Christiansen & Chater (C&C) have taken the interactionist approach to linguistic universals to an extreme, adopting the metaphor of language as an organism. This metaphor adds no insights to five decades of analyzing language universals as the result of interaction of linguistically unique and general cognitive systems. This metaphor is also based on an outmoded view of classical Darwinian evolution and has no clear basis in biology or cognition.

Over 200 health journals call on the United Nations, political leaders, and health professionals to recognize that climate change and biodiversity loss are one indivisible crisis and must be tackle...

> Wealthy nations must do much more, much faster. The United Nations General Assembly in September 2021 will bring countries together at a critical time for marshalling collective action to tackle the global environmental crisis. They will meet again at the biodiversity summit in Kunming, China, and the climate conference 26) in Glasgow, UK. Ahead of these pivotal meetings, we—the editors of health journals worldwide—call for urgent action to keep average global temperature increases below 1.5°C, halt the destruction of nature (...) and protect health. Health is already being harmed by global temperature increases and the destruction of the natural world, a state of affairs health professionals have been bringing attention to for decades.1 The science is unequivocal; a global increase of 1.5°C above the preindustrial average and the continued loss of biodiversity risk catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse.2 3 Despite the world’s necessary preoccupation with COVID-19, we cannot wait for the pandemic to pass to rapidly reduce emissions. Reflecting the severity of the moment, this editorial appears in health journals across the world. We are united in recognising that only fundamental and equitable changes to societies will reverse our current trajectory. The risks to health of increases above 1.5°C are now well established.2 Indeed, no temperature rise is ‘safe’. In the past 20 years, heat-related mortality among people aged over 65 has increased by more than 50%.4 Higher temperatures have brought increased dehydration and renal function loss, dermatological malignancies, tropical infections, adverse mental health outcomes, pregnancy complications, allergies, and cardiovascular and pulmonary morbidity and mortality.5 6 Harms disproportionately affect the most vulnerable, including children, older populations, ethnic minorities, poorer communities and those with underlying health problems.2 4 Global heating is also contributing to the decline in …. (shrink)

If contemporary philosophers of science could transcend the skepticism that seems to have become obligatory in modern epistemologies, they could restore a comprehensive vision of science that would be a boon to science and scientific education. Science is not mere knowledge. Science is knowledge of something that is necessary and universal because its causes are understood. This was Aristotle’s conception of science (epistēmē), a conception which includes knowledge of substances and the first ontological principles of things. St. Thomas Aquinas (...) refined this understanding of science in a way that, perhaps surprisingly, has escaped the notice of many Thomists, especially the way St. Thomas understands physical substance to be a generic universal grounding necessary relations for some of its accidents. The recovery of Aristotle’s and St. Thomas’s conception of science would in no way threaten contemporary empirical science. Instead, it would explain how empirical science complements the ontology of science. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of the opacity problem in medical machine learning (ML). Guided by pragmatist assumptions, I argue that opacity in ML models is problematic insofar as it potentially undermines the achievement of two key purposes: ensuring generalizability and optimizing clinician–machine decision-making. Three opacity amelioration strategies are examined, with explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) as the predominant approach, challenged by two revisionary strategies in the form of reliabilism and the interpretability by design. Comparing the three strategies, I argue that (...) interpretability by design is most promising to overcome opacity in medical ML. Looking beyond the individual opacity amelioration strategies, the paper also contributes to a deeper understanding of the problem space and the solution space regarding opacity in medical ML. (shrink)

This paper is about the semantic analysis of referentially opaque verbs like seek and owe that give rise to nonspecific readings. It is argued that Montague's categorization (based on earlier work by Quine) of opaque verbs as properties of quantifiers runs into two serious difficulties: the first problem is that it does not work with opaque verbs like resemble that resist any lexical decomposition of the seek ap try to find kind; the second one is that it wrongly predicts de (...) dicto (i.e. narrow scope) readings due to quantified noun phrases in the object positions of such verbs. It is shown that both difficulties can be overcome by an analysis of opaque verbs as operating on properties. This is a strongly modified version of a paper entitled lsquoDo We Bear Attitudes towards Quantifiers?rsquo that I have presented at conferences in Gosen (Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft), Ithaca (SALT I), and Konstanz (Lexikon). I owe a special debt to Hans Kamp and Arnim von Stechow for shaping my views on the subject of this paper during the past ten years or so. Comments from and discussions with the following friends and colleagues have also led to considerable improvements: Heinrich Beck, Steve Berman, David Dowty, Veerle van Geenhoven, Fritz Hamm, Irene Heim, Wolfgang Klein, Angelika Kratzer, Michael Morreau, Barbara Partee, Mats Rooth, Roger Schwarzschild, Wolfgang Sternefeld, Emil Weydert, Henk Zeevat, and three referees. (shrink)

Archaeology can provide two bodies of information relevant to the understanding of the evolution of human cognition – the timing of developments, and the evolutionary context of these developments. The challenge is methodological. Archaeology must document attributes that have direct implications for underlying cognitive mechanisms. One example of such a cognitive archaeology is found in spatial cognition. The archaeological record documents an evolutionary sequence that begins with ape-equivalent spatial abilities 2.5 million years ago and ends with the appearance of modern (...) abilities in the still remote past of 400,000 years ago. The timing of these developments reveals two major episodes in the evolution in spatial ability, one, 1.5 million years ago and the other, one million years later. The two episodes of development in spatial cognition had very different evolutionary contexts. The first was associated with the shift to an open country adaptive niche that occurred early in the time range of Homo erectus. The second was associated with no clear adaptive shift, though it does appear to have coincided with the invasion of more hostile environments and the appearance of systematic hunting of large mammals. Neither, however, occurred in a context of modern hunting and gathering. Key Words: Archaeology; evolution; Homo erectus; spatial cognition; symmetry. (shrink)

In this book Han Thomas Adriaenssen offers the first comparative exploration of the sceptical reception of representationalism in medieval and early modern philosophy. Descartes is traditionally credited with inaugurating a new kind of scepticism by saying that the direct objects of perception are images in the mind, not external objects, but Adriaenssen shows that as early as the thirteenth century, critics had already found similar problems in Aquinas's theory of representation. He charts the attempts of philosophers in both periods (...) to grapple with these problems, and shows how in order to address the challenges of scepticism and representation, modern philosophers in the wake of Descartes often breathed new life into old ideas, remoulding them in ways that we are just beginning to understand. His book will be valuable for historians interested in the medieval background to early modern thought, and to medievalists looking at continuity with the early modern period. -/- . (shrink)

This essay explores the nature and neurological basis of creativity in technical production. After presenting a model of expert technical cognition based in cognitive anthropology and cognitive psychology, the authors propose that craft production has three inherent sources of novelty — procedural drift, serendipitous error and fiddling. However, these are quite limited in their creative potential, which may help explain the virtual absence of innovation over the long millennia of the Palaeolithic. Innovation can be far more rapid and effective via (...) invention, which requires folk theories of causation and adequate working memory capacity, all fairly recent evolutionary developments. The neurological basis of expert technical cognition lies in well-known cortical and sub-cortical structures, but recent research has established a provocative role for the cerebellum in the formulation of novel arrangements. (shrink)

Does the viability of the discovery program depend on showing either (1) that methods of generating new problem solutions, per se, have special probative weight (the per se thesis); or, (2) that the original conception of an idea is logically continuous with its justification (anti-divorce thesis)? Many writers have identified these as the key issues of the discovery debate. McLaughlin, Pera, and others recently have defended the discovery program by attacking the divorce thesis, while Laudan has attacked the discovery program (...) by rejecting the per se thesis. This disagreement over the central issue has led to communication breakdown. I contend that both friends and foes of discovery mistake the central issues. Recognizing a form of divorce helps rather than hurts the discovery program. However, the per se thesis is not essential to the program (nor is the related debate over novel prediction); hence, the status of the per se thesis is a side issue. With these clarifications in hand, we can proceed to the next stage of the discovery debate--the development (or revival) of a generative conception of justification which goes beyond consequentialism to forge a strong linkage of generation (or rather, generatability) with justification. (shrink)

"One of the outstanding authorities on the early days of the Republic, Saul K. Padover offers in this volume a generous sampling of the letters, essays, speeches, discourses, and personal documents--many of them previously unpublished--of the men who made America. Included are extensive selections from the papers and speeches of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. There are also copious extracts from the private and public utterances of secondary, but important, figures of (...) the founding days--Samuel Adams, Elbridge Gerry, Patrick Henry, John Dickinson, Oliver Ellsworth, William Paterson, Benjamin Rush, George Wythe, and many others. A number of the speeches made at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 are given in full, and several of the important debates are reproduced. John Dickinson's Letters from an American Farmer in Pennsylvania appear in these pages as well as many of Alexander Hamilton's famous and brief opinions. Also included are John Hancock's speech on the Boston Massacre; Thomas Jefferson's Notes on Virginia; James Madison's Memorial against Religious Assessments; two of the most important of John Marshall's Supreme Court decisions (Marbury vs. Madison and McCulloch vs. Maryland); Robert Morris' Letters on Finance; John Taylor's paper On Aristocracy, and William Paterson's Plan for a Constitution. Taken together, these writings offer in one volume a complete picture of the thinking, the debate, the legal maneuvers, the compromises, the manners, and the morals of the American nation's earliest days. The book provides a sound basic appreciation of the atmosphere in which the Founding Fathers worked and planned and debated with one another. All the many counter-currents that contributed to the building of the Constitution, the stresses to which the young nation was subjected, the rebellion that continued to seethe, the moral climate of the days--these are all recreated in the speeches and writings of America's first patriots. Dr. Padover has bound the selections together with enlightening commentary that enables the reader to understand the exact circumstances of each utterance and brings the particular work into historical perspective."--Jacket. (shrink)

The paper aims to put certain basic mathematical elements and operations into an empirical perspective, evaluate the empirical status of various analytic operations widely used within psychology and suggest alternatives to procedures criticized as inadequate. Experimentation shows the "manyness" of items to be a perceptual quality for both young children and animals and that natural operations are performed by naive children analogous to those performed by persons tutored in arithmetic. Number, counting, arithmetic operations therefore can make distinctions that are not (...) inevitably arbitrary, and conceptual operations can obviously have a status as natural events with psychology. If the elements and conceptual operations involved in mathematical systems were not inherent in physiological process, various primitive discriminations could not be possible. Also, since some calculi have a natural status in a given empirical circumstance, the axioms of others can not be satisfied. Therefore the psychologist when acting as an empirical scientist seeks a calculus having a structure whose elements are isomorphic with natural units of stimulus and response and whose operations are isomorphic with whatever natural processes are involved. Measurement poses a special problem for the empirical scientist. It concerns but a single class of natural qualities and this only in a limited way. The concept of quantity has a natural counterpart but quantity and measurement are not wholly analogous. Measurement is defined, as H. S. Leonard suggests, as a theoretical activity. Measurement theory has a formal structure but empirical end. Measurement hypothesizes about the position of a particular quality within a definite range of qualities. It therefore is beholden to definite empirical restrictions. Some hypotheses-making systems use terms and relations per se as the context and starting point for dealing with discriminable events. Such procedures are 'transcendent." In empirical science, questions are part of problem-solving activity and their reference is naturally restricted. In providing description and explanation, psychological researchers frequently use calculi in a transcendent way. This results in theories that are only quasi-empirical and "half" true. The roles measurement plays in psychology are discussed. Of particular concern are those cases in which the results of measuring or a theory of measurement are used to define the "real" units, or the "real" relations involved in problematic psychological events, and thence to describe and explain behaviors of interest. Metaphysical or ontological usages of measurement sometimes occur. The implication of these arguments with regard to a view of empirical science is discussed. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to compile a selection of the various formalisms found in conversation theory to introduce readers to Pask's discursive algebra. In this way, the text demonstrates how concept sharing and concept formation by means of the interaction of two participants may be formalized. The approach taken in this study is to examine the formal notation system used by Pask and demonstrate how such formalisms may be used to represent concept sharing and concept formation through conversation. (...) The compilation of the discursive algebra using the framework provided by conversation theory could potentially be used as an auxiliary framework to study conversational interactions in multi-agent systems theory. (shrink)

The President's Council on Bioethics has recently released a report supportive of the continued use of brain death as a criterion for human death. The Council's conclusions were based on a conception of life that stressed external work as the fundamental marker of organismic life. With respect to human life, it is spontaneous respiration in particular that indicates an ability to interact with the external environment, and so indicates the presence of life. Conversely, irreversible apnoea marks an inability to carry (...) out the necessary work of life, an inability which the Council considers an indicator of death. This conception has been conceived to circumvent criticisms of the previous model of loss of somatic integration, a model the Council admits that, in the presence of evidence of continuing functional integration in brain dead patients, was looking less than convincing. Nevertheless, by focusing on external work and ignoring the more essential work of integrative unity, the Council's conception of the nature of life is untenable, and of no assistance in supporting a relation of equivalence between the concepts of brain death and death. Consequently, the Council's conclusions do little to advance the definition of death debate, a potentially intractable debate that may necessitate the investigation of alternate ethical justifications for organ harvesting. (shrink)

One important aspect of globalization is the increasingly dense and influential regime of global rules that govern and shape interactions everywhere. Covering trade, investment, loans, patents, copyrights, trademarks, labor standards, environmental protection, use of seabed resources, production and marketing of weapons, maintenance of public security, and much else, these rules—structuring and enabling, permitting and constraining—have a profound impact on the lives of human beings and on the ecology of our planet. It is therefore important to think carefully, in moral terms, (...) about their design. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: I II Bibliography.

This special issue on general proof theory collects papers resulting from the conference on general proof theory held in November 2015 in Tübingen.

External cues and internal configuration states are the likely instigators of involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs) and déjà vu experience. Indeed, Barzykowski and Moulin discuss relevant neuroscientific evidence in this direction. A complementary line of enquiry and evidence is the study of inhibition and its role in memory retrieval, and particularly how its (dys)function may contribute to IAMs and déjà vu.

Nietzsche is generally regarded as a severe critic of historical method and scholarship; this view has influenced much of contemporary discussions about the role and nature of historical scholarship. In this article I argue that this view is seriously mistaken . I do so by examining what he actually says about understanding history and historical method, as well as his relation to the founders of modern German historiography . I show, contrary to most expectations, that Nietzsche knew these historians well (...) and that he fundamentally affirmed their view of historical method. What he primarily objected to among his contemporaries was that historical scholarship was often regarded as a goal in itself, rather than as a means, and consequently that history was placed above philosophy. In fact, a historical approach was essential for Nietzsche’s whole understanding of philosophy, and his own philosophical project. (shrink)

Environmental ethicists rarely discuss the morality of using illegal tactics to protect the environment. Yet ecosabotage (or monkeywrenching) is the topic of numerous articles and books in the popular press. In this paper I examine what I consider to be the three strongest arguments against destroying property as a means of defending the environment: the social fabric argument, the argument for moral consistency, and the generalisation argument. I conclude that none of them provides an a priori obstacle to a consequentialist (...) justification of particular acts of ecosabotage. Then I sketch a version of constrained utilitarianism, which is capable, at least in principle, of justifying some acts of strategic ecosabotage in a democratic society. (shrink)

Do facts about water have a priori, transparent, reductive explanations in terms of microphysics? Ned Block and Robert Stalnaker hold that they do not. David Chalmers and Frank Jackson hold that they do. In this paper I argue that Chalmers.