In recent years, many philosophers of modern physics came to the conclusion that the problem of how objectivity is constituted (rather than merely given) can no longer be avoided, and therefore that a transcendental approach in the spirit of Kant is now philosophically relevant. The usual excuse for skipping this task is that the historical form given by Kant to transcendental epistemology has been challenged by Relativity and Quantum Physics. However, the true challenge is not to force modern physics into (...) a rigidly construed static version of Kant's philosophy, but to provide Kant's method with flexibility and generality. In this book, the top specialists of the field pin down the methodological core of transcendental epistemology that must be used in order to throw light on the foundations of modern physics. First, the basic tools Kant used for his transcendental reading of Newtonian Mechanics are examined, and then early transcendental approaches of Relativistic and Quantum Physics are revisited. Transcendental procedures are also applied to contemporary physics, and this renewed transcendental interpretation is finally compared with structural realism and constructive empiricism. The book will be of interest to scientists, historians and philosophers who are involved in the foundational problems of modern physics. (shrink)

Jewish law takes an approach to self-defense that differs dramatically from the conventional assumptions of Western secular legal systems. The central theme of Talmudic jurisprudence is that self-defense rests on a duty not to stand idly by while one's neighbor suffers. “Do not stand on the blood of one's neighbor,” as the point is cryptically put in Leviticus 19:16. This way of thinking about self-defense departs in two significant ways from common Western assumptions. First, it stresses that the roots of (...) self-defense are a duty rather than a right to act; second, it treats the case of third-party defense as logically prior to the first-party case of self -defense. (shrink)

Hume's 'Natural History of Religion' offers a naturalized account of the causes of religious thought, an investigation into its 'origins' rather than its 'foundation in reason'. Hume thinks that if we consider only the causes of religious belief, we are provided with a reason to suspend the belief. I seek to explain why this is so, and what role the argument plays in Hume's wider campaign against the rational acceptability of religious belief. In particular, I argue that the work threatens (...) a form of fideism which maintains that it is rationally permissible to maintain religious belief in the absence of evidence or of arguments in its favour. I also discuss the 'argument from common consent', and the relative superiority of Hume's account of the origins of religious belief. (shrink)

I've previously suggested that the historical evidence used to challenge scientific realism should lead us to embrace what I call Uniformitarianism, but many recently influential forms of scientific realism seem happy to share this commitment. I trace a number of further points of common ground that collectively constitute an appealing Middle Path between classical forms of realism and instrumentalism, and I suggest that many contemporary realists and instrumentalists have already become fellow travelers on this Middle Path without recognizing how far (...) they have thereby diverged from those who share their labels and slogans. I conclude by describing their central remaining disagreement and the sorts of evidence needed to resolve it. (shrink)

Central to Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society was the description and justification of the method adopted and advocated by the Fellows of the Society, for it was thought that it was their method which distinguished them from ancients, dogmatists, sceptics, and contemporary natural philosophers such as Descartes. The Fellows saw themselves as furthering primarily a novel method, rather than a system, of philosophy, and the History gave expression to this corporate self-perception. However, the History's description of their method (...) was not necessarily accurate. Rather, as will be argued below, by a combination of subtle misrepresentation and selective exposition, Sprat portrayed a method which would further the aims of social and ecclesiastical stability and material prosperity, essential for the Royal Society since its continued existence depended upon the creation of a social basis for the institutionalized pursuit of natural philosophy. Some link had to be forged between the activities of the Society and the intellectual and social aspirations of the Restoration. To understand the intent and meaning of Sprat's History and the method there portrayed, we must therefore look to the institutional needs which it fulfilled. (shrink)

Integrated information theory (IIT) is a candidate theory of consciousness that highlights the role of complex interactions between parts of a system as the basis of consciousness – and, due to its general information-theoretic formulation, is capable of making statements about consciousness in neural and non-neural systems alike. Here, we argue that a system radically different to a human brain, host to complex physiological and functional structures capable of integrating information, can be found in the meristems and vascular system of (...) higher plants. Following a pragmatic and ontologically innocent approach, neither taking for granted that plants are conscious nor dismissing the possibility that they are, we argue that the time is ripe to apply analysis tools inspired by IIT to plants, taking advantage of recent developments in both plant imaging and information theory. We introduce and discuss the relevant literature, and pro information and integration in plant behaviour, assessing the plausibility of plant sentience. If successful, these experiments could position plants as the next frontier in consciousness science, and urge us to rethink our perspectives on consciousness, how to measure it, and its prevalence amongst living beings. (shrink)

The prospect of using cell-based interventions to treat neurological conditions raises several important ethical and policy questions. In this target article, we focus on issues related to the unique constellation of traits that characterize CBIs targeted at the central nervous system. In particular, there is at least a theoretical prospect that these cells will alter the recipients' cognition, mood, and behavior—brain functions that are central to our concept of the self. The potential for such changes, although perhaps remote, is cause (...) for concern and careful ethical analysis. Both to enable better informed consent in the future and as an end in itself, we argue that early human trials of CBIs for neurological conditions must monitor subjects for changes in cognition, mood, and behavior; further, we recommend concrete steps for that monitoring. Such steps will help better characterize the potential risks and benefits of CBIs as they are tested and potentially used for treatment. (shrink)

Cicero's philosophical works are now exciting renewed interest, in part because he provides vital evidence of the views of the Greek philosophers of the Hellenistic age, and partly because of the light he casts on the intellectual life of first century Rome. This edition uses the 1997 Clarendon text by the acclaimed translator P.G. Walsh.

Optimization by definition is the action of making most effective or the best use of a resource or situation and that is required almost in every field of engineering. In this work, the optimization of Least Mean square (LMS) algorithm is carried out with the help of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). Efforts have been made to find out the advantages and disadvantages of combining gradient based (LMS) algorithm with Swarm Intelligence SI (ACO, PSO). This optimization (...) of LMS algorithm will help us in further extending the uses of adaptive filtering to the system having multi-model error surface that is still a gray area of adaptive filtering. Because the available version of LMS algorithm that plays an important role in adaptive filtering is a gradient based algorithm, that get stuck at the local minima of system with multi-model error surface considering it global minima, resulting in an non-optimized convergence. By virtue of the proposed method we have got a profound solution for the problem associated with system with multimodal error surface. The results depict significant improvements in the performance and displayed fast convergence rate, rather stucking at local minima. Both the SI techniques displayed their own advantage and can be separately combined with LMS algorithm for adaptive filtering. This optimization of LMS algorithm will further help to resolve serious interference and noise issues and holds a very important application in the field of biomedical science. (shrink)

We show that Leitgeb’s dependence operator of Leitgeb is a \-operator and that this is best possible.

It is shown, assuming the linear case of Schinzel's Hypothesis, that the first-order theory of the structure $\langle \omega; +, P\rangle$ , where P is the set of primes, is undecidable and, in fact, that multiplication of natural numbers is first-order definable in this structure. In the other direction, it is shown, from the same hypothesis, that the monadic second-order theory of $\langle\omega; S, P\rangle$ is decidable, where S is the successor function. The latter result is proved using a general (...) result of A. L. Semenov on decidability of monadic theories, and a proof of Semenov's result is presented. (shrink)

New Blackfriars, Volume 103, Issue 1106, Page 483-498, July 2022.

Evolutionary change occurs most often through the modification of pre-existing structures. What were the pre-existing circuits in our primate ancestors that paved the way for human language, and how did they change in the lineages leading to our present condition? Among the neural modifications that were critical for human language, there are two of special interest: The origin and evolution of the remarkably rich conceptual world that humans share to the exclusion of other primates, and the origin of neural circuitry (...) that underlies various sequential and hierarchical aspects of language, as utilized for example in syntax and word morphology. The fossil record of brain evolution and the archaeological record provide intriguing clues about these processes. (shrink)

The quest for molecular mechanisms that guide axons or specify synaptic contacts has largely focused on molecules that intuitively relate to the idea of an “instruction.” By contrast, “permissive” factors are traditionally considered background machinery without contribution to the information content of a molecularly executed instruction. In this essay, I recast this dichotomy as a continuum from permissive to instructive actions of single factors that provide relative contributions to a necessarily collaborative effort. Individual molecules or other factors do not constitute (...) absolute instructions by themselves; they provide necessary context for each other, thereby creating a composite that defines the overall instruction. The idea of composite instructions leads to two main conclusions: first, a composite of many seemingly permissive factors can define a specific instruction even in the absence of a single dominant contributor; second, individual factors are not necessarily related intuitively to the overall instruction or phenotypic outcome. (shrink)

Several cases which have been considered by the courts in recent years have highlighted the legal dilemmas facing doctors whose decisions result in the ending of a patient's life. This paper considers the case of Dr Cox, who was convicted of attempting to murder one of his patients, and explores the roles of motive, diminished responsibility and consent in cases of "mercy killing". The Cox decision is compared to that of Tony Bland and Janet Johnstone, in which the patients were (...) in a persistent vegetative state. In all three cases, the doctors believed that their patients' quality of life was so poor that their continued existence was of no benefit to them, and decided that their lives should not be unduly prolonged, yet the doctor who was prosecuted was the one whose dying patient had requested that her death be hastened. The paper examines the law's seemingly contradictory approaches to such cases. (shrink)

The paper explores the status of the proposition "God exists" in late scholastic debates of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in some key authors of the era. A proposition is said to be self-evident if its truth is known solely from the meaning of the terms and is not inferred from other propositions. It does not appear to be immediately evident from the terms that God exists, for the concept expressed by "God" is based on the relation to creatures and (...) negation of imperfection and does not reach to the divine essence. Thomas Aquinas maintains that there are two types of self-evident propositions: those self-evident in themselves but not to us and those self-evident in themselves as well as to us. "God exists" is of the fi rst type. For Scotus a self-evident proposition is such that if its terms are conceived by any intellect, the truth of the proposition becomes known from the terms, non-inferentially. In his view there is no distinction between a self-evident proposition in itself and that in relation to us, because any proposition self-evident in itself is known to be such to any intellect, even though it might not be actually known; it would be known, provided that the terms are conceived. So for Scotus the sentence "God exists" expresses diff erent propositions for the blessed in heaven, the angels and God on the one hand and humans on the other. The former is self-evident, the latter is not. While later scholastics accept either the solution of Thomas or that of Scotus, according to which "God exists" is not self-evident for humans, Thomas de Argentina diff ers in that for him "God exists" is self-evident for humans too. The position of Thomas Aquinas was defended by Domingo Ban¯ez, Francisco Zumel and Gregorio de Valentia. In contrast, Johannes Poncius was a famous adherent of Scotus. There is a fair number of scholastics harmonizing the doctrine of Thomas and Scotus: Bernard Sannig, Luis de Molina, Gabriel Vázquez, Rodrigo de Arriaga and Jean Lalemandet. According to these authors, when Thomas says that "God exists" is self-evident in itself, he speaks about the extensional proposition, i.e. the state of affairs being conceptualized, which does not contradict Scotus’s teaching. © FILOSOFIA, 2013. (shrink)

In its predominant form, the understanding of the neurosciences, which stand in high public esteem, is a naturalistic one. The critique of this naturalism concerns the technical modelling of brain functions as a syntactic or control loop machine. Adequate solutions to the mind-body problem are not found in this way.

An epistemic logic is built up on the basis of an analysis of two skeptical arguments. the method used is to first construct an inference relation appropriate to epistemic contexts and introduce "a knows that..." as an operator giving rise to sentences closed with respect to this new concept of inference. soundness and completeness proofs are provided using auxiliary three-valued valuations.