ID 68, the important Delian inscription found in 1910 prohibiting access to outsiders and with jurisdiction probably over the Archegesion, is shown to have been inscribed twice. This is not a matter of republication, rather of simultaneous publication within the same sanctuary. The article provides a new text and a complete bibliography for the double publication before analyzing the architectural function of the two inscriptions and their significance as sacred law. With emphasis on the palaeography and aesthetic value of the (...) letterforms as well as on the physical evidence of the stones themselves, the meaning of the prohibition is reexamined, resulting in the proposal of a specific social context and date. (shrink)

This is a unique book. It is excellently written, crammed with information, wise and a pleasure to read.' ---Daniel C. Dennett, Tufts University.

Anydomainofscientificresearchhasitssustainingorthodoxy. Thatis, research on a problem, whether in astronomy, physics, or biology, is con- ducted against a backdrop of broadly shared assumptions. It is these as- sumptionsthatguideinquiryandprovidethecanonofwhatisreasonable-- of what "makes sense." And it is these shared assumptions that constitute a framework for the interpretation of research results. Research on the problem of how we see is likewise sustained by broadly shared assump- tions, where the current orthodoxy embraces the very general idea that the business of the visual system is to (...) create a detailed replica of the visual world, and that it accomplishes its business via hierarchical organization and by operatingessentiallyindependently of other sensorymodalitiesas well as independently of previous learning, goals, motor planning, and motor execution. (shrink)

During the first two years of human life a common neural substrate underlies the hierarchical organization of elements in the development of speech as well as the capacity to combine objects manually, including tool use. Subsequent cortical differentiation, beginning at age two, creates distinct, relatively modularized capacities for linguistic grammar and more complex combination of objects. An evolutionary homologue of the neural substrate for language production and manual action is hypothesized to have provided a foundation for the evolution of language (...) before the divergence of the hominids and the great apes. Support comes from the discovery of a Broca's area homologue and related neural circuits in contemporary primates. In addition, chimpanzees have an identical constraint on hierarchical complexity in both tool use and symbol combination. Their performance matches that of the two-year-old child who has not yet developed the neural circuits for complex grammar and complex manual combination of objects. (shrink)

Overview -- Locke's internal sense and Kant's changing views -- Personal identity amd its problems -- Rationalist metaphysics of mind -- Consciousness, self-consciousness, and cognition -- Strands of Argument in the Duisburg Nachlass -- A transcendental deduction for a priori concepts -- Synthesis : why and how? -- Arguing for apperception -- The power of apperception -- "I-think" as the destroyer of rational psychology -- Is Kant's theory consistent? -- The normativity objection -- Is Kant's thinker (as such) a free (...) and responsible agent? -- Kant our contemporary. (shrink)

Butz, Achimova, Bilkey, and Knott provide a topic overview and discuss whether the special issue contributions may imply that event‐predictive abilities constitute a root for conceptual human thought, because they enable complex, mutually beneficial, but also intricately competitive, social interactions and language communication.

A remarkable hypothesis has recently been advanced by Libet and promoted by Eccles which claims that there is standardly a backwards referral of conscious experiences in time, and that this constitutes empirical evidence for the failure of identity of brain states and mental states. Libet's neurophysiological data are critically examined and are found insufficient to support the hypothesis. Additionally, it is argued that even if there is a temporal displacement phenomenon to be explained, a neurophysiological explanation is most likely.

In its treatment of the role of emotion in ethics the argument of the book outlines a new way of packing motivational force into moral meaning that allows for a ...

Evolutionary biology and feminism share a variety of philosophical and practical concerns. I have tried to describe how a perspective from both evolutionary biology and feminism can accelerate the achievement of goals for both feminists and evolutionary biologists. In an early section of this paper I discuss the importance of variation to the disciplines of evolutionary biology and feminism. In the section entitled “Control of Female Reproduction” I demonstrate how insight provided by participation in life as woman and also as (...) a feminist suggests testable hypotheses about the evolution of social behavior—hypotheses that are applicable to our investigations of the evolution of social behavior in nonhuman animals. In the section on “Deceit, Self-deception, and Patriarchal Reversals” I have overtly conceded that evolutionary biology, a scientific discipline, also represents a human cultural practice that, like other human cultural practices, may in parts and at times be characterized by deceit and self-deception. In the section on “Femininity” I have indicated how questions cast and answered and hypotheses tested from an evolutionary perspective can serve women and men struggling with sexist oppression. (shrink)

I analyze the extent to which classical phase transitions, both first order and continuous, pose a challenge for intertheoretic reduction. My contention is that phase transitions are compatible with a notion of reduction that combines Nagelian reduction and what Thomas Nickles called Reduction2. I also argue that, even if the same approach to reduction applies to both types of phase transitions, there is a crucial difference in their physical treatment: in addition to the thermodynamic limit, in continuous phase transitions there (...) is a second infinite limit involved, which marks an important difference in the reduction of first-order and continuous phase transitions. (shrink)

Current treatments of practical rationality understand reasons as considerations counting in favor of or against some practical option, treating the positive and the negative case as symmetrical. Typically the focus is on examples of positive reasons. However, I want to shift the spotlight to negative reasons, as making a tighter or more direct link to rationality — and ultimately to morality, which is what much of the current interest in reasons is meant to clarify. Recognizing a positive/negative asymmetry in normative (...) force will let us reconcile the view of moral or other requirements as based on reasons with the denial that reasons as such, even all-thingsconsidered reasons, yield requirements — or as I like to put it, rationally compel. (shrink)

In this chapter, I defend a pluralistic approach to intertheoretic reduction, in which reduction is not understood in terms of a single philosophical “generalized model”, but rather as a family of models that can help achieve certain epistemic and ontological goals. I will argue then that the reductive model (or combination of models) that best suits to a particular case study depends on the specific goals that motivate the reduction in the intended case study.

In this paper, I compare the use of the thermodynamic limit in the theory of phase transitions with the infinite-time limit in the explanation of equilibrium statistical mechanics. In the case of phase transitions, I will argue that the thermodynamic limit can be justified pragmatically since the limit behavior also arises before we get to the limit and for values of N that are physically significant. However, I will contend that the justification of the infinite-time limit is less straightforward. In (...) fact, I will point out that even in cases where one can recover the limit behavior for finite t, i.e. before we get to the limit, one cannot recover this behavior for realistic time scales. I will claim that this leads us to reconsider the role that the rate of convergence plays in the justification of infinite limits and calls for a revision of the so-called Butterfield’s principle. (shrink)

Empirically minded philosophers have raised questions about judgments and theories based on moral intuitions such as Rawls’s method of reflective equilibrium. But they work from the notion of intuitions assumed in empirical work, according to which intuitions are immediate assessments, as in psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s definition. Haidt himself regards such intuitions as an appropriate basis for moral judgment, arguing that normal agents do not reason prior to forming a judgment and afterwards just “confabulate” reasons in its defense. I argue, first, (...) that the notion of “considered intuitive judgment” that Rawls spells out when he first presents his method is pre-theoretical, but not at all pre-reflective, in the way Haidt’s definition supposes; it may rest on various forms of reasoning short of systematic derivation from theoretical principles. I go on to take issue with Haidt’s dismissal of ex post facto moral reasoning, arguing that it can play both a causal role in an individual’s later intuitions or judgments and a legitimate normative role, as required by moral competence in judging non-taboo cases. I suggest that the move from intuition to judgment and thence to ex post facto reasoning makes sense as a justificatory version of Peircean abduction, or what is now mainly called “inference to the best explanation.”. (shrink)

Via a close reading of The Ethics of Ambiguity and The Second Sex, this chapter examines how Simone de Beauvoir's analogical thinking about race and gender shape her arguments concerning oppression and freedom. First, Beauvoir uses gender as an analytical category to examine women's oppression. In contrast, Beauvoir uses race, age, class and ethnicity as descriptive experiences that provide evidence for her analysis of women's oppression. Second, Beauvoir's analysis of women's oppression relies on an uncritical analogical method to develop arguments (...) about gender oppression, with the race/gender analogy granted special prominence. Third, the substance of Beauvoir's analogies undermines her theory of existentialist freedom: manipulating root metaphors that depict Black people as silent slaves or non‐independent women as complicit in their own subordination makes existential freedom difficult if not impossible for the majority of human beings. (shrink)

This paper argues that Book 3 of Porphyry’s De abstinentia contains an overlooked argument in favor of vegetarianism for the sake of non-human animals themselves. The argument runs as follows: animals are essentially sentient creatures. Sentience (αἴσθησις) allows them to discern what is good for their survival and what is destructive to them, so that they can pursue the former and avoid the latter. As a result, animals (human and non-human) have preferences, desires, and hopes. Having purposeful strivings that can (...) be promoted or frustrated makes them recipients of justice and injustice. This means, for Porphyry, that animals, unlike plants, can be wronged since they are creatures that discern, and purposefully pursue, what is good or bad for them. This reading stands against interpretations that argue that Porphyry advocates vegetarianism only for our benefit, and not for the animals’ own sake. (shrink)

Ruth Marcus has offered an account of moral dilemmas in which the presence of dilemmas acts as a motivating force, pushing us to try to minimize predicaments of moral conflict. In this paper, I defend a Marcus-style account of dilemmas against two objections: first, that if dilemmas are real, we are forced to blame those who have done their best, and second, that in some cases, even a stripped down version of blame seems inappropriate. My account highlights the importance of (...) collective responsibility in understanding dilemmas, and I suggest that it sheds light on understanding moral progress. (shrink)

In GIVING WELL: THE ETHICS OF PHILANTHROPY, an accomplished trio of editors bring together an international group of distinguished philosophers, social scientists, lawyers and practitioners to identify and address the most urgent moral questions arising today in the practice of philanthropy.

Knowledge-first epistemology includes a knowledge norm of action: roughly, act only on what you know. This norm has been criticized, especially from the perspective of so-called standard decision theory. Mueller and Ross provide example decision problems which seem to show that acting properly cannot require knowledge. I argue that this conclusion depends on applying a particular decision theory which is ill-motivated in this context. Agents’ knowledge is often most plausibly formalized as an ambiguous epistemic state, and the theory of decision (...) under ambiguity is then the appropriate modeling tool. I show how to model agents as acting rationally on the basis of their knowledge according to such a theory. I conclude that the tension between the knowledge norm of action and formal decision theory is illusory; the knowledge-first paradigm should be used to actively select the decision-theoretical tools that can best capture the knowledge-based decisions in any given situation. (shrink)

Habit and Embodiment in Merleau-PontyIntroductionMerleau-Ponty (French phenomenological philosopher, born in 1908 and deceased in 1961) refers to habit in various passages of his Phenomenology of Perception as a relevant issue in his philosophical and phenomenological position. Through his exploration of this issue he explains both the pre-reflexive character that our original linkage with the world has, as well as the kind of “understanding” that our body develops with regard to the world. These two characteristics of human existence bear a close (...) relation with the vision of an embodied mind sustained by Gallagher and Zahavi in their work The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science. Merleau-Ponty uses concepts like those of the lived or own body and of lived space in order to emphasize, from a first-person perspective, the co-penetration that exists between subject and world.Gallagher and Zahavi have regained the experience of phenomenology, especially that of Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, to contribute to the development of the cognitive sciences. Via the phenomenological approach to the reality of habit, a new understanding of the body becomes possible for us, such that it becomes characterized “as subject, as experiencer, as agent”, and at the same time we can understand “the way the body structures our experience” (Gallagher and Zahavi, 2008). Additionally, the idea of a pre-reflexive understanding is conceived of by these authors... (shrink)

This handbook brings together leading international scholars to study the diverse figures, movements, and approaches that constitute Presocratic philosophy. More than a survey of scholarship, this study presents new interpretations and evaluations of the Presocratics' accomplishments, from Thales to the sophists and from theology to science.

The notion of “cultural competency” in healthcare has gained currency in recent years. Health professionals are expected to be sensitive to the cultural backgrounds and language of their patients. Courses on cultural competency are now routinely offered to physicians, nurses, and others working in health fields. Although the rhetoric of cultural competency has been applied to clinical contexts, little attention has been given to its applicability in health research generally or, more specifically, in international health research. In this paper, I (...) briefly explore the relevance and limitations of cultural competency for informed consent to international health research, particularly in the context of low-resource settings. (shrink)

The category of emotions covers a disputed territory, but clear examples include fear, anger, joy, pride, sadness, disgust, shame, contempt and the like. Such states are commonly thought of as antithetical to reason, disorienting and distorting practical thought. However, there is also a sense in which emotions are factors in practical reasoning, understood broadly as reasoning that issues in action. At the very least emotions can function as "enabling" causes of rational decision-making (despite the many cases in which they are (...) disabling) insofar as they direct attention toward certain objects of thought and away from others. They serve to heighten memory and to limit the set of salient practical options to a manageable set, suitable for "quick-and-dirty" decision-making. (shrink)

In 1785, George Washington described a “knowing farmer” as “one who can convert every thing he touches into manure, as the first transmutation towards Gold.” With these words, Washington linked the “knowing farmer” to the alchemist who endeavored to transform base metals into gold with the aid of a philosopher's stone. In each instance, the challenge was to convert raw materials into something new and precious.Today, the “knowing bioethicist” is in a similar position. American bioethics harbors a variety of ethical (...) methods that emphasize different ethical factors, including principles, circumstances, character, interpersonal needs, and personal meaning. Each method reflects an important aspect of ethical experience, adds to the others, and enriches the ethical imagination. (shrink)

The "Ibercorp affair" was front-page news in Spain at various times between 1992 and 1995. In itself, there was nothing particularly new about it: a newly formed financial group engaged in legally and ethically reprehensible behaviour that eventually came to light in the media, ruining the company (and the careers of those involved). What aroused public interest at the time was the fact that it involved individuals connected with Spanish public and political life, the media and certain business circles. Above (...) all, it demonstrated the personal, economic, social and political consequences of a business culture based on the pursuit of easy profits at any price (what came to be known as the cultura del pelotazo or "culture of the fast buck"). Again, this is all too familiar in business ethics. But it served to goad Spanish society into a rejection of such behaviour. This article describes the facts and their ethical implications. (shrink)

This paper examines the connection between model-theoretic truth and necessary truth. It is argued that though the model-theoretic truths of some standard languages are demonstrably ''''necessary'''' (in a precise sense), the widespread view of model-theoretic truth as providing a general guarantee of necessity is mistaken. Several arguments to the contrary are criticized.

The highest principle of Kant’s theoretical philosophy is that all cognition must “be combined in one single self-consciousness”. Elsewhere I have tried to explain why he believed that all cognition must belong to a single self ; here I try to clarify the other half of the doctrine. What led him to the claim that all cognition involved self-consciousness? This question is pressing, because the thesis strikes many as obviously false.

How do people imagine the possibilities in which an assertion would be true and the possibilities in which it would be false? We argue that the mental representation of the meanings of connectives, such as "and", "or", and "if", specify how to construct the true possibilities for simple assertions containing just a single connective. It follows that the false possibilities are constructed by inference from the true possibilities. We report converging evidence supporting this account from four experiments in which the (...) participants had to list the true and the false possibilities for various sorts of assertion. Their systematic errors, response times, and think-aloud protocols corroborated the theory's predictions. Not even true possibilities are immediately available for complex assertions containing two or more different connectives. The task of listing the true possibilities then becomes difficult, and the task of listing the false possibilities almost impossible. (shrink)

This paper proposes how various disciplinary theories of cognition may be combined into a unifying, sub-symbolic, computational theory of cognition. The following theories are considered for integration: psychological theories, including the theory of event coding, event segmentation theory, the theory of anticipatory behavioral control, and concept development; artificial intelligence and machine learning theories, including reinforcement learning and generative artificial neural networks; and theories from theoretical and computational neuroscience, including predictive coding and free energy-based inference. In the light of such a (...) potential unification, it is discussed how abstract cognitive, conceptualized knowledge and understanding may be learned from actively gathered sensorimotor experiences. The unification rests on the free energy-based inference principle, which essentially implies that the brain builds a predictive, generative model of its environment. Neural activity-oriented inference causes the continuous adaptation of the currently active predictive encodings. Neural structure-oriented inference causes the longer term adaptation of the developing generative model as a whole. Finally, active inference strives for maintaining internal homeostasis, causing goal-directed motor behavior. To learn abstract, hierarchical encodings, however, it is proposed that free energy-based inference needs to be enhanced with structural priors, which bias cognitive development towards the formation of particular, behaviorally suitable encoding structures. As a result, it is hypothesized how abstract concepts can develop from, and thus how they are structured by and grounded in, sensorimotor experiences. Moreover, it is sketched-out how symbol-like thought can be generated by a temporarily active set of predictive encodings, which constitute a distributed neural attractor in the form of an interactive free-energy minimum. The activated, interactive network attractor essentially characterizes the semantics of a concept or a concept composition, such as an actual or imagined situation in our environment. Temporal successions of attractors then encode unfolding semantics, which may be generated by a behavioral or mental interaction with an actual or imagined situation in our environment. Implications, further predictions, possible verification and falsifications, as well as potential enhancements into a fully spelled-out unified theory of cognition are discussed at the end of the paper. (shrink)

Concerned with the idea of the self, this text challenges what it perceives to be the bleak deconstructionist views of ceaseless change with a discussion and depiction of the self in new vocabulary - an action-oriented self defined by the ways in which it communicates.

The study of morality is increasingly an interdisciplinary endeavor spanning the cognitive, social, and biological sciences. This article provides an overview and synthesis of recent work fields relevant to the scientific understanding of morality, with a focus on how moral judgment and behavior are rooted in the functioning, development, and evolution of the brain. It presents themes that have emerged from studies examining the cognitive processes involved in morality. It shows studies that directly investigate the neural substrates of morality using (...) modern brain imaging techniques. A number of brain regions and systems are identified that appear to be essential for normal moral behavior. The article focuses on two clinical conditions: lesions to the prefrontal cortex and psychopathy. Furthermore, it discusses neuroendocrinology and evolutionary neurobiology—that is relevant to understanding the development of morality and concerns evolutionary history and functions of two neuropeptides, oxytocin and vasopressin, in the mammalian brain and their effects on behavior. (shrink)

Descartes's claim that the eternal truths were freely created by God is fraught with interpretive difficulties. The main arguments in the literature are classified as concerning the ontological status or the modalities of possibility and necessity of the eternal truths. The views of the principal defenders of the Creation Doctrine – Robert Desgabets, Pierre Sylvain Régis, and Antoine Le Grand are contrasted with those of Nicolas Malebranche. In clarifying the theological, ontological, and logical terms of the debate we can see (...) that what was at stake was the objectivity and certainty of the truths of mathematics and physics. I conclude by suggesting that this issue might fruitfully be used to clarify the disparate discussions in the contemporary literature. (shrink)