A large number of cross-references to various bodies of text are used in legal texts, each serving a different purpose. It is often necessary for authorities and companies to look into certain types of these citations. Yet, there is a lack of automatic tools to aid in this process. Recently, citation graphs have been used to improve the intelligibility of complex rule frameworks. We propose an algorithm that builds the citation graph from a document and automatically labels each edge according (...) to its purpose. Our method uses the citing text only and thus works only on citations who’s purpose can be uniquely identified by their surrounding text. This framework is then applied to the US code. This paper includes defining and evaluating a standard gold set of labels that cover a vast majority of citation types which appear in the “US Code” but are still short enough for practical use. We also proposed a novel linear-chain conditional random field model that extracts the features required for labeling the citations from the surrounding text. We then analyzed the effectiveness of different clustering methods such as K-means and support vector machine to automatically label each citation with the corresponding label. Besides this, we talk about the practical difficulties of this task and give a comparison of human accuracy compared to our end-to-end algorithm. (shrink)

The Western world is experiencing a resurgence of interest in the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, most of which are derived from plants or fungi with a history of Indigenous ceremonial use. Recent research has revealed that psychedelic compounds have the potential to address treatment‐resistant depression and anxiety, as well as post‐traumatic stress disorder and addictions. These findings have contributed to the decriminalization of psychedelics in some jurisdictions and their legalization in others. Despite psychedelics’ opaque legal status, numerous companies and individuals (...) are profiting from speculative investments with few, if any, benefits accruing to Indigenous Peoples. In this paper, we suggest that the aptly named “psychedelic renaissance,” like the European Renaissance, is made possible by colonial extractivism. We further suggest that Indigenous philosophical traditions offer alternative approaches to reorient the “psychedelic renaissance” towards a more equitable future for Indigenous Peoples, psychedelic medicines, and all our relations. (shrink)

This book represents emerging alternative perspectives to the "constructivist" orthodoxy that currently dominates the field of science and technology studies. Various contributions from distinguished Americans and Europeans in the field, provide arguments and evidence that it is not enough simply to say that science is "socially situated." Controversial Science focuses on important political, ethical, and broadly normative considerations that have yet to be given their due, but which point to a more realistic and critical perspective on science policy.

Critique of Sarcastic Reason is a philosophical dissertation that combines several different fields in order to pave the way for those studying sarcasm at the neurobiological, communicative and socio-political levels of analysis where sarcasm appears, respectively, through associated brain activity, between two or more individuals with higher level metabeliefs, and as a method by which political, religious and other social ideologies are attacked (i.e., one form of "biting sarcasm"). The academic disciplines involved in Critique of Sarcastic Reason include social cognitive (...) and developmental psychology, neuroscience, critical theory, modern and contemporary philosophy of mind, evolutionary biology, logic, metaphysics and epistemology. Sarcasm is argued to only function at the highest levels of metacognition, and sarcasm occurs within social situations during which there are tendencies for two or more people to form desires and disgusts directly related to beliefs about beliefs. Sarcasm is compared to deception and is argued to be best analyzed as either spontaneous or rehearsed. (shrink)

In this book, William Brant inquires how violence is reduced. Social causes of violence are exposed. War, sexual domination, leadership, propagandizing and comedy are investigated. Legal systems are explored as reducers and implementers of violence and threats.

Mental images, or envisioning things with your "mind's eye," are now studied via multiple levels of observation and involve computational neuroscience, robotics and many disciplines that complement philosophy and form integral parts of cognitive science. MENTAL IMAGERY AND CREATIVITY offers an historical analysis of the use of "mental images" in science. This book also gives many useful illustrations, depicting roles of imagery with 21st century technology, including the usage of imagery, fMRIs and internet connections, allowing people to control virtual avatars (...) or robots at remote distances. Imagery formations and brain imaging techniques allow non-communicative patients, who appear to be in vegetative states, to communicate effectively, despite brain damage. Notwithstanding many 21st century developments of imagery combined with technology and science, many speculative accounts of imagery arose in the 20th century. Philosophic developments, regarding the relation between mental imagery and creativity, are provided in order to compare and contrast speculative and rational foundations. Creativity is defined in relation to problem-solving, inventiveness, art, discovery and cognitive formations of ranges of possibilities, arising before and after realizations (i.e., when one recognizes real and unreal events or solutions), involving images of events, solutions and alternatives. (shrink)

Logic-based approaches to legal problem solving model the rule-governed nature of legal argumentation, justification, and other legal discourse but suffer from two key obstacles: the absence of efficient, scalable techniques for creating authoritative representations of legal texts as logical expressions; and the difficulty of evaluating legal terms and concepts in terms of the language of ordinary discourse. Data-centric techniques can be used to finesse the challenges of formalizing legal rules and matching legal predicates with the language of ordinary parlance by (...) exploiting knowledge latent in legal corpora. However, these techniques typically are opaque and unable to support the rule-governed discourse needed for persuasive argumentation and justification. This paper distinguishes representative legal tasks to which each approach appears to be particularly well suited and proposes a hybrid model that exploits the complementarity of each. (shrink)

It is argued that the Achilles heel of contemporary sociology-and great parts of social science-is a) weak theory development, and b) absence of a meta-theory providing a common platform and a shared goal for its practitioners, fostering cumulativity. A meta-theory called causal realism (a variant of critical realism) is suggested for these purposes. The main tenets and key concepts of realism, such as causality and explanation, mechanism, stratified reality, are presented. Thereafter, via an anology to the physical sciences, it is (...) argued that a natural implication of realism and the search for causal mc mechanisms is a division of society into levels. The micro-macro issue is approached by a level-ontology for the development of sociological theory. Five levels are suggested, discussed and briefly exemplified. In the concluding remarks, some further positive implications of realism to sociology are touched upon. 140105b.k. (shrink)

In the Philebus, Socrates argues that some anticipatory pleasures can be false. The main argument at 38b6-41a4 has perplexed readers, however, and scholars have developed several different ways to understand the falsity of false anticipatory pleasures. I argue that the anticipation argument should be read in conjunction with a later distinction in the Philebus between intense pleasures mixed with pain and pure pleasures free from pain. I suggest that anticipatory pleasures taken in intense pleasures are false because they misidentify an (...) intense pleasure as a genuine pleasure when in fact intense pleasures are inferior and non-genuine due to being mixed with pain. I contend that the example of a false anticipatory pleasure supports recognizing this kind of falsity, and that doing so helps to resolve several challenges that face existing interpretations. (shrink)

Freedom of information laws promote transparency by permitting individuals and organizations to obtain government documents. However, exemptions from disclosure are necessary to protect privacy and to permit government officials to deliberate freely. Deliberative language is often the most challenging and burdensome exemption to detect, leading to high processing costs and delays in responding to open-records requests. This paper describes a novel deliberative-language detection model trained on a new annotated training set. The deliberative-language detection model is a component of a decision-support (...) system for open-records requests under the US Freedom of Information Act, the FOIA Assistant, that ingests documents responsive to an open-records requests, suggests passages likely to be subject to deliberative language, privacy, or other exemptions, and assists analysts in rapidly redacting suggested passages. The tool’s interface is based on extensive human-factors and usability studies with analysts and is currently in operational testing by multiple US federal agencies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? Historical and Theological Reflections by Matthew LeveringBrant PitreDid Jesus Rise from the Dead? Historical and Theological Reflections by Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 272 pp.In his book Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? Historical and Theological Reflections, Matthew Levering writes "to make the case" that there is "good reason" to believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus (1). In this (...) self-described work of "theological apologetics" (211), Levering argues from a threefold foundation for the credibility of Jesus's resurrection: (1) "the New Testament evidence," considered from the perspective of historical investigation; (2) the "sheer strangeness" of the apostolic claim that [End Page 1347] Jesus was "resurrected" and not just resuscitated or exalted into heaven as an immortal soul; (3) and the intrinsic credibility of the "supreme love" revealed through his death and resurrection (2–4). As this threefold foundation makes clear, Levering draws together both "historical and theological reasons for believing that Jesus' Resurrection happened" (4).In chapter 1, Levering contends that, while "faith does not stand or fall upon the results of historical research, those who insist that the truth of Jesus' Resurrection has nothing to do with the domain of historical investigation are mistaken" (30). To this end, he offers a survey of three figures: (1) the Belgian Dominican theologian Edward Schillebeeckx; (2) the American Protestant biblical scholar Dale C. Allison Jr.; and (3) the Anglican bishop and biblical theologian N. T. Wright. Levering exposes the serious flaws of contemporary attempts to reduce the resurrection claims of early Christians to hallucinations or visions of someone who has recently died. In particular, Levering finds compelling Wright's argument that the bodily resurrection of Jesus provides "the best historical explanation" of the early Christian claim that what first-century Jews expected to happen to everyone at the end of time had in fact happened to only one person—Jesus of Nazareth—in the middle of time. From a strictly historical point of view, claims that the disciples were merely moved by grace to a new experience Jesus being "alive" or that they simply experienced hallucinatory visions of Jesus after his death fail to explain the "radical change of eschatology" that took place in the early Church (56).In chapter 2, Levering explores the question of whether "the Church's mediation is truly effective in enabling us to share in the apostolic communion with the risen Jesus" (63). He first offers a sympathetic overview of the Protestant biblical scholar Richard Bauckham's book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2003; 2nd ed., 2017), in which he claims that the Gospels rest largely on "eyewitness testimony" (87–88). According to Levering, Bauckham's historical arguments show that "the ongoing presence of eyewitnesses provides a reason for not being skeptical about the major events of Jesus' life as reported by the Gospels, including his Resurrection" (89). At the same time, Levering insists that eyewitness memory is only one "mode of historical remembrance" utilized by the Church; in addition, Jesus also "willed that the historical remembrance of his Resurrection be an ecclesial reality" (90)—that is, a liturgical act of "remembrance" that takes place above all in the Eucharistic liturgy.In chapter 3, Levering aims to shed light on "the role of the Old Testament in aiding the discernment of the historical credibility of Jesus's Resurrection" (91). This chapter presents a stark contrast to contemporary [End Page 1348] studies of the resurrection that begin (and end) with the New Testament data. In it, Levering surveys the work of three contemporary scholars—Dale Allison, N. T. Wright, and the Jewish scholar Jon Levenson—and puts them in conversation with Thomas Aquinas's thirteenth-century commentary on the account of Jesus's resurrection in John 20–21. As this chapter amply demonstrates, it is "precisely in the scriptural history that the Creator God has guided, that we come to know that given such a God and such a history, Jesus' Resurrection is believable" (112). According to Levering, "the entire Old Testament" (113) is a necessary prolegomenon for understanding what it even means to say that Jesus has been raised in the first... (shrink)

Non-communicable (chronic) and communicable (infectious) diseases constitute the leading causes of death worldwide. They appear to impact populations in developed and developing nations differently with changing trends in the landscape of human conditions. Greater understanding of changing disease burdens should influence the planning of health programmes, the implementation of related interventions, and policymaking efforts on a national and global scale. However, the knowledge of disease burdens does not reflect how states and global health organizations prioritize their efforts in addressing them. (...) This work aims to address the discrepancy in public health priority setting by improving our understanding of how the two disease categories impact the human condition. It reviews two case studies, COVID-19 and type 2 diabetes, as representative cases of an infectious and a chronic disease, respectively, to answer the following question. How does biopolitics, as the governance of human bodies, at the nexus of infectious and chronic disease, impact national and global public health priorities? This work contextualizes and reframes the relationship towards disease categories by focusing on three primary themes: risk, current public health interventions, and funding priorities for each case study analysed. It argues that the politics over life at the nexus of chronic and infectious diseases, best conceived as future-oriented economic optimization, directs the efforts of prioritization in healthcare based on risk and responsibility-based relationship between multiple stakeholders. (shrink)

What is the role of colleges and universities in forming the character of students? Should universities even attempt to cultivate virtue? If so, how can they do so effectively in a pluralistic context? Cultivating Virtue in the University seeks to answer these questions by gathering diverse perspectives on character education within twenty-first century universities. Bringing together experts from a variety of academic disciplines, this volume catalyzes a critical debate about the possibilities and limits of character education in the university while (...) offering theoretical and practical perspectives on what such education could look like in increasingly global, pluralistic, and intercultural institutions. Ultimately, by engaging insights from education, history, literature, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and theology, the volume encourages faculty, staff, and administrators to embrace the opportunities and challenges of cultivating virtue in the university. (shrink)

Through an analysis of the histrionic “man of acute consciousness”” in Notes from Underground, this text tries to highlight a sneaky question posed by Dostoevsky's novel: is it in the underground’s ground that literature is born?

The foreknowledge problem involves two assumptions. First, that “God once believed that an event would occur now” is about the past. Second that it is equivalent to “God once existed and the event is occurring now.” These, Plantinga argues, are incompatible. But he makes assumptions. First, that equivalent propositions are both about a given time, or neither are. Second, that if a proposition is about a given time, so is its negation. Third, that if two propositions are about a given (...) time, so is their conjunction. These, though plausible, are incompatible. (shrink)

Internet is often said to open up new avenues for a more direct and deliberative democracy. In this article, the notion of ‘deliberation’ will be problematized and a typology of political web sites will be developed. Next, three case studies of Dutch discussion sites are used to test the claim that the organizational structure, aim, control of content and kind of interactivity of political web sites can explain the level and quality of participation. Except for its mostly extreme elitist participation, (...) the research presented here gives a rather ambiguous picture of e-democracy at work. Not only are we confronted with more paradoxes than clear-cut answers, the question is raised whether notions such as the ‘public sphere’ are not more of a hindrance than a help in making sense of politics on the Internet. (shrink)

In this book, Ronald Giere seeks to resolve the opposition between objectivism and constructivism by suggesting a third way, perspectival realism, according to which both sides are partly right. To prove his case, Giere reconstructs some of the acknowledged puzzle pieces in the philosophy of science (theory, observation, etc.). To my mind, of most interest is the piece Giere calls “representional model.” Constituting the basis of every science, it functions as a template that governs data collection as well as theory (...) development. Throughout the book, Giere illustrates his various propositions with examples taken from the natural sciences. I contend that the propositions are just as relevant for the social sciences and present some examples in order to indicate this. Especially, the concept of model is useful both for a better understanding of social science and for increasing its cumulativity. (shrink)

Education is increasingly coming under the shadow of economics. In this article we engage in ideology critique by applying a critical realist analysis to conventional economic models and the teaching of students. Through a historical and philosophical interrogation, we argue that the current curriculum suffers from a diminutive understanding of human being. We argue that economics education has for a long time now worked with a highly abstracted and decontextualized idea of human being that has absented other dimensions of human (...) concerns. We examine the current English Advanced level economic curriculum and the revised curriculum which will be taught from September 2015. Using an understanding of the dynamics of structure and agency and that economics operates in open systems, we argue for retroduction as an appropriate methodology. (shrink)

Media in Question sets the agenda for a revitalized debate on the hybrid communicative practices that constitute the postmodern media landscape: practices that cross the boundaries between fact and fiction, information and entertainment, public knowledge, and popular culture. In this challenging and provocative collection, the individual contributors rethink key issuesùthe meaning of the public interest, the quality of media performance, and deregulation. In the process they raise questions rarely addressed in normative media theories, for example, the ethics of sports reporting, (...) the moral reasoning in popular culture, and the required professional standards for infotainment genres such as reality television and gossip journalism. Accessible and wide-ranging, The Media in Question will be essential reading for students in mass communication and political communication studies. (shrink)

This article maps out a pedagogical juncture of bell hooks's feminist theory of homeplace (hooks 2007) and Indigenous maternal pedagogies as liberatory praxis through a journey with Indigenous women's literatures. I position this work as a response to the call to transform feminist theorizing through Indigenous philosophies as articulated in a recent Hypatia special issue (Bardwell-Jones and McLaren 2020, 2). The article documents hooks's theory of homeplace as a space of resistance and renewal and shares insights into Indigenous experiences of (...) homeplace within historical and contemporary contexts of genocide, and the ongoing racialized and sexualized violence on Turtle Island. I discuss finding homeplace in Indigenous literatures by sharing a genealogy of Indigenous women's literatures as theorizing tools for engaging social change within academic spaces. To bring this work full circle, I offer Indigenous perspectives of homeplace, and the lessons gleaned from Indigenous women's literatures, as intentional work toward imagining Indigenous futurities. Indeed, connecting this work with liberatory pedagogical praxis imagines a site to establish homeplace in academic settings and empower students to engage in the kind of work that fosters and calls for safer homes, schools, and communities. (shrink)

Genes in Development is a collection of 13 stimulating essays on "post genomic" approaches to the concept of the gene. At the risk of caricaturing some complex balances, the contributors tend to be skeptical about genetic determinism, the central dogma of molecular biology, reductionism, genes as programs and the concept of the gene as a DNA sequence. They tend to like emergent properties, complexity theory, the parity thesis for developmental resources, developmental systems theory, and membranes. But within this broad weltanschauung (...) the essays in Genes in Development vary widely in their interests and emphases––from the history of twentieth century genetics to the social and ethical issues raised by contemporary genetics––which makes for an attractive and valuable collection. (shrink)

The first issue of Artificial Intelligence and Law journal was published in 1992. This paper offers some commentaries on papers drawn from the Journal’s third decade. They indicate a major shift within Artificial Intelligence, both generally and in AI and Law: away from symbolic techniques to those based on Machine Learning approaches, especially those based on Natural Language texts rather than feature sets. Eight papers are discussed: two concern the management and use of documents available on the World Wide Web, (...) and six apply machine learning techniques to a variety of legal applications. (shrink)

Justification, or at least ‘justification’, bulks large in recent epistemology. The view that knowledge consists of true-justified-belief has been prominent in this century, and the justification of belief has attracted considerable attention in its own right. But it is usually not at all clear just what an epistemologist means by ‘justified’, just what concept the term is used to express. An enormous amount of energy has gone into the attempt to specify conditions under which beliefs of one or another sort (...) are justified; but relatively little has been done to explain what it is for a belief to be justified, what that is for which conditions are being sought. The most common procedure has been to proceed on the basis of a number of obvious cases of justified belief, without pausing to determine what property it is of which these cases are instances. Now even if there were some single determinate concept that all these theoriests have implicitly in mind, this procedure would be less than wholly satisfactory. For in the absence of an explicit account of the concept being applied, we lack the most fundamental basis for deciding between supposed intuitions and for evaluating proposed conditions of justification. And in any event, as philosophers we do not seek merely to speak the truth, but also to gain an explicit, reflective understanding of the matters with which we deal. We want to know not only when our beliefs are justified, but also what it is to enjoy that status. True, not every fundamental concept can be explicated, but we shall find that much can be done with this one. (shrink)

The use of multiple means of determination to “triangulate” on the existence and character of a common phenomenon, object, or result has had a long tradition in science but has seldom been a matter of primary focus. As with many traditions, it is traceable to Aristotle, who valued having multiple explanations of a phenomenon, and it may also be involved in his distinction between special objects of sense and common sensibles. It is implicit though not emphasized in the distinction between (...) primary and secondary qualities from Galileo onward. It is arguably one of several conceptions involved in Whewell’s method of the “consilience of inductions” (Laudan 1971) and is to be found in several places in Peirce. (From M. Brewer and B. Collins, eds., (1981); Scientific Inquiry in the Social Sciences (a festschrift for Donald T. Campbell), San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp. 123–162.). (shrink)

The paper has three aims. First, to show that Julian Reiss' critique of what he calls the New Mechanist Perspective in the social sciences is built on a number of misconceptions; second, to provide some arguments for the need of reflections and discussions about common and "ultimate" goals for the social sciences; and third, to suggest a focus on mechanisms as one such viable goal. Key Words: social science • goals • explanations • mechanisms.

The larger project of which this volume forms part is an attempt to craft a coherent doctrine of divine eternity and God's relationship to time.

Willard van Orman Quine once said that he had a preference for a desert ontology. This was in an earlier day when concerns with logical structure and ontological simplicity reigned supreme. Ontological genocide was practiced upon whole classes of upper-level or ‘derivative’ entities in the name of elegance, and we were secure in the belief that one strayed irremediably into the realm of conceptual confusion and possible error the further one got from ontic fundamentalism. In those days, one paid more (...) attention to generic worries about possible errors than to actual errors derived from distancing oneself too far from the nitty-gritty details of actual theory, actual inferences from actual data, the actual conditions under which we posited and detected entities, calibrated and ‘burned in’ instruments, identified and rejected artifacts, debugged programs and procedures, explained the mechanisms behind regularities, judged correlations to be spurious, and in general, to the real complexities and richness of actual scientific practice. (shrink)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 Excerpt:...earth. r' = radius of moon, or other body. P = moon's horizontal parallax = earth's angular semidiameter as seen from the moon. f = moon's angular semidiameter. Now = P (in circular measure), r'-r = r (in circular measure);.'. r: r':: P: P', or (radius of earth): (radios of (...) moon):: (moon's parallax): (moon's semidiameter). Examples. 1. Taking the moon's horizontal parallax as 57', and its angular diameter as 32', find its radius in miles, assuming the earth's radius to be 4000 miles. Here moon's semidiameter = 16';.-. 4000::: 57': 16';.-. r = 400 16 = 1123 miles. 2. The sun's horizontal parallax being 8"8, and his angular diameter 32V find his diameter in miles. ' Am. 872,727 miles. 3. The synodic period of Venus being 584 days, find the angle gained in each minute of time on the earth round the sun as centre. Am. l"-54 per minute. 4. Find the angular velocity with which Venus crosses the sun's disc, assuming the distances of Venus and the earth from the sun are as 7 to 10, as given by Bode's Law. Since (fig. 50) S V: VA:: 7: 3. But Srhas a relative angular velocity round the sun of l"-54 per minute (see Example 3); therefore, the relative angular velocity of A V round A is greater than this in the ratio of 7: 3, which gives an approximate result of 3"-6 per minute, the true rate being about 4" per minute. Annual ParaUax. 95. We have already seen that no displacement of the observer due to a change of position on the earth's surface could apparently affect the direction of a fixed star. However, as the earth in its annual motion describes an orbit of about 92 million miles radius round the sun, the different positions in space from which an observer views the fixed stars from time to time throughout the year must be separated... (shrink)

Most philosophical accounts of emergence are incompatible with reduction. Most scientists regard a system property as emergent relative to properties of the system's parts if it depends upon their mode of organization--a view consistent with reduction. Emergence can be analyzed as a failure of aggregativity--a state in which "the whole is nothing more than the sum of its parts." Aggregativity requires four conditions, giving tools for analyzing modes of organization. Differently met for different decompositions of the system, and in different (...) degrees, these conditions provide powerful evaluation criteria for choosing decompositions, and heuristics for detecting biases of vulgar reductionisms. This analysis of emergence is compatible with reduction. (shrink)

The text is the Russian translation of W. Whewell’s work “Novum Organon Renovatum” (Preface and Book I Aphorisms concerning ideas), which is the third edition of the second volume of his major work “The philosophy of the Inductive Sciences founded upon their History”. In the text, W. Whewell proposes his theory of scientific method and classification of the necessary scientific ideas as a basis, from where every particular scientific discipline derives. By adopting the structure of the notorious Francis Bacon’s “Novum (...) Organon”, Whewell reverses the order of scientific genesis, opposing himself to inductivism – the most influential philosophical theory of his time. (shrink)

Oxford Scholarly Classics brings together a number of great academic works from the archives of Oxford University Press. Reissued in a uniform series design, they will enable libraries, scholars, and students to gain fresh access to some of the finest scholarship of the last century.

Abstract: Some propose that the question of how you know that James is angry can be adequately answered with the claim that you see that James is angry. Call this the Perceptual Hypothesis. Here, I examine that hypothesis. I argue that there are two different ways in which the Perceptual Hypothesis could be made true. You might see that James is angry by seeing his bodily features. Alternatively, you might see that James is angry by seeing his anger. If you (...) see that James is angry in the first way, your knowledge is inferential. If you see that James is angry in the second way, your knowledge is not inferential. These are different ways of knowing that James is angry. So the Perceptual Hypothesis alone does not adequately answer the question of how you know that fact. To ascertain how you know it, we need to decide whether or not you saw his anger. This is an epistemological argument. But it has consequences for a theory of perception. It implies that there is a determinate fact about which features of an object you see. This fact is made true independently of what you come to know by seeing. In the final section of the paper, I seek to undermine various ways in which the claim that you see James' anger may be thought implausible. (shrink)

This study is an unusual contribution to the philosophy of mind in that it argues for the sometimes unfashionable view of dualism: that mind and matter are distinct and separate entities as Descartes believed. The author takes as his point of departure the imaginative hypothesis of disembodiment, which establishes the possibility of the mind's being a quite non-material thing. There are clear casual correlations between what is physical and what is mental, and the most serious issue confronting dualism since Descartes (...) has been how such an interaction is possible. Dr Hart sets out to answer this question by showing that the issue is as much about the nature of causation as it is about the natures of mind and matter. (shrink)

The notion of levels has been widely used in discussions of cognitive science, especially in discussions of the relation of connectionism to symbolic modeling of cognition. I argue that many of the notions of levels employed are problematic for this purpose, and develop an alternative notion grounded in the framework of mechanistic explanation. By considering the source of the analogies underlying both symbolic modeling and connectionist modeling, I argue that neither is likely to provide an adequate analysis of processes at (...) the level at which cognitive theories attempt to function: One is drawn from too low a level, the other from too high a level. If there is a distinctly cognitive level, then we still need to determine what are the basic organizational principles at that level. (shrink)

This essay considers what it means to understand natural language and whether a computer running an artificial-intelligence program designed to understand natural language does in fact do so. It is argued that a certain kind of semantics is needed to understand natural language, that this kind of semantics is mere symbol manipulation (i.e., syntax), and that, hence, it is available to AI systems. Recent arguments by Searle and Dretske to the effect that computers cannot understand natural language are discussed, and (...) a prototype natural-language-understanding system is presented as an illustration. (shrink)

This paper concerns the rational reconstruction of physical theories initially advanced by F. P. Ramsey and later elaborated by Rudolf Carnap. The Carnap–Ramsey reconstruction of theoretical knowledge is a natural development of classical empiricist ideas, one that is informed by Russell's philosophical logic and his theories of propositional understanding and knowledge of matter ; as such, it is not merely a schematic representation of the notion of an empirical theory, but the backbone of a general account of our knowledge of (...) the physical world. Carnap–Ramsey is an illuminating approach to epistemological problems that remain with us, one whose difficulties are shared by accounts that have sought to replace it. 1 Introduction 2 Russell's theory of propositional understanding 3 Ramsey's primary and secondary systems 4 Carnap's reconstruction of the language of science and an observation of Newman 5 Extension of the foregoing to constructive empiricism 6 Putnam's model-theoretic argument and the semantic view of theories 7 The problem clarified and resolved. (shrink)

An impressive body of recent literature posits that traditional notions of civil disobedience prevent us from properly considering potentially legitimate types of ‘uncivil’ political lawbreaking. When might uncivil (covert, legally evasive, morally offensive and potentially violent) lawbreaking prove normatively acceptable? If justifiable, what conditions should its practitioners be reasonably expected to meet? Despite some important insights, defenders of uncivil disobedience rely on a narrow and sometimes misleading view of civil disobedience, as previously practiced and theorized. Notwithstanding legitimate skepticism about Rawlsian (...) notions of civil disobedience, they reproduce its troublesome binary or ‘all-or-nothing’ view of political lawbreaking. Uncivil disobedience’s proponents tend to group a vast array of distinctive types of lawbreaking under one amorphous categorical rubric, impeding the suitably complex, nuanced analysis we need. A superior approach would pay careful attention to uncivil disobedience’s ambivalent historical record, a record suggesting that UD is more likely to reproduce authoritarian populism’s disturbing political logic than counteract it. (shrink)

Methodological reductionists practice ‘wannabe reductionism’. They claim that one should pursue reductionism, but never propose how. I integrate two strains in prior work to do so. Three kinds of activities are pursued as “reductionist”. “Successional reduction” and inter-level mechanistic explanation are legitimate and powerful strategies. Eliminativism is generally ill-conceived. Specific problem-solving heuristics for constructing inter-level mechanistic explanations show why and when they can provide powerful and fruitful tools and insights, but sometimes lead to erroneous results. I show how traditional metaphysical (...) approaches fail to engage how science is done. The methods used do so, and support a pragmatic and non-eliminativist realism. (shrink)

The goal of this chapter is to describe recollective memory and give an account of some of the characteristics of this form of human memory. I take recollective memory to be the type of memory that occurs when an individual recalls a specific episode from their past experience. I start with this very loose definition because a large part of this chapter consists of an attempt to work out a more detailed and analytic description of this form of memory.

Most philosophical accounts of emergence are incompatible with reduction. Most scientists regard a system property as emergent relative to properties of its parts if it depends upon their mode of organization-a view consistent with reduction. Emergence is a failure of aggregativity, in which ``the whole is nothing more than the sum of its parts''. Aggregativity requires four conditions, giving powerful tools for analyzing modes of organization. Differently met for different decompositions of the system, and in different degrees, the structural conditions (...) can provide evaluation criteria for choosing decompositions, ``natural kinds'', and detecting functional localization fallacies, approximations, and various biases of vulgar reductionisms. This analysis of emergence and use of these conditions as heuristics is consistent with a broader reductionistic methodology. (shrink)

The media hoop-la about Edward Snowden has obscured a less flashy yet more vital – and philosophically relevant – part of the story, namely the moral and political seriousness with which he acted to make the hitherto covert scope and scale of NSA surveillance public knowledge. Here I argue that we should interpret Snowden’s actions as meeting most of the demanding tests outlined in sophisticated political thinking about civil disobedience. Like Thoreau, Gandhi, King and countless other (forgotten) grass-roots activists, Snowden (...) has in fact articulated a powerful defense of why he was morally obligated to engage in politically motivated law-breaking. He has also undertaken impressive efforts to explain how his actions are distinguishable from ordinary criminality, and why they need not culminate in reckless lawlessness. In fact, his example can perhaps help us advance liberal and democratic ideas about civil disobedience. First, it highlights sound reasons why, pace the orthodox view, the acceptance of punishment by those engaging in civil disobedience should not be seen as a precondition of its legitimacy. Second, Snowden reminds us that ours is an era in which intensified globalization processes directly shape every feature of political existence. Defenders of civil disobedience need to update their reflections accordingly. (shrink)

The hard problem of consciousness has held center stage in the philosophy of mind for the past two decades. It claims that the phenomenal character of conscious experiences—what it’s like to be in them—cannot be explained by appeal to the operation of physiological subsystems. The hard problem arises, however, only given the assumption that hylomorphism is false. Hylomorphism claims that structure is a basic ontological and explanatory principle. A human is not a random collection of physical materials, but an individual (...) composed of physical materials with a structure that accounts for what it is and what it can do—the powers it has. What is true of humans is true of their activities as well. The latter are not random physiological changes, but structured ones: we engage in them by coordinating the ways our parts manifest their powers. Structured activities include perceptual experiences. Consequently, everything about a perceptual experience, including its phenomenal character, can be explained by describing the perceiver’s perceptual subsystems, the powers of those subsystems, and the coordination that unifies their activities into the activity of the perceiver as a whole. Conscious experiences thus fit unproblematically into the natural world—just as unproblematically as the phenomenon of life. Even exponents of the hard problem of consciousness agree that there is no hard problem of life. Consequently, if hylomorphism is true, there can be no hard problem of consciousness. To insist that there is such a problem, then, is implicitly to reject hylomorphism. The concept of consciousness that motivates the hard problem is as much a theoretical construct, therefore, as the concept of life that motivates an obstinate vitalist. (shrink)

Beliefs are freely attributed to God nowadays in Anglo–American philosophical theology. This practice undoubtedly reflects the twentieth–century popularity of the view that knowledge consists of true justified belief . The connection is frequently made explicit. If knowledge is true justified belief then whatever God knows He believes. It would seem that much recent talk of divine beliefs stems from Nelson Pike's widely discussed article, ‘Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action’. In this essay Pike develops a version of the classic argument for (...) the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and free will in terms of divine forebelief. He introduces this shift by premising that ‘ A knows X ’ entails ‘A believes X ’. As a result of all this, philosophers have increasingly been using the concept of belief in defining ‘omniscience’. (shrink)

There are many branches of philosophy called “the philosophy of X,” where X = disciplines ranging from history to physics. The philosophy of artificial intelligence has a long history, and there are many courses and texts with that title. Surprisingly, the philosophy of computer science is not nearly as well-developed. This article proposes topics that might constitute the philosophy of computer science and describes a course covering those topics, along with suggested readings and assignments.

Hylomorphism claims that structure is a basic ontological and explanatory principle; it accounts for what things are and what they can do. My goal is to articulate a metaphysic of hylomorphic structure different from those currently on offer. It is based on a substance-attribute ontology that takes properties to be powers and tropes. Hylomorphic structures emerge, on this account, as powers to configure the materials that compose individuals.