Paul M. Pietroski presents an ambitious new account of human languages as generative procedures that respect substantive constraints. He argues that meanings are neither concepts nor extensions, and sentences do not have truth conditions; meanings are composable instructions for how to access and assemble concepts of a special sort.

In _ Plato's Camera_, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation -- or "takes a picture" -- of the universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth, yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories (...) to which any perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled in the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book. Unexpectedly, this neurobiologically grounded account of human cognition also provides a systematic story of how such low-level epistemological activities are integrated within an enveloping framework of linguistic structures and regulatory mechanisms at the social level. As Churchland illustrates, this integration of cognitive mechanisms at several levels has launched the human race on an epistemological adventure denied to all other terrestrial creatures. (shrink)

A study in the philosophy of science, proposing a strong form of the doctrine of scientific realism' and developing its implications for issues in the philosophy of mind.

For the uninitiated, there are two major tendencies in the modeling of human cognition. The older, tradtional school believes, in essence, that full human cognition can be modeled by dividing the world up into distinct entities -- called __symbol s__-- such as “dog”, “cat”, “run”, “bite”, “happy”, “tumbleweed”, and so on, and then manipulating this vast set of symbols by a very complex and very subtle set of rules. The opposing school claims that this system, while it might be good (...) at concluding that Paris is the capital of France or that there must be blood flowing in the left-rear leg of a cow, can never capture the full measure -- indeed, the essence -- of human cognition. For them, the essential features of cognition emerge from the combined effects of myriad, tiny actions far below the surface of consciousness. This is the camp to which Paul Churchland belongs. (shrink)

The event analysis of action sentences seems to be at odds with plausible (Davidsonian) views about how to count actions. If Booth pulled a certain trigger, and thereby shot Lincoln, there is good reason for identifying Booths' action of pulling the trigger with his action of shooting Lincoln; but given truth conditions of certain sentences involving adjuncts, the event analysis requires that the pulling and the shooting be distinct events. So I propose that event sortals like 'shooting' and 'pulling' are (...) true of complex events that have actions (and various effects of actions) as parts. Combining this view with some facts about so-called causative verbs, I then argue that paradigmatic actions are best viewed as tryings, where tryings are taken to be intentionally characterized events that typically cause peripheral bodily motions. The proposal turns on a certain conception of what it is to be the Agent of an event; and I conclude by elaborating this conception in the context of some recent discussions about the relation of thematic roles to grammatical categories. (shrink)

This collection was prepared in the belief that the most useful and revealing of anyone's writings are often those shorter essays penned in conflict with...

ABSTRACT This paper is a case study in public health ethics. It considers whether there is a basis in ethics for political action by health professionals and their associations in response to inhumane treatment. The issue arises from Australia's treatment of asylum seekers and the charge that this treatment has been both immoral and inhumane. This judgement raises several questions of broader significance in bioethics and of significance to the emerging field of public health ethics. These questions relate to the (...) role of health professionals in response to inhumane treatment of people in their charge; to the discipline of public health in light of a growing recognition of its ethical basis; and the role of public health and bioethical associations in response to ethical issues arising in a political context. It is argued that, in serious cases of humanitarian and human rights abuses affecting health and well‐being, there is a case for political action by health professionals, academic and professional institutions, and associations of public health and ethics. (shrink)

We examine possible causal structures of experiments with entangled quantum objects. Previously, these structures have been obscured by assuming a misleading probabilistic analysis of quantum non locality as 'Outcome Dependence or Parameter Dependence' and by directly associating these correlations with influences. Here we try to overcome these shortcomings: we proceed from a recent stronger Bell argument, which provides an appropriate probabilistic description, and apply the rigorous methods of causal graph theory. Against the standard view that there is only an influence (...) between the measurement outcomes, we show that there must be an influence from one setting to its distant outcome: EPR correlations can only come about if one of the outcomes is a common effect of both settings. Our discussion makes explicit under which assumptions similar conclusions from information theoretic considerations can be interpreted causally. (shrink)

Frege's account of opacity is based on two attractive ideas: every meaningful expression has a sense (Sinn) that determines the expression's semantic value (Bedeutung); and the semantic value of a‘that’‐clause is the thought expressed by its embedded sentence. Considerations of compositionality led Frege to a more problematic view: inside ‘that’‐clauses, an expression does not have its customary Bedeutung. But contrary to initial appearances, compositionality does not entail a familiar substitutivity principle. And Fregeans can exploit this point in a way that (...) lets them reject Bedeutung‐shifting. (shrink)

Functionalism in the philosophy of mind is here criticized from the perspective of a more naturalistic and less compromising form of materialism. Parallels are explored between the problem of cognitive activity and the somewhat more settled problem of vital activity. The lessons drawn suggest that functionalism in the philosophy of mind may be both counterproductive as a research strategy, and false as a substantive position.

A study of how syntax relates to meaning by a leader of the new generation of philosopher-linguists.

Words indicate concepts, which have various adicities. But words do not, in general, inherit the adicities of the indicated concepts. Lots of evidence suggests that when a concept is lexicalized, it is linked to an analytically related monadic concept that can be conjoined with others. For example, the dyadic concept CHASE(_,_) might be linked to CHASE(_), a concept that applies to certain events. Drawing on a wide range of extant work, and familiar facts, I argue that the (open class) lexical (...) items of a natural spoken language include neither names nor polyadic predicates. The paper ends with some speculations about the value of a language faculty that would impose uniform monadic analyses on all concepts, including the singular and relational concepts that we share with other animals. (shrink)

The doctrine that the character of our perceptual knowledge is plastic, and can vary substantially with the theories embraced by the perceiver, has been criticized in a recent paper by Fodor. His arguments are based on certain experimental facts and theoretical approaches in cognitive psychology. My aim in this paper is threefold: to show that Fodor's views on the impenetrability of perceptual processing do not secure a theory-neutral foundation for knowledge; to show that his views on impenetrability are almost certainly (...) false; and to provide some additional arguments for, and illustrations of, the theoretical character of all observation judgments. (shrink)

I have argued that forgiveness paradigmatically involves overcoming moral anger, of which resentment is the central case. I have argued, as well, that forgiveness may involve overcoming any form of anger so long as the belief that you have been wrongfully harmed is partially constitutive of it, and that overcoming other negative emotions caused by a wrongdoer's misdeed may, given appropriate qualifications, count as forgiveness. Those qualifications indicate, however, significant differences between moral anger and other negative emotions; differences which must (...) be taken into account when determining whether overcoming negative emotions other than moral anger count as forgiveness. I have proposed, too, that forgiveness requires neither overcoming all negative feelings nor the judgment that the offender is a wrongdoer. (shrink)

In this book, Livingston develops the political implications of formal results obtained over the course of the twentieth century in set theory, metalogic, and computational theory. He argues that the results achieved by thinkers such as Cantor, Russell, Godel, Turing, and Cohen, even when they suggest inherent paradoxes and limitations to the structuring capacities of language or symbolic thought, have far-reaching implications for understanding the nature of political communities and their development and transformation. Alain Badiou's analysis of logical-mathematical structures forms (...) the backbone of his comprehensive and provocative theory of ontology, politics, and the possibilities of radical change. Through interpretive readings of Badiou's work as well as the texts of Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Livingston develops a formally based taxonomy of critical positions on the nature and structure of political communities. These readings, along with readings of Parmenides and Plato, show how the formal results can transfigure two interrelated and ancient problems of the One and the Many: the problem of the relationship of a Form or Idea to the many of its participants, and the problem of the relationship of a social whole to its many constituents. (shrink)

Paul Pietroski presents an original philosophical theory of actions and their mental causes. We often act for reasons: we deliberate and choose among options, based on our beliefs and desires. However, bodily motions always have biochemical causes, so it can seem that thinking and acting are biochemical processes. Pietroski argues that thoughts and deeds are in fact distinct from, though dependent on, underlying biochemical processes within persons.

Electronic health record (EHRs) have largely replaced obsolete paper medical charts. This replacement has produced an increased demand on physicians’ time and has compromised efficiency. In an attempt to overcome this perceived obstacle to productivity, physicians turned to medical scribes to perform the work required by EHRs. In doing so, they have introduced an uninvited participant in the physician-patient relationship and compromised patients’ confidentiality. Scribes may be a successful work around for physicians frustrated by EHRs, but patients’ confidentiality should not (...) be sacrificed in the process. (shrink)

This paper suggests that the increasing bureaucracy of ethics review by committee is more about fulfilling institutional requirements than it is about ethics. It is suggested that ethics committees should not be instruments of bureaucratic regulation and control. They should be freed to play a critical role within the institution, to support and develop ethical research and researchers, and given time to discuss and explore difficult ethical issues where they arise. To burden research ethics committees with trivial bureaucratic tasks is (...) to miss an opportunity for healthy exchanges of views about ethics and to distort the nature and meaning of ethics. (shrink)

It is well-known that the entangled quantum state of a composite object cannot be reduced to the states of its parts. This quantum holism provides a peculiar challenge to formulate an appropriate mereological model: When a system is in an entangled state, which objects are there on the micro and macro level, and which of the objects carries which properties? This paper chooses a modeling approach to answer these questions: It proceeds from a systematic overview of consistent mereological models for (...) entangled systems and discusses which of them is compatible with the quantum mechanical evidence (where quantum states are understood realistically). It reveals that entangled quantum systems neither describe undivided wholes nor objects that stand in irreducible relations. The appropriate model assumes that the entangled property is an irreducible non-relational plural property carried collectively by the micro objects, while there is no macro object. In this sense, quantum holism is an instance of property holism, not of object holism. (shrink)

The Mind-Body Problem Questions: What is the mind? What is its connection to the body? Most basic division of answers: Dualist and Materialist (or Physicalist) responses.

My aim in this paper is to begin a discussion about how, and to what extent, Martin Heidegger’s thinking about technology offers helpful critical terms for thinking about the nature and global sway of today’s most dominant and prevalent forms of technology, namely the interrelated technologies of information, communication, and (capitalist) commerce. My suggestion will be that Heidegger’s thought does indeed have implications for critical thinking about these technologies, but that in order to see how it does, we may have (...) to deepen and further radicalize some of Heidegger’s suggestions about essence, being, and form. This need for deepening is connected with the way in which these specific technologies themselves depend on the character and structure of language , in that they present themselves as effective means for the manipulation, storage, retrieval and exchange of broadly linguistic, symbolic, and informational material. In fact, in the context of Heidegger’s late thought about technology as well as language, the syntagm “information technology” itself – a term that, as far as I know, Heidegger himself never used – nevertheless points the way, as I shall argue, to a deepening of the Heideggerian inquiry into form which itself can facilitate an improved critical understanding of the implications of these technologies for life around the planet today. (shrink)

Tumor suppressor protein 53 (p53) plays a central role in the control of genome stability, acting primarily through the transcriptional activation of stress‐response genes. However, many p53 binding sites are located at genomic locations with no obvious regulatory‐link to known stress‐response genes. We recently discovered p53 binding sites within retrotransposon‐derived elements in human and mouse subtelomeres. These retrotransposon‐derived p53 binding sites protected chromosome ends through transcription activation of telomere repeat RNA, as well as through the direct modification of local chromatin (...) structure in response to DNA damage. Based on these findings, I hypothesize that a class of p53 binding sites, including the retrotransposon‐derived p53‐sites found in subtlomeres, provide a primary function in genome stability by mounting a direct and local protective chromatin‐response to DNA damage. I speculate that retrotransposon‐derived p53 binding sites share features with telomere‐repeats through an evolutionary drive to monitor and maintain genome integrity. (shrink)

In this paper I critically discuss what has come to be known as the consensus or standard view of interpersonal forgiveness noting some of the paradoxes it appears to generate, how its conceptual resources seem unable to help illuminate several other varieties of forgiveness that are either themselves instances of interpersonal forgiving or at least types of forgiveness that a theory of interpersonal forgiveness should be able to shed some light upon. In the final section I offer some remarks on (...) the nature of revenge, which has recently come to be seen by some philosophers as a morally acceptable alternative to forgiving wrongdoers, note some of the puzzles to which it gives rise, and conclude that while both types of responses to wrongdoers remain morally complex, there is good reason to think that forgiveness is the morally more appropriate response to having been wronged. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that the violation of Bell inequalities excludes local theories of the quantum realm. This paper presents a stronger Bell argument which even forbids certain non-local theories. The conclusion of the stronger Bell argument presented here provably is the strongest possible consequence from the violation of Bell inequalities on a qualitative probabilistic level. Since among the excluded non-local theories are those whose only non-local probabilistic connection is a dependence between the space-like separated measurement outcomes of EPR/B experiments, (...) outcome dependence cannot be the crucial dependence for explaining a violation of Bell inequalities. Rather, the remaining non-local theories, which can violate Bell inequalities, are characterized by the fact that at least one of the measurement outcomes in some sense probabilistically depends both on its local as well as on its distant measurement setting. While this is not to say that what is usually called parameter dependence has to hold, some kind of dependence on the distant parameter cannot be avoided. Against the received view, established by Jarrett and Shimony, that on a probabilistic level quantum non-locality amounts to outcome dependence, this result confirms and makes precise Maudlin's claim that some kind of parameter dependence is required. (shrink)

A Neurocomputationial Perspective illustrates the fertility of the concepts and data drawn from the study of the brain and of artificial networks that model the...

Eliminative materialism is the thesis that our common-sense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced, rather than smoothly reduced, by completed neuroscience. Our mutual understanding and even our introspection may then be reconstituted within the conceptual framework of completed neuroscience, a theory we may expect to be more powerful by far than the common-sense psychology it displaces, and more substantially (...) integrated within physical science generally. My purpose in this paper is to explore these projections, especially as they bear on (1) the principal elements of common-sense psychology: the propositional attitudes (beliefs, desires, etc.), and (2) the conception of rationality in which these elements figure. (shrink)