In Charles Renouvier we have one of the lone, stern, and indefatigable workers in philosophy in the nineteenth century. His powerful mind, moral earnestness, and intellectual vigour command respect and attention and place him high in the ranks of the philosophical thinkers of his century. He differed profoundly from his English contemporary Spencer and his German contemporary Lotze, both of whom have received more attention than Renouvier. His long and immensely active life fell into periods which coincide with, and partly (...) reflect, the political and intellectual fortunes of his country from the Battle of Waterloo, through the Revolution of 1830, the Second Republic of 1848, the Second Empire, the War and the Commune of 1871, into the Third Republic, with its Dreyfus struggles and its Educational and Disestablishment problems in the early years of the present century. (shrink)

The stir caused in the civilised world by the writings of Bergson, particularly during the past decade, is evidenced by the volume of the stream of exposition and comment which has flowed and is still flowing. If the French were to be tempted to set up, after the German manner, a Bergson-Archiv they would be in no embarrassment for material, as the Appendix to this book - limited though it wisely is - will show. Mr. Gunn, undaunted by all this, (...) makes a further, useful contribution in his unassuming but workmanlike and well-documented account of the ideas of the distinguished French thinker. It is designed to serve as an introduction to Bergson's philosophy for those who are making their first approach to it, and as such it can be commended. (shrink)

The problem of Time is one of the most fascinating and yet most difficult of those questions to which the human mind applies itself in philosophical thought. Dean Inge, in his Philosophy of Plotinus, has referred to this problem as ‘the hardest in metaphysics,’ and we know that “from the time of Parmenides and Zeno to that of Mr. Bradley and M. Bergson, there has been no other problem that has seemed so baffling as that of Time.”.

: This paper represents the authors' attempt to provide a useful framework for discussing and investigating the links between the apparently disparate disciplines of neuroscience and dance. This attempt arose from an interdisciplinary course offering on this topic. A clear need apparent in preparing for an exploration of such uncharted territory was for some definition of the relevant landmarks in the form of a conceptual framework. The current status of that developing framework is presented here, as we consider the historical (...) context that contributed to the cultural distance between neuroscience and dance as disciplines; the conceptual and technical obstacles to collaborative work between these disciplines; and the recent developments, both conceptual and technological, that make the interface between neuroscience and dance a particularly fruitful source of inspiration not only for dancers and neuroscientists but potentially for a wide variety of disciplines touching on health and education in general. (shrink)

It is difficult within the space of an article such as this to do more than indicate the principal features of Renouvier's philosophy, and it is, of course, impossible to give in detail a discussion of the immense wealth of thought and argument contained in his writings. Of his thought before 1854, the most important piece of work was the article on “Philosophie” written for the Encyclopédic Nouvelle. This in some respects shows his own thought developing in the direction.

It is certainly the case that morality governs the interactions that take place between individuals. But what if morality exists because of these interactions? This book, first published in 2007, argues for the claim that much of the behaviour we view as 'moral' exists because acting in that way benefits each of us to the greatest extent possible, given the socially structured nature of society. Drawing upon aspects of evolutionary game theory, the theory of bounded rationality, and computational models of (...) social networks, it shows both how moral behaviour can emerge in socially structured environments, and how it can persist even when it is not typically viewed as 'rational' from a traditional economic perspective. This book also provides a theory of how moral principles and the moral sentiments play an indispensable role in effective choice, acting as 'fast and frugal heuristics' in social decision contexts. (shrink)

This paper examines two questions about scientists’ search for knowledge. First, which search strategies generate discoveries effectively? Second, is it advantageous to diversify search strategies? We argue pace Weisberg and Muldoon (2009) that, on the first question, a search strategy that deliberately seeks novel research approaches need not be optimal. On the second question, we argue they have not shown epistemic reasons exist for the division of cognitive labor, identifying the errors that led to their conclusions. Furthermore, we generalize the (...) epistemic landscape model, showing that one should be skeptical about the benefits of social learning in epistemically complex environments. (shrink)

Early German Romanticism sought to respond to a comprehensive sense of spiritual crisis that characterised the late eighteenth century. The study demonstrates how the Romantics sought to bring together the new post-Kantian idealist philosophy with the inheritance of the realist Platonic-Christian tradition. With idealism they continued to champion the individual, while from Platonism they took the notion that all reality, including the self, participated in absolute being. This insight was expressed, not in the language of theology or philosophy, but through (...) aesthetics, which recognised the potentiality of all creation, including artistic creation, to disclose the divine. In explicating the religious vision of Romanticism, this study offers a new historical appreciation of the movement, and furthermore demonstrates its importance for our understanding of religion today. (shrink)

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the EU confirms the protection of personal data as a fundamental human right and affords data subjects more control over the way their personal information is processed, shared, and analyzed. However, where data are processed by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, asserting control and providing adequate explanations is a challenge. Due to massive increases in computing power and big data processing, modern AI algorithms are too complex and opaque to be understood by most data (...) subjects. Articles 15 and 22 of the GDPR provide a modest regulatory framework for automated data processing by, among other things, mandating that data controllers inform data subjects about when it is being used, and its logic and ramifications. Nevertheless, due to the phrasing of the articles and the numerous exceptions they allow, doubts have arisen about their effectiveness. In this paper, we empirically evaluate the quality and effectiveness of AI disclosures as mandated by the GDPR. By means of an online survey (N = 835), we investigated how data subjects expect to be informed about the automated processing of their data. We then conducted a content analysis of the AI disclosures of N = 100 companies and organizations. The combined findings reveal that current GDPR-mandated disclosures do not meet the expectations and needs of data subjects. Explanations drawn up following the guidelines of the generic formulations of the GDPR differ widely and are often vague, incomplete and lack transparency. In our conclusions we identify a path towards standardizing and optimizing AI information notices. (shrink)

After over 300 years of scrutiny, the subject of Galileo continues to be pursued with unabating intensity. Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter points to the popular interest in the man and his legacy. The Catholic Church, understandably interested in dispelling the notion that its censure of Galileo centuries ago is proof positive that religious faith and science as well as ecclesiastical authority and free pursuit of scholarship are irreconcilable, continues to offer explanations. New books, articles and conferences probe both in breadth (...) and in depth the magnetic field charged by Galileo, science, and the Church. Galileo's analysis of the physics of motion has also received considerable attention. In particular, a great deal has been written during the past thirty years about the structure and objectives of three experiments with inclined planes. Galileo had carried them out in Padua and recorded them in his working papers. The assessments of the three experiments differ widely in points of detail, but all regard them as sophisticated, ingenious, and remarkable. This article presents a new critical study of these experiments. Its conclusion is that one of the experiments is indeed a success, but that the other two fail and are abandoned because Galileo did not have a firm enough grip on the underlying physical principles and mathematical relationships. (shrink)

The posterior cortex, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex in the Leabra architecture are specialized in terms of various neural parameters, and thus are predilections for learning and processing, but domain-general in terms of cognitive functions such as face recognition. Also, these areas are not encapsulated and violate Fodorian criteria for modularity. Anderson's terminology obscures these important points, but we applaud his overall message.

Appeals to human nature are ubiquitous, yet historically many have proven ill-founded. Why? How might frequent errors be remedied towards building a more robust and reliable scientific study of human nature? Our aim is neither to advance specific scientific or philosophical claims about human nature, nor to proscribe or eliminate such claims. Rather, we articulate through examples the types of errors that frequently arise in this field, towards improving the rigor of the scientific and social studies. We seek to analyze (...) such claims rhetorically, cognitively, and epistemically. Namely, how do we think about human nature? Claims about human nature, we show, are susceptible to widely exhibited deficits in cognitive tendencies such as framing, confirmation bias, satisficing, and teleological perspectives, as well as motivated reasoning. Such missteps foster methodological, empirical, and psychological mistakes and biases. Specifically, they promote the naturalizing error, whereby cultural ideology and values are projected onto an apparently objective description of nature. Concrete remedies are offered to aid scientists in conducting and reporting their research goals and findings more responsibly and effectively (relevant also to educators and other communicators who convey these findings publicly). Recommendations include acknowledging that human nature claims are often context-dependent, seeking multiple critical perspectives, and explicitly labeling uncertainties. (shrink)

At the very end of the 19th century, Gabriele Tarde wrote that all society was a product of imitation and innovation. This view regarding the development of society has, to a large extent, fallen out of favour, and especially so in those areas where the rational actor model looms large. I argue that this is unfortunate, as models of imitative learning, in some cases, agree better with what people actually do than more sophisticated models of learning. In this paper, I (...) contrast the behaviour of imitative learning with two more sophisticated learning rules (one based on Bayesian updating, the other based on the Nash-Brown-von Neumann dynamics) in the context of social deliberation problems. I show for two social deliberation problems, the Centipede game and a simple Lewis sender-receiver game, that imitative learning provides better agreement with what people actually do, thus partially vindicating Tarde. (shrink)

We develop and defend a new approach to counterlogicals. Non-vacuous counterlogicals, we argue, fall within a broader class of counterfactuals known as counterconventionals. Existing semantics for counterconventionals, 459–482 ) and, 1–27 ) allow counterfactuals to shift the interpretation of predicates and relations. We extend these theories to counterlogicals by allowing counterfactuals to shift the interpretation of logical vocabulary. This yields an elegant semantics for counterlogicals that avoids problems with the usual impossible worlds semantics. We conclude by showing how this approach (...) can be extended to counterpossibles more generally. (shrink)

Cheap talk has often been thought incapable of supporting the emergence of cooperation because costless signals, easily faked, are unlikely to be reliable (Zahavi and Zahavi, 1997). I show how, in a social network model of cheap talk with reinforcement learning, cheap talk does enable the emergence of cooperation, provided that individuals also temporally discount the past. This establishes one mechanism that suffices for moving a population of initially uncooperative individuals to a state of mutually beneficial cooperation even in the (...) absence of formal institutions. (shrink)

Sender–receiver games, first introduced by David Lewis ([1969]), have received increased attention in recent years as a formal model for the emergence of communication. Skyrms ([2010]) showed that simple models of reinforcement learning often succeed in forming efficient, albeit not necessarily minimal, signalling systems for a large family of games. Later, Alexander et al. ([2012]) showed that reinforcement learning, combined with forgetting, frequently produced both efficient and minimal signalling systems. In this article, I define a ‘dynamic’ sender–receiver game in (...) which the state–action pairs are not held constant over time and show that neither of these two models of learning learn to signal in this environment. However, a model of reinforcement learning with discounting of the past does learn to signal; it also gives rise to the phenomenon of linguistic drift. 1 Introduction2 Dynamic Signalling Games with Reinforcement Learning2.1 Introducing new states2.2 Swapping state–action pairs3 Discounting the Past3.1 Learning to signal in a dynamic world3.2 An unexpected outcome: linguistic drift4 ConclusionAppendix: A Markov Chain Analysis. (shrink)

The reductive, as opposed to deductive, view of logic is the form of logic that is, perhaps, most widely employed in practical reasoning. In particular, it is the basis of logic programming. Here, building on the idea of uniform proof in reductive logic, we give a treatment of logic programming for BI, the logic of bunched implications, giving both operational and denotational semantics, together with soundness and completeness theorems, all couched in terms of the resource interpretation of BI’s semantics. We (...) use this set-up as a basis for exploring how coalgebraic semantics can, in contrast to the basic denotational semantics, be used to describe the concrete operational choices that are an essential part of proof-search. The overall aim, toward which this paper can be seen as an initial step, is to develop a uniform, generic, mathematical framework for understanding the relationship between the deductive structure of logics and the control structures of the corresponding reductive paradigm. (shrink)