(1983). Consciousness and complexity: Evolutionary perspectives on the mind-body problem. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 61, No. 4, pp. 378-395.

Pickering and Chater (P&C) maintain that folk psychology and cognitive science should neither compete nor cooperate. Each is an independent enterprise, with a distinct subject matter and characteristic modes of explanation. P&C''s case depends upon their characterizations of cognitive science and folk psychology. We question the basis for their characterizations, challenge both the coherence and the individual adequacy of their contrasts between the two, and show that they waver in their views about the scope of each. We conclude that P&C (...) do not so muchdiscover ascreate the gap they find between folk psychology and cognitive science. It is an artifact of their implausible and unmotivated attempt to demarcate the two areas, and of the excessively narrow accounts they give of each. (shrink)

An analysis of two heuristic strategies for the development of mechanistic models, illustrated with historical examples from the life sciences. In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they identify a number of "choice points" that life scientists confront in developing mechanistic explanations and show how different choices result (...) in divergent explanatory models. Describing decomposition as the attempt to differentiate functional and structural components of a system and localization as the assignment of responsibility for specific functions to specific structures, Bechtel and Richardson examine the usefulness of these heuristics as well as their fallibility—the sometimes false assumption underlying them that nature is significantly decomposable and hierarchically organized. When Discovering Complexity was originally published in 1993, few philosophers of science perceived the centrality of seeking mechanisms to explain phenomena in biology, relying instead on the model of nomological explanation advanced by the logical positivists (a model Bechtel and Richardson found to be utterly inapplicable to the examples from the life sciences in their study). Since then, mechanism and mechanistic explanation have become widely discussed. In a substantive new introduction to this MIT Press edition of their book, Bechtel and Richardson examine both philosophical and scientific developments in research on mechanistic models since 1993. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 121.2 (2000) 320-324 [Access article in PDF] David M. Lewis. Selected Papers in Greek and Near Eastern History. Edited by P.J. Rhodes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. xii 1 418 pp. 4 pls. Cloth, $89.95. David Lewis's death in 1994 deprived the world of scholarship of one of the leading ancient historians of our time. His books include a revision of Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals (...) of Athens (with John Gould, 1968), A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century B.C. (with Russell Meiggs, 1969; 2d ed. 1984), Sparta and Persia (1977), Inscriptiones Graecae I3 (editor-in-chief), fasc. 1 (1981), fasc. 2 (1993), and Cambridge Ancient [End Page 320] History, 2d ed. (co-editor), IV (1988), V (1992), VI (1994). Many of his most original ideas are to be found in his articles and reviews, however, and so the Cambridge University Press planned, before his death, a book of his short papers.The volume under review presents a total of thirty-eight papers, four previously unpublished, ranging from the 1950s to 1993. The general contents, notes, and final editing by P.J. Rhodes were discussed with Lewis; some of the notes simply give references, but there is representation of Lewis's words in the longer ones. His passion for precision, reconciling the testimony of inscriptions with the literary references, shows him to care, like Thucydides, for "exact knowledge."The four previously unpublished papers perhaps deserve summary. "On the Dating of Demosthenes' Speeches," read to the Oxford Philological Society in 1970, evaluates critically the testimony of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The dates for Orations 22 (Against Androtion) and 24 (Against Timokrates) given in Ad Amm., relied upon by scholars for Demosthenes' career (e.g., Cawkwell, Sealey), are shown to be unlikely. The dates from Dionysius would be 355/4 for 22 and 353/2 for 24. More likely, however, are 358/7 or 357/6 for 22 and 354/3 for 24. Lewis patiently assesses the evidence of inscriptions for Androtion's career and for the documents cited in Oration 24, which he does not believe to be forgeries. He shows reasons for not putting confidence in the dates of Dionysius. Principally, this involves an analysis of Deinarchos, where his statements can be checked. Dionysius cannot be checked on his Demosthenes, but Lewis argues that his statements cannot be accepted outright. The analysis of Deinarchos is new, but part of Lewis's view there is anticipated in his "Notes on Attic Inscriptions," ABSA 49 (1954) 32, 39-49. Rhodes cites a text from the Agora excavations, soon to be published by John Camp and M.B. Richardson, which will support the date 354/3 for Oration 24.In "The Financial Offices of Eubulus and Lycurgus" (written ca. 1957) Lewis addresses two questions: "When did Eubulus hold the office of treasurer of the theoric fund (), and, with it, control of Athenian finances?" and "When was Lycurgus officially made controller of Athenian finances?" Generally held opinions would be in the 350s and 340s for Eubulus, with specific dates variously suggested, in relation to Demosthenes' speeches. For Lycurgus, either 342-330 or 338-326 is the tenure previously accepted. The decree honoring Lycurgus in [Plut.] Vit. X Or. has Lycurgus serve as treasurer of the public finance for three penteterids. Lewis argues that specific evidence is lacking for Eubulus, but that his moral authority in the reorganization of finances is likely in the 350s and 340s. He examines closely Aeschines 3.25 in assessing Eubulus' authority and argues that the office of controller of the public finance was created in 336, its term defined by the law of Hegemon: hence the period 336-324 should be understood for Lycurgus' tenure."Aristophanes and Politics" was delivered to the Oxford Branch of the [End Page 321] Classical Association in 1957 and had been given earlier in France. Lewis seeks a position that is not so minimalist as that of Gomme (in CR 1938), who had argued that Aristophanes is a dramatist, seeking... (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

William Uttal's The new phrenology is a broad attack on localization in cognitive neuroscience. He argues that even though the brain is a highly differentiated organ, "high level cognitive functions" should not be localized in specific brain regions. First, he argues that psychological processes are not well-defined. Second, he criticizes the methods used to localize psychological processes, including imaging technology: he argues that variation among individuals compromises localization, and that the statistical methods used to construct activation maps are flawed. (...) Neither criticism is compelling. First, as we illustrate, there are behavioral measures which offer at least weak constraints on psychological attribution. Second, though imaging does face methodological difficulties associated with variation among individuals, these are broadly acknowledged; moreover, his specific criticisms of the imaging work, and in particular of fMRI, misrepresent the methodology. In concluding, we suggest a way of framing the issues that might allow us to resolve differences between localizationist models and more distributed models empirically. (shrink)

Responds to comments by F. C. Richardson regarding the present author's rejection of the indeterminate textuality of postmodern thought as self-contradictory . The present author considers the possibility of a rational-empiricist explanation of human behavior. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Part I: The Life of Cognitive Science:. William Bechtel, Adele Abrahamsen, and George Graham. Part II: Areas of Study in Cognitive Science:. 1. Analogy: Dedre Gentner. 2. Animal Cognition: Herbert L. Roitblat. 3. Attention: A.H.C. Van Der Heijden. 4. Brain Mapping: Jennifer Mundale. 5. Cognitive Anthropology: Charles W. Nuckolls. 6. Cognitive and Linguistic Development: Adele Abrahamsen. 7. Conceptual Change: Nancy J. Nersessian. 8. Conceptual Organization: Douglas Medin and Sandra R. Waxman. 9. Consciousness: Owen Flanagan. 10. Decision Making: J. Frank (...) Yates and Paul A. Estin. 11. Emotions: Paul E. Griffiths. 12. Imagery and Spatial Representation: Rita E. Anderson. 13. Language Evolution and Neuromechanisms: Terrence W. Deacon. 14. Language Processing: Kathryn Bock and Susan M. Garnsey. 15. Linguistics Theory: D. Terence Langendoen. 16. Machine Learning: Paul Thagard. 17. Memory: Henry L. Roediger III and Lyn M. Goff. 18. Perception: Cees Van Leeuwen. 19. Perception: Color: Austen Clark. 20. Problem Solving: Kevin Dunbar. 21. Reasoning: Lance J. Rips. 22. Social Cognition: Alan J. Lambert and Alison L. Chasteen. 23. Unconscious Intelligence: Rhianon Allen and Arthur S. Reber. 24. Understanding Texts: Art Graesser and Pam Tipping. 25. Word Meaning: Barbara C. Malt. Part III: Methodologies of Cognitive Science:. 26. Artificial Intelligence: Ron Sun. 27. Behavioral Experimentation: Alexander Pollatsek and Keith Rayner. 28. Cognitive Ethology: Marc Bekoff. 29. Deficits and Pathologies: Christopher D. Frith. 30. Ethnomethodology: Barry Saferstein. 31. Functional Analysis: Brian Macwhinney. 32. Neuroimaging: Randy L. Buckner and Steven E. Petersen. 33. Protocal Analysis: K. Anders Ericsson. 34. Single Neuron Electrophysiology: B. E. Stein, M.T. Wallace, and T.R. Stanford. 35. Structural Analysis: Robert Frank. Part IV: Stances in Cognitive Science:. 36. Case-based Reasoning: David B. Leake. 37. Cognitive Linguistics: Michael Tomasello. 38. Connectionism, Artificial Life, and Dynamical Systems: Jeffrey L. Elman. 39. Embodied, Situated, and Distributed Cognition: Andy Clark. 40. Mediated Action: James V. Wertsch. 41. Neurobiological Modeling: P. Read Montague and Peter Dayan. 42. Production Systems: Christian D. Schunn and David Klahr. Part V: Controversies in Cognitive Science:. 43. The Binding Problem: Valerie Gray Hardcastle. 44. Heuristics and Satisficing: Robert C. Richardson. 45. Innate Knowledge: Barbara Landau. 46. Innateness and Emergentism: Elizabeth Bates, Jeffrey L. Elman, Mark H. Johnson, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett. 47. Intentionality: Gilbert Harman. 48. Levels of Explanation and Cognition Architectures: Robert N. McCauley. 49. Modularity: Irene Appelbaum. 50. Representation and Computation: Robert S. Stufflebeam. 51. Representations: Dorrit Billman. 52. Rules: Terence Horgan and John Tienson. 53. Stage Theories Refuted: Donald G. Mackay. Part VI: Cognitive Science in the Real World:. 54. Education: John T. Bruer. 55. Ethics: Mark L. Johnson. 56. Everyday Life Environments: Alex Kirlik. 57. Institutions and Economics: Douglass C. North. 58. Legal Reasoning: Edwina L. Rissland. 59. Mental Retardation: Norman W. Bray, Kevin D. Reilly, Lisa F. Huffman, Lisa A. Grupe, Mark F. Villa, Kathryn L. Fletcher, and Vivek Anumolu. 60. Science: William F. Brewer and Punyashloke Mishra. Selective Biographies of Major Contributors to Cognitive Science: William Bechtel and Tadeusz Zawidzki. (shrink)

William C. Gentry was both an academic philosopher, perfectly willing to engage in the philosophical 'conversations' of the written word and, more importantly, a true philosopher, in the Platonic and Socratic style. Engaging with those around him in discourse, in live conversations, which are the vehicle of actual philosophical inquiry and discovery. These essays are the product of those conversations. Gentry's thoughts consisted of investigations into the deepest and most profound questions of human nature, ethics, and knowledge. This volume (...) is a tribute both to his role as a teacher and philosopher. As a teacher, friend, and colleague, Gentry was the epitome of the philosopher: questioning, exploring, critiquing, discovering. (shrink)

“The object of this book,” writes William C. Dowling in his preface, “is to make the key concepts of Paul Ricoeur’s _Time and Narrative_ available to readers who might have felt bewildered by the twists and turns of its argument.” The sources of puzzlement are, he notes, many. For some, it is Ricoeur’s famously indirect style of presentation, in which the polarities of argument and exegesis seem so often and so suddenly to have reversed themselves. For others, it is (...) the extraordinary intellectual range of Ricoeur’s argument, drawing on traditions as distant from each other as Heideggerian existentialism, French structuralism, and Anglo-American analytic philosophy. Yet beneath the labyrinthian surface of Ricoeur’s _Temps et récit_, Dowling reveals a single extended argument that, though developed unsystematically, is meant to be understood in systematic terms. __Ricoeur on Time and Narrative_ _presents that argument in clear and concise terms, in a way that will be enlightening both to readers new to Ricoeur and those who may have felt themselves adrift in the complexities of _Temps et récit,_ Ricoeur’s last major philosophical work. Dowling divides his discussion into six chapters, all closely involved with specific arguments in _Temps et récit_: on mimesis, time, narrativity, semantics of action, poetics of history, and poetics of fiction. Additionally, Dowling provides a preface that lays out the French intellectual context of Ricoeur's philosophical method. An appendix presents his English translation of a personal interview in which Ricoeur, having completed _Time and Narrative, _looks back over his long career as an internationally renowned philosopher. __Ricoeur on Time and Narrative___ _communicates to readers the intellectual excitement of following Ricoeur’s dismantling of established theories and arguments—Aristotle and Augustine and Husserl on time, Frye and Greimas on narrative structure, Arthur Danto and Louis O. Mink on the nature of historical explanation—while coming to see how, under the pressure of Ricoeur’s analysis, these ideas are reconstituted and revealed in a new set of relations to one another. "The scholarship in William C. Dowling's __Ricoeur on Time and Narrative____ __is impeccable; Dowling knows Ricoeur inside out. He highlights Ricoeur's most important arguments, presents them in a limpid, concise language, and links them to the relevant nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophical developments. Dowling's book provides us with a lucid, intelligible version of Ricoeur's major work, one that will be of considerable significance to philosophers, historians, and literary theorists." —_Thomas Pavel, Gordon J. Laing Distinguished Service Professor of French Literature, and the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago_ "William C. Dowling's __Ricoeur on Time and Narrative___ _is a subtle and remarkably well-sustained piece of work. It provides a detailed introduction to a major work of philosophy and narrative theory—already a considerable achievement, given the difficulty of Ricoeur's text. However, Dowling also shows us, sometimes explicitly, sometimes simply through the way he conducts his argument, why we should bother with Ricoeur—what we have to gain from knowing him better than we do, however well we may think we know him." —_Michael Wood, Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923 Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Princeton University _. (shrink)

With the rejection of group selectionist derivations of ecological phenomena so incisively given by George Williams in 1966,43 Nicholson's long-ignored messages met with acceptance. Species benefit became, explicitly, incidental. But the reorientation was not just about a point of ecological theory. It was more fundamentally about theoretical style, the element shared by Wynne-Edwards' work and the newer, evolutionary ecology. That current approach is well expressed in an already classic paper by the British plant ecologist John Harper: Ultimately all the discoveries (...) of descriptive, production or population ecology must find their meaning in evolutionary phenomena... Evolutionary thinking concentrates attention on the behaviour of the individual and his descendants. If nothing in biology has meaning except in the light of evolution and if evolution is about individuals and their descendants — i.e. fitness — we should not expect to reach any depth of understanding from studies that are based at the level of the superindividual... What we see as the organised behaviour of systems is the result of the fate of individuals.44The emphasis in this passage is on style of thinking more than on study matter. What is so different from earlier ecologists is the rejection of the superorganism and its associated baggage of selfimposed constraints in an end-oriented process, such as balance of nature or species-level adaptation.The hallmark of post-1959 evolutionary ecology is the recognition, the making explicit of the question that the selective, genetical process of fitness (fates of genes) has to be separated from the observations of different levels of adaptiveness. An easy conflation of cause and result is no longer satisfying; now attempts to disentangle the complex strands tying population phenomena to the different levels of selection are providing the excitement of a new research program. In this program evolutionary theory is used to define the appropriate questions, as exemplified by the organization of the textbook Evolutionary Ecology.45 Our discussion of the invention of a new approach, with a characteristic style and set of interests, must also be about how the practitioners of ecology have perceived themselves. The early attempts of Poulton and Nicholson were not taken up by the vigorously growing science of ecology, which developed first - and intentionally — along a narrower, hierarchically restrained set of questions about population. The depth of Poulton's and Nicholson's submergence is indicated by the fact that even Wynne-Edwards did not argue in the manner of one rescuing a minor tradition. Rather, he thought he had a new approach, that of placing evolution in the foundations of ecology. Although this approach was not exactly original, we should be cautious in grouping all evolutionary concerns within ecology in one intellectual tradition. The particular style of selectionist deduction invigorated by Wynne-Edwards was successful only in the volatile situation of a rapidly growing discipline, full of self-critical examination and new rigor. Whereas in 1930 evolutionary concerns did not provide that rigor, by 1960 they could - and did. (shrink)

Though the phrase 'x is true of x' is well formed grammatically, it does not express any predicate in the logical sense, because it does not satisfy the principle of reduction for statements containing 'x is true of'. recognition of this allows for solution of russell's paradox without his restrictive theory of types.

This book introduces the work of an important medieval Islamic philosopher who is little known outside the Persian world. Afdal al-Din Kashani was a contemporary of a number of important Muslim thinkers, including Averroes and Ibn al-Arabi. Kashani did not write for advanced students of philosophy but rather for beginners. In the main body of his work, he offers especially clear and insightful expositions of various philosophical positions, making him an invaluable resource for those who would like to learn the (...) basic principles and arguments of this philosophical tradition but do not have a strong background in philosophy. Here, Chittick uses Kashani and his work to introduce the basic issues and arguments of Islamic philosophy to modern readers. (shrink)

Calhoun, W.C., Incomparable prime ideals of recursively enumerable degrees, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 63 39–56. We show that there is a countably infinite antichain of prime ideals of recursively enumerable degrees. This solves a generalized form of Post's problem.

Over the past several years a cascade of corporate scandals have erupted. Savings and provisions for retirement have shrunk drastically. Jobs have been lost. One of the world's largest and best-known accounting firms is gone. Ordinary people have been hurt and they have lost confidence in business leaders. The on-going public debate over business ethics and corporate reform points to one common conclusion: Things cannot be corrected by simply adding more laws and new rules. The solution will come from high (...) moral leadership. The Heart of A Business Ethic is based on the Hansen-Wessner Lectureship Series established by the ServiceMaster Foundation to consider the source of moral authority and ethical behavior in business. The eight lectures in this series were presented at major universities in the U.S. and Britain, and brought together some of the most distinguished business experts of our time. What they have to say is important for business teachers and students, and business leaders at every level. The scandals at Enron, Tyco and others have generated many books on business ethics, but none offer the expertise or breadth of thinking that this volume does. The Heart of A Business Ethic is useful to professors, students, and practitioners who not only want to understand what has happened, but who also want to think through the basis for a new standard of morality in business. (shrink)

The reductionistic vision of evolutionary theory, "the gene's eye view of evolution" is the dominant view among evolutionary biologists today. On this view, the gene is the only unit with sufficient stability to act as a unit of selection, with individuals and groups being more ephemeral units of function, but not of selection. This view is argued to be incorrect, on several grounds. The empirical and theoretical bases for the existence of higher-level units of selection are explored, and alternative analyses (...) discussed critically. The success of a multi-level selection theory demands the recognition and development of a multi-level genetics. The way to accomplish this is suggested. The genotype/phenotype distinction also requires further analysis to see how it applies at higher levels of organization. This analysis provides a way of defining genotype and phenotype for cultural evolution, and a treatment of the innate-acquired distinction which are both generalizeable to analyze problems of the nature and focus of scientific change. (shrink)

This book offers a philosophy for error-prone humans trying to understand messy systems in the real world.

Frege begins his exposition of the symbol system employed in his Begriffsschrift by introducing the sign ⟝, whereby, he says, “[a] judgment is always to be expressed”.[The judgment sign] stands to the left of the sign or complex of signs in which the content of the judgment is given. If we omit the little stroke at the left of the horizontal stroke, then the judgment is to be transformed into a mere complex of ideas; the author is not expressing his (...) recognition or nonrecognition of the truth of this. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The evolutionary background Genes: Selfish? Altruistic? Or both? The hunter‐gatherer mind and before Nature's moral sentiments Nature in the workplace The rest of the story and more.

We will show that there is a strong form of emergence in cell biology. Beginning with C.D. Broad's classic discussion of emergence, we distinguish two conditions sufficient for emergence. Emergence in biology must be compatible with the thought that all explanations of systemic properties are mechanistic explanations and with their sufficiency. Explanations of systemic properties are always in terms of the properties of the parts within the system. Nonetheless, systemic properties can still be emergent. If the properties of the components (...) within the system cannot be predicted, even in principle, from the behavior of the system's parts within simpler wholes then there also will be systemic properties which cannot be predicted, even in principle, on basis of the behavior of these parts. We show in an explicit case study drawn from molecular cell physiology that biochemical networks display this kind of emergence, even though they deploy only mechanistic explanations. This illustrates emergence and its place in nature. (shrink)

The book roots corruption in the idea of a departure from conventional standards, and thus offers an account not only of its corrosiveness but also of its malleability and controversiality. In the course of a broadranging exploration, it examines various links between private and public corruption, connecting the latter with other social and political structures.

To say ‘mysticism versus philosophy’ in the context of Islamic civilization means something far different from what it has come to signify in the West, where many philosophers have looked upon mysticism as the abandonment of any attempt to reconcile religious data with intelligent thought. Certainly the Muslim mystics and philosophers sometimes display a certain mutual opposition and antagonism, but never does their relationship even approach incompatibility.