This short paper will discuss the background to the special issue through a consideration of the basic knowledge representation issues in AI. We will briefly introduce the symbolic and sub-symbolic representations which are traditionally associated with AI, before noting the socially constructed views of knowledge with which they are at odds and the techniques for knowledge elicitation which they use. This forms the context against which this special issues sits, highlighting the broad view of knowledge elicitation and representation and the (...) issues that they raise which we feel are important to debate in the discipline. By gathering this set of papers together, we hope to encourage researchers to see the value in differing approaches and to encourage a more synthetic view of the discipline, where contributions and insights from different perspectives may be of use. (shrink)

A wide-ranging collection of essays inspired by the memory of the cognitive psychologist John Macnamara.

Volume 24, Issue 7, July 2024, Page 6-12.

Brian Loar [1976] observed that, even in the simplest of cases, such as an utterance of (1): ‘He is a stockbroker’, a speaker's audience might misunderstand her utterance even if they correctly identify the referent of the relevant singular term, and understand what is being predicated of it. Numerous theorists, including Bezuidenhout [1997], Heck [1995], Paul [1999], and Récanati [1993, 1995], have used Loar's observation to argue against direct reference accounts of assertoric content and communication, maintaining that, even in (...) these simple cases, the propositional contribution of a referring expression must be more than just its referent. -/- I argue here that, while Loar's observation is correct, the conclusion he and others have sought to draw from it simply does not follow. Rather, his observation helps to remind us of an important Gricean insight into the nature of communicative acts—including acts of speaker-reference—namely, that there is more to understanding a communicative act than merely entertaining what a speaker is intending to communicate thereby. Once we remember this insight, we see that the phenomenon to which Loar is calling our attention should actually be expected given the direct reference theorist's assumptions, together with independently plausible Gricean principles concerning how we make our referential intentions manifest in communication. More generally, the Gricean strategy for explaining the challenge posed by Loar cases suggests a novel way to account for certain crucial anti-direct reference intuitions—one requiring no modification of the original theory (e.g., no invocation of ‘descriptive enrichments’ as in Soames [2002]), thereby allowing for a direct reference account of what is asserted in utterances of ‘simple sentences’ such as (1). (shrink)

Philosophy and economics of Malthusianism. An optimistic view of human population growth and a critique of The Club of Rome and Paul R. Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb. I apply Julian Simon's perspective to the malthusian debate, inspired by his book The Ultimate Resource. When a child is born he brings into existence not just an extra mouth to feed, but two hands and - more importantly in the long run - an extra brain with which to solve (...) any problems that an increase in population brings. In the long run, and given enough freedom, there in a propensity for humans to produce more than they consume. We are not just like flies in a bottle with a limited amount of resources, but creative creatures that can in principle engage in continual, never ending economic growth. -/- More Info: Multiple publishers: National Review; Clashing Views on Controversial Social Issues; Libertarian Alliance, UK. (shrink)

Campbell, Ray This paper is an abbreviated version of a paper given at the National Colloquium for Catholic Bioethicists, Melbourne, 2012. That paper in turn was an abbreviated version of part of my doctoral thesis, The Human Act and Moral Responsibility, John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, Melbourne, 2011. The larger works give more of the context for this discussion and more examples.

Although research has generated a wealth of information on cultural influences on emotion judgements, the information we have to date is limited in several ways. This study extends this literature in two ways, first by obtaining judgements from people in two cultures of expressions portrayed at different intensity levels, and second by incorporating individual level measures of culture to examine their contribution to observed differences. When judging emotion categories in low intensity expressions, American and Japanese judges see the emotion intended (...) at above-chance rates, albeit lower than when judging high intensity faces. Also, American and Japanese intensity ratings of external displays and internal experiences differ dramatically for low intensity expressions compared to high intensity faces. Finally, the two cultural dimensions measured in this study—individualism versus collectivism (IC) and status differentiation (SD)—accounted for almost all of the variance in the observed differences. These findings are discussed in terms of their underlying possible mechanisms, and future research possibilities. (shrink)

Ethics of Christian Freedom and Discipleship is written for teachers and students of Christian ethics within the English-speaking world. It demonstrates the basis of Christian ethics in Christian theology. Twenty-nine years ago, before leaving the Nigerian theological college where the author had been teaching, Between Two Worlds: An Ethic of Christian Freedom was privately printed. In Kenya, at what became St. Paul's University, the author primarily used copies of this book for eleven years of teaching Christian ethics. Ethics of (...) Christian Freedom and Discipleship manifests continuity with the author's earlier book, but is a distinctly different work. (shrink)

Joseph Beuys’ installation Plight forcefully avows of the Nazi genocide by means of negative presentation. The work culminates a collective artistic investigation of negative sculptural strategies for representing traumatic history, opened by the Nouveaux Réalistes under the impact of Alain Resnais’ documentary film Nuit et Brouillard. This article outlines this history and analyzes Plight in the context of the ‘after Auschwitz’ crisis of representation and traditional culture theorized by Theodor W. Adorno. For Adorno, Auschwitz demonstrated threats to autonomous subjectivity posed (...) by tendencies unfolding within the global social process of modernity itself. Reflecting on the fate of music, poetry and literature under these conditions, Adorno advocated a hermetic art of silence and dissonance, as exemplified by Paul Celan and above all Samuel Beckett. This article shows that in the visual arts, too, the genocidal violence of World War II was confronted with analogous strategies of indirection. In Plight, Beuys would successfully synthesize John Cage’s symbolic demolitions of traditional music and the investigations of negative presentation carried out in sculpture by Arman and Daniel Spoerri. (shrink)

In this thorough compendium, nineteen accomplished scholars explore, in some manner the values they find inherent in the world, their nature, and revelence through the thought of Frederick Ferré. These essays, informed by the insights of Ferré and coming from manifold perspectives—ethics, philosophy, theology, and environmental studies, advance an ambitious challenge to current intellectual and scholarly fashions.

In this thorough compendium, nineteen accomplished scholars explore, in some manner the values they find inherent in the world, their nature, and revelence through the thought of Frederick FerrZ. These essays, informed by the insights of FerrZ and coming from manifold perspectives—ethics, philosophy, theology, and environmental studies, advance an ambitious challenge to current intellectual and scholarly fashions.

fusion theory challenges efforts to see theory as inhibiting by presenting an approach that is innovative, eclectic, and subtle in order to draw out competing and constellating ideas and opinions. This collected volume of essays examines fusion theory and demonstrates how the theory can be applied to the reading of various works of Indian English novelists.

In this ambitious book, Paul Thagard develops a theory of coherence as constraint satisfaction that is precise enough to be stated formally, yet general enough to have application to an array of philosophical problems. Working within the framework of cognitive naturalism, Thagard aims to reunite philosophy and psychology by employing “a computational theory of coherence to illuminate both the psychological task of understanding human thinking and the philosophical task of evaluating how people ought to think”. The formal theory of (...) coherence is presented in chapter 2, and is used in chapter 3 to characterize the main kinds of epistemic coherence: explanatory, analogical, deductive, perceptual, and conceptual. Over the next few chapters, Thagard applies these to a variety of venerable philosophical problems, including the nature of reality, the existence of God, the problem of other minds, and the ethics of capital punishment and abortion. In a very interesting chapter, the theory of coherence is extended to account for the role of emotion in human cognition and later applied to understanding judgments of beauty and humor. One should consider this book not as giving the final word on these matters, but as showcasing the promise of cognitive naturalism. (shrink)

This book sorts out the confusion created by the use of the term "postmodern" in relation to widely divergent theological positions. Four different types of postmodern theology are distinguished in the preface: constructive, deconstructive, liberationist, and conservative. Two forms of each type are discussed in the book. Writing from a constructive, postmodern perspective, the authors enter into dialogue with the deconstructive postmodernism of Mark C. Taylor and Jean-François Lyotard, with the liberationist postmodernism of Harvey Cox and Cornel West, and with (...) the conservative postmodernism of George William Rutler and John Paul II. (shrink)

This book is about the eminent behavioral scientist B. F. Skinner, the American culture in which he lived and worked, and the behaviorist movement that played a leading role in American psychological and social thought during the twentieth century. From a base of research on laboratory animals in the 1930s, Skinner built a committed and influential following as well as a utopian movement for social reform. His radical ideas attracted much public attention and generated heated controversy. By the mid-1970s, he (...) had become the most widely recognized scientist in America, surpassing even Margaret Mead and Linus Pauling. Yet Skinner himself was an unassuming family man from a modest middle-class background, a machine-shop tinkerer whose tastes ran to English and French literature. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and historical styles appropriate to the evidence, the authors assembled in this volume examine Skinner's remarkable rise to prominence in the wider context of America's intellectual, cultural, and social history. (shrink)

The Modern School Movement traces the efforts made by the Anarchist movement to abolish all forms of authority and usher in a new society through a different form of education. Between 1910 and 1960 anarchists established more than twenty schools in the United States where children might study in an atmosphere of freedom and self-reliance in sharp contrast to the discipline of the traditional classroom. The prominent participants of this movement, including Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger, Alexander Berkman and Man Ray (...) are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:I Am Not Sure?Paul E. LevinIt was a beautiful Friday morning, a few weeks into the summer. My schedule appeared lighter than usual and I even envisioned leaving work a bit early. Maybe a challenging bike ride before dinner. I was sitting in the chairman’s office having our weekly meeting. One of our junior faculty members called... he needed help. He was on call and a 32–year–old pregnant (...) woman with a displaced femoral neck fracture had just been transferred to our emergency department (ED). Ms. B tripped in her kitchen last evening. She was unable to stand and was brought to the local ED by ambulance.My colleague was concerned that he wouldn’t be able to successfully reduce the fracture. The long–term prognosis of the hip joint depended on a successful reduction of the femoral neck fracture. In addition, there was an ongoing debate in the orthopaedic literature related to the urgency of operative care to prevent osteonecrosis of the femoral head. I reviewed the x–rays, didn’t anticipate a problem and let him know that I would come to the operating room (OR) to assist. “No”, he responded, “I am not comfortable caring for this patient”. I immediately left the office, went to the hospital and assumed care of the patient. Clearly, my plans for a bike ride were gone, but I had the opportunity to help a woman in need of expert orthopaedic care.Ms. B had been admitted to the obstetrical service. She was a 32–year–old woman of Haitian descent who had recently immigrated to the United States. She had very limited English comprehension and her primary spoken languages were French and Creole. She was alone, in a hospital in a foreign country. She was 24 weeks pregnant with her first child and had no other co–morbidities. Her pregnancy had ben progressing uneventfully.When I first met Ms. B she was lying on a stretcher in an observation unit on the obstetrical floor. She appeared frightened. Two orthopaedic residents were present and obtaining consent for surgical repair of the hip. In their minds there was nothing to discuss, the patient had a displaced femoral neck fracture and needed to have surgery immediately. In their minds, no other options were available and obtaining consent would be straightforward. I introduced myself, sat down on a lab stool by the bed and began a conversation. I needed to meet the patient, understand who she was and discuss treatment. I am not sure that obtaining an informed consent is ever “straightforward” when [End Page 14] a doctor is explaining to a patient that they require emergency surgery. This discussion surely would not be easy or straightforward.We utilized a telephone interpretation service. Every question and response required the transfer of the handset between the patient and physician. Ms. B was in pain and frightened. She immediately expressed concern about her pregnancy and her baby. I arranged for her to meet all of the physicians who would possibly be involved in her care and the care of her baby. Each consultant could explain their area of expertise and potential involvement in the care of Ms. B and her child. She met and had an opportunity to talk with the obstetrician on call, a maternal fetal medicine (MFM) fellow and a neonatologist. I supplied the orthopaedic information. I explained the severity of the injury, the risks of osteonecrosis either with or without surgery as well as concerns over non–union and traumatic arthritis of the hip. Undoubtedly, in a healthy 32–year–old woman who wasn’t pregnant, early surgical intervention would be the most appropriate management in hopes of preserving a normal hip joint. We also discussed the possibility of treating her without surgery. She would be administered pain medication, which were known to be safe during pregnancy, and allowed to begin to ambulate with a walker or crutches. I explained potential problems without surgery and what options would be available to treat any problems that developed with her hip after the child was born. Of course, hip fractures in pregnant woman are very rare, and as a result treating a... (shrink)

Born like Venus on the half shell from the centuries-long tradition of the nude in painting, the nude first appeared as a subject matter in photography with the introduction of the medium itself, between 1837 and 1840, and has continued as an ever-evolving theme through changing technical developments and cultural mores to the present day. This volume surveys the subject of nudity from the earliest surviving photographs of Greek and Roman sculpture through studies of living nude models for aesthetic or (...) scientific purposes to the burgeoning practice of exploring the human body as pure form. The seventy-eight works, selected from the extensive collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum and further contextualized here in the essay “Masterworks of the Nude,” span the entire arc of the history of photography in a manner that is both fresh and illuminating. Among the sixty-four photographers included are nineteenth-century masters Julia Margaret Cameron, Edgar Degas, and Thomas Eakins; early-twentieth-century artists Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Weston; mid-twentieth-century innovators Bill Brandt, Harry Callahan, and Minor White; late-twentieth-century image makers Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Herb Ritts; and contemporary artists Chuck Close, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, and Mona Kuhn. (shrink)

As climate change risks intensify, I welcome Ray and Cooper’s call for bioethicists to engage with environmental injustice, though I am pessimistic it is another false dawn for bioethics engagement...

Here are some of the most important discoveries in the history of medicine: blood circulation (1620s), vaccination, (1790s), anesthesia (1840s), germ theory (1860s), X- rays (1895), vitamins (early 1900s), antibiotics (1920s-1930s), insulin (1920s), and oncogenes (1970s). This list is highly varied, as it includes basic medical knowledge such has Harvey’s account of how the heart pumps blood, hypotheses about the causes of disease such as the germ theory, ideas about the treatments of diseases such as antibiotics, and medical instruments such (...) as X-ray machines. The philosophy of medicine should be able to contribute to understanding of the nature of discoveries such as these. The great originators of the field of philosophy of science were all concerned with the nature of scientific discovery, including Francis Bacon (1960), William Whewell (1967), John Stuart Mill (1974), and Charles Peirce (1931-1958). The rise of logical positivism in the 1930s pushed discovery off the philosophical agenda, but the topic was revived through the work of philosophers such as Norwood Russell Hanson (1958), Thomas Nickles (1980), Lindley Darden (1991, 2006), and Nancy Nersessian (1984). Scientific discovery has also become an object of investigations for researchers in the fields of cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence, as seen in the work of Herbert Simon, Pat Langley, and others (Langley et al., 1987; Klahr, 2000). Today, scientific September 14, 2009 discovery is an interdisciplinary topic at the intersection of the philosophy, history, and psychology of science. The aim of this chapter is to identify patterns of discovery that illuminate some of the most important developments in the history of medicine. I have used a variety of sources to identify forty great medical discoveries (Adler, 2004; Friedman and Friedland, 1998; Science Channel, 2006; Strauss and Strauss, 2006).. (shrink)

High-spin states have been studied in Pr-135(59), populated through the Cd-116(Na-23,4n) reaction at 115 MeV, using the Gammasphere gamma-ray spectrometer. The negative-parity yrast band has been significantly extended to spin similar to 45 (h) over bar and excitation energy 21.5 MeV, showing evidence for several rotational alignments. The positive-parity yrast band of Ce-135(58), populated through the p4n channel of this reaction, was also populated to spin similar to 38 (h) over bar and excitation energy 18 MeV. Cranking calculations indicate that (...) these nuclei are soft with respect to the triaxiality parameter gamma and that several competing nuclear shapes occur at high spin. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On the Conceivability of Artificially Created EnlightenmentPaul Andrew PowellPointsman can only possess the zero and the one. He cannot, like [Roger] Mexico, survive anyplace in between.... [H]e imagines the cortex of the brain as a mosaic of tiny on/off elements.... [E]ach point is allowed only the two states:... [o]ne or zero.... [B]rain mechanics assumes the presence of these bi-stable points....If ever the Anti-pointsman existed, Roger Mexico is the man.... (...) How can Mexico play, so at his ease, with these symbols of randomness and fright? Innocent as a child, perhaps unaware—perhaps—that in his play he wrecks the elegant rooms of history.—Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's RainbowWhen I first read about the Dalai Lama's remark that "if all the external conditions and the karmic action were there, a stream of consciousness might actually enter into a computer,"1 I couldn't help but wonder if a computer could then attain enlightenment. The answer, at first, seemed simple and obvious (though perhaps distasteful for some): if the machine was self-aware, sentient, and conscious, then it would be only reasonable to assume that it could also attain enlightenment. Yes, simple and obvious, of course, but this takes for granted some very large and complex issues. After all, what makes for self-awareness, sentience, and consciousness to begin with, and how would we manufacture them in a machine?If we take a moment to think about the creation of artificial enlightenment the paradox becomes clear. In order to manufacture enlightenment, we must first manufacture samsara, because for a Buddhist, enlightenment is the "event" of deconstructing the problematic natures of "self," sentience (suchness), and consciousness, all of which are samsaric illusions. "Self," sentience, and consciousness represent the prerequisites of samsara/Nirvana, realized or unrealized, artificial or organic. They represent the prerequisites of desire. They represent the prerequisites for the illusion of death and birth. And thus they represent the truly salient issues that must be addressed before we can assemble our complicated hard (and soft) ware. Interestingly, because computational information consists of a conceptualized, dualistic [End Page 123] binary system of ones and zeroes, and because the nature of Nirvana/samsara also consists of a conceptualized, dualistic system of "self"/"other," technology, in theory anyway, may probably be capable of manufacturing a facsimile of samsara, if only because computational information is, by its very nature, samsaric to begin with. Of course, all this demands that consciousness, self-awareness, and sentience be a function of information processing. Personally, I believe they are, and that, in fact, the words information and samsara are synonymous with one another. Thus it follows that information technology will most certainly be capable of manufacturing the prerequisites, at least, of enlightenment. If that blunt statement strikes you as utterly preposterous, technically impossible, or even offensive, you might want to first read any number of excellent texts describing the future of artificial intelligence (AI). Two of the best popular books on the subject are Robot by Hans Moravec and The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil. These will assuage your doubts concerning the soft problem, or, as it is sometimes called, the nuts-and-bolts problem.With these considerations in mind, let's see what we can come up with.In order to arrive at what you are not You must go through the way in which you are not.—T.S. Eliot, "East Coker" (The Four Quartets)For most Buddhists, enlightenment can be defined as seeing through the illusion of the self and experiencing unadulterated suchness. In the words of Master Wolfgang Kopp, "The seer, the seen, and the process of seeing are one. The thinker, the thought, and the process of thinking fall together into one and multiplicity melts away. There is neither inside, nor outside in this state. There is only 'suchness,' tathata."2 So, enlightenment is suchness, or, things as they are, revealed as all that there is. As engineers of enlightenment, it would appear then that are at least two components we need to build into our machine: an illusionary "self" and suchness, or things as they are. As we shall see, the... (shrink)

An instrument is any object which makes possible the attainment of desired ends. It is not essential to the being of the instrument that it be inanimate, worked over, or its mode of operation understood. A pigeon can carry a message; a stone as well as a hammer can be employed to break a glass; a child can start an automobile. The instrument need not function in the interests of men, be set into operation by living beings, or even be (...) used at all. Leaves serve some insects as umbrellas do men; the rays of the sun may turn a screw; a new knife has not yet had a chance to cut. A cow is an instrument for the production of milk, a hen for the production of eggs, though neither is inanimate, worked over, nor its operation understood; they can serve the interests of other animals, are able to initiate their own movements, and may not yet have had occasion to produce the desired results. But they are instruments because they are acknowledged means for the production of the desired milk and eggs. (shrink)

To understand how the photoreceptor protein rhodopsin performs in its role as a receptor, its structure needs to be determined at the atomic level. Upon receiving a photon of light, rhodopsin undergoes a change in conformation that allows it to bind and activate the C-protein, transducin. An important future goal should be to determine the structure of both the inactive and the photoactivated state of rhodopsin, R*. This should provide the groundwork necessary for experiments on how rhodopsin achieves its signaling (...) state R*, and how R* functions to activate transducin. To do this, the crystal structure of both rhodopsin and R* must be determined. Few membrane proteins have been successfully crystallized, so this is not a trivial undertaking. Two- or three dimensional crystals of rhodopsin must be prepared that are well ordered, to produce a high-resolution structure. Rhodopsin must be purified to homogeneity and the appropriate detergent(s) selected for crystallization experiments. Long-term thermal stability of the rhodopsin-detergent complex must be achieved in the presence of a precipitant. Two-dimensional crystals may offer advantages in investigating the structure of R*, but the structure obtained may be limited in resolution. It is necessary to work with rhodopsin in the dark, unless suitable light-stable retinal derivatives are developed. Protein engineering of rhodopsin offers attractive opportunities to improve its ability to crystallize, but is presently hindered by the absence of a high-yielding expression system. Knowledge of the structure of rhodopsin will have general importance. Because rhodopsin is a member of the family of C-protein-coupled receptors, knowledge of the structure and the mechanism of action of rhodopsin suggests by analogy how other members of the receptor family may function. (shrink)

Primarily, this article emphasises that while conducting research, especially one involving human subjects, researchers are expected to comply with applicable global and national ethical standards. Should a researcher fail to do so, he/she stands the risk of breaching research ethics, and this is capable of rendering his/her research unacceptable. Accordingly, this article, making reference to relevant ethical theories, critically examines and analyses the actions of a researcher who set out to investigate treatment recommendations for diarrhoea. Ultimately, a number of ethical (...) pitfalls in the stated research are x-rayed and some recommendations for subsequent studies are provided in this paper. (shrink)