I will argue that the cognitive-linguistic enterprise should step up its efforts to embrace the social and pragmatic dimensions of language. This claim will be derived from a survey of the premises and promise of the cognitive-linguistic approach to the study of language and be defended in more detail on logical and empirical grounds. Key elements of a usage-based emergentist socio-cognitive approach known as Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model (Schmid 2014, 2015) will be presented in order to demonstrate how social and pragmatic (...) aspects can be integrated and operationalized in a cognitive-linguistic framework. (shrink)

We examine two competing solutions to Benardete paradoxes: causal finitism, according to which nothing can have infinitely many causes, and the unsatisfiable pair diagnosis (UPD), according to which such paradoxes are logically impossible and no metaphysical thesis need be adopted to avoid them. We argue that the UPD enjoys notable theoretical advantages over causal finitism. Causal finitists, however, have levelled two main objections to the UPD. First, they urge that the UPD requires positing a ‘mysterious force’ that prevents paradoxes from (...) arising. Since such a force is implausible, the UPD is in trouble. Second, they employ recombination or patchwork principles to argue that paradoxical situations would be possible if causal finitism were false. Since such situations are not possible, causal finitism is true, and so a substantive metaphysical thesis is needed to avoid the paradoxes. We argue that the UPD proponent can successfully respond to these objections. (shrink)

Study of the multiplicity of interactions between invertebrate hosts and their parasites helps to define the aspects of the host immune systems that have ecological and evolutionary significance. Such study, however, reveals how much is yet unknown. For instance, the costs of mounting an immune response, the nature of the long-lasting protection sometimes attained, and the high degree of specificity observed in certain hosts are phenomena that still await full explanation. An additional puzzle is the high degree of specificity achieved (...) in light of the apparent low degree of specificity in the recognition and effector mechanisms of insect immune systems. Furthermore, while protective immunity is typically associated with vertebrate adaptive immune systems, invertebrates may have analogous capacities, whose nature is still largely unknown. This review will illustrate how the traditional host-centred view of immune defence can be usefully extended by taking account of parasite immune evasion strategies and the variation that such strategies create in the observed outcomes of infection. BioEssays 27:1026–1034, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Peiodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Schmid analyzes the historical and recent controversies over language in the U.S., comparing it to two official multilingual societies: Canada and Switzerland. She also examines how people of different language communities co-exist in, or are divided by, a political community.

Benardete paradoxes involve a beginningless set each member of which satisfies some predicate just in case no earlier member satisfies it. Such paradoxes have been wielded on behalf of arguments for the impossibility of an infinite past. These arguments often deploy patchwork principles in support of their key linking premise. Here I argue that patchwork principles fail to justify this key premise.

James Henry Collin recently developed a new symmetry breaker favouring the ontological argument’s possibility premiss over that of the reverse ontological argument. The symmetry breaker amounts to an undercutting defeater for the reverse possibility premiss based on Kripkean cases of a posteriori necessity. I argue, however, that symmetry re-arises in two forms. First, I challenge the purported asymmetry in epistemic entitlements to the original and reverse possibility premisses. Second, relevantly similar Kripkean cases equally undercut the original possibility premiss.

Scholars of international law have been increasingly troubled by states’ vast powers and practices of migrant exclusion. There is no doubt that much of this uneasiness is catalyzed by a keen sense of the demands of a basic liberalism at the international legal order's core. Indeed, the increased construction of border walls,1 the continuously widespread use of deportation as a migration control tool,2 and new digital bordering technologies3 have all come under scrutiny precisely because of the challenges they pose to (...) the notion of supposedly universal entitlements, both substantive and procedural, that often appear disabled or overridden when it comes to the treatment of different sorts of migrants. My goal in this contribution is not to add to such legal critiques, but rather to provide the contours of a broader normative argument to rebuke—or at least complicate—what is often called the state's “right to exclude” all or most would-be immigrants. This right is not just standardly assumed in legal and political practice—indeed, standardly viewed as the linchpin of sovereignty—but has also enjoyed sophisticated defense by liberal political theorists.4 The main goal of my argument is to suggest that anyone with basic liberal inclinations—including political theorists, lawyers, and practitioners of politics—should be able to agree that, under current circumstances, granting states a potent “right to exclude” entails deep tensions with basic moral standards of legitimate authority. This is because the deeply entrenched characteristics and historical background conditions of immigration control today tend structurally to push states to violate the appropriate moral conditions of their legitimate authority to enforce immigration restrictions.5 While moving above and beyond legal argumentation, my hope is that the argument may underscore and give further analytical expression to some of the animating concerns of contemporary legal contestations of states’ exclusive powers and practices. (shrink)

The modal ontological argument (MOA) proceeds from God’s possible existence to God’s actual existence. A prominent objection to the MOA is that it suffers from a symmetry problem: an exactly parallel modal ontological argument can be given for God's non-existence. Several attempts have been made to break the symmetry between the arguments. This draft is a mostly comprehensive survey of those attempts. -/- The draft was initially written as a supplement to the 2024 Summer edition of the SEP entry on (...) Ontological Arguments. However, the draft is not included in the SEP entry. (shrink)

Protestant Ethics can supply Orientierungswissen as well as Verfügungswissen. Beyond that it can and must also formulate »Evangeliums«-Wissen, a knowledge about the condition of life that precedes all notions of what we can and should do. There is no reason why this knowledge should not be a fundamental part of the cosmos of sciences. For Protestant Ethics this mode of reasoning is interesting because Protestant Ethics can thus operate in an area of its own while at the same time being (...) more than a pseudo-science of politics, economics or medicine. (shrink)

We draw out significant consequences of a relatively popular theory of metaphysical modality—branching actualism—for cosmological arguments for God’s existence. According to branching actualism, every possible world shares an initial history with the actual world and diverges only because causal powers (or dispositions, or some such) are differentially exercised. We argue that branching actualism undergirds successful responses to two recent cosmological arguments: the Grim Reaper Kalam argument and a modal argument from contingency. We also argue that branching actualism affords a response (...) to one popular defense of the classic contingency argument. What results are new difficulties for several cosmological arguments arising from the metaphysics of modality. (shrink)

Considering Ethics in Dance, Theatre and PerformanceBannonFionaPalgrave Macmillan. 2018. pp. xxi + 250. £59.99.

Dieses Buch bietet eine gründliche Einführung in die Religionsphilosophie von Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. Der Autor diskutiert Jacobi's Ansichten über Glauben, Vernunft und Selbstbewusstsein und zeigt, wie diese Ansichten zu einer grundlegenden Neudefinition von Religion und Philosophie führten. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United (...) States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Creating focal lesions in primary visual cortex (V1) provides an opportunity to study the role of extra-geniculo-striate pathways for activating extrastriate visual cortex. Previous studies have shown that more than 95% of neurons in macaque area V2 and V3 stop firing after reversibly cooling V1 [1,2,3]. However, no studies on long term recovery in areas V2, V3 following permanent V1 lesions have been reported in the macaque. Here we use macaque fMRI to study area V2, V3 activity patterns from 1 (...) to 22 months after lesioning area V1. We find that visually driven BOLD responses persist inside the V1-lesion projection zones (LPZ) of areas V2 and V3, but are reduced in strength by ,70%, on average, compared to prelesion levels. Monitoring the LPZ activity over time starting one month following the V1 lesion did not reveal systematic changes in BOLD signal amplitude. Surprisingly, the retinotopic organization inside the LPZ of areas V2, V3 remained similar to that of the non-lesioned hemisphere, suggesting that LPZ activation in V2, V3 is not the result of input arising from nearby (non-lesioned) V1 cortex. Electrophysiology recordings of multi-unit activity corroborated the BOLD observations: visually driven multi-unit responses could be elicited inside the V2 LPZ, even when the visual stimulus was entirely contained within the scotoma induced by the V1 lesion. Restricting the stimulus to the intact visual hemi-field produced no significant BOLD modulation inside the V2, V3 LPZs. We conclude that the observed activity patterns are largely mediated by parallel, V1-bypassing, subcortical pathways that can activate areas V2 and V3 in the absence of V1 input. Such pathways may contribute to the behavioral phenomenon of blindsight. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to be impacting all industry sectors, while becoming a motor for innovation. The diffusion of AI from the civilian sector to the defense sector, and AI’s dual-use potential has drawn attention from security and ethics scholars. With the publication of the ethical guideline Trustworthy AI by the European Union (EU), normative questions on the application of AI have been further evaluated. In order to draw conclusions on Trustworthy AI as a point of reference for responsible research (...) and development (R&D), we approach the diffusion of AI across both civilian and military spheres in the EU. We capture the extent of technological diffusion and derive European and German patent citation networks. Both networks indicate a low degree of diffusion of AI between civilian and defense sectors. A qualitative investigation of project descriptions of a research institute’s work in both civilian and military fields shows that military AI applications stress accuracy or robustness, while civilian AI reflects a focus on human-centric values. Our work represents a first approach by linking processes of technology diffusion with normative evaluations of R&D. (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish three claims, which I label individual intentional autonomy, individual intentional autarky, and intentional individualism. The autonomy claim is that under normal circumstances, each individual's behavior has to be interpreted as his or her own action. The autarky claim is that the intentional interpretation of an individual's behavior has to bottom out in that individual's own volitions, or pro-attitudes. The individualism claim is weaker, arguing that any interpretation of an individual's behavior has to be given in (...) terms of individual intentional states. I argue that individual intentional autonomy implies neither individual intentional autarky, nor intentional individualism, with which it is usually lumped together. I further argue that this insight is the key to an adequate view of an important class of actions, i.e., plural actions. (shrink)

José Benardete developed a famous paradox involving a beginningless set of items each member of which satisfies some predicate just in case no earlier member satisfies it. The Grim Reaper version of this paradox has recently been employed in favour of various finitist metaphysical theses, ranging from temporal finitism to causal finitism to the discrete nature of time. Here, I examine a new challenge to these finitist arguments—namely, the challenge of implying that the future cannot be endless. In particular, I (...) develop future-oriented Benardete paradoxes and examine their epistemic symmetry with past-oriented paradoxes. (shrink)

In transformation research of late, accounts on the relation between intentionality and agency on the one hand, and the more routinised and structured side of social co-existence on the other, are increasingly nuanced. However, we observe a deficiency in the way arguments are set up by the interlocutors: both, scholars who grant intentionality a central role and those who emphasise its limitations generally do so at the level of ontology – debating degrees of human capacity for conscious planning versus a (...) largely unconscious reproduction. We wish to shift this question from an ontological to a pedagogical one, exploring possibilities to cultivate and learn intentionality. We do so by developing the concept of consciousness-in-nature that we derive from, and contextualise in, the traditions of deep ecology and (Westernised) Buddhism which both view human beings as inseparable from nature and one another. With consciousness-in-nature we refer to an understanding of humans as a part of nature that has developed the capacity for (self-) reflection and deliberation – a capacity that is not static or firm but can be nurtured and cultivated or clouded over and subdued. From this standpoint, we lay out an understanding of the role of (re)learning consciousness for processes of social change and explore potentials for its nurturing. (shrink)

Thought about scientific models and modelling practices in the sciences has a long tradition. It has recently been argued that this practice of science also exists in metaphysics. In this paper, I show that this view has two significant historical forerunners: Hans Vaihinger and Salomon Maimon. Vaihinger provided what is today often seen as the starting point of the contemporary debate on scientific models as fictions. He argued that fictions can be equally useful in the sciences as in metaphysics. However, (...) Vaihinger‘s position is problematic. Firstly, he mainly credits Kant for providing the first comprehensive account of the method of fictions in the sciences. I will argue that contrary to his claims, it was Maimon – whom Vaihinger only mentions in passing – who first adapted Kant‘s doctrine of ideas to serve the purposes of a fictionalist agenda. I will show that Maimon‘s account of scientific fictions already contains many of the features which Vaihinger claims to have discovered himself. Secondly, Vaihinger’s failure to distinguish between the use of fictions in the sciences and metaphysics creates a problem for some types of metaphysical fictions. I show that Maimon‘s account of metaphysical fictions identifies and avoids this problem. (shrink)

Joining insights from social science and philosophy, this book offers a nuanced view on the discourse of evil, which has been on the rise in the West in recent years. Exploring the famous 'Pear Theft' episode in St Augustine's Confessions, it looks beyond the theological implications of the event to focus instead on the secular insights that it offers when the event is placed in the context of social thought. With attention to Augustine's lengthy reflections on a seemingly marginal episode, (...) the author contends that it is possible to discern the elements of a convincing account of intentional evil action, the Pear Theft representing a case of joint radical improvisation that lacks collective deliberation. As such, a new perspective emerges on familiar and more intuitive forms of evil in joint action that involve group identification and institutional action. Evil in Joint Action will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory and philosophy with interests in ethics, collective action and concepts of evil. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

The word belief is widely assumed to designate a special class of mental states, the attitude of representing something as being the case. This book providesa critique of representationalism by focusing on the role that psychological concepts play in language, the way in which they are used in practice. Offering an alternative conception of their meaning, it finds a new way to deal with Moore's Paradox.

Residence of unauthorized immigrants is a stable feature of the Global North’s liberal democracies. This article asks how liberal-democratic policymakers should respond to this phenomenon, assuming both that states have incontrovertible rights and interests to assert control over immigration and that unauthorized residence is nevertheless an entrenched fact. It argues that a set of liberal-democratic commitments gives policymakers strong reason to implement both so-called ‘firewall’ and ‘regularization’ policies, thereby protecting unauthorized immigrants’ basic needs and interests and officially incorporating many of (...) them in society. It then explains that the background imperative of immigration control creates a dilemmatic tension between these policies, as regularization is envisaged alongside the removal of the ineligible, which is in turn hindered by the implementation of firewalls. This creates a dilemma between the pursuit of two policy goals that are both underwritten by the same value commitments. Though it cannot be entirely dissolved, I argue that the best way to mitigate this dilemma is to design regularization policy in a way that leaves only a small number of unauthorized immigrants subject to removal. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay considers definitions of racism which emphasise its behavioural, motivational, and cognitive features. The behavioural definition (‘the failure to give equal consideration, based on the fact of race alone’) is rejected, primarily due to its inability to distinguish between ‘true’and ‘ordinary’racism. It is the former which is morally most objectionable — and which identifies the essence of the racist attitude and belief. The central part of the essay argues in favour of the motivational approach to the definition (‘the (...) infliction of unequal consideration, motivated by the desire to dominate, based on race alone’) and clarifies the way in which racism, thus understood, conflicts with the principle of human equality. Finally, the cognitivist definition (‘unequal consideration, out of a belief in the inferiority of another race’) is also rejected, despite its intuitive appeal. The overall discussion has important implications for moral philosophy. It is shown both that the principle of human equality does not strictly imply equal consideration, and that one may violate the principle of equal perception, yet not deny the principle which, from the perspective of this argument, is the more fundamental element in the principle of human equality, the principle of equal human worth. (shrink)

Abstract.In this paper we show that the theory of fields together with an integrally closed subring, the theory of formally real fields with a real holomorphy ring and the theory of formally \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $p$\end{document}-adic fields with a \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $p$\end{document}-adic holomorphy ring have no model companions in the language of fields augmented by a unary predicate for the corresponding ring.