In their thought-provoking article, Sedlakova and Trachsel (2023) defend the view that the status—both epistemic and ethical—of Conversational Artificial Intelligence (CAI) used in psychotherapy is complicated. While therapeutic CAI seems to be more than a mere tool implementing particular therapeutic techniques, it falls short of being a “digital therapist.” One of the main arguments supporting the latter claim is that even though “the interaction with CAI happens in the course of conversation… the conversation is profoundly different from a conversation with (...) a human therapist” (Sedlakova and Trachsel 2023, 8). In particular, unlike a human therapist, CAI cannot help its users gain new insight and self-understanding (Sedlakova and Trachsel 2023). We agree that currently available therapeutic CAI cannot be considered a “digital therapist,” however, we think that the issue surrounding the acquisition of new self-understanding in the interaction with therapeutic CAI is more complicated than Sedlakova and Trachsel suggest. (shrink)

I-theories of bare demonstratives take the semantic referent of a demonstrative to be determined by an inner state of the utterer. E-theories take the referent to be determined by factors external to the utterer. I argue that, on the Standard view of communication, neither of these theories can be right. Firstly, both are committed to the existence of conventions with superfluous content. Secondly, any claim to the effect that a speaker employs the conventions associated with these theories cannot have any (...) content, i.e. nothing can count as following these conventions. Bare demonstratives may well not be devices of semantic reference at all, i.e. may not actually contribute a referent to the proposition semantically expressed by an utterance. (shrink)

Declarations like “this meeting is adjourned” make certain facts the case by representing them as being the case. Yet surprisingly little attention has been paid to the mechanism whereby the utterance of a declaration can bring about a new state of affairs. In this paper, we use the incentivization account of institutional facts to address this issue. We argue that declarations can serve to bring about new states of affairs as their utterance have game theoretical import, typically in virtue of (...) the utterer signaling a commitment to act in an incentive-changing way. (shrink)

Three experiments explore the role of working memory in motor skill acquisition and performance. Traditional theories postulate that skill acquisition proceeds through stages of knowing, which are initially declarative but later procedural. The reported experiments challenge that view and support an independent, parallel processing model, which predicts that procedural and declarative knowledge can be acquired separately and that the former does not depend on the availability of working memory, whereas, the latter does. The behaviour of these two processes was manipulated (...) by providing or withholding visual (and auditory) appraisal of outcome feedback. Withholding feedback was predicted to inhibit the use of working memory to appraise success and, thus, prevent the formation of declarative knowledge without affecting the accumulation of procedural knowledge. While the first experiment failed to support these predictions, the second and third experiments demonstrated that procedural and declarative knowledge can be acquired independently. It is suggested that the availability of working memory is crucial to motor performance only when the learner has come to rely on its use. (shrink)

There are two tasks for any adequate philosophy of mind: (1) articulate one’s position and explain why dualism is the commonsense view; (2) defend one’s position. I believe that there is an argument that simultaneously satisfies both desiderata in a non–ad hoc way and, thus, the argument can thereby claim the virtue of theoretical simplicity in its favor. In what follows, I shall present the argument and defend its most crucial premise, respond to three criticisms that have been raised against (...) it, and draw out one dialectical implication of the argument. (shrink)

While my own philosophical views are largely in keeping with my mentor, Dallas Willard, nevertheless, I find his conception of the human person puzzling, hard to specify precisely, and prima facie contradictory in a few places. Dallas's central goal in formulating his anthropology was to develop a model that shed light on, allowed for deeper insight into, and fostered interest in spiritual formation, especially the role of the body in spiritual maturation. I share this goal, and agree with most of (...) his model. But in what follows, I will make more precise what his views were, try to clear up what, prima facie, seem to be contradictions in his theory, and, finally, recommend an alternative that captures the central concerns Dallas had for his own position. Thus, I will lay out a few general points of Dallas's ontology, provide a description of his philosophical/theological anthropology, along with two problems that seem to be present, and offer a slightly adjusted alternative to his position that accomplishes his main goal in a way with which I believe he would be satisfied. (shrink)

I argue that Kant’s mature political philosophy entails the provisionality thesis. The provisionality thesis asserts that in a world like ours, populated with beings sufficiently like us, acquired rights (rights to external objects of choice, including property, sovereignty and territory) are necessarily provisional. I motivate the standard view, which restricts the notion of provisional right to the state of nature and the transition from the state of nature to the civil condition. I then provide two textual arguments against it. I (...) conclude by reflecting on the normative implications of the provisionality thesis, arguing that they are more modest than has been formerly appreciated. (shrink)

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation is a technique that may aid researchers in their attempts to elucidate the underlying brain functions involved in consciousness. By employing TMS along with other neuroimaging methods and case studies, researchers may be aided in addressing their various hypotheses. Employing the ‘brain as mobile’ analogy, it may be possible to determine the individual contributions of single elements of the brain without upsetting the overall balance.

Construed metaphysically, the problem of individuation is the problem of offering an ontological assay of two entities that share all their pure properties in common so as to offer an account of what makes them distinct particulars. This article provides a survey of the major contemporary attempts to answer this problem. To accomplish this goal, the most important contemporary advocates of each solution is analyzed: the trope nominalism of Keith Campbell, the realism of D. M. Armstrong, the Leibnizian essence view (...) of Alvin Plantinga, and the bare particular position of Gustav Bergmann. As a secondary purpose, the article provides a brief critique of the first three solutions and a brief defense of the fourth. (shrink)

Of the early Roman historians who wrote in Greek, A. Postumius Albinus was not necessarily alone in realizing that his Greek was not the best Greek; while, on the other hand, Cato and those who followed the new fashion of writing in Latin would have resented, we may assume, could they have foreknown, the statement of Q,. Catulus in Cicero's De Oratore that they had no literary or rather ‘oratorical’ merit; though Cato might have approved Catulus' caustic comment on Roman (...) historical writing, ‘Satis est non esse mendacem’. That an historian should not, consciously and deliberately, lie all second-century historians would no doubt have agreed; and they would have endorsed Polybius' condemnation of masquerading as history in a story whose falseness was self-evident, because it assumed, on the part of the young sons of senators at Rome, a gravitas such as no young boy could possibly possess. (shrink)

The paper shows a new example of nonuniqueness of the solutionto Newtonian equations of motion for infinite gravitational systems. Unlike otherexamples, the gravitational field presents no singularity, nor are the non-gravitational forcesintroduced in the model singular (in particular, there are no collisions). The result is also ofinterest because it points to an interesting limitation of the elementary (Newtonian) formulationof classical mechanics.

This paper responds to the recent situationist critique of practical rationality and decision-making. According to that critique, empirical evidence indicates that our choices are governed by morally irrelevant situational factors and not durable character traits, and rarely result from overt rational deliberation. This critique is taken to indicate that popular moral theories in the Western tradition are descriptively deficient, even if normatively plausible or desirable. But we believe that the situationist findings regarding the sources of, or influences over, our moral (...) agency do not reflect durable features of human nature, and claim that these findings are a byproduct of a deficient approach to moral education. Existing models of moral education, which are “positive” in nature, do a poor job of developing virtuous people. Instead, we argue that a “negative” approach to moral education, traceable to Locke, Smith, and Rousseau, would be more successful. This strategy represents something of a compromise between the strategies adopted by thinkers like Rachana Kamtekar : 458–491 2004), who argues that traditional moral categories escape largely untouched by findings in social psychology, and John Doris :504–530 1998) and Gilbert Harman : 87–94 2003), who argue that findings in psychology prove our traditional moral theories are defective. (shrink)

The classical wave-particle problem is resolved in accord with Newton's concept of the particle nature of light by associating particle density and flux with the classical wave energy density and flux. Point particles flowing along discrete trajectories yield interference and diffraction patterns, as illustrated by Young's double pinhole interference. Bound particle motion is prescribed by standing waves. Particle motion as a function of time is presented for the case of a “particle in a box.” Initial conditions uniquely determine the subsequent (...) motion. Some discussion regarding quantum theory is preseted. (shrink)

Im Hinblick auf den Herbrand'schen Satz für die Prädikatenlogik der ersten Stufe und auf die Lehre vom Beweisverfahren mit Rechenautomaten, die daraus folgt, wird ein Beweis als komputazional synthetisch bezeichnet, wenn er sich auf Objekte bezieht, die im erwiesenen Satz nicht erwähnt sind. Die mathematischen Beweise sind aber auch synthetisch in einem begrifflichen Sinne: die Kontrolle oder die Begrenzung der angewandten Begriffe — die sogenannte Methodenreinheit — ist im allgemeinen unerreichbar.

i) We show for each context-free language L that by considering each word of L as a structure in a natural way, one turns L into a finite union of classes which satisfy a finitary analog of the characteristic properties of complete universal first order classes of structures equipped with elementary embeddings. We show this to hold for a much larger class of languages which we call free local languages. ii) We define local languages, a class of languages between free (...) local and context-sensitive languages. Each local language L has a natural extension L ∞ to infinite words, and we prove a series of "pumping lemmas", analogs for each local language L of the "uvxyz theorem" of context free languages: they relate the existence of large words in L or L ∞ to the existence of infinite "progressions" of words included in L, and they imply the decidability of various questions about L or L ∞ . iii) We show that the pumping lemmas of ii) are independent from strong axioms, ranging from Peano arithmetic to ZF + Mahlo cardinals. We hope that these results are useful for a model-theoretic approach to the theory of formal languages. (shrink)

We characterize the determinacy of $F_\sigma $ games of length $\omega ^2$ in terms of determinacy assertions for short games. Specifically, we show that $F_\sigma $ games of length $\omega ^2$ are determined if, and only if, there is a transitive model of ${\mathsf {KP}}+{\mathsf {AD}}$ containing $\mathbb {R}$ and reflecting $\Pi _1$ facts about the next admissible set.As a consequence, one obtains that, over the base theory ${\mathsf {KP}} + {\mathsf {DC}} + ``\mathbb {R}$ exists,” determinacy for $F_\sigma $ (...) games of length $\omega ^2$ is stronger than ${\mathsf {AD}}$, but weaker than ${\mathsf {AD}} + \Sigma _1$ -separation. (shrink)