As philosophers of mind we seem to hold in common no very clear view about the relevance that work in psychology or the neurosciences may or may not have to our own favourite questions—even if we call the subject ‘philosophical psychology’. For example, in the literature we find articles on pain some of which do, some of which don't, rely more or less heavily on, for example, the work of Melzack and Wall; the puzzle cases used so extensively in discussions (...) of personal identity are drawn sometimes from the pleasant exercise of scientific fantasy, at times from surprising reports of scientific fact; and there are those who deny, as well as those who affirm, the importance of the discovery of rapid-eye-movement sleep to the philosophical treatment of dreaming. A general account of the relation between scientific, and philosophical, psychology is long overdue and of the first importance. Here I shall limit myself to just one area where the two seem to connect, discussing one type of neuropsychological research and its relevance to questions in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of psychology. (shrink)

Is the tendency to morally prioritize humans over animals weaker in children than adults? In two pre-registered studies (N = 622), 5- to 9-year-old children and adults were presented with moral dilemmas pitting varying numbers of humans against varying numbers of either dogs or pigs and were asked who should be saved. In both studies, children had a weaker tendency to prioritize humans over animals than adults. They often chose to save multiple dogs over one human, and many valued the (...) life of a dog as much as the life of a human. While they valued pigs less, the majority still prioritized ten pigs over one human. By contrast, almost all adults chose to save one human over even one hundred dogs or pigs. Our findings suggest that the common view that humans are far more morally important than animals appears late in development and is likely socially acquired. (shrink)

This book explores the scope and limits of the concept of personDS a vexed question in contemporary philosophy. The author begins by questioning the methodology of thought-experimentation, arguing that it engenders inconclusive and unconvincing results, and that truth is stranger than fiction. She then examines an assortment of real-life conditions, including infancy, insanity andx dementia, dissociated states, and split brains. The popular faith in continuity of consciousness, and the unity of the person is subjected to sustained criticism. The author concludes (...) with a look at different views of the person found in Homer, Aristotle, the post-Cartesians, and contemporary cognitive science. (shrink)

Through analysis of film sequences focusing on DNA in two British Broadcasting Corporation nonfiction science television programs, Wonders of Life and Bang! Goes the Theory, first broadcast in 2013, contrasting “religious” and “secular” representations of science are identified. In the “religious” portrayal, immutable scientific knowledge is revealed to humanity by nature with minimal human intervention. Science provides a creation story, “explanatory omnicompetence,” and makes life existentially meaningful. In the “secular” portrayal, scientific knowledge is changeable; is produced through technical skill in (...) expert communities; and is ambiguous, potentially positive and negative for society. Television representations of science affect audience understandings, and this is particularly the case for nonfiction representations of science, as they are likely to be “taken more seriously” than fictional representations. The consequences of the “religious” representation of science are discussed, and it is argued that a widespread understanding of science as presented in the religious portrayal would negatively impact democracy. (shrink)

Recent work in the philosophy of science has been debunking theory and acclaiming practice. Recent work in philosophical psychology has been neglecting practice and emphasizing theory, suggesting that common?sense psychology is in all essential respects like any scientific theory. The marriage of these two strands of thought would serve to make science and common sense virtually indistinguishable. My paper resists this conflation. The main target is the attempt to assimilate everyday psychology to a scientific theory; I argue that this is (...) badly mistaken, and does a disservice both to scientific and to common?sense psychology. A secondary aim is to argue that some of the new pragmatism in the philosophy of science is overstated. The suggested conflation would have interesting implications, as would its denial; in a concluding section, some of these implications are briefly explored. (shrink)

In contemporary American cinema, the representation of women remains disproportionately limited despite significant social movements advocating for diversity and equality. This study examines the depiction of women in top-grossing films of 2018, contrasting those directed by men with those directed by women, to understand the influence of gender dynamics on cinematic portrayal. Analyzing the top five highest-grossing live-action movies directed by each gender, this research utilizes critical mass and critical actor theories to evaluate the impact of female filmmakers on the (...) representation of women both on and off-screen. Findings reveal that films directed by women feature higher percentages of female characters and crew members in key roles, yet face substantial budgetary and box office disparities compared to their male-directed counterparts. Despite some progress, the film industry continues to exhibit systemic biases, necessitating further structural changes to achieve genuine gender equality in cinematic storytelling. This study underscores the need for increased opportunities and resources for female filmmakers to foster a more inclusive and diverse cinematic landscape. (shrink)

Given the central place organisms occupy in Kant’s account of living nature, it might seem unlikely that his claims about biological wholes could be relevant to current debates over the problem of biological individuality. These debates acknowledge the multiple realizability of biological individuality in vastly different forms, including parts of organisms and complex groups of organisms at various levels of the biological hierarchy, sparking much controversy in attempts to characterize a biological individual. I argue that, far from being irrelevant to (...) this controversy, Kant’s account provides a key insight for addressing the multiple realizability problem. I show how the reciprocal causality between a self-organizing whole and its parts, which Kant thinks characterizes a natural end, is not limited to organisms but is exhibited by numerous types of beings in living nature. Self-organizing wholes of various kinds, and at various biological levels, may count as biological individuals, depending on the degree to which their functionally integrated parts are represented by reflective judgement as a natural end. (shrink)

The paper discusses the utility of the notion of consciousness for the behavioural and brain sciences. It describes four distinctively different senses of 'conscious', and argues that to cope with the heterogeneous phenomena loosely indicated thereby, these sciences not only do not but should not discuss them in terms of 'consciousness'. It is thus suggested that 'the problem' allegedly posed to scientists by consciousness is unreal; one need neither adopt a realist stance with respect to it, nor include the term (...) and its cognates in the sciences' conceptual apparatus. The paper briefly examines Nagel's [1974] article, since this presents the strongest counter to the thesis proposed. (shrink)

This paper tries to argue that at least some alluring, trendy or fashionable problems to do with thought and language — several of which are discussed in this volume — are in fact alluring, trendy or fashionable red herrings or cul-de-sacs. I shall primarily be concerned with the ascription of thought and intelligence to non-language-users; but, en route to that, will need to brood over our ascriptions of such terms quite generally.

Abelard maintains that individual words in a sentence represent distinct semantic units of its overall meaning. He employs two strategies to defend this position in the face of troublesome counterexamples. One strategy—the earlier of the two—sacrifices normal intuitions about what a word is, often labeling what seem to be words as non-signifying syllables. The later strategy invokes a rather fluid conception of what the signification of a word is, allowing this signification considerable latitude to alter under the contextual influence of (...) other words. This evolution of strategy is linked to a new willingness on Abelard’s part to adopt the principle of charity in interpreting sentences; this approach presumes the truth of the statement, and tries to find an interpretation which bears that presumption out. This new willingness to adopt the principle is in turn linked to Abelard’s developing vocation as an interpreter of biblical texts. (shrink)

What mechanisms led to the intractable legal situation of “enemy combatants” detained by the U.S. government in Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere? And what does the role of the judiciary in the enemy combatants cases suggest about politically contentious court cases in general? This article develops a two-stage theory of political justice that is based on the U.S. post-9/11 terrorism cases. It demonstrates mechanisms by which politically contentious cases turn into political justice. Political justice in these cases is mainly the result (...) of violations of the separation of powers that are legitimized by portraying the defendants/detainees as enemies beyond the law. (shrink)

Linguistics. Artificial intelligence. Related fields. Computation.

A general hypothesis of atom size effects for G.P. zone formation is discussed in this paper and results are presented of precipitation in the systems Fe-Au and Fe-Mo. Techniques used are resistivity measurements and electron microscopy. In the Fe-Mo system it is shown that after initial cluster formation during the early stages of ageing after the quench, further growth ceases and vacancies anneal out into dislocation loops. The activation energy for the initial clustering was 1·3 ev whilst the excess vacancy (...) concentration estimated from the loop area gave a vacancy formation energy of ∼1·5 ev. These results confirm recent quenching results on pure iron. The refusal of Mo zones to grow confirms the general hypothesis of size effects.In the Fe-Au system precipitation of gold platelets after quenching is shown to be associated with the high density of dislocations formed during quenching through the phase transformation of the iron matrix. The effect of the dislocations is shown by the low value of ∼0·5 for the Johnson—Mehl kinetic parameter and by the activation energy for growth which is ∼0·8 of the equilibrium diffusion energy for Au in Fe. As the size-effect hypothesis does not apply to precipitation on dislocations the growth of zones in Fe—Au does not affect its validity. (shrink)

Employee misconduct is prevalent in organizations and may be counterproductive in social and material terms. It is thus important to better understand how misconduct is construed by employees and the factors that determine its ethical acceptability in specific cases. This study explores attitudes towards unethical and minor deviant behaviours by examining the degree of acquiescence towards them in a sample of employees. Based on previous studies it was hypothesized that both organizational commitment and job satisfaction would be negatively related to (...) the acceptance of such behaviours in organizational settings. Results show that there is a relationship between the degree of acquiescence and organizational commitment and a more modest relationship with job satisfaction. They further indicate that organizational tenure impacts very significantly on the degree of acceptance. Although differences were found for age, neither gender nor organizational variables were found to be significant. (shrink)

I discuss two questions: (1) would Duhem have accepted the thesis of the continuity of scientific methodology? and (2) to what extent is the Oxford tradition of classification/subalternation of sciences continuous with early modern science? I argue that Duhem would have been surprised by the claim that scientific methodology is continuous; he expected at best only a continuity of physical theories, which he was trying to isolate from the perpetual fluctuations of methods and metaphysics. I also argue that the evidence (...) does not support the conclusion that early modern doctrines about mathematics and physics are continuous with the subalternation of sciences from Grosseteste, Bacon, and the theologians of fourteenth-century Oxford. The official and dominant context for early modern scientific methodology seems to have been progressive Thomism, and early modern thinkers seem to have pitted themselves against it. (shrink)

The primary aim of this study is to dissolve the mind-body problem. It shows how the ‘problem’ separates into two distinct sets of issues, concerning ontology on the one hand, and explanation on the other, and argues that explanation – whether or not human behaviour can be explained in physical terms – is the more crucial. The author contends that a functionalist methodology in psychology and neurophysiology will prove adequate to explain human behaviour. Defence of this thesis requires: an examination (...) of the mental/physical dichotomy, and its rejection in favour of a distinction between psychological and physical terms; a description and discussion of functionalism in psychology and neurophysiology, showing how the notorious problem of the necessary intensionality of psychological terms may be circumvented; an examination of the role of computer simulation in psycho-physical research; and an explanation of how the phenomena of sentience fit the functional framework. The book concludes that the thesis presented is in all essentials that of Aristotle; Aristotle had no ‘mind-body problem’, and were it not for a subsequent over-obsession with Cartesian scepticism, we need not have had one either. (shrink)

Background: Continuous viewing of ambiguous patterns is characterized by wavering perception that alternates between two or more equally valid visual solutions. However, when such patterns are viewed intermittently, either by repetitive presentation or by periodic closing of the eyes, perception can become locked or "frozen" in one configuration for several minutes at a time. One aspect of this stabilization is the possible existence of a perceptual memory that persists during periods in which the ambiguous stimulus is absent. Here, we use (...) a novel paradgim of temporally interleaved ambiguous stimuli to explore the nature of this memory, with particular regard to its potential impact on perceptual organization. Results: We found that the persistence of a perceptual configuration was robust to interposed visual patterns and, further, that at least three ambiguous patterns, when interleaved in time, could undergo parallel, stable time courses. Then, using an interleaved presentation paradigm, we established that the occasional reversal in one pattern could be coupled with that of its interleaved counterpart, and that this coupling was a function of the structural similarity between the patterns. Conclusions: We postulate that the stabilization observed with repetitive presentation of ambiguous patterns can be at least partially accounted for by processes that retain a recent perceptual interpretation, and we speculate that such memory may be important in natural vision. We further propose tha the interleaved paradigm introduced here may be of great value to gauge aspects of stimulus similarity that appeal to particular mechanisms of perceptual organization. (shrink)

In Tough Choices for Teachers: Ethical Challenges in Today's Schools and Classrooms, Infantino and Wilke help student teachers, new teachers, and experienced teachers think more deeply about ethical concerns. The case studies included by the authors involve ethical dilemmas dealing with honesty, integrity, and proper professional behavior.

Cytokine receptors fall into two basic classes: those with their own intrinsic protein tyrosine kinase (PTK) domain, and those lacking a PTK domain. Nonetheless, PTK activity plays a fundamental role in the signal transduction processes lying downstream of both classes of receptor. It now seems likely that many of those cytokine receptors that lack their own PTK domain use members of the JAK family of PTKs to propagate their intracellular signals. Moreover, the involvement of the JAK kinases in a newly (...) defined pathway which links membrane receptors directly to the activation of nuclear genes, via latent cytoplasmic transcription factors known as STATs (for Signal Transducers and Activators of Transcription), appears to be a theme common to cytokine receptors of both classes. (shrink)