Despite its diminished importance amongst philosophers, the deductive-nomological framework is still important to contemporary behavioral scientists. Behavioral theorists operating within this framework must be careful to distinguish between nesting and chaining. Explanations are chained when the explanandum sentence of one explanation is one of the antecedent conditions of another. They are nested when one of the antecedent conditions or the explanandum sentence of one explanation is one of the covering laws of another. Confusion between nesting and chaining leads to explanation (...) nests that cannot be nomologically entrenched. They cannot, even in principle, be logically connected to laws arising from other sciences. This hazard should be particularly important for evolutionary psychologists to avoid, since many evolutionary psychologists tend to see themselves as dedicated to both nomological entrenchment and cognitive functionalist models. The hazard can be avoided if the intentional constructs of the behavioral sciences are construed not as ineffable and inaccessible antecedent conditions, but as complex, law-like patterns in behavior. (shrink)

Aim: Participation in classroom physical activity breaks may improve children’s cognition, but few studies have involved adolescents. The primary aim of this study was to examine the effects of classroom-based resistance training with and without cognitive training on adolescents’ cognitive function.Methods: Participants were 97 secondary school students. Four-year 10 classes from one school were included in this four-arm cluster randomized controlled trial. Classes were randomly assigned to the following groups: sedentary control with no cognitive training, sedentary with cognitive training, resistance (...) training without cognitive training, and resistance training with cognitive training. Sessions varied in levels of both cognitive demand and resistance training and were administered three times per week for 4 weeks. Inhibition, cognitive flexibility, episodic memory, on-task behavior, and muscular fitness were assessed at baseline and post-test. Linear mixed models were used to examine changes within and between groups.Results: In comparison with the control group, episodic memory improved significantly in the resistance training without cognitive training group. There were no group-by-time effects for inhibition or cognitive flexibility. Classroom activity breaks both with and without cognitive demand improved participants’ on-task behavior in comparison with the control and sedentary group. The resistance training programs did not lead to improvements in muscular fitness.Conclusion: Participation in body weight resistance training without cognitive training led to selective improvements in episodic memory. No training effects were found for inhibition or cognitive flexibility. A longer study period may be necessary to induce improvements in muscular fitness and associated changes in inhibition and cognitive flexibility.Clinical Trial Registration:https://www.anzctr.org.au/ACTRN12621001341819.aspx, Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry—ACTRN12621001341819. (shrink)

Neil Sinhababu and I presented Backward Clock, an original counterexample to Robert Nozick’s truth-tracking analysis of propositional knowledge. In their latest defence of the truth-tracking theories, “Methods Matter: Beating the Backward Clock,” Fred Adams, John A. Barker and Murray Clarke try again to defend Nozick’s and Fred Dretske’s early analysis of propositional knowledge against Backward Clock. They allege failure of truth-adherence, mistakes on my part about methods, and appeal to charity, ‘equivocation,’ reliable methods and unfair internalism. I argue that (...) these objections all fail. They are still stuck with the fact that the tracking theories fall to Backward Clock, an even more useful test case for other analyses of knowledge than might have first appeared. (shrink)

In this entertaining and provocative introduction, Royle offers lucid explanations of various key ideas, including deconstruction, undecidability, iterability, differance, aporia, the pharmakon, the supplement, a new enlightenment, and the democracy to come. He also gives attention, however, to a range of less obvious key ideas of Derrida, such as earthquakes, animals and animality, ghosts, monstrosity, the poematic, drugs, gifts, secrets, war, and mourning. Derrida is seen as an extraordinarily inventive thinker, as well as a brilliantly imaginative and often very funny (...) writer. Other critical introductions tend to highlight the specifically philosophical nature and genealogy of his work. Royle's book proceeds in a new and different way, in particular by focusing on the crucial but strange place of literature in Derrida's writings. He thus provides an appreciation and understanding based on detailed reference to Derrida's texts, interwoven with close readings of such writers as Shakespeare, Coleridge, P.B. Shelley, Poe, Emily Brontë, Franz Kafka and Elizabeth Bowen. In doing so, he explores Derrida's consistent view that deconstruction is "a coming-to-terms with literature". He emphasizes the ways in which "literature", for Derrida, is indissociably bound up with other concerns, such as philosophy and psychoanalysis, politics and ethics, responsibility and justice, law and democracy. (shrink)

Here, I combine the semantics of Mares and Goldblatt [20] and Seki [29, 30] to develop a semantics for quantified modal relevant logics extending ${\bf B}$. The combination requires demonstrating that the Mares–Goldblatt approach is apt for quantified extensions of ${\bf B}$ and other relevant logics, but no significant bridging principles are needed. The result is a single semantic approach for quantified modal relevant logics. Within this framework, I discuss the requirements a quantified modal relevant logic must satisfy to be (...) “sufficiently classical” in its modal fragment, where frame conditions are given that work for positive fragments of logics. The roles of the Barcan formula and its converse are also investigated. (shrink)

Presumption is a remarkably versatile and pervasively useful resource. Firmly grounded in the law of evidence from its origins in classical antiquity, it made its way in the days of medieval scholasticism into the theory and practice of disputation and debate. Subsequently, it extended its reach to play an increasingly significant role in the philosophical theory of knowledge. It has thus come to represent a region where lawyers, debaters, and philosophers can all find some common around. In Presumption and the (...) Practices of Tentative Cognition, Nicholas Rescher endeavors to show that the process of presumption plays a role of virtually indispensable utility in matters of rational inquiry and communication. The origins of presumption may lie in law, but its importance is reinforced by its service to the theory of information management and philosophy. (shrink)

Individuals are a prominent part of the biological world. Although biologists and philosophers of biology draw freely on the concept of an individual in articulating both widely accepted and more controversial claims, there has been little explicit work devoted to the biological notion of an individual itself. How should we think about biological individuals? What are the roles that biological individuals play in processes such as natural selection (are genes and groups also units of selection?), speciation (are species individuals?), and (...) organismic development (do genomes code for organisms)? Much of our discussion here will focus on organisms as a central kind of biological individual, and that discussion will raise broader questions about the nature of the biological world, for example, about its complexity, its organization, and its relation to human thought. (shrink)

Enkrasia and the Fixed Point Thesis are equivalent.

I argue that inquiry can be defined without reference to the attitudes inquirers have during inquiry. Inquiry can instead be defined by its aim: it is the activity that has the aim of answering a question. I call this approach to defining inquiry a “naive” account. I present the naive account of inquiry in contrast to a prominent contemporary account of inquiry most notably defended by Jane Friedman. According to this view of inquiry, which I call an attitude-centric view, inquiry (...) is appropriately defined not by the aim of the activity but by the attitudes that inquirers have during inquiry. After developing the naive view, I defend it against the objection that it collapses into the attitude-centric view. (shrink)

Abstract. A rhesus monkey, Helen, from whom the striate cortex was almost totally removed, was studied intensively over a period of 8 years. During this time she regained an effective, though limited, degree of visually guided behaviour. The evidence suggests that while Helen suffered a permanent loss of `focal vision she retained (initially unexpressed) the capacity for `ambient vision.

Given the growing prominence of nudge economics both within and beyond the academy, it is a timely moment to reassess the philosophical and political arguments that sit at its core, and in particular what Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein call libertarian paternalism. The first half of this paper provides a detailed account of the main features of this form of paternalism, before moving, in the second half, to a critical evaluation of the nudge agenda that questions, among other things, the (...) gendered basis of paternalistic governance; the idea of ‘nudging for good’; and the political values that underpin nudge. The final section of this paper builds on the existing work of John McMahon by asking whether libertarian paternalism should be understood as a new, hybrid form of neoliberalism, or, rather, as a post-neoliberal form of governance that has emerged out of, and flourished in, the post-crisis situation. (shrink)

This volume presents new work in history and historiography to the increasingly broad audience for studies of the history and philosophy of science. These essays are linked by a concern to understand the context of early modern science in its own context.

While Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs) have been shown to be effective for a range of patient populations and outcomes, a question remains as to the role of common therapeutic factors, as opposed to the specific effects of mindfulness practice, in contributing to patient improvements. This project used a mixed-method design to investigate the contribution of specific (mindfulness practice-related) and common (instructor and group related) therapeutic factors to client improvements within an MBI. Participants with mild-severe depression (N= 104; 73% female,Mage = 40.28) (...) participated in an 8-week MBI. Specific therapeutic factors (formal out-of-class meditation minutes and informal mindfulness practice frequency) and social common factors (instructor and group ratings) were entered into multilevel growth curve models to predict changes in depression, anxiety, stress, and mindfulness at six timepoints from baseline to 3-month follow-up. Qualitative interviews with participants provided rich descriptions of how instructor and group related factors played a role in therapeutic trajectories. Findings indicated that instructor ratings predicted changes in depression and stress, group ratings predicted changes in stress and self-reported mindfulness, and formal meditation predicted changes in anxiety and stress, while informal mindfulness practice did not predict client improvements. Social common factors were stronger predictors of improvements in depression, stress, and self-reported mindfulness than specific mindfulness practice-related factors. Qualitative data supported the importance of relationships with instructor and group members, involving bonding, expressing feelings, and instilling hope. Our findings dispel the myth that MBI outcomes are exclusively the result of mindfulness meditation practice, and suggest that social common factors may account for much of the effects of these interventions. Further research on meditation should take into consideration the effects of social context and other common therapeutic factors. (shrink)

Eclipse of Grace offers original insights into the roots of modern theology by introducing systematic theologians and Christian ethicists to Hegel through a focus on three of his seminal texts: Phenomenology of Spirit, Science of Logic, and Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Presents brilliant and original insights into Hegel’s significance for modern theology Argues that, theologically, Hegel has been misconstrued and that much more can be gained by focusing on the logic that he develops out of an engagement with (...) Christian doctrines Features an original structure organized as a set of commentaries on individual Hegel texts, and not just presenting overviews of his entire corpus Offers detailed engagement with Hegel’s texts rather than relying on generalizations about Hegelian philosophy Provides an illuminating, accessible and lucid account of the thinking of the major figures in modern German philosophy and theology. (shrink)

This paper proposes interpretations of the vexed notions of intensionality and intentionality and then investigates their resulting interrelations.The notion of intentionality comes from Brentano, in connection with his view that it can help us understand the mental. Setting aside Husserl’s basic definition of intentionality as not quite in line with Brentano’s explanatory purpose, this paper proposes that intentionality be defined in terms of inexistence and indeterminacy.It results that Brentano’s thesis (that all and only mental phenomena are intentional) will not be (...) strictly true. However, intentional descriptions will always be intensional, though not all intensional descriptions will be intentional. (shrink)

Great advances have been made of late years in the understanding of ancient artillery, but the difference between the παλíντινιν and the εθτινιν seems to remain a riddle still inviting solution. In tentatively accepting the invitation, we are met at the outset by a certain amount of fog due to the fact that ancient guns were classed by two methods which produce a cross division. It will pay us to dispel this fog, or at any rate to find our bearings (...) in it as exactly as may be, before going further. (shrink)

Presents a collection of twelve essays on teleological explanation in the natural sciences dealing with considerations regarding teleological concepts in biology to the role of teleology in the human sciences and even in cosmology. Co-published with the Center for Philosophy of Science.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.