`Folk Psychology' - our everyday talk of beliefs, desires and mental events - has long been compared with the technical language of `Cognitive Science'. Does folk psychology provide a correct account of the mental causes of our behaviour, or must our everyday terms ultimately be replaced by a language developed from computational models and neurobiology? This broad-ranging book addresses these questions, which lie at the heart of psychology and philosophy. Providing a critical overview of the key literature in the field, (...) including the seminal work of Fodor and Churchland, the author explores the classic `Frame Problem' and assesses the future prospects of cognitive science. The scope of the frame problem, touching on connec. (shrink)

Rapid developments in Artificial Intelligence are leading to an increasing human reliance on machine decision making. Even in collaborative efforts with Decision Support Systems (DSSs), where a human expert is expected to make the final decisions, it can be hard to keep the expert actively involved throughout the decision process. DSSs suggest their own solutions and thus invite passive decision making. To keep humans actively ‘on’ the decision-making loop and counter overreliance on machines, we propose a ‘reflection machine’ (RM). This (...) system asks users questions about their decision strategy and thereby prompts them to evaluate their own decisions critically. We discuss what forms RMs can take and present a proof-of-concept implementation of a RM that can produce feedback on users’ decisions in the medical and law domains. We show that the prototype requires very little domain knowledge to create reasonably intelligent critiquing questions. With this prototype, we demonstrate the technical feasibility to develop RMs and hope to pave the way for future research into their effectiveness and value. (shrink)

Does Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics give one consistent answer to the question what life is best or two mutually inconsistent answers? In the First Book he says that we can agree to say that the best life is eudaimonia or eupraxia but must go on to say in what eudaimonia consists. By considering the specific nature of man as a thinking animal he reaches a conclusion: eudaimonia, the human good, is the activity of soul in accordance with virtue, and (...) if there are more than one virtue in accordance with the best and most complete, and in a complete life. Aristotle states that his formula is no more than a sketch or outline, but that a good sketch is important since, if the outline is right, anyone can articulate it and supply details. He seems to be thinking here not just of the rest of his own treatise but of the work of pupils and successors; he speaks, as at the end of the Topics, of progress in a science. (shrink)

If C 1 , ..., C k are members of a certain class of suitable categories (which contains those arising from models with dimension), C = C 1 × ⋯ × C k , C' is a suitable category, F: C → C' is a partial recursive combinatorial functor satisfying a certain property (which, if C = C 1 , is that F is nonconstant) and U ∈ C, then (1) if FU is regressive so is U as is each (...) U i , and (2) if FU is Dedekind then each U i is Dedekind. (shrink)

In the course of a series of arguments to refute Simmias' hypothesis that soul is an attunement Socrates asks the question , which may be literally translated ‘Is it not natural for each attunement to be an attunement according as it has been attuned?’ This question Simmias admits he does not understand, and Socrates responds with another question in which he suggests that if it is more attuned and to a greater extent, supposing that it is possible for this to (...) happen, it would be more of an attunement and a greater attunement, if less attuned and to a smaller extent, less of an attunement and a smaller attunement .if less attuned and to a smaller extent, less of an attunement and a smaller attunement . Neither the meaning of these questions nor their place in the argument is at all obvious, and none of the solutions offered by the English commentators seems to be without difficulty. (shrink)

This study empirically assesses the extent to which intrinsic value theories of nature are accepted and acknowledged outside the realm of academic environmental ethics. It focuses on twenty of the largest landowning organisations in England, including both conservation and non-conservation organisations and investigates the environmental philosophical beliefs and values held by representative individuals of these groups. An in-depth interview was held with a representative from each organisation. The interviews were analysed using qualitative data analysis software and the results compared against (...) a backdrop of academic philosophical positions. The study found that an ecocentric position which acknowledges nature's intrinsic value was adopted by the majority of respondents, both from conservation and non-conservation organisations. However, it was also found that individuals felt the idea of nature's intrinsic value was generally not reflected in organisational policy. (shrink)

Rational social theorists have failed to confirm that observations of social reality equal social reality. Yet they argue that teams, organizations and social systems should minimize interdependence and competition, echoed by social psychologists to make data iid. But the evidence indicates that competitive teams maximize interdependence; self-reports of social reality correlate poorly with social behavior; and only competition measures interdependent social states. Rational expectations aside, we report progress towards a science of interdependence for human–machine teams. Our model of interdependence works (...) like an uncertainty principle in the sense that tradeoffs arise from the uncertainty caused by measuring interdependent actors in orthogonal roles; e.g., in the tradeoff between teams and individuals, teams are more productive but more opaque. Previously, we described interdependence as bistable stories of social reality; the motivation to reject alternative interpretations, increasing uncertainty and errors; and the inability to factor social states. Now we explore education as a surrogate for intelligence in teams. We hypothesized that teams rely on the education of its members to produce more patents. We found that the average schooling in a nation is significantly related to its total patents produced. (shrink)