point to the existence of a type of social understanding that is more direct and more fundamental than the types of social cognition normally addressed by simulation theory and theory theory.

Irenaeus of Lyon is a landmark in the reception history of the Shepherd of Hermas, as he seems to consider it scriptural, while being the earliest author to quote its text. The present article reconsiders the presence of the Shepherd of Hermas in the works of Irenaeus of Lyon, offering a fresh assessment of the rather differing stances on the matter in modern scholarship and some new considerations, with relevance for better understanding the circulation, function and use of authoritative texts (...) in early Christianity. (shrink)

Nine codes of ethics from companies in the Swedish financial sector were subjected to a content analysis to determine how they address and treat employees. The codes say a great deal about employee conduct and misconduct but next to nothing about employee rights, their rightful expectations or their value to the firm. The normative analysis – echoing some of the value-based HRM literature – draws on the foundational values of respect, equality, reciprocity and care. The analysis shows that most of (...) the codes are in conflict with these values. Such a treatment is then in conflict with fairness and risks harming the employees. Some of the features that make these codes ethically problematic are typical of how corporate codes have been described in previous code studies. Consequently, the normative analysis reaches beyond the scope of this material and in the end, what is at stake, is a very typical code design. (shrink)

This paper presents a computational model that integrates a dynamically structured holographic memory system into the ACT-R cognitive architecture to explain how linguistic representations are encoded and accessed in memory. ACT-R currently serves as the most precise expression of the moment-by-moment working memory retrievals that support sentence comprehension. The ACT-R model of sentence comprehension is able to capture a range of linguistic phenomena, but there are cases where the model makes the wrong predictions, such as the over-prediction of retrieval interference (...) effects during sentence comprehension. Here, we investigate one such case involving the processing of sentences with negative polarity items and consider how a dynamically structured holographic memory system might provide a cognitively plausible and principled explanation of some previously unexplained effects. Specifically, we show that by replacing ACT-R's declarative memory with a dynamically structured memory, we can explain a wider range of behavioral data involving reading times and judgments of grammaticality. We show that our integrated model provides a better fit to human error rates and response latencies than the original ACT-R model. These results provide proof-of-concept for the unification of two independent computational cognitive frameworks. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titles: Proper Functions Representations: The Basic Teleosemantic Framework Concepts Externalism, Language, and Meaning Rationalism.

We often assume that hypothetical approval – either in the form of preferences or consent – under ideal conditions adds to the legitimacy of an arrangement or act. I want to show that this assumption, reasonable as it may seem, will also give rise to ethical problems. I focus on three problem areas: prudence, euthanasia and coercive psychiatric treatment. If we are to count as prudentially or morally␣relevant those preferences you would have if you were informed and rational, we will (...) run into difficulties in all these areas if your actual and rational preferences are at variance with each other. In the prudential sphere we may question the personal value of satisfying preferences that a person does not actually have. In this case our problem concerns the point of satisfying a rational preference in conflict with an actual one. In the cases of euthanasia and coercive care it concerns instead whether it would be morally right to do such a thing. I doubt there is a simple solution to our problem. In this paper at most I prepare the way for a solution or for wiser decisions in the hard cases, by pointing out what they will have to deal with. (shrink)