Current theories suggest that the brain is the sole source of mental illness. However, affective disorders, and major depressive disorder (MDD) in particular, may be better conceptualized as brain-body disorders that involve peripheral systems as well. This perspective emphasizes the embodied, multifaceted physiology of well-being, and suggests that afferent signals from the body may contribute to cognitive and emotional states. In this review, we focus on evidence from preclinical and clinical studies suggesting that afferent thermosensory signals contribute to well-being and (...) depression. Although thermoregulatory systems have traditionally been conceptualized as serving primarily homeostatic functions, increasing evidence suggests neural pathways responsible for regulating body temperature may be linked more closely with emotional states than previously recognized, an affective warmth hypothesis. Human studies indicate that increasing physical warmth activates brain circuits associated with cognitive and affective functions, promotes interpersonal warmth and prosocial behavior, and has antidepressant effects. Consistent with these effects, preclinical studies in rodents demonstrate that physical warmth activates brain serotonergic neurons implicated in antidepressant-like effects. Together, these studies suggest that (1) thermosensory pathways interact with brain systems that control affective function, (2) these pathways are dysregulated in affective disorders, and (3) activating warm thermosensory pathways promotes a sense of well-being and has therapeutic potential in the treatment of affective disorders. (shrink)

This paper examines one of the historical antecedents of Big Data, the social physics movement. Its origins are in the scientific revolution of the 17th century in Western Europe. But it is not named as such until the middle of the 19th century, and not formally institutionalized until another hundred years later when it is associated with work by George Zipf and John Stewart. Social physics is marked by the belief that large-scale statistical measurement of social variables reveals underlying relational (...) patterns that can be explained by theories and laws found in natural science, and physics in particular. This larger epistemological position is known as monism, the idea that there is only one set of principles that applies to the explanation of both natural and social worlds. Social physics entered geography through the work of the mid-20th-century geographer William Warntz, who developed his own spatial version called “macrogeography.” It involved the computation of large data sets, made ever easier with the contemporaneous development of the computer, joined with the gravitational potential model. Our argument is that Warntz's concerns with numeracy, large data sets, machine-based computing power, relatively simple mathematical formulas drawn from natural science, and an isomorphism between natural and social worlds became grounds on which Big Data later staked its claim to knowledge; it is a past that has not yet passed. (shrink)

ABSTRACTJohn Campbell’s Present State of Europe has been viewed, particularly by Guido Abbattista, as a change in Campbell’s view on British intervention on the continent. Campbell certainly alters his position from a conventional ‘Country’ and ‘Tory’ critique of British interventionism to acceptance, but this shift aligns him more closely with the Bolingbrokean political philosophy that undergirds much of his early thought as he accommodates this political philosophy to the dominant theory of foreign policy of his day, ‘balance of power’. Campbell (...) articulates a moderate, Tory view of balance of power by drawing upon Samuel Pufendorf’s idea of states-system, which allows Campbell to extend his ‘Country’-Bolingbrokean philosophy from inside to outside the state. By extending his views outside the state, Campbell indicates how continental intervention not only may be required based upon a nation’s fluctuating, indeterminate circumstances but also may be needed to protect far-flung subjects within an expanding British Empire. (shrink)

In this issue of the American Journal of Bioethics, manuscripts focus on the obligations of clinicians and researchers in pragmatic clinical trials (Garland, Morain, and Sugarman 2023; Morain and L...

Arguments figure prominently in our practices of reason-giving. For example, we use them to advance reasons for their conclusions in order to justify believing something, to explain why we believe something, and to persuade others to believe something. Intuitively, using arguments in these ways requires a certain degree of self-reflection. In this paper, I ask: what cognitive requirements are there for using an argument to advance reasons for its conclusion? Towards a partial response, the paper’s central thesis is that in (...) order to so use an argument one must believe the associated inference claim to the effect that the premises collectively are reasons that support the conclusion. I then argue against making it a further cognitive requirement that one be aware of one’s justification for believing such an inference claim. This thesis provides a rationale for the typical informal-logic textbook characterization of argument and motivates a constraint on adequate accounts of what are referred to as inference claims in the informal logic and argumentation literatures. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of new research on moral thinking informed by evolutionary theory. The new findings have emanated from a wide variety of fields. While there is no shortage of theoretical models that attempt to account for specific research findings, Matthew Keefer's goals in this essay are more general. First, he examines the strength of the evolutionary approach to understanding morality and moral emotions as adaptations to cooperation. Second, he considers the importance of unconscious (...) processing for generating ethical (or unethical) behavior and the complex relation among moral emotions, intuitions, and conscious moral reasoning. Third, he underscores the importance of understanding self-deception and self-serving biases in moral thinking and behavior. Keefer ends the essay with a discussion of some implications of these considerations for professional ethics and moral education. (shrink)

Old habits die hard; so, it seems, do old arguments. Proponents of thoracoabdominal normothermic regional perfusion (TA-NRP, but more commonly referred to as NRP) continue to proffer arguments and...

What are the effects of word-by-word predictability on sentence processing times during the natural reading of a text? Although information complexity metrics such as surprisal and entropy reduction have been useful in addressing this question, these metrics tend to be estimated using computational language models, which require some degree of commitment to a particular theory of language processing. Taking a different approach, this study implemented a large-scale cumulative cloze task to collect word-by-word predictability data for 40 passages and compute surprisal (...) and entropy reduction values in a theory-neutral manner. A separate group of participants read the same texts while their eye movements were recorded. Results showed that increases in surprisal and entropy reduction were both associated with increases in reading times. Furthermore, these effects did not depend on the global difficulty of the text. The findings suggest that surprisal and entropy reduction independently contribute to variation in reading times, as these metrics seem to capture different aspects of lexical predictability. (shrink)

Although a large literature demonstrates that object‐extracted relative clauses (ORCs) are harder to process than subject‐extracted relative clauses (SRCs), there is less agreement regarding where during processing this difficulty emerges, as well as how best to explain these effects. An eye‐tracking study by Staub, Dillon, and Clifton (2017) demonstrated that readers experience more processing difficulty at the matrix verb for ORCs than for SRCs when the matrix verb immediately follows the relative clause (RC), but the difficulty is eliminated if a (...) prepositional phrase (PP) intervenes. A careful examination of Staub et al.’s materials reveals that the types of PPs used in the experiment were a mixture of locative and temporal PPs. This is important in that locative PPs can modify either a noun phrase or a verb phrase (VP), whereas temporal PPs typically modify VPs, resulting in systematic differences in PP attachment across ORCs versus SRCs. In the current eye‐tracking experiment, we systematically manipulated RC type and PP type in the same sentences used by Staub et al. The manipulation of PP type resulted in a crossover pattern at the matrix verb such that there was a trend for reading times to be longer for ORCs than SRCs when the PP was locative, but reading times were longer for SRCs than ORCs when the PP was temporal. These results provide important information regarding the locus of RC‐processing effects and highlight the importance of carefully considering how intervening material might unintentionally alter the structure or the meaning of a sentence. (shrink)

As an application of his Material Theory of Induction, Norton (2018; manuscript) argues that the correct inductive logic for a fair infinite lottery, and also for evaluating eternal inflation multiverse models, is radically different from standard probability theory. This is due to a requirement of label independence. It follows, Norton argues, that finite additivity fails, and any two sets of outcomes with the same cardinality and co-cardinality have the same chance. This makes the logic useless for evaluating multiverse models based (...) on self-locating chances, so Norton claims that we should despair of such attempts. However, his negative results depend on a certain reification of chance, consisting in the treatment of inductive support as the value of a function, a value not itself affected by relabeling. Here we define a purely comparative infinite lottery logic, where there are no primitive chances but only a relation of ‘at most as likely’ and its derivatives. This logic satisfies both label independence and a comparative version of additivity as well as several other desirable properties, and it draws finer distinctions between events than Norton's. Consequently, it yields better advice about choosing between sets of lottery tickets than Norton's, but it does not appear to be any more helpful for evaluating multiverse models. Hence, the limitations of Norton's logic are not entirely due to the failure of additivity, nor to the fact that all infinite, co-infinite sets of outcomes have the same chance, but to a more fundamental problem: We have no well-motivated way of comparing disjoint countably infinite sets. (shrink)

The interest in and enthusiasm for urban agriculture (UA) in urban communities, the non-profit sector, and governmental institutions has grown exponentially over the past decade. Part of the appeal of UA is its potential to improve the civic health of a community, advancing what some call food democracy. Yet despite the increasing presence of the language of civic agriculture or food democracy, UA organizations and practitioners often still focus on practical, shorter-term projects in an effort both to increase local involvement (...) and to attract funding from groups focused on quantifiable deliverables. As such, it seems difficult to move beyond the rhetoric of food democracy towards significant forms of popular participation and deliberation within particular communities. In this paper we provide a theoretical framework—deep democracy—that helps to contextualize nascent attempts at civic agriculture or food democracy within a broader struggle for democratic practices and relationships. We argue that urban agriculture efforts are well positioned to help citizens cultivate lasting relationships across lines of difference and amidst significant power differentials—relationships that could form the basis of a community’s collective capacity to shape its future. We analyze the theory of deep democracy through recent experiences with UA in Denver, Colorado, and we identify ways in which UA can extend its reach and impact by focusing more consciously on its political or civic potential. (shrink)

On the first page of “What is Cantor's Continuum Problem?”, Gödel argues that Cantor's theory of cardinality, where a bijection implies equal number, is in some sense uniquely determined. The argument, involving a thought experiment with sets of physical objects, is initially persuasive, but recent authors have developed alternative theories of cardinality that are consistent with the standard set theory ZFC and have appealing algebraic features that Cantor's powers lack, as well as some promise for applications. Here we diagnose Gödel's (...) argument, showing that it fails in two important ways: Its premises are not sufficiently compelling to discredit countervailing intuitions and pragmatic considerations, nor pluralism, and its final inference, from the superiority of Cantor's theory as applied to sets of changeable physical objects to the unique acceptability of that theory for all sets, is irredeemably invalid. (shrink)

Executive speechwriting is a common practice in most large organizations. This activity, however, raises a number of ethical questions about responsibility and about audience deception. This essay explores the ethics of speechwriting from three perspectives and offers some general guidelines for maintaining ethical standards when using speechwriters.

Matthew W. Slaboch examines the work of German philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer and Oswald Spengler, Russian novelists Leo Tolstoy and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and American historians Henry Adams and Christopher Lasch—rare skeptics of the idea of progress who have much to offer political theory, a field dominated by historical optimists.

Introduction -- The concept of logical consequence -- Tarski's characterization of the common concept of logical consequence -- The logical consequence relation has a modal element -- The logical consequence relation is formal -- The logical consequence relation is A priori -- Logical and non-logical terminology -- The meanings of logical terms explained in terms of their semantic properties -- The meanings of logical terms explained in terms of their inferential properties -- Model-theoretic and deductive-theoretic conceptions of logic -- Linguistic (...) preliminaries : the language M -- Syntax of M -- The definition of a well formed formula of M -- Semantics for M -- The sentential connectives are defined -- The notion of satisfaction is introduced and the quantifiers are defined -- Model-theoretic consequence -- Truth in a structure -- Satisfaction revisited -- Formalized definition of truth -- Model-theoretic consequence defined -- The model-theoretic definition and the concept of logical consequence -- Does the model theoretic consequence relation reflect the salient features of the common concept of logical consequence? -- What is a logical constant? -- Deductive consequence -- Deductive system n -- The deductive theoretic definition and the concept of logical consequence -- Tarski's criticism of the deductive theoretic definition -- Is N a correct deductive system? (shrink)

The least infringement principle has been widely endorsed by public health scholars. According to this principle, public health policies may infringe upon “general moral considerations” in order to achieve a public health goal, but if two policies provide the same public health benefit, then policymakers should choose the one that infringes least upon “general moral considerations.” General moral considerations can encompass a wide variety of goals, including fair distribution of burdens and benefits, protection of privacy and confidentiality, and respect for (...) autonomy.In this article, we argue that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's 2006 HIV screening recommendations may violate the least infringement principle. This is a concern because, although not legally binding, the Recommendations appear to have already influenced state laws and will likely continue to do so as legislative proposals continue to be passed. At a minimum, therefore, the Recommendations have important implications for HIV screening within the United States. (shrink)

We examine a case in which non-computable behavior in a model is revealed by computer simulation. This is possible due to differing notions of computability for sets in a continuous space. The argument originally given for the validity of the simulation involves a simpler simulation of the simulation, still further simulations thereof, and a universality conjecture. There are difficulties with that argument, but there are other, heuristic arguments supporting the qualitative results. It is urged, using this example, that absolute validation, (...) while highly desirable, is overvalued. Simulations also provide valuable insights that we cannot yet (if ever) prove. (shrink)

Recent research in ethics education shows a potentially problematic variation in content, curricular materials, and instruction. While ethics instruction is now widespread, studies have identified significant variation in both the goals and methods of ethics education, leaving researchers to conclude that many approaches may be inappropriately paired with goals that are unachievable. This paper speaks to these concerns by demonstrating the importance of aligning classroom-based assessments to clear ethical learning objectives in order to help students and instructors track their progress (...) toward meeting those objectives. Two studies at two different universities demonstrate the usefulness of classroom-based, formative assessments for improving the quality of students’ case responses in computational modeling and research ethics. (shrink)

Some have suggested that certain classical physical systems have undecidable long-term behavior, without specifying an appropriate notion of decidability over the reals. We introduce such a notion, decidability in (or d- ) for any measure , which is particularly appropriate for physics and in some ways more intuitive than Ko's (1991) recursive approximability (r.a.). For Lebesgue measure , d- implies r.a. Sets with positive -measure that are sufficiently "riddled" with holes are never d- but are often r.a. This explicates Sommerer (...) and Ott's (1996) claim of uncomputable behavior in a system with riddled basins of attraction. Furthermore, it clarifies speculations that the stability of the solar system (and similar systems) may be undecidable, for the invariant tori established by KAM theory form sets that are not d-. (shrink)

Recent work has defended “Euclidean” theories of set size, in which Cantor’s Principle (two sets have equally many elements if and only if there is a one-to-one correspondence between them) is abandoned in favor of the Part-Whole Principle (if A is a proper subset of B then A is smaller than B). It has also been suggested that Gödel’s argument for the unique correctness of Cantor’s Principle is inadequate. Here we see from simple examples, not that Euclidean theories of set (...) size are wrong, but that they must be either very weak and narrow or largely arbitrary and misleading. (shrink)

Ten years ago, researchers using event-related brain potentials to study language comprehension were puzzled by what looked like a Semantic Illusion: Semantically anomalous, but structurally well-formed sentences did not affect the N400 component—traditionally taken to reflect semantic integration—but instead produced a P600 effect, which is generally linked to syntactic processing. This finding led to a considerable amount of debate, and a number of complex processing models have been proposed as an explanation. What these models have in common is that they (...) postulate two or more separate processing streams, in order to reconcile the Semantic Illusion and other semantically induced P600 effects with the traditional interpretations of the N400 and the P600. Recently, however, these multi-stream models have been called into question, and a simpler single-stream model has been proposed. According to this alternative model, the N400 component reflects the retrieval of word meaning from semantic memory, and the P600 component indexes the integration of this meaning into the unfolding utterance interpretation. In the present paper, we provide support for this “Retrieval–Integration ” account by instantiating it as a neurocomputational model. This neurocomputational model is the first to successfully simulate the N400 and P600 amplitude in language comprehension, and simulations with this model provide a proof of concept of the single-stream RI account of semantically induced patterns of N400 and P600 modulations. (shrink)

A probability distribution is regular if it does not assign probability zero to any possible event. Williamson argued that we should not require probabilities to be regular, for if we do, certain “isomorphic” physical events must have different probabilities, which is implausible. His remarks suggest an assumption that chances are determined by intrinsic, qualitative circumstances. Weintraub responds that Williamson’s coin flip events differ in their inclusion relations to each other, or the inclusion relations between their times, and this can account (...) for their differences in probability. Haverkamp and Schulz rebut Weintraub, but their rebuttal fails because the events in their example are even less symmetric than Williamson’s. However, Weintraub’s argument also fails, for it ignores the distinction between intrinsic, qualitative differences and relations of time and bare identity. Weintraub could rescue her argument by claiming that the events differ in duration, under a non-standard and problematic conception of duration. However, we can modify Williamson’s example with Special Relativity so that there is no absolute inclusion relation between the times, and neither event has longer duration except relative to certain reference frames. Hence, Weintraub’s responses do not apply unless chance is observer-relative, which is also problematic. Finally, another symmetry argument defeats even the appeal to frame-dependent durations, for there the events have the same finite duration and are entirely disjoint, as are their respective times and places. (shrink)

We consider an approach to some philosophical problems that I call the Method of Conceptual Articulation: to recognize that a question may lack any determinate answer, and to re-engineer concepts so that the question acquires a definite answer in such a way as to serve the epistemic motivations behind the question. As a case study we examine “Galileo’s Paradox”, that the perfect square numbers seem to be at once as numerous as the whole numbers, by one-to-one correspondence, and yet less (...) numerous, being a proper subset. I argue that Cantor resolved this paradox by a method at least close to that proposed—not by discovering the true nature of cardinal number, but by articulating several useful and appealing extensions of number to the infinite. Galileo was right to suggest that the concept of relative size did not apply to the infinite, for the concept he possessed did not. Nor was Bolzano simply wrong to reject Hume’s Principle (that one-to-one correspondence implies equal number) in the infinitary case, in favor of Euclid’s Common Notion 5 (that the whole is greater than the part), for the concept of cardinal number (in the sense of “number of elements”) was not clearly defined for infinite collections. Order extension theorems now suggest that a theory of cardinality upholding Euclid’s principle instead of Hume’s is possible. Cantor’s refinements of number are not the only ones possible, and they appear to have been shaped by motivations and fruitfulness, for they evolved in discernible stages correlated with emerging applications and results. Galileo, Bolzano, and Cantor shared interests in the particulate analysis of the continuum and in physical applications. Cantor’s concepts proved fruitful for those pursuits. Finally, Gödel was mistaken to claim that Cantor’s concept of cardinality is forced on us; though Gödel gives an intuitively compelling argument, he ignores the fact that Euclid’s Common Notion is also intuitively compelling, and we are therefore forced to make a choice. The success of Cantor’s concept of cardinality lies not in its truth (for concepts are not true or false), nor its uniqueness (for it is not the only extension of number possible), but in its intuitive appeal, and most of all, its usefulness to the understanding. (shrink)

Even with the lack of consensus on the nature of an argument, the thesis that explanations and arguments are distinct is near orthodoxy in well-known critical thinking texts and in the more advanced argumentation literature. In this paper, I reconstruct two rationales for distinguishing arguments from explanations. According to one, arguments and explanations are essentially different things because they have different structures. According to the other, while some explanations and arguments may have the same structure, they are different things because (...) explanations are used for different purposes than arguments. I argue that both rationales fail to motivate a distinction between arguments and explanations. Since these are the only rationales for distinguishing arguments from explanations that I am prepared to take seriously, I don’t see why we should exclude explanations from being arguments. (shrink)

There is no uniquely standard concept of an effectively decidable set of real numbers or real n-tuples. Here we consider three notions: decidability up to measure zero [M.W. Parker, Undecidability in Rn: Riddled basins, the KAM tori, and the stability of the solar system, Phil. Sci. 70(2) (2003) 359–382], which we abbreviate d.m.z.; recursive approximability [or r.a.; K.-I. Ko, Complexity Theory of Real Functions, Birkhäuser, Boston, 1991]; and decidability ignoring boundaries [d.i.b.; W.C. Myrvold, The decision problem for entanglement, in: R.S. (...) Cohen et al. (Eds.), Potentiality, Entanglement, and Passion-at-a-Distance: Quantum Mechanical Studies fo Abner Shimony, Vol. 2, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Great Britain, 1997, pp. 177–190]. Unlike some others in the literature, these notions apply not only to certain nice sets, but to general sets in Rn and other appropriate spaces. We consider some motivations for these concepts and the logical relations between them. It has been argued that d.m.z. is especially appropriate for physical applications, and on Rn with the standard measure, it is strictly stronger than r.a. [M.W. Parker, Undecidability in Rn: Riddled basins, the KAM tori, and the stability of the solar system, Phil. Sci. 70(2) (2003) 359–382]. Here we show that this is the only implication that holds among our three decidabilities in that setting. Under arbitrary measures, even this implication fails. Yet for intervals of non-zero length, and more generally, convex sets of non-zero measure, the three concepts are equivalent. (shrink)

Arguments, understood initially as premise-conclusion complexes of propositions, figure in our practices of giving reasons. Among other uses, we use arguments to advance reasons to explain why we believe or did something, to justify our beliefs or actions, to persuade others to do or to believe something, and (following Pinto 2001b) to advance reasons to worry or to fear that something is true. This book is about our uses of arguments to advance their premises as reasons for believing their conclusions, (...) i.e., as reasons for believing that their conclusions are true. The focus here is reason-giving centered on such reason-to-believe uses of arguments. Accordingly, the book does not discuss uses of arguments to advance their premises as reasons for believing that the conclusion is plausible, compelling, reasonable, nontrivial, helpful, plausibly deniable, or possible in principle. For ease of reference, hereafter I'll refer to uses of arguments to advance their premises as reasons for believing that their conclusions are true simply as reason-giving uses of argument. The book focuses on reason-giving uses of arguments that have three features, put briefly as follows. (shrink)

Both of us have been involved with helping professions, especially new scientific or technological professions, develop ethics programs—for undergraduates, graduates, and practitioners. By “ethics program”, we mean any strategy for teaching ethics, including developing materials. Our purpose here is to generalize from that experience to identify the chief elements needed to get an ethics program started in a new profession. We are focusing on new professions for two reasons. First, all the older professions, both in the US and in most (...) other countries, now have ethics programs of some sort. They do not need our advice to get started. Second, new professions face special problems just because they are new—everything from deciding who belongs to the profession to formalizing ethical standards so that they can be taught. Our purpose in this paper is to generalize from our experience and to identify some of the fundamentals for getting an ethics program started in a new profession. We present our recommendations in the form of response to 6 questions anyone designing an ethics program for a new profession should ask. We realize that our brief discussion does not provide a complete treatment of the subject. Our purpose has been to point in the right direction those considering an ethics program for new profession. (shrink)

A probability distribution is regular if no possible event is assigned probability zero. While some hold that probabilities should always be regular, three counter-arguments have been posed based on examples where, if regularity holds, then perfectly similar events must have different probabilities. Howson (2017) and Benci et al. (2016) have raised technical objections to these symmetry arguments, but we see here that their objections fail. Howson says that Williamson’s (2007) “isomorphic” events are not in fact isomorphic, but Howson is speaking (...) of set-theoretic representations of events in a probability model. While those sets are not isomorphic, Williamson’s physical events are, in the relevant sense. Benci et al. claim that all three arguments rest on a conflation of different models, but they do not. They are founded on the premise that similar events should have the same probability in the same model, or in one case, on the assumption that a single rotation-invariant distribution is possible. Having failed to refute the symmetry arguments on such technical grounds, one could deny their implicit premises, which is a heavy cost, or adopt varying degrees of instrumentalism or pluralism about regularity, but that would not serve the project of accurately modelling chances. (shrink)

Blair articulates a concept of argument that suggests, as he puts it, that argument is a normative concept (Blair, Informal Logic 24:137–151, 2004, p. 190). Put roughly, the idea is that a collection of propositions doesn’t constitute an argument unless some taken together constitute a reason for the remaining proposition and thereby support it enough to provide at least prima facie justification for it (Blair, in: Blair, Johnson, Hansen, Tindale (eds) Informal Logic at 25, Proceedings of the 25th anniversary conference, (...) Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation, 2003, p.173). My primary task in this paper is to advance an understanding of the illative unit of argument and the reasons associated with it that provides an intuition pump for a normative concept of argument. My aim is to advance a positive consideration in favor of a normative concept of argument that motivates its further development. I take the normative concept of argument I defend here to be in the same ballpark as the one Blair characterizes. (shrink)

The task of this article is to propose an alternative method for adjudicating truth claims between various paradigms. Informed by sources such as Augustine, Aquinas, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Kuhn, I argue for a form of reasoning which aspires to credibility, plausibility, and explanatory capacity, rather than absolute proof. Instead of representing a flight from scientific standards, I argue that such an approach ultimately represents the best hope of safeguarding the essence of science and rationality as such.