_Europe's Economic Challenge_ considers what sort of industrial economic strategy would prepare Europe for the next century. The authors examine the broad approaches to industrial policy and explore future possibilities for what is needed if these policies are to become reality.

There is a long history of the science of intelligent machines and its potential to provide scientific insights have been debated since the dawn of AI. In particular, there is renewed interest in the role of AI in research and research policy as an enabler of new methods, processes, management and evaluation which is still relatively under-explored. This empirical paper explores interviews with leading scholars on the potential impact of AI on research practice and culture through deductive, thematic analysis to (...) show the issues affecting academics and universities today. Our interviewees identify positive and negative consequences for research and researchers with respect to _collective_ and _individual use_. AI is perceived as helpful with respect to information gathering and other narrow tasks, and in support of impact and interdisciplinarity. However, using AI as a way of ‘speeding up—to keep up’ with bureaucratic and metricised processes, may proliferate negative aspects of academic culture in that the expansion of AI in research should assist and not replace human creativity. Research into the future role of AI in the research process needs to go further to address these challenges, and ask fundamental questions about how AI might assist in providing new tools able to question the values and principles driving institutions and research processes. We argue that to do this an explicit movement of meta-research on the role of AI in research should consider the effects for research and researcher creativity. Anticipatory approaches and engagement of diverse and critical voices at policy level and across disciplines should also be considered. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s specific theory of negation has received surprisingly little attention within the literature. Given his engagement with Sartre, not to mention Hegel and Marx, one would think that this concept and its surrounding issues and problems would occupy a more central place within various readings and interpretations. This essay attempts to give some indications of how to think about a Merleau-Pontian theory of negativity specifically. By re-reading the “Temporality” chapter from Phenomenology of Perception in dialogue with later writings and lectures, (...) I propose a theory of “integration” and “disintegration” of temporal passage in place of a dialectic of pure being and nothingness. This theory organizes various themes in Merleau-Ponty’s work, including sense-genesis and his references to the “scream of light”. (shrink)

I present the features of the ordinary use of 'knows' that make a compelling case for the contextualist account of that verb, and I outline and defend the methodology that takes us from the data to a contextualist conclusion. Along the way, the superiority of contextualism over subject-sensitive invariantism is defended, and, in the final section, I answer some objections to contextualism.

There is a duality in our everyday view of belief. On the one hand, we sometimes speak of credence as a matter of degree. We talk of having some level of confidence in a claim (that a certain course of action is safe, for example, or that a desired event will occur) and explain our actions by reference to these degrees of confidence – tacitly appealing, it seems, to a probabilistic calculus such as that formalized in Bayesian decision theory. On (...) the other hand, we also speak of belief as an unqualified, or flat-out, state (‘plain belief’ as it is sometimes called), which is either categorically present or categorically absent. We talk of simply believing or thinking that something is the case, and we cite these flat-out attitudes in explanation of our actions – appealing to classical practical reasoning of the sort formalized in the so-called ‘practical syllogism’.1 This tension in everyday discourse is reflected in the theoretical literature on belief. In formal epistemology there is a division between those in the Bayesian tradition, who treat credence as graded, and those who think of it as a categorical attitude of some kind. The Bayesian perspective also contrasts with the dominant view in philosophy of mind, where belief is widely regarded as a categorical state (a token sentence of a mental language, inscribed in a functionally defined ‘belief box’, according to one popular account). A parallel duality is present in our everyday view of desire. Sometimes we talk of having degrees of preference or desirability; sometimes we speak simply of wanting or desiring something tout court, and, again, this tension is reflected in the theoretical literature. What should we make of these dualities? Are there two different types of belief and desire – partial and flat-out, as they are sometimes called? If so, how are they related? And how could both have a role in guiding rational action, as the everyday view has it? The last question poses a particular challenge in relation to flat-out belief and desire.. (shrink)

Contemporary virtue ethics was revolutionized by Alasdair MacIntyre’s reconfiguration using practices as the starting point for understanding virtues. However, MacIntyre has very pointedly excluded the professions of the financial world from the reformulation. He does not count these professions as practices, and further charges that virtue would actually hinder or even rule out one’s pursuit of these professions. This paper addresses three tasks, in regard to the financial profession of investment advising. First, the paper lays out MacIntyre’s soon-to-be-published charges against (...) the investment world, as specified to this profession. Second, it sets forth the role function of investment advising and shows that it does possess internal goods—the crucial aspect of practices disputed by MacIntyre in this case—including goods of production and goods of performance. Third, it demonstrates that this function, and the goods tied to it, cannot be achieved apart from the virtuous pursuit of the profession, thereby showing that MacIntyre’s charges are mistaken. Investment advising is shown to be a virtue-based practice, and the groundwork is laid for showing that other financial professions are so, as well. (shrink)

Many philosophers and scientists take perceptual experience, whatever else it involves, to be representational. In ‘The Silence of the Senses’, Charles Travis argues that this view involves a kind of category mistake, and consequently, that perceptual experience is not a representational or intentional phenomenon. The details of Travis’s argument, however, have been widely misinterpreted by his representationalist opponents, many of whom dismiss it out of hand. This chapter offers an interpretation of Travis’s argument from looks that it is argued presents (...) a genuine and important challenge to orthodox representational views of experience. Whilst this challenge may not be insurmountable, it places a substantial burden upon the representationalist to explain not only how experiences come to have the contents that they do, but how those contents come to feature in our conscious mental lives. (shrink)

This paper has two aims. The first is to use contemporary discussions of naïve realist theories of perception to offer an interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception. The second is to use consideration of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception to outline a distinctive version of a naïve realist theory of perception. In a Merleau-Pontian spirit, these two aims are inter-dependent.

This paper defends direct activism-the view that it is possible to form beliefs in a causally direct way. In particular, it addresses the charge that direct activism entails voluntarism-the thesis that we can form beliefs at will. It distinguishes weak and strong varieties of voluntarism and argues that, although direct activism may entail the weak variety, it does not entail the strong one. The paper goes on to argue that strong voluntarism is non-contingently false, sketching a new argument for that (...) conclusion. This argument does not tell against the weak form of voluntarism, however, and the final part of the paper argues that weak voluntarism, and consequently direct activism, remains a coherent and defensible position. (shrink)

Discussion of atomistic and monistic theses about abstract reality.

Stories are an important indicator of our vision of the future. In the case of artificial intelligence (AI), dominant stories are polarized between notions of threat and myopic solutionism. The central storytellers—big tech, popular media, and authors of science fiction—represent particular demographics and motivations. Many stories, and storytellers, are missing. This paper details the accounts of missing AI narratives by leading scholars from a range of disciplines interested in AI Futures. Participants focused on the gaps between dominant narratives and the (...) untold stories of the capabilities, issues, and everyday realities of the technology. One participant proposed a “story crisis” in which these narratives compete to shape the public discourse on AI. Our findings indicate that dominant narratives distract and mislead public understandings and conceptions of AI. This suggests a need to pay closer attention to missing AI narratives. It is not simply about telling new stories, it is about listening to existing stories and asking what is wanted from AI. We call for realistic, nuanced, and inclusive stories, working with and for diverse voices, which consider (1) story-teller; (2) genre, and (3) communicative purpose. Such stories can then inspire the next generation of thinkers, technologists, and storytellers. (shrink)

I argue that the co-existence of omnipotence, omniscience, and total evil forms an inconsistent triad. An omniscient being will know what it is like for anyone to feel pain, and since pain is undesirable, will not freely create pains which it would have to share. An omnipotent being would choose to be rational, and a purely rational being would choose what it believes to be good. It would in fact choose to be of supreme value, and thus would necessarily contain (...) all compossible values, including those of friendship and love. Therefore an omnipotent omniscient being cannot be evil. (shrink)

kind of joke to ask what is the case if the antecedent is false—“And where are the biscuits if I don’t want any?”, “And what’s on PBS if I’m not interested?”, “And who shot Kennedy if that’s not what I’m asking?”. With normal indicative conditionals like.

This should be fairly close to the text of this paper as it appears in The Southern Journal of Philosophy 38 (2000), Spindel Conference Supplement: 121-148.

The causes of violence -- The corruptibility of all things human -- Religion and war -- Faith and reason -- Life after death -- Morality and the Bible -- Morality and faith -- The enlightenment, liberal thought and religion -- Does religion do more harm than good in personal life? -- What good has religion done?

[About the book] This book explores the idea that we have two minds - automatic, unconscious, and fast, the other controlled, conscious, and slow. In recent years there has been great interest in so-called dual-process theories of reasoning and rationality. According to such theories, there are two distinct systems underlying human reasoning - an evolutionarily old system that is associative, automatic, unconscious, parallel, and fast, and a more recent, distinctively human system that is rule-based, controlled, conscious, serial, and slow. Within (...) the former, processes the former, processes are held to be innate and to use heuristics that evolved to solve specific adaptive problems. In the latter, processes are taken to be learned, flexible, and responsive to rational norms. Despite the attention these theories are attracting, there is still poor communication between dual-process theorists themselves, and the substantial bodies of work on dual processes in cognitive psychology and social psychology remain isolated from each other. This book brings together leading researchers on dual processes to summarize the state-of-the-art, highlight key issues, present different perspectives, explore implications, and provide a stimulus to further work. It includes new ideas about the human mind both by contemporary philosophers interested in broad theoretical questions about mental architecture and by psychologists specialising in traditionally distinct and isolated fields. For all those in the cognitive sciences, this is a book that will advance dual-process theorizing, promote interdisciplinary communication, and encourage further applications of dual-process approaches. (shrink)

What is the relationship between being coloured and looking coloured? According to Alva Noë, to be coloured is to manifest a pattern of apparent colours as the perceptual conditions vary. I argue that Noë’s ‘phenomenal objectivism’ faces similar objections to attempts by traditional dispositionalist theories of colour to account for being coloured in terms of looking coloured. Instead, I suggest that to be coloured is to look coloured in a ‘non-perspectival’ sense, where non-perspectival looks transcend specific perceptual conditions.

How did the French Revolution become thinkable? Keith Michael Baker, a leading authority on the ideological origins of the French Revolution, explores this question in his wide-ranging collection of essays. Analyzing the new politics of contestation that transformed the traditional political culture of the Old Regime during its last decades, Baker revises our historical map of the political space in which the French Revolution took form. Some essays study the ways in which the revolutionaries' break with the past was (...) prepared by competition between agents and critics of absolute monarchy to control the cultural resources and political meanings of French sought before 1789 to reconstitute their body politic; and by the invention of 'public opinion' as a new form of political authority displacing notions of 'representation', 'constitution', 'sovereignty' - and of 'the French Revolution' itself - the ambiguities, tensions, and contradictions that were to drive the revolutionary dynamic in subsequent years. The result is a substantial and unified set of studies, stimulating renewed reflection on one of the central themes in modern European history. (shrink)

If sociology is about society must it not also be about morality? In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the identification between sociology and morality was clear cut; Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Spencer, and Veblen all dealt with moral issues and one might argue that they saw themselves as engaged in a moral vocation. Now, one might argue that the connections between sociology and moral currents have become more tenuous. Moral Culture examines what it means to be moral in contemporary social (...) and cultural life. Author Keith Tester takes the highly original and revealing step of exploring how violence today, and throughout history, affects the relatively safe and secure people who live in the west and who tend to know horror only through television and cinema screens. The book raises questions about the meaning and significance of massacres in the Balkans, Rwanda and, rather more historically, the Holocaust, and the slaughter of Vietnamese peasants by American soldiers in My Lai. It also discusses how Adolf Eichmann and the men of Charlie Company might be different from or similar to us. It answers questions about whether this is a time of moral decay or more seriously, the collapse of moral Civilization. Sociologists often claim that they make a virtue of being relevant and objective, but few have attacked these issues with the urgency and originality that Keith Tester displays in this work. Each chapter provides a historically aware account of a moral problem making it especially relevant reading for students of cultural studies, sociology, political science, and moral philosophy. (shrink)

The "War" in science is largely the discussion between those who believe that science is above criticism and those who do not. After the Science Wars is a collection of essays by leading philosophers and scientists, all attempting to bridge interdisciplinary gulfs in this discussion.

The issue of what constitutes a valid logical inference is a difficult question. At a minimum, we believe a permissible step in a proof must provide the reader with rational grounds to believe that the new step is a logically necessary consequence of previous assertions. However, this begs the question of what constitutes these rational grounds. Formalist accounts typically describe valid rules of inferences as those that can be found by applying one of the explicit rules of inference in the (...) formal system in which the proof is couched. However, philosophers of mathematics find such a description unhelpful because many inferences in the proofs that mathematicians actually produce cannot be expressed in a formal language, at least not without seriously distorting the semantic content of the inference (e.g., Larvor, 2012). In this chapter, we investigate mathematicians’ perceptions of a particular kind of inference in a particular setting. Specifically, we shed light on what types of graphical inferences mathematicians find permissible in a real analysis proof. Following Larvor (in press), we examine mathematicians’ reactions to metrical graphical inferences (i.e., inferences whose validity depends on the accuracy of the graph that was drawn and whose validity can be changed by minor deformations) and nonmetrical graphical inferences (i.e., inferences whose validity does not depend on a the accuracy of the graph and whose validity is not vulnerable to local deformations). The goal of this chapter is threefold. First, we demonstrate that most mathematicians reject metrical graphical inferences as impermissible in a real analysis proof. Second, we show that many mathematicians regard nonmetrical graphical inferences as permissible in a real analysis proofs. Third, we illustrate how mathematicians collectively disagree on the permissibility of nonmetrical inferences. (shrink)

An examination, by a diverse field of experts, of Pickering's mangle theory and its applicability (or lack thereof) beyond the limited cases he presented in the ...

This volume aims to inspire a return to the energetics of Nietzsche's prose and the critical intensity of his approach to nihilism. For too long contemporary thought has been dominated by a depressed "what is to be done?" All is regarded to be in vain, nothing is deemed real, there is nothing new seen under the sun. Such a "postmodern" lament is easily confounded with an apathetic reluctance to think engagedly. Hence the contributors here draw on a variety of issues--the (...) future of life, the nature of life-forms, the techno-sciences, the body, religions--as a way of tackling the question of nihilism's pertinence to us now. (shrink)

Religion is an important social force, both for good and evil, in the modern world. This book considers the main ways in which religion and society interact, and the ways in which the major world religions need to adapt themselves in the modern world. The author, a Christian theologian, describes the major types of religious community in the world, and proposes a radical vision of the church as a person-affirming, world-transforming society in the emerging global community of many faiths and (...) cultures. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a growing acknowledgement within the mathematical community that mathematics is cognitively/socially constructed. Yet to anyone doing mathematics, it seems totally objective. The sensation in pursuing mathematical research is of discovering prior (eternal) truths about an external (abstract) world. Although the community can and does decide which topics to pursue and which axioms to adopt, neither an individual mathematician nor the entire community can choose whether a particular mathematical statement is true or false, based on the given (...) axioms. Moreover, all the evidence suggests that all practitioners work with the same ontology. (My number 7 is exactly the same as yours.) How can we reconcile the notion that people construct mathematics, with this apparent choice-free, predetermined objectivity? I believe the answer is to be found by examining what mathematical thinking is (as a mental activity) and the way the human brain acquired the capacity for mathematical thinking. (shrink)

Offers an original reading of Wittgenstein's views on such topics as radical scepticism, the first- and third-person asymmetry of mental talk, Cartesianism, and rule-following.

An anthropogenic global catastrophic risk is a human-induced risk that threatens sustained and wide-scale loss of life and damage to civilisation across the globe. In order to understand how new research on governance mechanisms for emerging technologies might assuage such risks, it is important to ask how perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes towards the governance of global catastrophic risk within the research community shape the conduct of potentially risky research. The aim of this study is to deepen our understanding of emerging (...) technology research culture as it relates to global catastrophic risks, and to shed new light on how new research governance mechanisms might be developed. We analyse in-depth interviews with leading AI and biotech researchers both from universities and the private sector. We develop new insights in terms of four salient themes. First, ‘engineering mindset’, which highlights the premium placed by many interviewees on pursuing interesting research about the physical world for its own sake. Second, ‘self-government’, which looks at how self-regulation of technological development currently occurs. Third, ‘pure incentives’, focussing on how career and other incentives shapes research. Fourth, ‘norms and persuasion’, which examines the role of moral considerations in guiding the research choices of scientists. We end by considering the implications of these findings for future research on governance of anthropogenic global catastrophic risk. (shrink)

According to dual-process theory, human cognition is supported by two distinct types of processing, one fast, automatic, and unconscious, the other slower, controlled, and conscious. These processes are sometimes said to constitute two minds – an intuitive old mind, which is evolutionarily ancient and composed of specialized subsystems, and a reflective new mind, which is distinctively human and the source of general intelligence. This theory has far-reaching consequences, and it means that research on enhancing and replicating human intelligence will need (...) to take different paths, depending on whether it is the old mind or the new mind that is the target. This chapter examines these issues in depth. It argues first for a reinterpretation of dual-process theory, which pictures the new mind as a virtual system, formed by culturally transmitted habits of autostimulation. It then explores the implications of this reinterpreted dual-process theory for the projects of cognitive enhancement and artificial intelligence, including the creation of artificial general intelligence. The chapter concludes with a brief assessment of the risks of those projects as they appear in this new light. (shrink)

Chapter Beginning an account of linguistic meaning: speaker, hearer, context, and utterance Pity the poor analyst, who has to do the best he can with ...

Visual experience is often characterised as being essentially spatial, and auditory experience essentially temporal. But this contrast, which is based upon the temporal structure of the objects of sensory experience rather than the experiences to which they give rise, is somewhat superficial. By carefully examining the various sources of temporal variation in the chemical senses we can more clearly identify the temporal profile of the resulting smell and taste (aka flavour) experiences. This in turn suggests that at least some of (...) the objects of olfactory experience have significant temporal structure, including interactions between odorants and the body’s own sensory systems. This can help to inform our understanding not only of the metaphysics of olfaction, but the temporal structure of sensory processing and experience in other sense-modalities, including vision and audition. (shrink)

Patents for genetic material in theindustrialized North have expandedsignificantly over the past twenty years,playing a crucial role in the currentconfiguration of the agricultural biotechnologyindustries, and raising significant ethicalissues. Patents have been claimed for genes,gene sequences, engineered crop species, andthe technical processes to engineer them. Mostcritics have addressed the human and ecosystemhealth implications of genetically engineeredcrops, but these broad patents raise economicissues as well. The Catholic social teachingtradition offers guidelines for critiquing theeconomic implications of this new patentregime. The Catholic principle of (...) the universaldestination of goods implies that genes, genesequences, and engineered crop varieties areineligible for patent protection, although theprocesses to engineer these should be eligible.Religious leaders are likely to make a moresubstantive contribution to debates aboutagricultural biotechnology by addressing theselife patents than by speculating that geneticengineering is ``playing God.''''. (shrink)

In this engaging sequel to Rethinking History , Keith Jenkins argues for a re-figuration of historical study. At the core of his survey lies the realization that objective and disinterested histories as well as historical 'truth' are unachievable. The past and questions about the nature of history remain interminably open to new and disobedient approaches. Jenkins reassesses conventional history in a bold fashion. His committed and radical study presents new ways of 'thinking history', a new methodology and philosophy and (...) their impact on historical practice. This volume is written for students and teachers of history, illuminating and changing the core of their discipline. (shrink)

John Macquarrie, a Fellow of the British Academy, was the foremost Anglican systematic theologian of the twentieth century. His many books cover a wide range of topics, from studies of existentialist philosophy to expositions of systematic Christian theology, writings on mysticism and world religion, and analyses of ethical thought. Macquarrie was always a theologian of the church, using a philosophical vocabulary that united philosophical idealism, existentialism, and Anglo-Saxon analytical philosophy in an original and fruitful way. His masterpiece was the 1966 (...) Principles of Christian Theology, which works through almost every aspect of Christian doctrine in the light of the concepts of human nature and of God that he had forged from idealism, from Martin Heidegger, and from an increasingly sacramental and mystical approach to Christian faith. In 1970, Macquarrie was offered, without his prior knowledge, the Lady Margaret Chair of Divinity at Christ Church, University of Oxford. He received various honours that testify to the high regard in which he was held both in America and in Britain. (shrink)

Regulation theory offers a unique perspective on the institutional aspects of digital capitalism’s accumulation regime. However, a gap exists in examining the associated mode of regulation. Based on the analysis of AI ethics washing phenomenon, we suggest the state is delicately balancing between fueling innovation and reducing uncertainty in emerging technologies. This balance leads to a unique mode of regulation, "Fugazi regulation," characterized by vaguely defined, non-enforceable moral principles with no specific implementation mechanisms. We propose a microeconomic model that rationalizes (...) this approach and shows that it is justifiable when the government struggles to differentiate between benign and harmful technology use due to capacity constraints. The potential for private companies to adopt ethical practices under Fugazi regulation supports the government’s preference for this method. This regulation mode is particularly attractive to the government during technology’s early development stages, marked by governmental optimism and uncertainty about the technology. Implications for greenwashing are also derived from the analysis. (shrink)

A critical examination of Descartes’s Passions of the Soul and Discourse on Method reveals that indeterminate judgments (judgments that do not involve certainty) play a fundamental role in the Cartesian corpus. The following paper establishes this claim and argues that such an analysis provides an avenue for understanding the relationship that Descartes envisions between his Discourse and its readers as well as for understanding his attempts to establish his new science. Finally, it argues that Descartes’s provocative claim in the Passions (...) that generous souls are “naturally led to do great deeds” reveals an heroic and Aristotelian element not only in the Passions but also in Descartes’s own actions. (shrink)

‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth’ (Genesis 1.1). For millions of Jews, Christians and Muslims this has been a fundamental article of belief. Nor is it unknown in the classical Indian traditions. The Upanishads, taken by the orthodox to be ‘heard’, not invented, and to be verbally inerrant, state: ‘He desired: “May I become many, may I procreate” … He created (or emanated) this whole universe’ (Taittiriya Upanishad, 6). The belief that everything in the universe is (...) brought into being by an act of will or desire on the part of one uniquely uncreated being is widespread and fundamental in religion. Historians of religion generally suppose that it is a rather late belief in the Biblical tradition, having developed from an earlier stage at which Jahweh was one tribal deity among others. By the time of the major prophets, however, the notion was firmly established that there is only one God, creator of everything other than himself. Christian theologians always seem to have had a great interest in conceptual problems, and the idea of creation has proved a very fruitful one for generating philosophical puzzles. Those puzzles are still of great theoretical interest, and I shall consider some of them with reference to the work of Augustine and, to a lesser extent Thomas Aquinas. Their views have been so influential that they may fairly be called ‘classical’, in Christian theology. (shrink)

The teleological context of Kant's ethics can be clearly seen as an integral and essential part of his theory when reason is seen to be closely concerned with the purposes of nature, and yet to subject nature to categorical demands for which nature is of itself unable to provide the conditions of fulfilment. The sense of beauty is simply a disinterested, universal and necessary delight which arises because beautiful forms are conducive to the mutual interplay and enhancement of the faculties (...) of imagination and understanding. It is true that beauty has no intrinsic connexion with morality. Nature at once overawes us by its might and yet calls us to remembrance that we are superior to the whole of nature, in our moral destiny. There is another way in which nature can be conceived as integrally related to reason through the concept of purposiveness; and that is in the existence of biological organisms. (shrink)