The theme of this essay is rather simple, though its demonstration is not. It is that humans think reflexively or metamentally because -- and often in the forms in which -- they interpret each other. In this essay ‘metamental’ means ‘about mental’ and ‘reflexive mind’ means ‘a mind thinking about its own thoughts.’ To think reflexively or metamentally is to think about thoughts deliberately and explicitly, as in thinking that my current thoughts about metamentation are right. Thinking about thoughts requires (...) understanding thoughts as thoughts, as mental structures that represent; it also requires an ability to relate thoughts to other thoughts and to recognize such inter-thought relations. Since metamentation is essential to and uniquely distinctive of human minds, the idea that it originates in interpreting other minds can be encapsulated in the slogan that minds are minded because minds mind minds. This word play translates as: minds evolve into reflexive minds because they mind other minds -- where ‘minding other minds’ means interacting and bonding with other minds, being concerned or curious about them, representing their relations to the world, manipulating and using these relations for some purpose, and the like. All of this amounts (in my terminology) to interpreting other minds in social contexts of cooperation, communication, education, politics, and so on. It follows that intermental relations among individuals, handled by a distinct competence for interpretation, are essential to the evolution of abilities to represent intramental relations among thoughts, typical of a reflexive mind. I take ‘interpretation’ to be a convenient, short, and grammatically flexible label for what is known in philosophy as commonsense or folk psychology and in psychology as theory of mind, mindreading, or naive psychology. Interpretation is a cognitive rapport between an interpreter (she, in this book) and a subject (he), whereby she represents his mind-world relations, from the simplest, such as seeing.... (shrink)

AN INTENSIONAL INTERPRETATION OF TRUTH-VALUES* 1. Introduction In a profound and seminal paper of 1956 'Begrundung einer strengen Implikation', JSL), ...

This long awaited new edition contains seven of the dialogues of Plato, and is the first in the five-volume complete edition of Plato's works in the Oxford Classical Texts series. The result of many years of painstaking scholarship, the new volume will replace the now nearly one hundred-year-old original edition, and is destined to become just as long lasting a classic.

It is often thought that the literature dealing with religion is nothing more than the expression of a thought elaborated by the theologian, which he struggles to express: the Bible, the primary text, is initially interpreted by theologians, and then writers gather their interpretations. But it is not always so, as the reception of Judas Iscariote testifies: from Klosptock to Kazantzakis through Victor Hugo and Gérard de Nerval, it is the people of letters who preceded the exegetes in the interpretation (...) of the figure of the one who betrayed Jesus. (shrink)

”The Barometer of Flaubert or Literature and Reality”. Discussing the relationship between literature and reality, this study focuses on the analysis of the“reality effect” (effet de réel) which is applied to the narrative technique in Gogol’s novel Dead Souls by revisiting it through a Nabokovian perspective.

Leading invasion biologists sometimes dismiss critics and criticisms of their field by invoking “the straw man” fallacy. Critics of invasion biology are also labelled as a small group of “naysayers” or “contrarians”, who are sometimes engaging in “science denialism”. Such unfortunate labels can be seen as a way to possibly suppress legitimate debates and dismiss or minimize reasonable concerns about some aspects of invasion biology, including the uncertainties about the geographic origins and complex environmental impacts of species, and the control (...) programs against species perceived as “invasive”. In assessing the quality of the debate in this area, we examine the validity of the use of various strategies, including the “straw man” concept, and explore a range of potential logical fallacies present in some recent prominent discussions about invasion biology and so-called “invasive” species. The goal is to add some clarity to the concepts involved, point out some problematic issues, and improve the quality of the debates as the discussions move forward. (shrink)

The contributors to this volume examine recent controversies about the importance of common sense psychology for our understanding of the human mind. Common sense provides a familiar and friendly psychological scheme by which to talk about the mind. Its categories tend to portray the mind as quite different from the rest of nature, and thus irreducible to physical matters and its laws. In this volume a variety of positions on common sense psychology from critical to supportive, from exegetical to speculative, (...) are represented. Among the questions posed are: Is common sense psychology an empirical theory, a body of analytic knowledge, a practice or a strategy? If it is a legitimate enterprise can it be naturalized or not? If it is not legitimate can it be eliminated? Is its fate tied to our understanding of consciousness? Should we approach its concepts and generalizations from the standpoint of conceptual analysis or from the philosophy of science? (shrink)

Economic profit is produced by entrepreneurs, those special individuals able to detect and seize as yet unexploited market opportunities. Many large capitalist firms manage to deliver positive profits even in the most competitive environments. They can do so, thanks to internal entrepreneurs, a subset of their employees able to drive change and develop innovation in the workplace. This paper argues that the goal of increasing economic profit is fully consistent with the corporation doing good for society. However, there is little (...) justification for corporations to transfer the whole economic profit to shareholders. Economic agents entitled to receive the economic profit are precisely those who create this profit, namely the internal entrepreneurs. (shrink)

This is how guidance of behavior to goal grounds and explains cognition and the main forms in which it manages information.

What is it that one thinks or believes when one thinks or believes something? A mental formula? A sentence in some natural language? Its truth conditions? Or perhaps an abstract proposition? The current story of content is fairly ecumenical. It says that a number of aspects, some mental, other semantic, go into our understanding of content. Yet the current story is incomplete. It leaves out a very important aspect of content, one which I call incremental information. It is information in (...) a specific format, information as a limited or local increment, structured by a number of underlying parameters. It is in the form of such increments that information drives cognition and behavior. This is why, perhaps of all aspects of content, it is incremental information which matters most when we want to understand cognitive attitudes and performances. This in turn must have an impact on our philosophical notions of content, propositional attitudes, inference, justification and knowledge. (shrink)

Some of the topics presented in this volume of original essays on contemporary approaches to belief include the problem of misrepresentation and false belief, conscious versus unconscious belief, explicit versus tacit belief, and the durable versus ephemeral question of the nature of belief. The contributors, Fred Dretske, Keith Lehrer, William Lycan, Stephen Schiffer, Stephen P. Stich, and the editor, Radu Bogdan, focus on the mental realization of belief, its cognitive and behavioral aspects, and the semantic aspects of its content. (...) This interdisciplinary study takes advantage of many new theories in what has become an important area of research. (shrink)

JUSTIFICATION and knowledge are thought to be closed under known implication..1 This widely shared assumption is embodied in the following principles of epistemic closure.

In this original and provocative book, Bogdan proposes that the ability to interpret others' mental states should be viewed as an evolutionary adaptation.

The author details the life of Socrates in order to present an exegesis of the philosophy of Plato.

Review of Ștefan Iloaie, Cultura vieții. Aspecte morale în bioetică (Culture of life. Moral aspects in bioethics) (Cluj -Napoca: Editura Renașterea, 2009).

En tant que modèle cosmologique, les structures mises en place par le platonisme s’apparentent formellement à celles de la cosmologie biblique. C’est laraison pour laquelle le christianisme n’a pas hésité à y trouver un moyen propice pour exprimer son propre mystère. Malgré ces similitudes extérieures, un planplus rapproché permet de constater que les deux ensembles appréhendent l’existence de manière dissemblable. Sur la toile de fond de la création biblique, les mystères connexes de l’Incarnation et de l’Ascension, tels qu’ils sont compris (...) par l’intelligence dogmatique chrétienne, s’écartent radicalement de l’approche métaphysique qui avait présidé à l’élaboration du système de Platon – et ce en dépit des tentations à teinte «platonicienne» qui se font jour dans le christianisme avec l’émergence des doctrines ascétiques. Sans aborder les complexités de cette dernière problématique, cet article entend revisiter, comme en négatif, la valeur positive du corps dans le christianisme. (shrink)

The deposit insurance makes the value of deposits independent from the behavior of other depositors or from the value of bank assets. Its existence induces a moral hazard which might threaten the stability of the banking system. The efficiency of the DI depends on the control of moral hazard, which means the agents’ responsibilisation, depositors included. There is a conflict between the DI principles and the present propositions improving this mechanism.The possible solutions in order to solve this paradox are the (...) restriction of the insurance coverage only for the demand deposits and the implementation of the double liability for the bank shareholders.The demand deposits insurance eliminates the incentive to bank runs caused by the fear of lack of liquidity, whereas the term deposits are exposed to losses which reduce the moral hazard induced by the demand deposit insurance.The double liability forces the shareholders of the defaulting banks to make supplementary payments limited to the nominal value of the owned shares. This combines the advantages of the limited liability and the unlimited liability.The efficiency of both propositions implies the enforcement of a closure rule of the banks whose net worth is close to zero.La garantie des dépôts rend la valeur des dépôts indépendante du comportement des autres déposa- nts ou de la valeur des actifs bancaires. Son instauration induit un aléa moral qui peut menacer la stabilité du système bancaire. L’efficacité de ce mécanisme dépend de la maîtrise de l’aléa moral. Cela suppose, entre autres, la responsabilisation des agents, y compris des déposants. Par conséquent, il existe un conflit entre le principe de la garantie des dépôts et les propositions courantes d’amélioration de ce dispositif.Les solutions envisagées dans cet article pour résoudre ce paradoxe sont la limitation de la garantie aux seuls dépôts à vue et l’instauration de la double responsabilité pour les actionnaires des banques.La garantie des dépôts à vue élimine l’incitation à la ruée due à la crainte de manque de liquidité, tandis que les dépôts à terme sont assortis d’une clause permettant à la banque de refuser tout retrait anticipé. Les titulaires des dépôts à terme s’exposent à des pertes, ce qui réduit l’aléa moral induit par la garantie des dépôts à vue.La double responsabilité oblige les actionnaires des banques défaillantes à effectuer des versements supplémentaires dans la limite de la valeur nominale des actions détenues. Cela réunit les avantages de la responsabilité limitée et de la responsabilité illimitée.L’efficacité des deux propositions suppose l’application d’une règle de fermeture des banques dont l’actif net avoisine zéro. (shrink)

Hölder’s review of Robert Graßmann’s Theory of Number provides the first statement of Hölder’s most significant tenets concerning the distinction between the genetic and axiomatic presentation of mathematics, the mature expression of which is found in Hölder’s book The Mathematical Method of 1924. By translating Hölder’s review into English, I hope to make this unique document known to a wider public. In my introductory note I provide some context to Hölder’s paper and a few other remarks concerning the translation work.

The article presents the preliminary results of the author’s study of the unedited homily De transfiguratione et eleemosyna, ascribed to John Chrysostom. The question of the manuscript tradition is first discussed. The article shows that Maurice Sachot is right when he indicates only the manuscript Romanus Angelicus gr. 125 as a manuscript witness of this homily and that the other two witnesses indicated by Pinakes are erroneous. Then, the descriptions of the folios that preserve the homily are analysed in the (...) light of a new examination of them. This re-examination shows that hitherto several sources that inspired the compiler have gone unnoticed. This is followed by a brief summary of the contents of the homily and an analysis of the passages in which almsgiving is mentioned.Contribution: The article offers a re-examination of the folios 353v–361 from the manuscript Romanus Angelicus gr. 125, the first presentation of the content of the homily De transfiguratione et eleemosyna, and tries to shed light on the association of the theme of the Transfiguration with almsgiving. (shrink)

Cyber risk has become one of the greatest threats to firms in recent years. Accordingly, boards of directors must be continually vigilant about this danger. They have a duty to ensure that the companies adopt appropriate cybersecurity measures to manage the risk of cyber fraud. Boards should also ensure that the firm disclose material cyber risk and breaches. We examine how the board’s gender composition can influence the extent of such disclosure, based on a sample of the companies listed on (...) the S&P/TSX 60 Index over the period 2014–2018. Results show evidence of a positive association between the presence and level of cybersecurity disclosure and board gender diversity. However, the board must boast a critical mass of at least three women before this positive impact can be observed. Our findings contribute to the debate on the importance of gender diversity by adding the concept of the positive influence of heterogeneity on cyber disclosure. We also augment the literature on the critical mass of women in boardrooms by providing empirical evidence that three or more women constitute the threshold for better governance. Our study has important implications for investors, stakeholders and regulators. If investors wish to increase cybersecurity disclosure, they should ask for more diversified boards. Our findings support regulators in their efforts to increase women’s representation on boards by providing empirical evidence of better outcomes with this type of board composition. (shrink)

An exploration of why and how the human competence for predication came to be.

This book explores the evolution of the mental competence for self-reflection: why it evolved, under what selection pressures, in what environments, out of what precursors, and with what mental resources. Integrating evolutionary, psychological, and philosophical perspectives, Radu J. Bogdan argues that the competence for self-reflection, uniquely human and initially autobiographical, evolved under strong and persistent sociocultural and political pressures on the developing minds of older children and later adults. Self-reflection originated in a basic propensity of the human brain to (...) rehearse anticipatively mental states, speech acts, actions, and states of the world in order to service one's elaborate goal policies. These goal policies integrate offline representations of one's own mental states and actions and those of others in order to handle the challenges of a complex and dynamic sociopolitical and sociocultural life, calling for an adaptive intramental self-regulation: that intramental adaptation is self-reflection. (shrink)

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)

Heyes's (1998) skepticism about theory of mind (ToM) in nonhuman primates exploits the idea of a strong and unified theory of mind in humans based on an unanalyzed category of mental state. It also exploits narrow debates about crucial observations and experiments while neglecting wider evolutionary trends. I argue against both exploitations.