Citizen event reporting (CER) attempts to leverage the eyes and ears of a large population of citizen sensors to increase the amount of information available to decision makers. When deployed in an environment that includes hostile elements, foes can exploit the system to exert indirect control over the response infrastructure. We use an agent-based model to relate the utility of responses to population composition, citizen behavior, and decision strategy, and measure the result in terms of a force multiplier. We show (...) that CER can lead to positive force multipliers even with a majority of hostile elements in the population. When reporter identity is known, a reputation system that keeps track of trustworthy reporters can further increase the force multipliers. (shrink)

This article contains a survey of recent debates in the philosophy of photography, focusing on aesthetic and epistemic issues in particular. Starting from widespread notions about automatism, causality and realism in the theory of photography, the authors ask whether the prima facie tension between the epistemic and aesthetic embodied in oppositions such as automaticism and agency, causality and intentionality, realism and fictional competence is more than apparent. In this context, the article discusses recent work by Roger Scruton, Dominic Lopes, (...) Kendall Walton, Gregory Currie, Jonathan Cohen and Aaron Meskin, Noël Carroll, and Patrick Maynard in some detail. Specific topics addressed include: aesthetic scepticism, transparency, imagination, perception, information, representation and depiction. (shrink)

What is photography? Is it primarily a source of knowledge about the world or an art? Many have said the former, because it records the world automatically, others the latter because it embodies human subjectivity. Can it photography be both or must we choose? In On Photography: A Philosophical Inquiry Diarmuid Costello examines these fascinating questions and more. In so doing he introduces some of the fundamental topics and debates about the nature of photography, with the help of photographic (...) images from Paul Strand, Lee Friedlander, James Welling, Jeff Wall, and Gerhard Richter, among others. Tracing the roots of thinking about photography from its discovery, through Nineteenth Century debates about its standing as art, to Twentieth Century Modernism and post-War cultural criticism, Costello identifies the emergence of a powerful "orthodox" view of photography. The features that make photographs compelling documents are precisely those that put pressure on its standing as art; though they provide a wealth of empirical information, they cannot have the unifying vision we look for in art. He draws on the reflections of photographers and theorists, including Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Siegfried Kracauer, Andre Bazin and Stanley Cavell to illustrate this fundamental tension. The view comes to fruition in the work of Roger Scruton and Kendall Walton. Whether pure photography is capable of representing fictions, or always presents a transparent window onto the real world becomes the key question. Recently, the orthodox view has come under increasing pressure from a new generation of philosophers who reject the contrast between machine and hand made images that underwrites it. He concludes by examining photographic agency in a digital age. Written in a clear and engaging style, On Photography: A Philosophical Inquiry is essential reading for anyone interested in the philosophy of photography, aesthetics, art, and visual studies. (shrink)

Drawing on a host of philosophers such as Arthur Schopenhauer, Gabriel Marcel, Josef Pieper, Paul Ricoeur, Viktor Frankl, Eric Voegelin, Bernard Lonergan, Roger Scruton, John Caputo, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, as well as theologians like Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, Hans KÃ1/4ng, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, this book argues passionately for the place of hope as the â ~beyondâ (TM) of both a will-oâ (TM)-the-wisp, facile optimism, on the one hand, and a world-weary, fatuous pessimism, on the (...) other. Drawing on the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta in the concluding chapter, it suggests that only by living from the Self as distinct from the ego can we know ultimate peace and experience the bliss of being that is beyond both hope and happiness. These philosophical reflections are both timely, as the publication appears amid the Coronavirus crisis, and wise. It is warmly recommended for its breadth and depth of knowledge. This book will appeal to students of both Eastern and Western philosophy, as well as spiritual seekers. (shrink)

Argues that the only way to understand the Confucian vision of the consummate moral life is to take the tradition on its own terms.

It is notoriously difficult to spell out the norms of inductive reasoning in a neat set of rules. I explore the idea that explanatory considerations are the key to sorting out the good inductive inferences from the bad. After defending the crucial explanatory virtue of stability, I apply this approach to a range of inductive inferences, puzzles, and principles such as the Raven and Grue problems, and the significance of varied data and random sampling.

This disagreement extends to the fundamental details of physical and biochemical theories. On the other hand, (2) There is almostuniversal agreementthatlife did notfirstcome aboutmerely by chance. This is not to say that all scientists think that life’s existence was inevitable. The common view is that given a fuller understanding of the physical and biological conditions and processes involved, the emergence of life should be seen to be quite likely, or at least not very surprising. The view which is almost universally (...) rejected by researchers in the field is that the numerous and prima facie improbable physical and biological requirements for life all fell together just by a fluke, like so many dice tumbling out of a bag and landing all sixes. Most importantly, for the purposes of the following discussion, (3) The conviction that life did not arise largely by chance is treated as epistem- ically prior to the development of alternative theories. C 2007, Copyright the Authors Journal compilation C 2007, Blackwell Publishing, Inc. (shrink)

(1) is an example of an adjectival comparative. In it, the adjective important is flanked by more and a comparative clause headed by than. This article is a survey of recent ideas about the interpretation of comparatives, including (i) the underlying semantics based on the idea of a threshold; (ii) the interpretation of comparative clauses that include quantifiers (brighter than on many other days); (iii) remarks on differentials such as much in (1) above: what they do in the comparative and (...) what they do elsewhere in the language; (iv) the relationship between comparatives and other Degree constructions (e.g. as important, too impor- tant); and (v) the types of phrases in which comparatives are found (adjective: tighter versus noun: more water). Given the nature and purpose of this essay, I have tried not to presuppose background in formal semantics and I have departed from standard practice in journal articles by, as much as possible, not interrupting the flow with footnotes and references. There are two appendices. The first provides more analytical detail and there I do rely on formal techniques of natural language semantics. The second covers the sources for the ideas surveyed here. (shrink)

Emphasizing the continuity between his moral and aesthetic doctrines and the metaphysical basis in which they rest, the author explores Kant's relation to Leibniz and Hume, and his attempt to construct a philosophy which was neither rationalist nor empiricist, and could display the limits of human understanding; he shows that Kant was not only a master of philosophical criticism, but the greater defender of the objectivity of human knowledge, in both the scientific and the moral spheres.

Analyses of quotation have assumed that quotations are referring expressions while disagreeing over details. That assumption is unnecessary and unacceptable in its implications. It entails a quasi-Parmenidean impossibility of meaningfully denying the meaningfulness or referential function of anything uttered, for it implies that: 'Kqxf' is not a meaningful expression 'The' is not a referring expression are, if meaningful, false. It also implies that ill formed constructions like: 'The' is 'the' are well formed tautologies. Such sentences make apparent the need for (...) what is commonly explicit, a genuine referring expression, a noun phrase, usually a description, to which the quotation is appositional. A quotation is not itself a word, though it may contain such. The markers signal that the enquoted material is like a sentence-embedded color patch, material displayed to facilitate reference to something identifiable by/with it specified by the noun phrase it subserves. (shrink)

I critique Peter Singer’s view that equality across species is a natural extension of equality. Singer presents one minor and two major arguments. The first major argument is that equality across species is implied by the traditional principle of equality. The second is that it follows from a conception that is behind the principle of equality, namely the moral “point of view of the universe.” The minor argument is a theory of the altruistic character and expanding circles of ethics.

Contrasts classical Greek ontology ("the science of being in itself") with classical Chinese "zoetology" ("the art of living").

Three topics are discussed concerning the application probability and explanation to the confirmation of theories. The first concerns the debate over prediction versus accommodation. I argue that we typically have reason to be more confident of a theory given that it was constructed independently of the knowledge of certain data than if it was designed to accommodate those data. The second concerns the puzzle of the apparent 'fine-tuning' of the universe for life. I argue that the fact that our universe (...) meets the extremely improbable yet necessary conditions for life provides no evidence for the thesis that there are, or have been, very many universes. The third chapter concerns the need to explain the existence of life. I argue that if life's existence needs an explanation at all, the place to look is in a teleological explanation. If this option is rejected, we should be content to see the origin of life as an extremely improbable fluke. (shrink)

The identity "relation" is misconceived since the syntax of "=" is misconceived as a relative term. Actually, "=" is syncategorematic; it forms (true) sentences with a nonpredicative syntax from pairs of (coreferring) flanking names, much as "&" forms (true) conjunctive sentences from pairs of (true) flanking sentences. In the conaming structure, nothing is predicated of the subject, other than, implicitly, its being so conamed. An identity sentence has both an objectual reading as a necessity about what is named, and also (...) a metalinguistic reading as a contingency about the names. Either way the claim about the subject referent has no extralinguistic content. The necessity of alteridentity (non-self-identity) statements is "lexical", due to contingencies of the names' reference, much like the necessity of analytic statements, due to contingencies of the predicates' sense, and unlike the necessity of logical truths (e.g., self-identities) whose truth is secured by syntax alone. Both alter-identity and analytic sentences are readable as objectual necessities and metalinguistic contingencies. Epistemically, alter-identity statements are not essentially unlike analyticities. "Greece is Hellas"/"g=h" and "Greeks are Hellenes"/"(x)(Gx<=>Hx)" are equally (un)informative; so too for "Azure is cobalt"/"a=c" and "Everything azure is cobalt"/"(x)(Ax<=>Cx)". The real epistemic contrast is between proper names (terms without predicative sense) and terms with a predicative sense (names and predicates of properties). Proper names refer to concrete objects, property names refer to abstract objects. That contrast is metaphysical and thus epistemic. (shrink)

Does economics hold the key to everything or does the recent financial crisis show that it has failed? This book provides an assessment of modern economics that cuts through the confusion and controversy on this question. Case studies of the creation of new markets, the Russian transition to capitalism, globalization, and money and finance establish that economics has been very successful where problems have been well defined and where the world can be changed to fit the theory, but that it (...) has been less successful in tackling bigger problems. The book then offers a historical perspective on how economists have, since the Second World War, tried to make their subject scientific. It explores the evolving relationship between science and ideology and investigates the place of heterodoxy and dissent within the discipline. (shrink)

This collection dedicated to and including David Hume's "Of the Standard of Taste," offers a much needed resource for students and scholars of philosophical aesthetics, political reflection, value and judgments, economics, and art. The authors include experts in the philosophy of art, aesthetics, history of philosophy as well as the history of science. Contributors include Babette Babich, Howard Caygill, Timothy M.Costelloe, Andrej Démuth / Slávka Démuthová, Bernard Freydberg, Peter Kivy, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Christopher MacLachlan, Emilio Mazza, Roger Schiner, Roger (...) Scruton, and Dabney Townsend, . (shrink)

Deconstructing life -- Playing games with death -- The hollow crown -- The challenging void -- Waiting for God -- Static chaos -- Knots -- Can these dry bones live? -- Frankenstein -- Whirlwinds -- A very human chaos.

The waters part at the Crossing of the Red Sea by the Hebrews. Water is turned into wine by Jesus at the Wedding Feast at Cana. For Christians, these miraculous events have really or truly happened. But aren't miracles rather fictions full of deep meaning? Aren’t Christians invited to pretend (make-believe) that miracles have taken place? Aren’t miracles fictions? Fictionalism answer positively to these questions. This account is sometimes presupposed in the hermeneutics of the biblical narrative. Fictionalism can be theological, (...) that is global: God himself is fiction; it can be partial: only miracles are fictions, not God. The article shows that a Christian may not adhere to fictionalism and must assume the reality of miracles. The Christian may not make them a matter of simple interpretation and deep meaning. He must believe that the waters parted when the Jewish people fled Egypt, that Jesus did indeed turn the water into wine in Cana. (shrink)

Reid thought that testimony possesses positive epistemic value. Epistemic autonomy is not necessarily the royal road to truth; nor is credulity a systematic epistemic fault and indeed, it can be an intellectual virtue. Even though the notion of epistemic virtue does not explicitly appear in Reid’s epistemology, it seems inherent to his views that what will give a heteronomous agent exercising the social operations of the mind the best chance to acquire and develop true beliefs is the epistemic virtues that (...) permit her to recognize reliable authorities. This is why it seems to me possible to associate Reid with to the virtue epistemology tradition. (shrink)

German Idealism began with Leibniz and lasted until Schopenhauer, with a few central European after-shocks in the work of Husserl and his followers. That great epoch in German philosophy coincided with a great epoch in German music. It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that Idealist philosophers should have paid special attention to this art form. Looking back on it, is there anything of this prolonged encounter between music and philosophy that we can consider to be a real advance, and one that (...) we should draw on? Many have thought so, not least because Idealism, as it matured in the post-Kantian period, inherited the adulation for art in general, and music in particular, that we find in the writings of the German Romantics, notably in Schiller, Tieck and Wackenroder. The post-Kantian Idealists connected aesthetic experience with their claims to reveal the secret meaning of things, in the infinite, the absolute, the transcendental, the ineffable or some other such object of a quasi-religious devotion. Such we find in the writings of Schelling, Fichte, Hegel and Schopenhauer, the last of whom made music not only an object of philosophy, but a prime example of it. Music, Schopenhauer wrote, is not unconscious arithmetic, as Leibniz had claimed, but unconscious philosophy, since in music the inner essence of the world, which is will, is made directly present to the intellect. (shrink)

In On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin put forward his theory of natural selection. Conventionally, Darwin's argument for this theory has been understood as based on an analogy with artificial selection. But there has been no consensus on how, exactly, this analogical argument is supposed to work – and some suspicion too that analogical arguments on the whole are embarrassingly weak. Drawing on new insights into the history of analogical argumentation from the ancient Greeks onward, as well as on (...) in-depth studies of Darwin's public and private writings, this book offers an original perspective on Darwin's argument, restoring to view the intellectual traditions which Darwin took for granted in arguing as he did. From this perspective come new appreciations not only of Darwin's argument but of the metaphors based on it, the range of wider traditions the argument touched upon, and its legacies for science after the Origin. (shrink)