A librarian’s view of adapting an academic reference library to a Grade I listed church in North Oxford.

Non-reductive moral realism is the view that there are moral properties which cannot be reduced to natural properties. If moral properties exist, it is plausible that they strongly supervene on non-moral properties- more specifically, on mental, social, and biological properties. There may also be good reasons for thinking that moral properties are irreducible. However, strong supervenience and irreducibility seem incompatible. Strong supervenience entails that there is an enormous number of modal truths (specifically, truths about exactly which non-moral properties necessitate which (...) moral properties); and all these modal truths must be explained. If these modal truths can all be explained, then it must be a fundamental truth about the essence of each moral property that the moral property is necessarily equivalent to some property that can be specified purely in mental, social and biological terms; and this fundamental truth appears to be a reduction of the moral property in question. The best way to resist this argument is by resorting to the claim that mental and social properties are not, strictly speaking, natural properties, but are instead properties that can only be analysed in partly normative terms. Acceptance of that claim is the price of non-reductive moral realism. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 467-491, July 2022.

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In this paper, I explore how to accommodate non-consequentialist constraints with a broadly value-based conception of reasons for action. It turns out that there are two grades of non-consequentialist constraints. The first grade involves attaching ethical importance to such distinctions as the doing/allowing distinction, and the distinction between intended and unintended consequences that is central to the Doctrine of Double Effect. However, at least within the value-based framework, this first grade is insufficient to explain rights, which ground weighty reasons against (...) infringing those rights that need not be outweighed even when infringing those rights is necessary for preventing a larger number of people from having their rights infringed in the same way. Such rights form a second grade of non-consequentialist constraints: within the value-based framework, this second grade is best explained in terms of the intrinsically relational values and disvalues of interpersonal interactions and relationships. (shrink)

In psychology, deception is commonly used to increase experimental control. Yet, its use has provoked concerns that it raises participants' suspicions, prompts second-guessing of experimenters' true intentions, and ultimately distorts behavior and endangers the control it is meant to achieve. Over time, these concerns regarding the methodological costs of the use of deception have been subjected to empirical analysis. We review the evidence stemming from these studies.

First published in 1931, A Study in the Philosophy of Malebranche examines the theories which constitute the philosophical system of Malebranche. Church specifically analyses theories pertaining to Malebranche's vision in god; knowledge; occasionalism; and imagination and sense.

It is widely held that for an action to be free it must be the case that the agent can do otherwise. Compatibilists and incompatibilists disagree over what this ability amounts to. Two recent articles offer novel perspectives on the debate by employing Angelika Kratzer’s semantics of ‘can’. Alex Grzankowski proposes that Kratzer’s semantics favour incompatibilism because they make valid a version of the Consequence Argument. Christian List argues that Kratzer’s semantics favour a novel form of compatibilism. I argue that (...) List’s compatibilist application of Kratzer’s semantics faces problems not faced by Grzankowski’s incompatibilist employment of them. On the other hand I argue that Kratzer’s semantics make Grzankowski’s version of the Consequence Argument valid only at the cost of rendering it dialectically useless. Contrary to both views Kratzer’s semantics do not appear to add substantial weight to either side of the compatibilism/incompatibilism dispute. (shrink)

Mit beeindruckender Geschwindigkeit hat der Transhumanismus in akademischen Kreisen und den Medien immer mehr Aufmerksamkeit gewonnen. Er wird von angesehenen Denkern unterstützt. Die ihm zugrunde liegende Triebkraft, Technologie zum größtmöglichen Nutzen der Menschen zu nutzen, hat offenbar ihren Reiz. Dennoch begegnet ein beachtlicher Teil der Menschen dem Transhumanismus mit Skepsis, Abneigung, sogar Verachtung. Ein verwirrendes Phänomen.

In addressing the shortcomings of computationalism, we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. That consciousness is not merely an epiphenomenon with optional access to unconscious computations does not imply that unconscious computations, in the limited domain where they do occur (e.g., occipital transformations of visual data), cannot be reformulated in a way consistent with a self-organizational view.

The Buddhist concept of nonattachment refers to a flexible engagement with experience without fixation on achieving specified outcomes. The primary focus of this study was to qualitatively examine how nonattachment and attachment are experienced in individuals identified as having very high and low levels of nonattachment. Specifically, we examined individuals’ descriptions of how their levels of nonattachment and attachment developed, and how nonattachment and attachment affect their lives, their relationships, and their understanding of personal development. Twenty-four in-depth interviews were conducted (...) with participants (18 women, six men) aged 19 to 61 (mean = 36.20, standard deviation = 11.00), drawn from a larger sample of 1191, who scored very high or very low on nonattachment. Thematic analysis revealed highly nonattached individuals were psychologically mature, and flexibly engaged with their experiences, allowing their life to flow with minimal self-obstruction. In contrast, highly attached individuals were quite fixed in their thinking and often placed unachievable expectations on themselves and others. Interestingly, transformative suffering was crucial in the development of nonattachment, whereas unresolved experiences of suffering contributed to the development of attachment. (shrink)

Recent investigations and theorising about category-specific deficits have begun to focus upon patients with progressive brain disease such as semantic dementia and Alzheimer's disease. In this commentary we briefly review what insights have been gained from studying patients of this type. We concentrate on four specific issues: the sensory/functional distinction, correlation between features, neuroanatomical considerations, and confounding factors.

Design features for language and stone toolmaking (not tool use) involve similar if not homologous cognitive processes. Both are arbitrary transformations of internal symbolization, whereas non-human tool using is mostly an iconic transformation. The major discontinuity between humans and non-humans (chimpanzees) is language. The presence of stone tools made to standardized patterns suggests communicative and social control skills that involved language.

Contents: FOREWORD Aronson, Moses J.; THE HUMANIZATION OF PHILOSOPHY Ayres, Clarence Edwin, THE GOSPEL OF TECHNOLOGY Bates, Ernest Sutherland; TOWARD A SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY Bode, Boyd H.; "THE GREAT AMERICAN DREAM" Cohen Felix S.; THE SOCIALIZATION OF MORALITY Costello, Harry Todd, A PHILOSOPHER AMONG THE METAPHYSICIANS Durant, Will; AN AMATEUR'S PHILOSOPHY Edman, Irwin; THE NATURALISTIC TEMPER Flewelling, Ralph Tyler; THE NEW TASK OF PHILOSOPHY Holt, Edwin Bissell; THE WHIMSICAL CONDITION OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, AND OF MANKIND Hook, Sidney; EXPERIMENTAL NATURALISM (...) Irving, John Allan; TOWARD RADICAL EMPIRICISM IN ETHICS Kallen, Horace Meyer . (shrink)

E-Z Reader achieves an impressive fit of empirical eye movement data by simulating core processes of reading in a computational approach that includes serial word processing, shifts of attention, and temporal overlap in the programming of saccades. However, when common assumptions for the time requirements of these processes are taken into account, severe constraints on the time line within which these elements can be combined become obvious. We argue that it appears difficult to accommodate these processes within a largely sequential (...) modeling framework such as E-Z Reader. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay explores new technologies of communication, mischievously suggesting that an ordinary memoir, on some fundamental level, is no different from what occurred with a young woman in a persistent vegetative state who “willfully modulated [her] brain activity.” If, as Elaine Scarry famously suggested, readers produce mental imagery “under the instruction of a writer,” then thinking about the role of alternative and augmentative communication (AAC) in providing such instruction might help us to think through the relationship between cognition and generic (...) innovation while, importantly, making room for neurodivergent writers. When George Perec wrote The Void without using the letter “e,” he imposed a restriction that could be said to work a bit like a “tennis-yes, navigation-no” protocol. In Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening, the blind writer Stephen Kuusisto reinvents travel writing by having hearing and touch take the lead. Narrative itself ends up being transformed. This essay explores how disability puts pressure on the procedures of conventional narrative. (shrink)

In Argument, Inference and Dialectic Pinto argues that critical practice can furnish us with the necessary guidance to answer our questions about argument and inference; we do not need to develop a theory of argument/inference. Pinto’s provocative remarks raise questions about the appeal to practice, and recall problems that Toulmin encounters in development of his innovative theory in The Uses of Argument. In this paper, I juxtapose and reflect on these developments.