We will look at several theories of indicative conditionals grouped into three categories: those that base its semantics on its logical counterpart (the material conditional); intensional analyses, which bring in alternative possible worlds; and a third subgroup which denies that indicative conditionals express propositions at all. We will also look at some problems for each kind of approach.

How should biological behaviour be modelled? A relatively new approach is to investigate problems in neuroethology by building physical robot models of biological sensorimotor systems. The explication and justification of this approach are here placed within a framework for describing and comparing models in the behavioural and biological sciences. First, simulation models – the representation of a hypothesis about a target system – are distinguished from several other relationships also termed “modelling” in discussions of scientific explanation. Seven dimensions on which (...) simulation models can differ are defined and distinctions between them discussed: 1. Relevance: whether the model tests and generates hypotheses applicable to biology. 2. Level: the elemental units of the model in the hierarchy from atoms to societies. 3. Generality: the range of biological systems the model can represent. 4. Abstraction: the complexity, relative to the target, or amount of detail included in the model. 5. Structural accuracy: how well the model represents the actual mechanisms underlying the behaviour. 6. Performance match: to what extent the model behaviour matches the target behaviour. 7. Medium: the physical basis by which the model is implemented. No specific position in the space of models thus defined is the only correct one, but a good modelling methodology should be explicit about its position and the justification for that position. It is argued that in building robot models biological relevance is more effective than loose biological inspiration; multiple levels can be integrated; that generality cannot be assumed but might emerge from studying specific instances; abstraction is better done by simplification than idealisation; accuracy can be approached through iterations of complete systems; that the model should be able to match and predict target behaviour; and that a physical medium can have significant advantages. These arguments reflect the view that biological behaviour needs to be studied and modelled in context, that is, in terms of the real problems faced by real animals in real environments. Key Words: animal behaviour; levels; models; neuroethology; realism; robotics; simulation. (shrink)

This article considers the relevance of time theory for Beck's theory of reflexive modernization and vice versa. It focuses in particular on discontinuity in the context of continuity, on decontextualization, naturalization and responsibility as key concerns of both perspectives on the industrial way of life. It makes explicit the temporal underpinnings of that cultural form with respect to five Cs: the creation of time to human design (C1), the commodification of time (C2), the compression of time (C3), the control of (...) time (C4) and the colonization of time (C5). It concludes that explicit concern with temporal relations shows reflexive modernization in action and facilitates improved knowledge for deliberative change. (shrink)

Philosophers have long distinguished between appearance and reality, and the opposition between a supposedly deceptive surface and a more profound truth is deeply rooted in Western culture. At a time of obsession with self-representation, when politics is enmeshed with spectacle and social and economic forces are intensely aestheticized, philosophy remains moored in traditional dichotomies: being versus appearing, interiority versus exteriority, authenticity versus alienation. Might there be more to appearance than meets the eye? In this strikingly original book, Barbara Carnevali (...) offers a philosophical examination of the roles that appearances play in social life. While Western metaphysics and morals have predominantly disdained appearances and expelled them from their domain, Carnevali invites us to look at society, ancient to contemporary, as an aesthetic phenomenon. The ways in which we appear in public and the impressions we make in terms of images, sounds, smells, and sensations are discerned by other people's senses and assessed according to their taste; this helps shape our ways of being and the world around us. Carnevali shows that an understanding of appearances is necessary to grasp the dynamics of interaction, recognition, and power in which we live-and to avoid being dominated by them. Anchored in philosophy and traversing sociology, art history, literature, and popular culture, Social Appearances develops new theoretical and conceptual tools for today's most urgent critical tasks. (shrink)

Abbott replies to each of Hauser's arguments. Problem solving by chimpanzees and evidence of recursion in the thought of a feral human being suggest that natural language is not necessary for productive thought. Communication would be trivial if the inner language were the outer language, but it is not. The decryption analogy Hauser uses is flawed, and it is not clear which way Occam's razor cuts.

It will be assumed that the questions are legitimate.

This chapter reviews issues surrounding theories of reference. The simplest theory is the Fido-Fido theory – that reference is all that an NP has to contribute to the meaning of phrases and sentences in which it occurs. Two big problems for this theory are coreferential NPs that do not behave as though they were semantically equivalent and meaningful NPs without a referent. These problems are especially acute in sentences..

In the 1960’s, both Montague (e.g. 1970, 222) and Grice (1975, 24) famously declared that natural languages were not so different from the formal languages of logic as people had thought. Montague sought to comprehend the grammars of both within a single theory, and Grice sought to explain away apparent divergences as due to the fact that the former, but not the latter, were used for conversation. But, if we confine our concept of logic to first order predicate logic (or (...) FOPL) with identity (that is, omitting everything which is not required for the pursuit of mathematical truth), then there are of course many other aspects, in addition to its use in conversation, which distinguish natural language from logic. Conventional implicature, information structure (including presupposition), tense and time reference, and the expression of causation and inference are several of these, which combine as well with syntactic complexities which are unnecessary in first order predicate logic. In this paper I will argue that such distinguishing aspects should be more fully exploited to explain the differences between the material conditional of logic and the indicative conditional of one natural language (English). (shrink)

This paper first reviews key Buddhist concepts of time anicca , khanavada and uji and then describes the way in which a particular form of Bhuddist meditation, vipassana, may be thought to actualize them in human experience. The chief aim of the paper is to present a heuristic model of how vipassana meditation, by eroding dispositional tendencies rooted in the body-unconscious alters psychological time, transforming our felt-experience of time from a binding to a liberating force.

An analysis of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's statements regarding relativism in his 2005 homily to the conclave meeting to elect the new pope in the context of the charge of "relativism" in 20th-century philosophy. Parts of this essay are adapted from Barbara Herrnstein Smith,"Pre-Post-Modern Relativism," in *Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth and the Human* (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005; Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 18 – 45.

Pace Dummett, the issue between molecularism and holism does not turn on whether a meaning theory is compositional, but on how successful communication is conceived. Given a notion of partial understanding, molecularism escapes the two most prevalent objections against holism (learnability and communication). Holism, too, can escape these objections, provided we also grant the holist a notion of partial understanding and suitably amend our conception of successful communication.

En este artículo discuto las conexiones entre el poeta, los personajes y los lectores. Mi enfoque se funda en lo siguiente: ¿Cómo se imaginan los lectores al autor, cómo imagina el autor a los personajes y de qué modo los lectores son inspirados por los personajes? He seleccionado ejemplos de la tradición homérica y, más específicamente, de algunas estrategias de interpretación en la exégesis antigua, particularmente lo que se ha dado en denominar “soluciones desde el personaje”, para proponer vinculaciones con (...) la interpretación literaria y la crítica textual moderna. In this article I discuss the connections between poet, characters and readers. My focus is based on the following question: How is the author imagined by readers, how are the characters imagined by the author and how the characters inspire readers? I have taken my examples from the Homeric tradition and, more specifically, from some manoeuvres of interpretation in ancient exegesis, particularly the so-called ‘solutions from character’, suggesting a connection with modern textual criticism and literary interpretation. (shrink)

Here I craft a case for recognizing the roots and patterns that ground the possibility of contemporary com-posting—as outlined in Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble—by New Materialists and critical pragmatists, especially those who are affected by the social injustices and ill-advised practices of today’s formal education. I explore both Spinozan Ethics and American pragmatism in order to fashion a pattern that affects educational thought and action. That pattern of affect/affecting is one Haraway calls “attunement”, a state of co-relation that (...) makes “unexpected feats possible.” My goal is to encourage those educational theorists who dwell in a critical pragmatist archive and those who dwell in a New Materialist archive to “make kin,” to learn to play string figures with a companion species, as they com-post educational possibility in a world where agency is both more limited and more widely-distributed. (shrink)

Es ist ein Charakteristikum der hellenistisch-kaiserzeitlichen Lebensphilosophie, dass sie der ethischen Ausbildung des Menschen fuer die Lebenspraxis zentrale Bedeutung zuweist. Philosophie wird praxisbezogen und genieat den Stellenwert einer Lebenskunst (ars vitae). Dies gilt in besonderem Maae auch fuer Epiktet (ca. 50-135 n.Chr.), der in den Lehrgesprachen (Diatriben) seinen Schuelern Hilfen zur Bewaltigung des taglichen Lebens an die Hand gibt. Die vorliegende Monografie untersucht anhand einer eingehenden Analyse der vielschichtigen Dialogstruktur von Epiktets Lehrgesprachen die von Epiktet angewandten Mittel der Willenserziehung und (...) kommt u.a. zu dem ueberraschenden Ergebnis, dass Epiktet bereits Methoden wahlt, die auch in der modernen Psychologie Verwendung finden. Die Bedeutung dieses Werkes liegt - abgesehen vom unmittelbaren Gewinn fuer das Verstandnis Epiktets - darin, dass wichtige Einsichten im Bereich der Padagogik gewonnen werden, und zwar sowohl in systematischer als auch in historischer Hinsicht. "a ein Standardwerk fuer die formale Gestaltung von Epiktets Diatribena" Gymnasium "ades analyses tres precises et tres fines a] (I)l fault souligner limportance de cet excellent ouvrage pour letude de la grande tradition de la direction de conscience, de la meditation et des techniques de formation de la volonte qui sest maintenue et developpee dun bout a lautre de lhistoire de la philosophie antique. Gnomon. (shrink)

Technology assessment (TA) is – for several reasons – not detachable from ethical questions. The development of institutions and concepts for TA, especially in the USA and Western Europe, has been marked by an increasing tendency to focus evaluative and normative questions. In the following paper, we point out, in as far as the common notions of TA are implicitly normative, why reflection upon conceptual options of TA inevitably leads to ethical questions, and that the key question of participation necessarily (...) comes up in the context of societal decisions made under conditions of risk or uncertainty. Arrangements of participatory and discoursive TA are referred to as possible applications of discourse ethics, but there are consequences to consider, which result from discourses in TA not being ideal discourses. Concepts and performance of TA arrangements on biotechnology and gene technology in different European countries are compared, analysing what similarities and differences can be found with respect to ethical clarification. Crucial questions of how to conceptualise participatory TA (pTA) and current topics in ethics of technology are shown to coincide. A proposal is presented of how these – theoretical normative and empirical descriptive – considerations can be used in a comprehensive conception for participatory and discoursive TA. (shrink)

Portrayals of female scientists in science fiction tend to be rare and often distorted. Our research investigates the social media discourse related to public perceptions of the portrayals of scientists in science fiction. We explore the following questions: How does audience discourse about a female scientist protagonist in a science fiction film compare with that about a male scientist in a comparable movie? And, what fraction of discourse in each case is dedicated to (a) comments on physical appearance and (b) (...) incredulity that the character is a scientist? Using automated nonparametric sentiment analysis software that employs an intelligent algorithm informed by human coding, we analyze Twitter discourse around the release of two summer 2011 science fiction blockbusters with scientists in lead roles: Thor and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Although scholars have pointed to sexualized portrayals of women scientists in popular media, we found relatively few mentions of the attractiveness of an admittedly attractive female scientist. Additionally, audience discourse was not centered on the implausibility of the female scientist. This is particularly meaningful when combined with previous research showing that strong women in lead roles do not decrease profitability of science fiction films. (shrink)

This essay uses Garland’s framework from The Culture of Control to suggest an agenda for critical penology. This includes, as well as the analysis of choices actually made and the cultural repertoire actually available, describing and advocating other possible choices, and analysing the conditions of possibility for the adoption of other (better) policies and practices; and examining the implications for the future of choices which are currently being made. Carlen’s Women and Punishment: The Struggle for Justice and Garland’s edited collection (...) Mass Imprisonment in the USA are examples of these penologies. Another way in which penologists, social theorists and philosophers can attempt to influence policy choices is to contribute to enlargement of the available cultural repertoire. The development and promotion of restorative justice is given as one example of this; another is work by philosophers such as Duff, Matravers and Norrie which addresses questions such as the source, nature and limits of penal communities; the basis of political obligation, and the relational nature of responsibility for crime. (shrink)