The focus of this paper is two-fold. First, similarities generated from six semantic models were compared to human ratings of paragraph similarity on two datasets—23 World Entertainment News Network paragraphs and 50 ABC newswire paragraphs. Contrary to findings on smaller textual units such as word associations (Griffiths, Tenenbaum, & Steyvers, 2007), our results suggest that when single paragraphs are compared, simple nonreductive models (word overlap and vector space) can provide better similarity estimates than more complex models (LSA, Topic Model, SpNMF, (...) and CSM). Second, various methods of corpus creation were explored to facilitate the semantic models’ similarity estimates. Removing numeric and single characters, and also truncating document length improved performance. Automated construction of smaller Wikipedia-based corpora proved to be very effective, even improving upon the performance of corpora that had been chosen for the domain. Model performance was further improved by augmenting corpora with dataset paragraphs. (shrink)

Acknowledgments 1. Culture Is Essential 2. Culture Exists 3. Culture Evolves 4. Culture Is an Adaptation 5. Culture Is Maladaptive 6. Culture and Genes Coevolve 7. Nothing about Culture Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution.

In his book Autonomous Knowledge J. Adam Carter argues that the possibility of radical cognitive enhancement shows the need for epistemology to be significantly updated. Reflection on the possibility of such enhancement shows that doxastic autonomy matters. If a belief fails to be autonomous, it cannot qualify as knowledge. Sects. 1-3 of this paper introduce the key components of Carter's autonomy framework and his considerations on the value of knowledge (including his proposed solution to the value problem, i.e. the challenge (...) of accounting for why knowledge has greater value than any of its proper parts). Sects. 4-7 offer a critical appraisal of Carter's framework. We are not convinced that Carter has succeeded in showing that there is an autonomous belief condition on knowledge. In this paper, however, we shall not engage with this issue. Instead, for the sake of our critical discussion, we shall assume that autonomous belief is a condition on knowledge and engage Carter on a cluster of issues concerning axiology. (shrink)

In A Professor's Duties, distinguished philosopher Peter J. Markie adds to the expanding discussion of the ethics of college teaching. Part One concentrates on the obligations of individual professors, primarily with regard to issues about what and how to teach. Part Two expands Professor Markie's views by providing a selection of the most significant previously published writings on the ethics of college teaching.

The use of socially learned information (culture) is central to human adaptations. We investigate the hypothesis that the process of cultural evolution has played an active, leading role in the evolution of genes. Culture normally evolves more rapidly than genes, creating novel environments that expose genes to new selective pressures. Many human genes that have been shown to be under recent or current selection are changing as a result of new environments created by cultural innovations. Some changed in response to (...) the development of agricultural subsistence systems in the Early and Middle Holocene. Alleles coding for adaptations to diets rich in plant starch (e.g., amylase copy number) and to epidemic diseases evolved as human populations expanded (e.g., sickle cell and G6PD defi- ciency alleles that provide protection against malaria). Large-scale scans using patterns of linkage disequilibrium to detect recent selection suggest that many more genes evolved in response to agriculture. Genetic change in response to the novel social environment of contemporary modern societies is also likely to be occurring. The functional effects of most of the alleles under selection during the last 10,000 years are currently unknown. Also unknown is the role of paleoenvironmental change in regulating the tempo of hominin evolution. Although the full extent of culture-driven gene-culture coevolution is thus far unknown for the deeper history of the human lineage, theory and some evidence suggest that such effects were profound. Genomic methods promise to have a major impact on our understanding of gene-culture coevolution over the span of hominin evolutionary history. (shrink)

The work encompasses analysis of philosophers and writers from ancient times through to the present day and examines such episodes as the Oklahoma City Federal ...

Ambitiously identifying fresh issues in the study of complex systems, Peter J. Taylor, in a model of interdisciplinary exploration, makes these concerns accessible to scholars in the fields of ecology, environmental science, and science studies. Unruly Complexity explores concepts used to deal with complexity in three realms: ecology and socio-environmental change; the collective constitution of knowledge; and the interpretations of science as they influence subsequent research. For each realm Taylor shows that unruly complexity-situations that lack definite boundaries, where what (...) goes on "outside" continually restructures what is "inside," and where diverse processes come together to produce change-should not be suppressed by partitioning complexity into well-bounded systems that can be studied or managed from an outside vantage point. Using case studies from Australia, North America, and Africa, he encourages readers to be troubled by conventional boundaries-especially between science and the interpretation of science-and to reflect more self-consciously on the conceptual and practical choices researchers make. (shrink)

This comprehensive and important volume includes contributions by activists, journalists, lawyers and scholars from twenty-one countries. The essays map the directions the movement for women's rights is taking--and will take in the coming decades--and the concomittant transformation of prevailing notions of rights and issues. They address topics such as the rapes in former Yugoslavia and efforts to see that a War Crimes Tribunal responds; domestic violence; trafficking of women into the sex trade; the persecution of lesbians; female genital mutilation; and (...) reproductive rights. (shrink)

The norm of assertion, to be in force, is a social norm. What is the content of our social norm of assertion? Various linguistic arguments purport to show that to assert is to represent oneself as knowing. But to represent oneself as knowing does not entail that assertion is governed by a knowledge norm. At best these linguistic arguments provide indirect support for a knowledge norm. Furthermore, there are alternative, non-normative explanations for the linguistic data (as in recent work from (...) Van Elswyk). Direct arguments would rely on normative judgments about the permissibility or impermissibility of assertions with and without the speaker knowing the content asserted. John Turri's work experimental results purport to show that our norm of assertion is factive, and probably knowledge. But as a number of recent experimentalists (Kneer, Reuter and Broessel, Marsili and Wiegmann) have shown, Turri's results rely on the problemmatic use of 'should' as in 'Maria should assert that she owns a 1990 watch.' Correcting for this, these experimentalists provide strong evidence that our norm of assertion is not factive. The standard reply to evidence like this from the assertion of unlucky falsehoods is the excuse maneuver. But Marsili and Wiegmann, following Turri's protocol for testing for excuse validation, show that participants who judge that assertions unlucky falsehoods are permissible are not guilty of excuse validation. Given our current understanding of the experimental evidence, knowledge is not our norm of assertion. (shrink)

Proper functionalism explicates epistemic warrant in terms of the function and normal functioning of the belief-forming process. There are two standard substantive views of the sources of functions in the literature in epistemology: God (intelligent design) or Mother Nature (evolution by natural selection). Both appear to confront the Swampman objection: couldn’t there be a mind with warranted beliefs neither designed by God nor the product of evolution by natural selection? Is there another substantive view that avoids the Swampman objection? There (...) are two. The first is the generalized selected-effects theory of functions. The second is the organizational theory of functions. Both, however, require some history to assign functions, for both are etiological theories of functions: past effects help explain current function. Swampman can then acquire functions, perhaps soon after creation, though he has none at the moment of inception. (shrink)

Demography plays a large role in cultural evolution through its effects on the effective rate of innovation. If we assume that useful inventions are rare, then small isolated societies will have low rates of invention. In small populations, complex technology will tend to be lost as a result of random loss or incomplete transmission (the Tasmanian effect). Large populations have more inventors and are more resistant to loss by chance. If human populations can grow freely, then a population-technology-population positive feedback (...) should occur such that human societies reach a stable growth path on which the rate of growth of technology is limited by the rate of invention. This scenario fits the Holocene to a first approximation, but the late Pleistocene is a great puzzle. Large-brained hominins existed in Africa and west Eurasia for perhaps 50,000 years with, at best, slow rates of technical innovation. The most sophisticated societies of the last glacial period appear after 50,000 years ago and were apparently restricted to west and north-central Eurasia and North Africa. These patterns have no simple, commonly accepted explanation. We argue that increased high-frequency climate change around 70,000–50,000 years ago may have tipped the balance between humans and their competitor-predators, such as lions and wolves, in favor of humans. At the same time, technically sophisticated hunters would tend to overharvest their prey. Perhaps the ephemeral appearance of complex tools and symbolic artifacts in Africa after 00,000 years ago resulted from hunting inventions that allowed human populations to expand temporarily before prey overexploitation led to human population and technology collapse. Sustained human populations of moderate size using distinctively advanced Upper Paleolithic artifacts may have existed in west Eurasia because cold, continental northeastern Eurasia–Beringia acted as a protected reserve for prey populations. (shrink)

Recently, Richard Healey and Simon Friederich have each advocated a pragmatist interpretation of quantum mechanics as a way to dissolve its foundational problems. The idea is that if we concentrate on the way quantum claims are used, the foundational problems of quantum mechanics cannot be formulated, and so do not require solution. Their central contention is that the content of quantum claims differs from the content of non-quantum claims, in that the former is prescriptive whereas the latter is descriptive. Healey (...) also argues that claims about non-decoherent systems are largely devoid of content. I consider various objections to these claims, noting in particular the ways in which the application of pragmatism to quantum mechanics differs from previous examples of pragmatist therapy. I conclude that a pragmatist dissolution of the foundational difficulties of quantum mechanics is promising, but requires fairly radical changes to our understanding of the content of propositions and the extent of physical explanation. (shrink)

Alan C. LoveDarwinian calisthenicsAn athlete engages in calisthenics as part of basic training and as a preliminary to more advanced or intense activity. Whether it is stretching, lunges, crunches, or push-ups, routine calisthenics provide a baseline of strength and flexibility that prevent a variety of injuries that might otherwise be incurred. Peter Bowler has spent 40 years doing Darwinian calisthenics, researching and writing on the development of evolutionary ideas with special attention to Darwin and subsequent filiations among scientists exploring (...) evolution . Therefore, we would expect that when Bowler engages in a counterfactual history—imagining a world without Darwin—he is able to avoid historical injury and generate novel insights. My assessment is that the results are mixed. Before we can see why, it is necessary to walk briskly through the main contours of his argument.Bowler begins with an apologia for a counterfactual appr .. (shrink)

Advances in molecular biological research in the latter half of the twentieth century have made the story of the gene vastly complicated: the more we learn about genes, the less sure we are of what a gene really is. Knowledge about the structure and functioning of genes abounds, but the gene has also become curiously intangible. This collection of essays renews the question: what are genes? Philosophers, historians and working scientists re-evaluate the question in this volume, treating the gene as (...) a focal point of interdisciplinary and international research. It will be of interest to professionals and students in the philosophy and history of science, genetics and molecular biology. (shrink)

Metaphysicians should pay attention to quantum mechanics. Why? Not because it provides definitive answers to many metaphysical questions-the theory itself is remarkably silent on the nature of the physical world, and the various interpretations of the theory on offer present conflicting ontological pictures. Rather, quantum mechanics is essential to the metaphysician because it reshapes standard metaphysical debates and opens up unforeseen new metaphysical possibilities. Even if quantum mechanics provides few clear answers, there are good reasons to think that any adequate (...) understanding of the quantum world will result in a radical reshaping of our classical world-view in some way or other. Whatever the world is like at the atomic scale, it is almost certainly not the swarm of particles pushed around by forces that is often presupposed. This book guides readers through the theory of quantum mechanics and its implications for metaphysics in a clear and accessible way. The theory and its various interpretations are presented with a minimum of technicality. The consequences of these interpretations for metaphysical debates concerning realism, indeterminacy, causation, determinism, holism, and individuality are explored in detail, stressing the novel form that the debates take given the empirical facts in the quantum domain. While quantum mechanics may not deliver unconditional pronouncements on these issues, the range of possibilities consistent with our knowledge of the empirical world is relatively small-and each possibility is metaphysically revisionary in some way. This book will appeal to researchers, students, and anybody else interested in how science informs our world-view. (shrink)

The author comments on the article “The neurobiology of addiction: Implications for voluntary control of behavior,‘ by S. E. Hyman. The author agrees with Hyman that debate persists whether addiction is a brain disease or a moral condition. The author states that Hyman has not fully answered the question of when addicted persons are responsible for what they do. The author also suggests that addiction is a brain disease and therapy can improve the symptoms of this life-threatening syndrome. Accession Number: (...) 24077918; Authors: Cohen, Peter J. 1; Email Address: [email protected]; Affiliations: 1: Georgetown University Law Center; Subject: EDITORIALS; Subject: ADDICTIONS; Subject: BRAIN -- Diseases; Subject: SYNDROMES; Subject: HYMAN, S. E.; Number of Pages: 3p. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the dialogue on spirituality in mental health care. Spirituality is still an uncomfortable theme in mental health care despite a burgeoning literature and research. We will introduce a conceptual model on spiritual and interpersonal relationships based on love in relatedness. The model will enable the therapist to assess the interconnectedness of spiritual and interpersonal relationships, to analyse positive or negative effects of spirituality on interpersonal functioning and vice versa, and to look (...) for possibilities for spiritual and therapeutic change. Based on the model, the next step is to reflect on the relationship between psychiatry and spirituality with a view to dialogue instead of unfruitful discussion and controversy. We will propose a dialogue about the alternative DSM-5™ model for personality disorders. Although preliminary, we will show the usefulness of such an interdisciplinary dialogue. (shrink)

In Navigating Everyday Life, Peter Adams explores the moments when everyday experience seems to open up spaces beyond what we normally experience. Adams draws on two philosophical concepts: finitude, the things that bind a person to a situation, and transcendence, the things that lie beyond these boundaries.

This article holds that ability to support one’s opinions with arguments, awareness of the arguments for other opinions, and insight into the superiority of some arguments are basic requirements for rational discourse. Based on a content analysis of Swiss Italian newspaper coverage of a controversy over a smoke-free law introduced and finally implemented in the canton of Ticino in 2007 and on a five-wave panel survey of public opinion on the issue, the article describes elements of the argumentative structure of (...) news coverage of this issue and relates them to rationality requirements. It finds that the newspapers offered a wide variety of arguments to readers (articulation function) when political activity to introduce a ban intensified, and especially when arguments mattered as a referendum approached. Papers displayed a reasonable and differentiated picture of arguments, contributing to a unique pattern of weighting and evaluating them. Neither newspaper coverage nor public opinion showed much sign of change, which speaks against a reaction to superior arguments. Finally, the newspaper bias towards arguments for the ban and their inclination to publish objections to arguments against may have contributed to a widespread lack of awareness of arguments against the ban among people favouring it. Thus, evidence of the rationality of argumentative structures is mixed, and further enquiry into this subject is encouraged. (shrink)

Bishop Elliott's book is a great tool for defending Catholic sexual ethics as humane and reasonable. His experience representing the Holy See at the United Nations has given him a ring-side seat in the battles showing just how radical the sexual revolutionaries really are. He offers a rare combination of sound theology and practical experience." -- Jennifer Roback Morse [taken from back cover].