In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to David Elliott’s “Music Education as/for Artistic Citizenship”Richard ColwellThe September issue of the Music Educators Journal contained an article by David Elliott entitled “Music Education as/for Artistic Citizenship”1 that I believe warrants considerable discussion by individuals conversant with the philosophy of music education in 2014.The journal is not known for its coverage of philosophy and an article in the Music Educators Journal is likely to influence far (...) more individuals than the Wayne Bowman and Anna Lucia Frega Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Music Education. Some of the statements may be misleading and/or readers unfamiliar with philosophy may misunderstand the present rationale for music education in the schools. There is a difference between advocacy and philosophy.Elliott has long been a close friend and I have admired his writings for decades. The article struck me as misplaced in MEJ and I immediately contacted Elliott about it. He replied that the article was based on a speech he had recently given and that the editors of the journal had asked that it be included in an early edition. [End Page 105]The basic thrust of the article appears to be philosophical with Elliott’s argument for praxial music education and his worry about teaching great works and great artists under some rubric connected with aesthetic education. I do not think this is what he means as he would support musical criticism. The attempt to reach the public directly through multiple approaches assumes that criticism is artificial and public taste natural.The opening paragraphs suggest that music education can be used in the service of additional or alternative aims and these appear to be unlimited. The basic ideas seem to contradict Elliott in his chapter on Music Education Philosophy in the McPherson andWelch Oxford Handbook of Music Education (2012) where he states, that “if everything counts, then nothing counts (p 68).” The MEJ article is a long-list of possibilities with an emphasis on three themes—music making for the betterment of social well-being, music making for social justice, and the infusion of school music with an ethic of care—three areas he felt were under-emphasized in his classic text Music Matters.Thus, there are a number of areas where I would seek clarification realizing that describing music education philosophy in fifty minutes is impossible if not misleading.The title indicates a plea for artistic citizenship. One can easily find artistic citizenship in every country in the world: Venezuela is a present example where artistic citizenship is promoted through social programs using great music supported by the World Bank and others and resulting in a reasonable type of citizenship based on the poll numbers for ex-President Chavez. I assume that Elliott supports the West-East Divan Orchestra project that brings together students from Mid-East countries where artistry for great music has little to do with the political and religious citizenships of sending countries.Valid examples are cited for protest songs that have addressed injustices through the centuries and against government practices. If the point is that music can expand our horizons, great. When possible, I would suggest that music be used that leads to greater growth: growth in musical understanding or in this instance, positive citizenship. Music can have both political and social meanings and the music used should have a positive objective in mind. Elliott might conclude that music education is divorced from the real world and too often it is. Dewey wanted a connection and that connection would have included making music for one’s own satisfaction or playing in the town band as well as listening to live and recorded music that dominated the first half of the 20th century.What seems important in education, in music, and in philosophy is that we build on the best ideas and writings available to us. Culture can be changed and may need to be. Kurt Vonnegut learned as a prisoner during WWII that culture [End Page 106] was as separate from the brain as a Model T Ford, and it could be tinkered with. It is an easy jump from there to believing that a culture can... (shrink)

This book is presented as “a study in ethno-metaphysics,” an exploration of the worldview of Canada's Native peoples. In offering this as a work of philosophy rather than of cultural anthropology or Native spirituality, authors Rabb and McPherson take as their point of departure anthropologist A. I. Hallowell's claim that a cultural worldview is a “cognitive orientation” from which a set of metaphysical claims might be deduced—even if it is not consciously recognized as such by those who live within (...) it. In other words, the guiding premise of this work is that something recognizable and significant as a metaphysical theory can be massaged out of the cultural belief-systems of Canada's Native peoples. (shrink)

This is one of the most important books on quantum mechanics to have appeared in recent years. It offers a dramatically new interpretation that resolves puzzles and paradoxes associated with the measurement problem and the behavior of coupled systems. A crucial feature of this interpretation is that a quantum mechanical measurement can be certain to have a particular outcome even when the observed system fails to have the property corresponding to that outcome just prior to the measurement interaction.

A notable achievement of T.M. Scanlon's What We Owe to Each Other is its sustained critique of welfarist consequentialism. Consequentialism is the doctrine that one morally ought always to do an act, of the alternatives, that brings about a state of affairs that is no less good than any other one could bring about. Welfarism is the view that what makes a state of affairs better or worse is some increasing function of the welfare for persons realized in it. I (...) shall argue that Scanlon’s critique, though containing much of interest, fails on its own terms. (shrink)

String dualities establish empirical equivalence between theories that often look entirely different with respect to their basic ontology and physical structure. Therefore, they represent a particularly interesting example of empirical equivalence in physics. However, the status of duality relations in string physics differs substantially from the traditional understanding of the role played by empirical equivalence. The paper specifies three important differences and argues that they are related to a substantially altered view on the underdetermination of theory building.

One of the most powerful tools in science is the analytic method, whereby we seek to understand complex systems by studying simpler sub-systems from which the complex is composed. If this method is to be successful, something about the sub-systems must remain invariant as we move from the relatively isolated conditions in which we study them, to the complex conditions in which we want to put our knowledge to use. This paper asks what this invariant could be. The paper shows (...) that the kinds of thing that a Humean might point to – behaviour, laws, and dispositions – cannot play the role required of the invariant in question. Nor, indeed, can non-Humean causal powers of the kind advocated by contemporary metaphysicians such as Ellis and Lierse. The paper suggests that the analytic method presupposes a kind of entity that does not appear in standard ontologies – a metaphysically substantial notion of causal influence. This notion of causal influence is one that Cartwright has also seen the need for, though she does not seem to take the notion as seriously as she should. (shrink)

Internal due process systems are the formal mechanisms thatmany organizations use to address and resolve ethics conflicts.Problematical due process systems such asinvestigation-punishment and grievance-arbitration systemsnarrowly constrain the political and moral space needed formeaningful ethics voice, praxis, and community. The relativelyuncommon employee board and mediator-counselor types of systemscan help solve such problems. The employee board andmediator-counselor systems permit questioning not only of guiltwith respect to policy violations but also the appropriateness ofthe policies as well as potential biases in an organization'sembedded tradition-system (...) that may be contributing to unethicalbehavior. Theoretical implications for organization ethics,praxis, community, and integrative social contracts theories areexplored. Several case examples are discussed. (shrink)

This chapter offers a review of standard views about the requirements for natural selection to shape evolution and for the sorts of ‘units’ on which selection might operate. It then summarizes traditional arguments for genic selectionism, i.e., the view that selection operates primarily on genes (e.g., those of G. C. Williams, Richard Dawkins, and David Hull) and traditional counterarguments (e.g., those of William Wimsatt, Richard Lewontin, and Elliott Sober, and a diffuse group based on life history strategies). It (...) then offers a series of responses to the arguments, based on more contemporary considerations from molecular genetics, offered by Carmen Sapienza. A key issue raised by Sapienza concerns the degree to which a small number of genes might be able to control much of the variation relevant to selection operating on such selectively critical organs as hearts. The response to these arguments suggests that selection acts on many levels at once and that sporadic selection, acting with strong effects, can act successively on different key traits (and genes) while maintaining a balance among many potentially conflicting demands faced by organisms within an evolving lineage. (shrink)

Prägender Denker für die Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften. Das Handbuch präsentiert den aktuellen Diskussionsstand zu Werk und Wirkung Theodor W. Adornos. Es beleuchtet zentrale Fragestellungen des wegweisenden Philosophen und bietet inhaltliche und methodische Werkzeuge zur Auseinandersetzung mit seinen Schriften. Über 40 Beiträger lassen die verschiedenen Zugangsweisen in der Beschäftigung mit Adorno deutlich werden. So kommt der spezifisch interdisziplinäre Charakter des Adornoschen Philosophierens hervorragend zum Ausdruck.

The claim that visually masked, unidentifiable words are analyzed at the level of whole word meaning has been challenged by recent findings indicating that instead, analysis occurs mainly at the subword level. The present experiments examined possible limits on subword analysis. Experiment 1 obtained semantic priming from pleasant- and unpleasant-meaning subliminal words in which no individual letter contained diagnostic information about a word’s evaluative valence; thus analysis must operate on information more complex than that contained in individual letters. Experiments 2 (...) and 3 showed that analysis must operate on information more complex than that represented by individual bigrams or trigrams . These findings suggest that while subliminal priming is driven by subword analysis, the effective units of analysis are distributed widely across at least short words. (shrink)

In this paper we study the model theory of extensions of models of first-order Peano Arithmetic by means of the arithmetized completeness theorem applied to a definable complete extension of PA in the original model. This leads us to many interesting model theoretic properties equivalent to reflection principles and ω-consistency, and these properties together with the associated first-order schemes extending PA are studied.

Malgre des commentaires deja fort nombreux sur Aristote, le present ouvrage se propose de donner une introduction originale a ce monument de la philosophie. Ne s'engageant pas dans les debats traditionnels sur le statut de l'oeurve d'Aristote, l'auteur, qui se presente comme un historien de la philosophie, a pour projet de restituer les originalites de cette oeuvre plurielle, sans la travestir par une lecture anachronique qui ferait perdre la lettre de texte. Il etudie ainsi le corpus aristotelicien selon diverses approches (...) a la fois systematiques et genetiques. Destinee a un large public, cette introduction claire et complete permet de s'initier aux problemes qui jalonnent cette oeuvre, dont l'unite est difficile a cerner. (shrink)

Various writers point out that accepting the terms of a contract does not imply consent to the background conditions of this contract. This is an important critical insight allowing for a critical perspective on the principle of free contract, according to which the state should not interfere with what adult agents contractually agree upon. In this paper I argue that the practical relevance of this critical insight depends on the availability of answers to three questions: (1) Which are the core (...) features of baseline background conditions supporting a well-ordered labor market enhancing economic welfare? (2) In which cases and for which reasons are non-market institutions needed in order to support these features? (3) Under which conditions and at which levels can collective mechanisms be expected to support adequate non-market institutions ‘curing market failure’? Some of the core properties of labor markets and labor contracts are discussed which need to be taken into account in attempts to answer these questions, most notably problems of contract enforcement, market failure and collective action. (shrink)

Addicts may simply deny that they are addicted; or they may use self-signalling to try to provide evidence that giving up is not worthwhile. I provide an account that shows how easy it is to provide apparent evidence either that the addiction is so bad that it cannot be escaped; or that there is no real addiction, and hence nothing to escape. I suggest that the most effective way of avoiding this is to avoid self-signalling altogether.

We present some general results concerning the topological space of cuts of a countable model of arithmetic given by a particular indicator Y.The notion of “indicator” is de.ned in a novel way, without initially specifying what property is indicated and is used to de.ne a topological space of cuts of the model. Various familiar properties of cuts are investigated in this sense, and several results are given stating whether or not the set of cuts having the property is comeagre.A new (...) notion of “generic cut” is introduced and investigated and it is shown in the case of countable arithmetically saturated models M ⊧ PA that generic cuts exist, indeed the set of generic cuts is comeagre in the sense of Baire, and furthermore that two generic cuts within the same “small interval” of the model are conjugate by an automorphism of the model.The paper concludes by outlining some applications to constructions of cuts satisfying properties incompatible with genericity, and discussing in model-theoretic terms those properties for which there is an indicator Y. (shrink)

There is a practical five-step method of ethics dialog developed by John Woolman, an 18th c. businessman and ethical activist, that was used by Robert K. Greenleaf, a 20th c. A.T.&T. Corporate Vice-President, that includes: (a) friendly, emotive affect; (b) discussion of mutual commonalities; (c) discussion of issue entanglements; (d) discussion of potential experimental solutions; and, (e) trial and feedback discussion. This method of dialog appears to proceed with a type of consciousness considered by John Woolman and Bernard Lonergan as (...) one where the I is conscious that I and Others are part of a more foundational, larger and prior We. This type of dialog is different than Socratic dialog. The corresponding type of consciousness is different than the more derivative, e.g., two allies being united in their response to a common goal. It is also different than Buber's I and Thou appreciative consciounsess of the interestingness, value, diversity, and uniqueness of others. Woolman dialog as seen in four cases appears to be a concrete method that has some value both as an end in itself and as instrumental means that can: be issue effective, help build ethical organization/community culture, and help facilitate peaceful, evolutionary change and development. Limitations of the method are also considered. The method may also be a several hundred year anticipation of experiment based pragmatist philosophy that is anthropologically sensitive to cultural entanglements. No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe, ... Each is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine.... John Donne (17th c.). (shrink)

In this paper, I reflect on the puzzle that machine learning presents to social theory to develop an account of its distinct impact on social reality. I start by presenting how machine learning has presented a challenge to social theory as a research subject comprising both familiar and alien characteristics (1.). Taking this as an occasion for theoretical inquiry, I then propose a conceptual framework to investigate how algorithmic models of social phenomena relate to social reality and what their stochastic (...) mode of operation entails in terms of their sociality (2.). Analyzed through a theoretical lens that relies on central tenets of sociological systems theory, I find that machine learning implies a distinct epistemic transformation, based on how algorithmic modeling techniques process meaning as represented in data embedded in vector space. Building on this characterization, I introduce my conceptualization of stochastic technology as distinct from mechanistic technologies that rely on causal fixation (3.). Based on this understanding, I suggest that real-world applications of machine learning are often characterized by a constitutive tension between the stochastic properties of their outputs and the ways in which they are put to use in practice. Focussing on the large language models LaMDA and ChatGPT, I examine the epistemological implications of LLMs to account for the confusion of correlation and causality as the root of this tension. Next, I illustrate my theoretical conception by way of discussing an essay on image models by German media artist Hito Steyerl (4.). Following a critical reflection on Steyerl's characterization of Stable Diffusion as a “white box ”, I finally propose to conceive ofmachine learning-based technologies as stochastic contingency machines that transform social indeterminacy into contingent observations of social phenomena (5.) In this perspective, machine learning constitutes an epistemic technology that operates on meaning as extractable from data by means of algorithmic data modeling techniques to produce stochastic accounts of social reality. (shrink)