This article presents a fundamental advance in the theory of mental models as an explanation of reasoning about facts, possibilities, and probabilities. It postulates that the meanings of compound assertions, such as conditionals (if) and disjunctions (or), unlike those in logic, refer to conjunctions of epistemic possibilities that hold in default of information to the contrary. Various factors such as general knowledge can modulate these interpretations. New information can always override sentential inferences; that is, reasoning in daily life is defeasible (...) (or nonmonotonic). The theory is a dual process one: It distinguishes between intuitive inferences (based on system 1) and deliberative inferences (based on system 2). The article describes a computer implementation of the theory, including its two systems of reasoning, and it shows how the program simulates crucial predictions that evidence corroborates. It concludes with a discussion of how the theory contrasts with those based on logic or on probabilities. (shrink)

It is possible that a fair coin tossed infinitely many times will always land heads. So the probability of such a sequence of outcomes should, intuitively, be positive, albeit miniscule: 0 probability ought to be reserved for impossible events. And, furthermore, since the tosses are independent and the probability of heads (and tails) on a single toss is half, all sequences are equiprobable. But Williamson has adduced an argument that purports to show that our intuitions notwithstanding, the probability of an (...) infinite sequence is 0. In this paper, I rebut his argument.No Abstract. (shrink)

In attempting to derive irreversible macroscopic thermodynamics from reversible microscopic dynamics, Boltzmann inadvertently smuggled in a premise that assumed the very irreversibility he was trying to prove: ‘molecular chaos.’ The program of ‘Einselection’ within Everettian approaches faces a similar ‘Loschmidt’s Paradox’: the universe, according to the Everettian picture, is a closed system obeying only unitary dynamics, and it therefore contains no distinguishable environmental subsystems with the necessary ‘phase randomness’ to effect einselection of a pointer observable. The theoretically unjustified assumption of (...) distinguishable environmental subsystems is the hidden premise that makes the derivation of einselection circular. In effect, it presupposes the ‘emergent’ structures from the beginning. Thus the problem of basis ambiguity remains unsolved in Everettian interpretations. (shrink)

In two curiously neglected papers, David Lewis claims to reduce to absurdity the supposition (commonly labeled DAB) that (some) desires are belief-like. My aim in this paper is to explain the significance of this claim and rebut the proof.

There is an urgent need to understand how private and public organisations can play a role in promoting human values such as fairness, dignity, respect and care. Globalisation, technological advance and climate change are changing work, organisations and systems in ways which foster inequality, alienation and collective risk. Against this backdrop, organisations are being urged to make their contribution to the common good, take account of the interests of multiple stakeholders, and respond ethically as well as efficiently to complex challenges (...) which transcend traditional organisational and state boundaries. Ethics, Meaningfulness, and Mutuality poses critical questions related to organisational design by challenging limits to current thinking, such as the neglect by political philosophers of markets, firms and stakeholders, or by organisational theorists of business ethics. In so doing, the book advances our understanding of the theory and practice of ethical organising. Specifically, meaningfulness and mutuality will be used to yield values and principles for a philosophy of ethical organising which includes an account of human values in morally desirable collective action, and examines the relationship of collective action to the contested concept of shared value creation. Within a philosophy of ethical organising, mutuality permits an examination of the unavoidable relational nature of collective action, whereas meaningfulness addresses fundamental human concerns for significance and leading a life we have reason to value. By addressing our status as relational beings with human needs for meaning, a philosophy of ethical organising brings critical thinking to the creation of morally informed organisational practices which are not only instrumentally beneficial for addressing wicked problems, but are normatively desirable for human flourishing. (shrink)

While reviewing relevant recent research, it becomes apparent that cognitive approaches have been rejected and excluded from Critical Discourse Analysis by many scholars out of often unjustified reasons. This article argues, in contrast, that studies in CDA would gain significantly through integrating insights from socio-cognitive theories into their framework. Examples from my own research into the comprehension and comprehensibility of news broadcasts, Internet discussion boards as well as into discourse and discrimination illustrate this position. However, I also argue that there (...) are salient limits to cognitive theories which have to be taken into account, specifically when proposing social change via rational/cognitive insights. Examples from recent political debates on immigration and from the election campaign in the US in 2004 serve to emphasize these arguments. (shrink)

This paper presents a formal characterization of a two stage decision rule. This characterization involves three conditions which, together, are satisfied by any choice function that can be represented as a two-tier choice function. And any choice function satisfying these three conditions can be represented as a two-tier choice function. The first condition identifies particular features of two-tier choice functions when they violate Property α. The other two conditions are essentially existence claims, required to ensure that the two tiers of (...) a choice function can be represented as (pseudo-) rationalizable choice functions. My aim is to offer a formal result that provides insight into the nature of two-tier decisions. The more we understand how a particular decision procedure operates, the more we should expect to predict its results accurately, and the more we should be able to understand the circumstances under which its use is (and is not) appropriate. (shrink)

Derived from Ruth Williams' more than 40-year immersion in spiritual practice, as well as her clinical experience as a Jungian analyst, this thought-provoking volume explores the nature of spiritual paths and trajectories in practical ways, incorporating personal anecdote and ground-breaking academic research and providing a window into how Jungian practitioners work with soul and spirit. Williams explores the nature of being a human using the Yiddish idea of a person being a 'mensch,' which means being a decent human being, (...) having humanity and living ethically with integrity. The idea of 'grace' is the thread that runs through the book-the mystery that binds things together and makes life meaningful, purposeful, potentially joyful and spiritually fulfilling. Williams sees 'grace' as being that which underpins and lies behind synchronicity and divinatory practices and as a force by which we can learn to be guided. Rooted in clinical work, Exploring Spirituality from a Post-Jungian Perspective is fascinating reading for Jungian analysts, therapists and academics, as well as for general readers interested in a spiritual journey, both personally and for clinical purposes. (shrink)

It is hypothesized that de Broglie’s ‘matter waves’ provide a dynamical basis for Minkowski spacetime in an antisubstantivalist or relational account. The relativity of simultaneity is seen as an effect of the de Broglie oscillation together with a basic relativity postulate, while the dispersion relation from finite rest mass gives rise to the differentiation of spatial and temporal axes. Thus spacetime is seen as not fundamental, but rather as emergent from the quantum level. A result by Solov’ev which demonstrates that (...) time is not an applicable concept at the quantum level is adduced in support of this claim. Finally, it is noted that de Broglie waves can be seen as the “bridge of becoming” discussed by ( 2005 ). (shrink)

Die Forschung mit embryonalen Stammzellen gehört in Deutschland seit Jahren zu den in der Öffentlichkeit besonders kontrovers diskutierten Fragen. Aus ethischer, rechtlicher und sozialwissenschaftlicher Perspektive wirft die Verwendung von humanen embryonalen Stammzellen und induzierten pluripotenten Stammzellen in der Grundlagenforschung, der sich abzeichnenden klinischen Anwendung oder auch der ebenfalls näher rückenden Nutzung von Stammzellen als Testsystemen eine Reihe von Fragen auf, die, neben eher allgemeinen Fragen der Ethik der Stammzellforschung, den Fokus der Beiträge des vorliegenden Sammelbandes bilden.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Guru to the World tells the story of Swami Vivekananda, the nineteenth-century Hindu ascetic who introduced the West to yoga and to a tolerant, scientifically minded universalist conception of religion. Ruth Harris explores the many legacies of Vivekananda's thought, including his impact on anticolonial movements and contemporary Hindu nationalism.

This book investigates what actually happens when Pierre Bayle writes about the past and challenges the still prevalent view that he is dispassionate in the way he treats the subjects of the more than two thousand articles in his biographical Dictionnaire historique et critique. It opens with two case studies of the way he uses the sources available to him, which reveal a committed writer at work. Subsequent chapters explore the theory that shapes his erudition; the method that he devised (...) to discern falsehood from truth; his critical approach to Scripture; his conceptual reconstruction of the past. Bayle emerges from this as a writer whose interest in the past is more than antiquarian. The ideal of impartiality, which he drew from Renaissance conceptions of history, is not neutral but always situated. For all their apparent objectivity, the articles in the Dictionnaire are actually shaped by the debates, conflicts, and politics of Bayle's own time and place. In 1989, when this book was first published, its intertextual and contextualised reading of Bayle was innovative. Although many similar studies followed, this book led the way by developing an approach that allows us to gain access to the deeper strata of Bayle's thought. (shrink)

Despite the considerable body of scholarship and practice on interconnected systems of dominance and its effects on women in different social locations, Chicanas remain “outside the frame” of mainstream academic feminist dialogues. This article provides an overview of the contributions of Chicana intersectional thought, research, and activism. We highlight four major scholarly areas of contribution: borders, identities, institutional inequalities, and praxis. Although not a full mapping of the Chicana/latina presence in intersectionality, it proffers the distinctive features and themes defining the (...) intersectional terrain of Chicana feminism. (shrink)

In the libertarian ``agent causation'' view of free will, free choices are attributable only to the choosing agent, as opposed to a specific cause or causes outside the agent. An often-repeated claim in the philosophical literature on free will is that agent causation necessarily implies lawlessness, and is therefore ``antiscientific." That claim is critiqued and it is argued, on the contrary, that the volitional powers of a free agent need not be viewed as anomic, specifically with regard to the quantum (...) statistical law. Assumptions about the role and nature of causation, taken as bearing on volitional agency, are examined and found inadequate to the task. Finally, it is suggested that quantum theory may constitute precisely the sort of theory required for a nomic grounding of libertarian free will. (shrink)

For Sartre, shame is not an ethical but an ontological experience. With this in mind, the article examines the philosophical connection between shame and ambiguity through analysis of the experiences of abortion and the Nazi Occupation. The article demonstrates how Beauvoir develops Sartre's ontological notion of shame into an ethical philosophy of ambiguity as a result of wartime experiences. It demonstrates how encounters with shame, abortion, ambiguity and Occupation life in Beauvoir's 1945 novel Le sang des autres elucidate and are (...) developed by Sartre and Beauvoir's philosophies of shame and ambiguity. The paper proposes that Sartre's and Beauvoir's thought was shaped by living through the Nazi Occupation and reveals how the memory of wartime shame is activated in contemporary ethical dilemmas in later literary works of both writers. (shrink)

This paper presents a different interpretation for Morris's change of mind on the issue of participation in 1890, and offers a new interpretation of his utopian writings in the light of this examination. In the first part it examines Morris's relationship to anarchism and Marxism and his reasons for adopting an anti-parliamentary stance in the period 1884 to 1890. It accepts the Marxist interpretation that Morris was never an anarchist but against it argues that he was serious in his hostility (...) to parliamentary action. The second part looks at Morris's reasons for rejecting anti-parliamentarism after 1890. It accepts that Morris altered his position on parliamentary participation but explains it as a product of the disappointment of his revolutionary hopes and his commitment to an idea of political education. The final section looks at the relationship between Morris's political strategy and his utopian writings and argues that his utopianism was defined not against political reality, but as a response to it. (shrink)

This paper examines the English case, Regina v Adams in which the difference between "scientific reason" and "common sense" was explicitly at stake in the use of DNA evidence. In its decision the Appellate Court reinstated a boundary between "scientific" and "common sense" evidence, arguing that this boundary was necessary to preserve the jury's role as trier of fact. The paper's discussion of the court's work of demarcation addresses the unresolved problems with the place of probability estimates in jury trials.

I start by considering Mark Steiner’s startling claim that Hume takes geometry to be synthetic a priori, which engenders the Kantian challenge to explain how such knowledge is possible. I argue, in response, that Steiner misinterprets the (deceptive) relevant passage from Hume, and that Hume, as the received view has it, takes geometry to be analytic, although in a more expansive sense of the word than the modern one. I then note a new challenge geometry engenders for Hume. Unlike Euclidean (...) space, Humean space is finitely divisible, for which several Euclidean axioms and theorems do not hold. I argue, in response, that (crucially for his scientific project) Hume can account for our belief in the truth of Euclidean geometry on the basis of non-Euclidean ideas, although (innocuously for him) not all should be true. I conclude by arguing, on a less optimistic note, that Hume cannot point to a geometry that is true of our (discrete) ideas. (shrink)

Two kinds of considerations are thought to be relevant to the correct response to the discovery of a peer who disagrees with you about some question. The first is general principles pertaining to disagreement. According to the second kind of consideration, a theory about the correct response to peer disagreement must conform to our intuitions about test cases. In this paper, I argue against the assumption that imperfect conformity to our intuitions about test cases must count against a theory about (...) peer disagreement, offer a principled way of shrugging off a theory’s failure to deliver the intuitive verdict, and consider the main extant theories from the new methodological perspective. (shrink)

Summary Edward Cocker was a well-known writing master and engraver during his lifetime, but is chiefly remembered for his posthumous arithmetic textbook, immortalized in the saying ?According to Cocker?. The book proved popular, being right for its time, and it remained in use for a century. It unexpectedly became the subject of controversy when Augustus De Morgan pronounced it to be the produce of its editor, John Hawkins. Research now shows that there is little doubt that it was really Cocker's (...) work. (shrink)

Psychology departments often require undergraduates to participate in faculty and graduate research as part of their course or face a penalty. Involuntary participant pools in which students are compulsorily enrolled are objectively coercive. Students have less autonomy than other research participants because they face a costly alternative task or the penalties that accompany failure to meet a course requirement if they choose not to participate. By contrast, other research participants are free to refuse consent without cost or penalty. Some researchers (...) claim that the educational value of participation justifies the requirement. They treat coercion as a cost that can be outweighed by the benefits to students. This paper argues that such an approach is flawed because coercion is not like other costs and that educational value is inherently low relative to personal study or classroom time. The unethical nature of involuntary participation is best demonstrated with an opportunity cost analysis. This shows that students are forced to sacrifice higher value alternatives that they have paid to do and undertake a lower value activity that principally benefits others. Faculty have a conflict of interest as they are the beneficiaries of student coercion in their role as researchers and responsible for student achievement in their role as teachers. Voluntary participant pools can resolve this conflict but at the cost of reducing the supply of participants. A change in departmental research conduct is required to restore the autonomy of students who are competent adults and not legitimate subjects of paternalism when it comes to research participation. (shrink)

Takes both an interpretive and analytic approach to Hume's philosophy -/- Aimed at not only academics but also graduate students and researchers -/- Defends the very contentious Idealist interpretation of Hume on external objects.

In the section of the Treatise titled “Of the immateriality of the soul”, Hume adduces an argument to show that nothing can be “locally conjoined” with all of a person’s perceptions. The argument is seldom discussed, and deserves attention, mainly because it can be transformed into an argument against the very existence of a soul. In this paper, I present and closely examine both arguments, Hume’s argument and the one against the existence of the soul. Both, I conclude, are fallacious.

Leslie’s doomsday argument purports to show that the likelihood of the human race perishing soon is greater than we think. The probability we attach to it, based on our estimate of the chance of various calamities which might bring extinction about (a nuclear holocaust, an ecological disaster, etc.), should be adjusted as follows. If the human race were to survive for a long time, we, livingnow, would be atypical. So our living now increases the probability that the human race will (...) end shortly. In this paper, I criticize some attempts to rebut the argument, and present my own. To facilitate the analysis, I consider a structurally similar problem, the “ShootingRoom.”. (shrink)

Learning Beyond the Objective in Primary Education explores an existential perspective for pedagogy in response to the current technocratic paradigm of education prevalent in many countries worldwide. This new perspective is termed 'Bildung's repetition.' The book seeks to encourage policy makers and educational practitioners to consider the impact of education on children, over and above the meeting of set targets and objectives.

It is argued that Niels Bohr ultimately arrived at positivistic and antirealist-flavored statements because of weaknesses in his initial objective of accounting for measurement in physical terms. Bohr’s investigative approach faced a dilemma, the choices being conceptual inconsistency or taking the classical realm as primitive. In either case, Bohr’s ‘Complementarity’ does not adequately explain or account for the emergence of a macroscopic, classical domain from a microscopic domain described by quantum mechanics. A diagnosis of the basic problem is offered, and (...) an alternative way forward is indicated. (shrink)

It seems to be important to recollect that if there were no names in the history of philosophy except those belonging to the creators of new systems, this would mean the extermination of culture, and thereby the death of philosophy itself. The very word "culture" and the inherent meaning in philosophy presuppose a continuity. For this reason they evoke disciples, imitators and followers who weave a living and indestructible chain. In other words, a tradition is sown, the fruits of which (...) are perpetually gathered in values, reassuring man of the ultimate and eternal harmony of all being, reaffirming the truth that nothing finally that is contingent or fleeting, nothing that is exclusively material or functional within life can sustain life, and reestablishing that only from that which lies beyond the phenomena can mankind gain access to all the abundance of spiritual resources indispensable for dealing with life. And it is tradition that constitutes an everlasting re-dedication to the life and the immortality of the spirit. Such re-dedication is Mumford's fruitful contribution to the philosophy of history and of ideas. He keeps the concept alive. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the distinction between classical liberalism and libertarianism and in particular with the claim of the latter to offer a theory of the good society which is independent of, and different from, that offered by classical liberalism. My argument is naturalistic in the following sense. A good society is one which delivers whatever is good for people, so that a theory of the good society (to ~ a theory of the good society) must say something about (...) what people are like and what is good for them. That is to say, it must be capable of making such judgments coherently and on its own terms. I shall argue that libertarianism is incapable of making such judgments because it rests on a Hobbesian radical individualism in which, by analogy with classical physics, people exist only as particulars, as individuals. If there are no general classes we cannot say what people have in common; if we cannot say what they have in common, the only "general" good is the negative liberty which enables them to pursue their own goals in their own way. Radical individualism leads by the shortest of routes to moral subjectivism. Thus libertarianism derives such plausibility as it has by drawing illicitly on aspects of classical liberalism which do not depend on radical individualism. In doing so it undermines not only its claim to be a distinct theory with its own foundations, but most of its own claims about what is good for people. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the idea of digital technologies as truth‐bearers in health care and argue that devices like SenseCam, which facilitate reflection and memory recall, have a potentially vital role in healthcare situations when questions of veracity are at stake (e.g., when best interest decisions are being made). We discuss the role of digital technologies as truth‐bearers in the context of nursing people with dementia, as this is one area of health care in which the topic of truth‐telling (...) has been hotly debated. People with dementia have been excluded from research studies and decisions that affect their lives because they are not regarded as truth‐bearers—that is, as being capable of giving truthful accounts of their experiences. Also, considerable research has focused on the ethics of lying to and deceiving people with dementia. Given their increasing prominence in healthcare settings, there has been surprisingly little discussion of what role digital technologies might play in relation to these questions of truth and deception. Drawing on theories from science and technology studies (STS), we explore their possible future role in some of the truth‐making processes of health care. In particular, we discuss the potential value of constraints on use of SenseCam to support the accounts of people with dementia as part of their care. (shrink)

Education is concerned with the production of intelligence. Is AI intelligent? and what are the implications for educating humanity? Samuel Butler makes the case that machinery emerges in co-relation with the evolution of humanity. In other words, the evolution of machines relies on the human intervention for reproduction, and the evolution of human epistemology is shaped by the emergence of machines. Pre-empting themes of posthumanism over 150 years ago, Butler teases out the notion of intelligence in the evolution and communication (...) of plants, animals, and machines. Stiegler worries that the rapid acceleration of automation, especially the emergence of the algorithms of artificial intelligence are disrupting the modern economic system by rupturing the relation between work and wages. Escalating entropy is overtaking the ordering of modernity. Education needs to engage with the contextual changes in modern expectations about work, as well as educational changes in thinking and learning. (shrink)