Focusing on political and interpersonal conflict in the U.S., particularly racial conflict, but with an eye to similar conflicts throughout the world, we argue that the enactive approach to mind as life can be elaborated to provide an exigent framework for present social-political problems. An enactive approach fills problematic lacunae in the Western philosophical ethics project by offering radically refigured notions of responsibility and language. The dual enactive, participatory insight is that interactional responsibility is not singular and language is not (...) an individual property or ability, something that someone simply and uniformly 'has' or 'controls'. These points have not been integrated into our self-understanding as moral actors, to everyone’s detriment. We first advocate for adequate appreciation of Colombetti and Torrance’s 2009 suggestion that participatory sense-making necessarily implies shared responsibility for interactional outcomes. We argue that the enactive approach presents open-ended cultivation of virtue as embodied, contextualized, and dynamic know-how and destabilizes an individualist metaphysics. Putting this framework to work, we turn to the interactional challenges of conversations that concern differences and that involve potentially oppositional parties, offering a reading of Claudia Rankine’s Just Us. Finally, we make explicit Rankine’s normative project of mindful navigation of multiple perspectives in an interaction. We abstract three interrelated spheres of participatory intervention: location, language, and labor. These also indicate routes for empirical investigation into complex perspective-taking in dynamic interactions. (shrink)

The Sweep of Probability broadly surveys this burgeoning field of philosophical inquiry. The book is unique because it engages the reader in contemporary debates about a variety of issues in probability theory without requiring a background in probability and mathematics. It also illustrates how the concerns of probability relate not only to philosophical inquiry but to aspects of everyday life. The primary aim of this book, claims George N.Schlesinger in the introduction, is to illustrate, by discussing a wide variety (...) of topics, that elementary probability belongs to one of those rare intellectual ventures where the returns are disproportionately high to the initial investment of effort. (shrink)

This book explores recently opened avenues in logic and philosophical analysis to offer new perspectives on time-honored religious beliefs. Topics covered include the nature of divine attributes, the implications of divine benevolence and divine justice, arguments in support of theism and atheism, and religion and morality.

Webb's scheme for classifying behavioral models is applicable to a wide range of theories and simulations, nonrobotic as well as robotic. It is suggested that a meta-analysis of existing models, characterized according to the proposed scheme, could identify regions of the seven-dimensional modelling space that are particularly likely to lead to new insights in understanding behavior.

According to popular opinion, thought experiments are limited in scope, since no novel empirical results could be expected to be produced by thought alone. Yet consider the spectacular 16th century experiment by Stevin. leading to the discovery of the principles of the resolution and combination of forces. He conducted no experiments, for he derived his novel and highly important conclusions by several steps of ingenious reasoning alone. To understand why mental experiments may serve as very effective scientific tools. we need (...) to explicate carefully their underlying mechanism. Thought experiments invariably involve the widely debated notion of “counterfactual conditionals.” A variety of historical examples are offered designed to illustrate the nature of thought experiments, their associated counterfactual conditionals. as well a the nature of the vital link between the two. (shrink)

Here, the claim that Middle Eastern persons are racialized is a response to complexities that define the United States ; namely, the language of race is seen as antiquated or misleading, and thus it fails to capture MENA American experiences, leading some to call for different terminology. The author argues that we should call social-political violence committed against MENA people racism because to name it otherwise is to ground the experience in an incomplete description which affords lighter moral responsibility and (...) omits historical conflict. The article first elaborates the problem of racial conflict in the US and the specific problem of MENA racialization. It then responds with a historical argument that emphasizes key genealogical markers in the co-emergence of orientalism, colonialism, and racialization. The article closes by contrasting the idea of race with competing terms to defend its use on descriptive and normative grounds. (shrink)

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O'Brien & Opie present an attractive alternative to the popular but flawed computational process approach to conscious awareness. Their “vehicle” theory, however, is itself seriously flawed by overstrict allegiance to the notion that explicit representation and stability are defining hallmarks of consciously experienced neural activity patterns. Including reentrant interactions among time-varying patterns in different brain areas can begin to repair their theory.

Besides failing for the reasons Brette gives, codes fail to help us understand brain function because codes imply algorithms that compute outputs without reference to the signals' meanings. Algorithms cannot be found in the brain, only manipulations that operate on meaningful signals and that cannot be described as computations, that is, sequences of predefined operations.

Basic yet familiar and non-technical features of time are investigated. Two novel and detailed arguments are advanced defending the common view that 'time rolls relentlessly'. A number of hitherto neglected but important differences between spatio-temporal location and every other physical property are discussed. Also explored are the locations of circular time; the uniformity of nature, temporal positions and possible worlds, as well as the famous, unresolved problem, 'Why do we know so much more about the past than about the future?'. (...) For those who wish to delve deeper, a portion of the book consists of problems to ponder and their possible solutions. (shrink)

La lecture des documents modernes (rapports techniques des ingénieurs grecs et français et cartes minières de la Compagnie Française des Mines du Laurium, élaborés lors de la reprise des travaux miniers à Camariza du Laurium au xixe s.) qui décrivent les restes des travaux miniers antiques à Camariza, qu’il s’agisse des terres accumulées en quantités considérables au fur et à mesure de l’extraction (haldes), des plynites rejetées au cours de la concentration ou des scories issues de la fusion, permet de (...) localiser en ce lieu la Maronée antique, ainsi baptisée par analogie avec la Maronée de Thrace. Ils nous livrent même une image étonnamment précise de ces travaux pionniers, réellement gigantesques, très précisément aux puits miniers Hilarion N° 1, Serpieri N° 1, Jean Baptiste N° 1. Les rapports relatifs au puits Jean Baptiste N° 1 mettent particulièrement en exergue l’antique extraction des veines à une profondeur d’à peine 28 m et la présence d’un riche gisement de plomb argentifère à 76 m, sur une longueur de 500 m et une épaisseur de 2 à 8 m, qui est, très probablement, le fameux « contact » repéré en 483 av. J.‑C. (shrink)

Quartz & Sejnowski find flaws in standard theories of neural selection, which they propose to repair by introducing Lamarckian mechanisms for anatomical refinement that are analogous to directed mutation in evolution. The reversal of cause and effect that these mechanisms require is no more plausible in an explanation of cognition than it is in an explanation of evolution.

According to Anselm, all Divine qualities are tightly interrelated: they are implied by the unique central property of being absolutely perfect. In the second chapter of the Proslogium , Anselm claims that it is the essence of our concept of God that He is a being greater than which nothing can be conceived. From this, he argues, it is possible to infer that He is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and so on. In other words, given an absolutely perfect being we (...) can derive all the attributes commonly ascribed to Him. (shrink)

Anselm begins his famous ontological argument by describing God as the being greater than which none is conceivable. His description seems coherent and intelligible. Consequently a divine being thus described may be spoken of as existing in the understanding. But if so, He must actually exist as well, otherwise a being greater than Him could possibly exist, namely, one of whom the additional great-making-term ‘actual existence’ may also be predicated. The result would be a contradiction, for we would now have (...) to concede, that contrary to our initial claim, the being harbored in our understanding is inferior to the greatest since another being who had actual existence would be greater. To avoid the contradiction we must concede actual existence to the absolutely perfect being. (shrink)